Prof looked puzzled for a moment.

“Oh! Thank you, but I'm not asking for payment for this. The loot we halve…”

“I understand. How do we halve? Weight, value, volume, necessity?”

“Doesn't it work like we halve in value and what no one needs or wants, will be sold in the first settlement and the money split?”

“Young man, where have you lived so far? I’m surprised your Guild has not yet explained the various loot contracts! What negligence!” Foxy, meanwhile, gathered her belongings and put on a half-coat leather jacket and put a straw hat over her head. The overall impression she gave fully clothed became interesting and somewhat disturbing.

“Ma'am, I'm not, and I've never been, in a guild. My loot experience so far is somewhat limited, but I think the loot halved in value works well for everyone.”

“Strange, strange. Very high combat skills while being low-level. Agility ​​and Dexterity at seventeen or eighteen, educated speech, and nothing to do with Guilds. Strange, strange. In addition, limited loot experience. One would expect the Guilds to line up to let you join them, young Human!”

All the TV detectives of the past fifteen to twenty years could have hid behind Foxy’s talent. Based on a short few minutes of fighting, and a few sentences spoken, she determined Prof’s values ​​quite accurately and realized some interesting contradictions.

“I have two theories!” Foxy continued. "Either you grew up in a cave but I think this is less likely based on your education, or you are a Traveller! Young Human, which is true, I await your reply!”

“Honestly, I have no idea who or what Travellers are, but I'm sure I didn't grow up in a cave, no matter how much an acquaintance of mine thinks so!”

“Are you saying you weren't born on another world and came to Arkadia because of some sort of “choice”? Let me hear the answer!” – that was fast. At Smallgrovewell, no one asked the question for a month, although Prof told it to Kendrik and assumed that both the Lady and Captain Bela had guessed where he came from. And the wolf creature figured it out on her own in a few minutes and confronted him about it. Not bad.

“You're right, I wasn't born on this world, I've been here for about a month.”

“I knew it! What a research opportunity! Young Human, I will give up my share of the loot for this, if I can come with you! Such an opportunity is so rare! We know so little about other worlds, about the choices, about everything! Tell me!”

Prof couldn’t decide if it was a good thing to being uprated from a hobo suspected of being a highwayman to a bacillus, or a rare animal that needs to be studied. Hopefully the research didn’t involve live autopsy or anal probes.

“All right, but then I have some requests too. First of all, everyone calls me a Prof, not a young Human, and I don’t think there is too much age difference between us. Secondly, I would be happy to hear all the basic knowledge about Arkadia that I probably missed in the last month. Shinead is not the best talking partner and most of the time she just insults me. Third, if you come with me, everyone has to do an equal share of the work. Is this acceptable?”

“All right, Prof. The age difference is an interesting thing, I'm thirty-five years old, which is seen as a good age for my people. How old are you exactly?”

“Twenty-two here on Arkadia, and I was thirty-five back home.”

“Strange, strange. Two worlds with different ages! Tell me more!”

"Okay, but let's process this bear first. Too bad most of it will be wasted!”

“Why?”

“The previous monster I overcame was practically completely processed by my comrade at the time, and we were close to a village where they could preserve or further process everything. Here, in the middle of the forest, it will be difficult, especially since my Skills are not very high either.”

“Hmmm… Let's see. I hazard no one ever showed you how to share your character parchment? As I guessed. It’s just a little mental exercise: focus on your character parchment and the person you want to show it to. Like I did now.”

Suddenly, the character parchment of the Level 5 half wolf-half Yellow Elf appeared before Prof’s mental eyes.

At least Prof found out why the woman was so bad with combat spells: her [Floramancy] Skill sat at only 60%. After a few tries, Prof sent his own character parchment and compared their respective Skills in Dire Bear harvesting. Prof was better in [Hunting], Foxy in [Cooking] and [Repair: Leather]. Unfortunately, all of their Skills that had anything to do with butchering an animal were all well below 100%.

Prof wasn’t sure how the “everyday use knowledge” of a Skill around 50% translated to the real-life difficulty of dressing and skinning a Dire Bear. After all, that was not “everyday knowledge”. He feared they would waste a lot of expensive parts (or get only lower quality) and at worst fail to get the really valuable parts at all.

Not that any of the two really knew what part of bear could be sold to an Alchemist… Preserving the loot until they reached the next settlement to sell it was another problem. They had nothing to preserve the meat with, and Prof wasn’t confident they could build a smoking shack on the fly either. With a deep sigh, Prof pulled out his hunting knife and set out to dress the corpse.

