"I just cleared an entire dungeon on my own, and now you want me to scout out the orcs, too?"

  "You're the only one with a stealth Skill," pointed out Daniel.

  Annoyingly, he was right. Parties entrusting tasks to the most suitable members was common sense, and [Expert Stealth] was a useful Skill for scouting. Still, the fact that I was sacrificing experience to them while they sat back and did nothing rankled somewhat, and it wasn't as if I had any other useful Skills in areas like perception or tracking.

  They'd damn well better pull their weight once I'd checked out the villages and determined if it was safe to assault them. To be fair, the fact that they trusted me to make such a determination counted for a lot, as far as I was concerned. And there was always a chance we'd find ourselves in a dungeon with a restriction that rendered me impotent. No daggers or no stealth. Maybe no physical attacks at all, forcing us to entrust the whole thing to Ryan.

  With a sigh, I set off alone into the woodland. The trees seemed a little sparse to call it a forest, but they were still dense enough that it certainly wasn't a meadow. It was a weird in-between state.

  The landscape of the royal canton seemed rather varied, but from travelling a little and looking at maps, it was apparent the reason for that was that it was considerably larger than either Cargellen or Harvent. Maybe Harvent canton having no dungeons was no coincidence, and the borders of the royal canton had been carefully chosen to enclose every dungeon in the area.

  I didn't need to walk far to encounter my first group of orcs. Four of the monsters, rooting around in the soil with bare hands. Unlike the smaller goblins and kobolds, these were human sized. The proportions were still a little off, though, with too long arms, bandy legs and distended bellies. The skin was a rather sickly gray with just a hint of green. The effect gave them a rather unnerving feel, as if they were deformed, diseased humans instead of monsters. At least until one saw their faces. With flat noses, pig-like ears, and tusks curling up from a mouth that was far too large for their head, there was no way they would pass as human, diseased or otherwise.

  One extracted a worm from where he was digging in the soil, finger-thick and as long as my arm. He greedily slurped it up, sucking it down like a particularly juicy noodle.

  One of the others slapped him over the head. Given the length of their arms, the palm was going quite quickly at the point it made contact. The resulting crack was loud enough to cause a burst of panicked screeching as scores of birds took flight from the trees and darted straight up.

  The slapped orc didn't appear amused, and punched his aggressor in the face. From there, things only went downhill.

  That was fine by me. The two fighters were concentrating only on each other, while the pair of spectators were too busy watching the fight to notice me creeping up behind them.

  "Stab."

  Even their fellow orcs collapsing, dead, with a significant amount of their brain matter leaking out of their skulls, didn't interrupt the pair of fighters. I wasn't even sure what the fight was about. Was one jealous that the other hadn't shared his worm? From the fact that the four of them had been rummaging through the soil, were they deliberately looking for such worms? I couldn't think of anything else of value they might have been looking for, but then I wouldn't have considered the worms valuable either. Maybe they were orc delicacies?

  Or maybe, with three villages growing unchecked, there was a food shortage? Unlike dungeon monsters, real monsters needed to eat.

  The cause didn't much matter, and the continuing fight gave me time to hide. By the time the fight ended—both orcs still alive, but one unconscious on the ground—I was well away from the scene of the slaughter.

  The winning orc noticed his dead friends, poked them a few times, then raised his head and howled into the air. The howl was ungracefully truncated by me stabbing him in the neck from behind. I didn't bother with [Stab], wanting to check if I could kill an orc without it while I had one alone, and it went down just as easily as the first two.

  That was really a D-rank monster? For all the risks I'd taken, perhaps I'd been playing too safe recently, now that I had a couple of combat Skills with decent levels behind them. Yes, attacking a full village alone, as in the Goblin Den, would still be foolhardy, but perhaps D-rank mobs were too weak for me now. No wonder my assassination experience was outstripping kill experience so badly.

  That only left the unconscious one, who obviously didn't stand a chance.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Still not enough for my next level, but another patrol of that size would be. I just needed to find one. Perhaps I should have tailed this lot, but then I'd have risked ending up fighting a much larger group. Now, which way had they been travelling from?

  An advantage of the orcs over the smaller and lighter goblins was that they'd left footprints in the damp soil. Even without a tracking Skill, their path was obvious.

  It led straight back to a village. 'Village' may once again have been a poor description, but this time it wasn't because of disorganisation or shelters of dubious efficacy. It was because the entire thing was a singular construction.

  Trees had been felled in a circular clearing, with the stumps somehow cut level with the ground, even if they hadn't been removed completely. In the middle of the clearing was a massive—by village standards—octagonal construction, supported by a tree trunk at each corner. The walls were open, with nothing between the trunks, but the roof was solid. It would keep the rain off a wide patch.

  Smaller tents had been erected under the main construction, utilising monster leather and smaller branches. Despite already being sheltered, they were better built than the goblin attempts. They also weren't any bigger than the goblins', despite the orcs larger sizes. It was likely they weren't used for anything other than sleeping.

