“All right, Wolfgang" Prof finally said "You get your book and even rediscovered the true, ancient music of your people. What exactly is your people's true, ancient music anyways? Please explain in short, easy, and simple words. Why is it so important?"

That question irked him previously, but looting was more important for a time. After he played a role in naming a long-lost art, he started to get curious again, what all that fuss was about.

“See, Greenskins do everything with musics. Crafting, fighting, raising plants, paving roads. Everything! Need good musics for it. Greenskins now have mostly stupid Clay musics, not good musics. Crafting bad, raising plants bad, fighting really bad. Only few play Granite, mostly old songs. Book has tru musics, songs no Greenskin remembers. It’s good musics! Will help Greenskins rise again!”

“All right, I understand, why it is so important.” helping a whole species to rediscover its roots and restore its former glory was good. Right? Right? Nothing could possibly go wrong with it. Right? “But what is Clay, Granite, and Mythrill?!? You are good at singing, can you at least give us an example?"

“Can do better! I got me axe back, can play!”

“You play on a two-handed battleaxe?"

“Yes! Great ancestor said, tru musics can only be played on an axe! Traditional, tru people play on axe, not guitar! Pitty, making tru musics axes is almost lost. Is magical! Normal guitars not magical, mostly, and no tru musics. It’s Clay. Here! Hear!”

Wolfgang took his axe and strummed the chords. He wasn't satisfied at first and tweaked the screws holding the chords a bit.

“First, Clay. Demeaning to play it on axe, but needed to understand difference.”

To Prof’s complete surprise, the axe turned out to be a high quality... electric guitar, to judge by the sound of it. Of course, the song was in Greenskinian, so Prof didn’t understand the lyrics, and with only one singer and an… axeman (axeorc?)… guitarist… the orchestra wasn’t very good either. If Prof wasn’t sitting, he would have fallen over, nevertheless.

The song could be called pop music on Earth! With a proper band, maybe with a cute, barely-clothed chick as frontwoman, it could easily generate a multi-million Dollar income. It was actually quite good, even with the minimal means Wolfgang had currently. He was a good singer and guitar player, and back on Earth, he could become some famous star. He probably was one on Arkadia too.

“Next, Granite. This old classic for cooking food.”

After tweaking the screws again – Prof was almost sure, the thingies had a proper name too – Wolfgang started a new song. Prof almost choked. Even when not understanding the lyrics, that was unmistakably Rock ‘n’ Roll. Or Hard Rock, the borders were somewhat fluid. Prof started to have a very bad feeling.

“I bring you MYTRHIL! Me not know song, it’s from ancestor’s book. First performance!”

The very first riff sent Prof’s jaw hitting the ground. He knew that riff, that intro, and that guitar solo. In fact, most Humans from Earth knew (or at least should know) it, even not knowing the title or the artist, because it was one of the most well-known songs of all time, it was iconic, it was…

It was Heavy Metal!

Who brought Metal to Arkadia?!? As soon as Prof asked himself the question, he realized, the answer was easy and obvious. The Elves even had a dedicated organization to hunt down people from Earth, which meant, folks were coming to Arkadia fairly frequently. That at least the Elves felt it necessary to observe or kill off whatevered Earthlings meant that they feared outside influences. If visitors were fairly frequent, and the influence was feared, it was to be expected, that some indeed left their mark on Arkadia. Why not Heavy Metal? Who knows, maybe the Elves' own drive to bureaucratize everything could be traced back to a German public servant.

Heavy Metal was actually better than German bureaucracy, or bureaucracy on its own, no matter the origin.

“This is GOOOD!" Prof was woken from his musings by Mini screaming and jumping around in a vague approximation of the rhythm. Maybe Prof could introduce headbanging to Arkadia? Sure, why not? If there was already Heavy Metal, it should be done correctly. No face paint, though.

“Hey, Mini! You should do it like this! And hold your fingers like this!”

“Better! Wolfyboy, play it again! I LOVE IT!” It was highly likely, Arkadia’s first Heavy Metal Groupie was born just now. Arkadia could have probably lived without the phenomenon…

“Prof, you know MYTHRILL?!”

“At home, we had something similar, Wolfgang.” technically not a lie “Say, how do you the performance usually?”