About two hours later, they were dripping in blood as the surveyed their haul (in Foxy’s case somewhat impatiently): Contrary to Prof's expectation, they managed to save the entire fur, which was accompanied by nearly a hundred portions of meat and enough cuttings for a few meals, all of the bear's claws and the complete skull.

Prof bet most of the bones could have been used for some potions, but neither he nor Foxy were sure which bone could be used and how much it could be sold for. Having already problems transporting and preserving the skin and the meat, Prof eventually took only the hind femurs, planning to take them if they could make room for them. They should have buried the dismantled corpse, but they realized, neither one of them had a spade. Prof eventually pulled the carcass into a shallow hole and threw some stones, branches and shrubs on it.

They were sure that if they didn't preserve the meat somehow, the whole thing would rot, but they didn't have enough salt or were skilled enough to make a smoking shack. Eventually, they agreed that Foxy would try to pre-fry the meat, and hoped it would be good for a few days at least. While preparing, Prof accidentally noticed that the half-blood had a very useful object, the possession of which she had not advertised so far:

“Foxy, you have a Bottomless Bag?!” He poked at the belly-bag-like container.

“Unfortunately, it's not bottomless, and it’s called a Bag of Holding.” Foxy was obviously not happy that Prof spotted the bag “It only can store a finite amount. Are there bottomless bags in your world?”

“No, there is no magic there. Bag of Holding, flying carpets and other stuff only exist in fairy tales and legends. How do the bags work here?”

“They are bigger inside than outside and reduce the weight of things. Mine is about four times the size on the inside and a quarter the weight of the stuff I put in. The volume difference of real masterpieces is twenty, or even thirty-three, while the weight is cut to a tenths or a fifteenth, but they are inherently expensive. Why, do you want to take it?”

“No, of course not! Can you use it for preservation?”

“If you ask if the bear meat will spoil in there, the answer is no. There is no time inside the bag.”

“Hmmm… If the bag is this big and a portion of meat is this size, I'd say it fits about six portions. What do you think?”

“You're not good at arithmetic, Prof. Or you can't pack. It can hold twelve portions.”

After some discussion, they agreed to put most valuable pieces of meat into the bag and pre-fry only the rest.

The results of a cooking spree, stretching into the late afternoon proved that 72% in [Cooking] was far from enough to pre-fry a Dire Bear. Two-thirds of their attempts resulted in burned, half-burned, over-fried, under-fried, and otherwise unusable pieces of meat. Eventually, they were glad to have successfully made twenty-five portions of pre-fried meat left, which they hoped to have a shelf-life of a week.

Prof took the scrap back to the remains of the bear and dredged some the loose earth over it. Back on Earth the Food Safety Agency and the Forestry Service (and a couple of environmental activists) would be on his back in no time, here he had to deal only with Red Elves. He couldn’t decide, which was worse.

As for the price, he estimated that at around forty-fifty copper list price per portion, they could get half of that from a trader for the pre-fried meat – if it didn’t spoil completely till then – , a little more for the “frozen” part, meaning the whole pile could be sold for somewhere between eight and nine silvers. Processing the skin ran into similar problems as preserving the meat: they didn’t have enough salt to finish it. And didn’t know how to start to begin with. Finally, they washed and scraped the excess material away somewhat and hung the skin up on a tree to dry.

Foxy, of course, had been impatiently asking Prof all day about how he got to Arkadia, what Earth was like, his life there, and all sorts of other things. As it turned out, although Prof remembered a lot of things, he couldn’t formulate the answers to many things (maybe because he didn’t know how certain things worked, his corresponding Skills were to low or there were simply no words for it in Bergian). He couldn’t draw them (because of his low drawing Skills) or show them off.

He already hated Activity back at home, but even the last minimal entertainment factor disappeared, as soon as the other party didn’t know most of the words and concepts, and the drawing-pointing party had mental barriers for explaining them – even if he knew the concepts back on Earth. Surprisingly, not many people on Earth do know how a steam engine, solar panels, electricity, airplanes or nukes worked. They heard about stuff, even used it, but had not the faintest idea how it worked.

As someone once said: I only ride ‘em, I don’t know what makes ‘em work. Interestingly, Foxy wasn’t upset about the lack of answers, but on the contrary, by not being able to give an answer, Prof seemed to prove a theory. Towards the end of the day, Foxy changed how she asked the questions, instead of asking for an essay, she asked yes-or-no-questions. The situation was getting better but in no way perfect: Prof could answer with yes or no, but Foxy lacked Earth-knowledge to know what to ask about in detail.

By the evening, Foxy ran out of questions - or got tired of the questioning - and retired to sleep. Prof tidied up the place before going to wash himself and going to bed.