  There were plenty of orcs outside—I counted thirty, at least—but very few looked as aimless as the goblins. One stood at each pillar, and from the serious way in which they were staring out into the forest, it seemed likely they were keeping watch. Inside, groups were gutting deer and boars, with another group roasting the results. And, near to the fire, gazing at a cooking chunk of meat...

  [Expert Stealth] twanged, yelling an urgent warning, and I ducked behind the tree I was watching from. The last thing I saw was that orc raising his head, turning it in my direction.

  I hardly dared to breathe for the next few seconds, but there came no angry roar. No pounding of orc feet as they flooded from their camp to claim my head.

  That must have been the orc chieftain, but he'd somehow detected me the moment I'd focused my attention on him. Even the sentries standing guard, watching the forest, hadn't spotted me watching from the distance. Yet that orc had known instantly, despite not even looking in my direction. He may not have known what he'd sensed, given that no orcs were headed in my direction, but it did seem unlikely I'd be able to backstab him.

  My first meeting with a C-rank monster. It seemed I wasn't quite ready.

  I couldn't take the village. There was no chance. Their sentries left no opening for me to sneak in, and even if I could, the quantity of orcs would prevent me from taking them out before they took me, even without the ability of their chieftain to sense me.

  I couldn't take the village, but I didn't need to. We could take it, as a team.

  I had the measure of the strength of an individual orc, and they weren't a match for our melee fighters. As far as I could see, none of them were armed. The structure they'd built, while impressive, would have serious issues should something unfortunate happen to a few of its supporting pillars.

  Ryan's [Earthquake], for example.

  The roof was conical rather than flat, so I doubted we could simply squash them all under it, but I'd bet its collapse would still do a decent amount of damage. If we could trap a bunch of orcs under it, then set it on fire, even better.

  I retreated the way I'd come, thankful for my Memory. I may not have had navigation Skills useful for finding my way back through a forest, but when I could remember the position of every single tree, backtracking was trivial, even after I'd reached the ends of the footprints.

  Twenty minutes later, I'd returned to my party.

  "What the heck do you think you were doing?!" hissed Daniel the moment I returned.

  I blinked. "Pardon?"

  "You heard me!"

  "Uh... Scouting out the orcs?"

  "And what part of scouting involves getting into fights with them?!"

  Oh. So that's what this was about. The experience notification would have let them know I'd killed four of them.

  "A pair of orcs got into a fight over some food. I saw the opportunity and took it."

  "... There were four notifications."

  "The other two were too busy watching the fight."

  Daniel sighed. "Okay, so what did you learn?"

  I retold my experience, sharing everything I'd seen, along with my opinion that we could take them.

  "Sounds like some sort of danger sense Skill, or the monster equivalent," said Lee, when I got to the point where the chieftain sensed me.

  "Hmm..." said Daniel. "If it picks up intent to harm, we might be able to blind it by fighting directly. It would be like trying to spot a firefly in the corner of your vision while staring at the sun. If we engage him, you might find you could sneak up behind him unnoticed."

  "Might," repeated Lee. "And if it doesn't work? Not to mention that there are more orcs around than him. We can't have all three of us engage."

  A crack sounded from behind us, the clang of metal against metal as Stacy bashed her fists together.

  "You want to fight the chieftain alone?!" exclaimed Lee.

  "How the heck did you get that from her banging her fists together?" I muttered.

  "We've had plenty of time to practise understanding her," pointed out Ryan. "But I say we go for it. Probably not [Earthquake], because I only have the Mana to cast it a couple of times and I doubt losing two supports would cause a catastrophic collapse. [Rain of Stones], though... I could hit all the supports on one side a couple of times each, and still have enough Mana for an [Earthquake] in the centre of their camp."

  "This is insane," complained Lee. "Hey, Felicity. You agree, right?"

  "Uh..." said Felicity. "I'm not sure I can contribute much here, so I'm not sure I should get a vote... A [Barrier] on everyone, but not much beyond that, unless someone gets hurt."

  "Unless? Sheesh, you're just as bad, too. And you, Daniel: with one breath you complain about Robin attacking orcs alone, and with the next you want to take on their entire village!"

  "We are contracted to do so."

  "At some point. Eventually. Preferably after gaining a few more levels. We just need to take out a few patrols."

  "Do you have any idea how much killing a few patrols will slow the birth of an orc king?"

  "Of course not."

  "And therein lies our problem. I suspect that receptionist may have pulled one over on us."

  We always had the option of ignoring the orders. I'd read the documents when signing up, and I knew the punishment wouldn't be that bad, at least compared to rushing to certain death. Not that I believed it would be certain death.

  Lee sighed. "I swear this party has changed since you pulled Robin in. Fine. Let's do this, and everyone try not to die."

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