“Good, the chick looks like she’s conscious again” Mini observed before they could go through their fallen friend’s remaining stuff “Let’s have a talk.”

Calling the female mercenary a "chick" was a bit of a stretch. Prof pegged her as only a few years younger than Mini – and was of a high enough Level to survive an expedition through the Valley (so far) and a battle against Guillermo. Or lucky enough.

The mercenary in question was sitting in the middle of her previous companion's corpses, looking a bit lost. Being lost wasn't really surprising, though. She was currently somewhere in the Valley of Torment, which was the very definition of getting lost, she was basically alone, and the only other people around were complete strangers.

“Hello, my name is Prof, she is Mini and the Kobold over there is Sharpclaw” Prof introduced themselves. It was never a bad idea to be polite.

“Talpas Bianca Valdezze from Camporosso, at your service” she made a motion with her right hand that could be understood as a half-hearted salute. “What was this all about? What should we do now?”

At least she spoke Bergian, although with a very heavy accent that made her very hard to understand. She had shoulder-length brown hair, brown eyes, and tan skin. She had a fit body – yeah, being a mercenary probably does that to you – and Prof was somehow reminded of a mix between a Warrior Princess and a War Trucker.

Except for wearing more clothes and having two hands.

“Well, the short version is that the Elves wanted to kill everyone else, honey, but you probably had it figured out too” Mini clarified

“Yes, we had that distinct impression. As long as we were still in Elffölde, the leader at least tried to present a face, but after entering the Valley… Well, a good part of our losses were due to the Elves, they retaliated to every perceived slight violently.”

“You didn’t try to rebel?”

“Some tried, and there was a battle. The Elves won… You have seen, what the leader was capable of, and that dark-skinned one was even worse. We had no choice. Even if we deserted, where would we go? We are in the Valley.”

Prof and Mini interrogated her in the next hour, but with both of them having a low [Interrogation] and [Investigation], they weren't very successful. Bianca showed them her Character Parchment and told them what she knew. She was a Level 10 "Normal", geared towards fighting Skills and with quite a few good, albeit cheap Perks.

She was hard to knock down, got a bit of an armor rating, especially when she was near death, and wearing heavy armor didn't hinder her in any way. With her high Skill in [Shield] and [Blocking], she was the perfect meat shield… ehmm… tank to protect the others. Prof was wasted as a defensive fighter.

On the other hand… Ice Queen, yeah, she probably would get a few cats for her old age. Another negative Perk made sure, she would never open locks, probably not even with the correct key – her [Lockpicking] sat at -6%...

She was from Camporosso (Bianca told him, the meaning was Redcamp, there was a Bluecamp, a Yellowcamp, a Greencamp, and a few other Colourcamps too. Why was everyone so hung up on color-coding everything?!), a Gerulian state, and was contracted indirectly through a mercenary broker to secure an expedition into the Valley of Torment. The first indication that something was fishy was the attack on the Red Elf Clan, but they were assured that it was legal and sanctioned. Even so, people started to desert.

When the rest of the company reached the Valley and it was too late to play morning mist and disappear, it started to become clear, the Elves were planning something big. Something big that not necessarily meant the survival of the Human mercenaries.

First, there was just grumbling, but after a few days and some losses due to animals and disappearances, the most vocal mercenary captains confronted the Elves about the whole issue.

Their corpses were presented to the rest of the mercenary band, and they were told in no uncertain terms that they should shut up and listen to their Elven masters. It worked for another few days, but after a pitched battle against a large pack of what Prof identified as certain dinosaurs with characteristic claws, the discontent finally boiled over into open revolt.

The outcome was as expected: the Elves held themselves back previously, sending the mercenaries to the front, tiring themselves out. From around eighty mercenaries only twenty or so survived, even if they managed to kill a dozen Elves. The survivors were cowed into submission.

Worse, about half their beast of burden fell or ran away during the fight, taking all their tents and camping gear with them. Half of the food went missing too, but with so few survivors, there was still enough left.

A few days later the remains of the expedition found a settlement, inhabited by Elves, Humans, and Greenskins. Only Guillermo and the duellist were allowed near the walls; Bianca had no idea, what was discussed. Less than an hour later they left in a hurry.

During the time till they arrived at the clearing with the ruins, they lost everybody else, leaving just five Humans and Elves each, plus six mules – those were parked next to the clearing.

“But, if they are next to the clearing and not on the clearing, they could be anywhere in the Valley!”

“The Elves had cast a spell, I don’t know the details, but obviously it fixed the space or something. It should be good for another few hours or so.”

“Sharpclaw, please retrieve them!” Prof directed the Kobold

“WAIT!” Bianca shouted “You don’t have the spell cast on you, you will go missing! Wait here, I will bring them here.”

That was a good save, he almost caused Sharpclaw to go missing. Of course, they just sent a complete stranger to retrieve the mules and the associated gear. Well, hopefully, she had enough sense not to try her luck alone in the Valley.

Meanwhile, Prof and Mini took a look at their stowed inheritance.

The remaining clothing wasn’t much, both in quality and quantity. The only better piece was a magical polka-dotted bandana (the classical white on red) from Foxy’s stash. Despite not knowing what it did, Mini appropriated it. A shirt from Shinead went to Sharplaw – because of the height difference, it went down to her hip.