“Stand around, play axe or guitar, why?”

“No, no, no, that’s not even good for Clay! You have to make a show out of it. It shouldn’t be hard, you even have to Perk for it.”

“What you mean, make show?”

“For example, there is a guitar player, who jumps around the stage like this while playing." Prof showed a well-known one-legged hop. "But at least you should stand in poses like this or this" He wasn't exactly a metalhead, but at least could show off a few poses. "You don't have the hair for headbanging, that is what Mini was doing, but the basic principle is all right. As for clothes… Invest in black. Heavy boots are also good. Maybe a heavy leather jacket, your family crest is ideal for the back of it. You could go with a top hat too. Or a bandana."

Prof thought about becoming a stage manager or creative director for Wolfgang and his new band. He could hire a secretary or an intern to do the actual work, he would need to just talk platitudes, and look all-knowing. Good money for no work. Maybe as a hobby, if they could move at least a part of the Hags' collection, he would be set for life.

That night he dreamt about being filthy rich and owning a nice seaside mansion or castle. The dream turned into a nightmare when Mini organized a village-wide orgy and the tax collectors showed up. Dreams were sometimes just cruel.

The next morning, Bianca – still in the chain bikini and a shirt – pulled him aside.

“Prof, you forgot a very important thing regarding Wolfgang.” That was true, he forgot to tell him to be on the lookout for gold diggers, don’t do drugs, try to get some female background singers and revealing clothes for them… “You haven’t discussed a loot contract with him yet. As it is now, he would be entitled to one share and we would get another.”

“One share for him and one for each of us wouldn’t be bad. What’s the problem with it?”

“You misunderstood. The four of us together would get one share, not one share for each.”

“What?! He would get half of the loot?”

“Exactly. Actually, you forgot to discuss loot rights with me, and I think with Sharpclaw too. At least Miss Mini made a deal with me in your stead. You should pay attention to this, I have seen happy looting turn into grimy fighting.”

“Thanks, Bianca, I will discuss it with him immediately.”

“Hopefully, he isn't greedy. But again, we could always feed him to Binky." That was… pragmatically put. And possibly a beginning of the "feed that guy to Binky, I don't like him" attitude.

Luckily, Wolfgang wasn't greedy. In fact, he didn't even want any of the liberated stuff, just his and his band's remaining gear, plus the book to bring Metal to Arkadia. Prof, however, felt generous and convinced him to take an equal share on top of the book. [Commerce] informed him in time to make an exception for the book and gear, if they didn't make it out with much, Prof's party would have a partial claim to it.

It was a sacred relic of Wolfgang’s people, making money out of it wouldn’t be right. As long as they had other loot to distribute, anyway.

As for loot and need, they had two immediate problems: food and clothing. As the only one, who had any Skill with ranged weapons, Prof tasked Mini to try to hunt something to eat. Maybe she could scavenge some plants too, but most likely Prof would need to take over that task too, he had the highest [Herbology] of everyone present. Hopefully [Herbology] was the needed Skill, and not a slightly mislabelled other one, like, for example [Agriculture].

As for clothing, Wolfgang was told to start identifying all the magical clothing they brought and the Hags collected. Hopefully, they could mix and match enough to be fully clothed again – cosplaying Barbarians was slightly funny for a few minutes, but for leaving the Valley they needed proper clothes, armor, and boots. As soon as Wolfgang finished with the clothing, he was told to work on armor pieces the others collected in the meantime.

Bianca and Sharpclaw were to shift through everything and look for Bags of Holding and the like; without those standard pieces of adventuring gear, they had no chance to move a considerable amount of loot. In fact, not even the stuff from the Elves could be reasonably moved with their current means. Prof felt cheated (again). From all the worlds in all the multiverses, he was on the only one, where Bags of Holding weren't just laying around everywhere, or could be bought for pocket change in a family store in the ass-end of nowhere. There wasn't even a conveniently abandoned truck parked in front of a working gas station!

Fantasy worlds weren’t like they used to be. On Arkadia you actually needed food, clothes didn’t resize and degraded over time and use, and magical items weren’t just dumped in convenient piles to be plundered.

Prof shrugged and started sifting through the magical items that were just dumped in convenient piles.