A leather folder held the personal papers of Shinead – permits, licenses, identification papers – shifting through all of them, Prof failed to learn much, only that she was only twenty years of age. Prof realized, in all the time together he never looked at Shinead's Character Parchment. The folder, decorated with the Clan's coat of arms, went into the pile he wanted to leave behind.

Two pouches held the rest of the girl's money, four gold worth of assorted money, mostly Elven ones, but also some Bergian coins. The rest consisted of some personal effects, including a magical… well… dildo. Prof was shocked. It was one thing that Earth had smart vibrators (did they count the number of thrusts or what?! Prof didn't really want to know) but for a fantasy world to have something like that… On the other hand, if there was a need, there probably was a provider. Why not for recreational stuff?

“Oh, I know what that does! Give!” Of course, Mini was wide-eyed, her hands slightly trembling. Prof handed the epic magical device over without further questions, only hoping, the vampire wouldn’t use it right there and then.

He wasn’t that lucky…

With the fabric of reality in the Valley… not doing as it should, Prof had only a limited space to relocate.

When Bianca came back with the mules, she just stared at the Vampire with wide eyes, blushing as if her life depended on it. Finally, she averted her eyes, and reported to Prof, staring at the ground, trying very hard not to hear the noises. Oh yeah, she was a Prude. Was Mini doing stuff just to scandalize?

“These three have the Elves' stuff, these two have the remaining food and the last one was for us Humans." she clarified the cargo.

“Thank you. We didn’t touch your comrades, you can do what you want with them. Also, the mule with the mercenary stuff is yours too.” Prof didn’t know how to give her freedom in looting her erstwhile buddies and what the usual rules were. Since neither Mini nor Sharpclaw had any problems with inheriting from Shinead and Foxy, there were no real problems with it. Probably. Maybe. Mini was after all… challenged… and Sharpclaw obviously hated both.

Pushing the philosophical-economical questions of robbing the corpses of your friends back, Prof turned to the three mules carrying the Elves’ stuff, waiting to be plundered. According to Bianca, at least a dozen Elves died during the expedition, and most of their stuff was kept – that translated into Good Loot!

Well, if Prof expected a shopping mall worth of stuff, including a well-stocked fantasy weapon shop, he was sorely disappointed. Obviously, three mules could not transport a few semi-trailers worth of goods, and the surviving Elves only took the more expensive – or expensive-looking – items. The fifteen bags – each with a name tag – nevertheless contained a nice selection of jewelry, weapons, armor, and clothing, plus some personal effects, some of them Prof pegged as important for the deceased's family since they had minimal retail value. There were some… cosmetics included too, Prof was prepared to throw them away, but Mini stopped him.

“That is expensive stuff, I know some of the manufacturer’s names! Give!”

Fine, obviously Arkadia had a cosmetics industry and the party happened on Channel Nr. 5 and… well, Prof didn't know any other big-name cosmetics. Why was someone lugging cosmetics around, to begin with?!

About one item per bag was magical, either a piece of clothing, a weapon, or jewelry – unfortunately, no one was able to identify them, so they went into a pile with the other currently useless, potentially game-changing magical knick-knacks. No one was stupid enough to equip or play with unknown magical items.

The non-magical pieces of clothing were summarily discarded, for some strange reason clothing on Arkadia did not resize for the new owner, probably because of a conspiracy of the world's tailors who wanted to keep their business. There were only a few pieces Prof was willing and able to wear, and even Mini found nothing interesting. Prof saw no reason to drag the whole collection of used clothing back to civilization but was willing to offer Bianca a chance to go through the pile herself.

The collection of armor was a mixed bunch, of durable cloth, leather, and only a few pieces of metal, obviously, the Elves were not really fond of metal armor – or at least the dead Elves were not fond of such. Maybe it was a kind of Darwinian Selection: you were not fond of heavy armor so you died with a higher probability. Of course, Prof also only wore leather and managed to survive a couple of months even so…

Prof used [Valuation] on everything, and selected about half the pieces as worth the effort to bring them along, the rest went into the left-behind pile.

In contrast, the weapons all looked expensive enough to transport to the nearest armament dealer in order to do some commerce. There was a selection of knives and swords, with a few bows and crossbows interspersed, and even a tricky mace that had small vents that could spray the enemy with some concoction. Get maced, right?

The jewelry was judged as worthy of further transportation without much ado. Prof already kept a smallish collection of non-monetary assets, the new plunder set him on the road to open a shop anytime he wanted. Even if he owned only a third of the new items.

All in all, Prof estimated the value of everything on the mules they wanted to keep as about twenty gold – or twenty thousand Euro or Dollars! Not even counting the magical stuff!

Interestingly, there was no loose change in the bag, only a note on the name tag, about how much money the former owner possessed. Added together it should have been another eight gold or so, depending on how correctly Prof managed to apply the exchange rates.

Prof was happy. He managed to plunder the equivalent of one year's salary on Earth while doing nothing much (just surviving mortal danger). Arkadia was fantastic!

He just needed to get back to civilization to enjoy the wealth.