With a sigh, I closed the prompt. While it was true I'd just been offered a B-rank Skill, something I'd been hoping for ever since reaching the final stage of [Expert Stealth], there was no way I was going to take it. Not only was there the simple fact that I couldn't afford it, but I wouldn't be tempted even if it was free. The warning was simply far too concerning. The System had never warned me about anything before. Would [Assassination Arts] be worse for face-to-face fighting than [Dagger Mastery]? Would [Backstab] not work on an aware opponent? It was too much of a risk. No way would I select that Path without knowing the consequences.

  Was this what Daniel had meant by achievements, though? The prompt explicitly mentioned being credited for over a hundred assassinations. If I'd scored a hundred kills with traps, would I be offered a different Path? What if I'd brought more Skills to the final stage of C-rank? Was it too late to earn other options?

  If I did earn other options, could I choose more than one of them? Presumably not, if I lost the required Skills, but even then, if I sacrificed [Stab] to gain [Backstab], could I then relearn [Stab] from another skill crystal? What about [Dagger Proficiency] or [Stealth]?

  There were simply too many unknowns. It was a pity our conversation earlier in the day had been so rudely interrupted. There was no way I could pick a Path of any sort before researching the details, and I doubted I'd want [Assassin] at all. I'd only recently been thinking that my sneak-and-backstab strategy was too limited, so I hardly wanted to evolve my Skills in a direction that made me better at that at the cost of everything else.

  For now, I had an elder treant to take down.

  Unlike the regular treants, which were well disguised among the trees of the forest, the elder treant was not. I could wrap my arms halfway around the trunks of even the biggest trees in the forest. I could not do the same to the elder treant. I doubted I could even stretch my arms far enough around it to notice any curvature.

  It was in the middle of another clearing, although the rutted ground and splintered wood suggested it hadn't been a clearing minutes earlier, before I'd activated the shrine. Or, if it had, the clearing had been a lot smaller.

  I looped around its outer perimeter, noting the layout of branches and plotting the safest routes to reach the trunk. Alas, my investigation revealed another serious issue caused by the monster's size: when I found its 'face', it was too far off the ground for me to reach.

  I could jump the distance, but unlike the earlier assassin, I couldn't manoeuvre in mid-air. I'd be a sitting duck, and the oversized treant would simply swat me from the air.

  Its limbs and branches were far too thick for me to cut through with a dagger. If I tried attacking the trunk, I'd be inflicting nothing more than pinpricks.

  I'd known my choice of weapon would cause issues against larger monsters, but I'd expected to have diversified into magic before I met any. I hadn't planned to face C-rank monsters with nothing more than a dagger.

  Oh well. If jumping wasn't safe, I'd just need to wall-run. I had the Dexterity to pull it off.

  With the elder treant's weak point in sight, I sprinted into the clearing. The branches immediately creaked and bent. Whatever senses the monstrous tree had, [Expert Stealth] wasn't up to the task of defeating them.

  The earth bulged, and I danced between the forming hillocks as root spears burst from the soil, always a few steps behind me. Branches swung downwards, but in that, the treant's size worked against it: the branches were too high. Yes, they picked up considerable speed in their descent, but the treant had no finesse whatsoever. Its thick limbs could curve only slightly, and dodging them was simple. They crashed into the forest floor with resounding crashes, but none came close to hitting me.

  Dodging roots and branches, I leapt into the trunk, sprinting a few steps up it.

  "Stab!"

  Sap squirted from the deep wound in the treant's face, but there was no kill notification, nor was I expecting one. This monster wouldn't go down that easily.

  I kicked off from the trunk before gravity took too much interest in my horizontal position. Branches swiped at me, impossible to evade in mid-air, but I'd expected that, too, kicking off branch after branch as I made my retreat, practically flying through the air.

  It was kinda cool, actually. By the time I'd reached the edge of the clearing, safely out of the monster's range, I was grinning like a madman.

  Despite the elder treant's lack of eyes, I felt distinctly watched as I took a few deep breaths, preparing for round two. This would be a battle of attrition. Unable to stop moving, I could only use hit-and-run tactics, rushing in, leaving a wound, and escaping. I needed to pull off the same stunt repeatedly until the monster expired.

  Could I keep it up? Would the monster learn? Would it simply get a lucky hit in, given enough time?

  Again and again I rushed in, dodging sharpened roots and slamming boughs, then hitting the face with [Stab] again and again. Twice, three times, five times, ten times. The treant grew more desperate, limbs flying through the air in violent anger, but no amount of anger could grant it the dexterity required to hit me. It was simply not built to deal with small, agile opponents.

  Obviously. Had the dungeon's boss been built to counter me, I would never have attempted the fight in the first place.

  The sap running down the trunk made finding footholds harder, forcing me to start varying the direction of my approach, but stab after stab continued, until on number fifteen, finally:

  Got it.

  Not quite as high base experience as an orc chieftain, but more than any other monster I'd defeated. Quite a nice boost, now that I wasn't splitting it six ways.

  And what did the new Marks do?

  [Conqueror of the Enchanted Wood] behaved exactly as expected, giving a ten percent boost to the experience value of plant-based monsters.

  That was... more interesting. Following the pattern, I was expecting a straight ten percent boost to monster kill experience, but that wasn't what I got. First, a check of my Status confirmed that it hadn't eaten [Dungeon Sweeper I], so rather than a ten percent boost, I'd ended up with a pair of five percent boosts, which, given their multiplicative nature, was actually slightly better.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Second, my Status also showed that the stat boost was retroactive. I'd ended up gaining an extra full level's worth of free stat points. Not a huge amount, in the grand scheme of things, but nothing to sneeze at.

  Not to mention that it made me really excited for [Dungeon Subjugator II].

  As usual, motes of light rose from all around the clearing, forming a teleportation circle and treasure chest in front of the dead monster. For the first time, the chest contained not any sort of crystal, but an item. A small disk of glass a couple of inches across, rimmed with gold. I had no idea what it was, but if a dungeon had produced it, presumably it was valuable.

  The bit that was unusual was that when I stepped into the transporter, finding myself instantly brought outside, another magic circle lit up. Something, rather loudly, went ding.

  "Uh..." I said, as the guard at the entrance stared in my direction. "From your surprise, I take it you didn't do that?"

  Unwilling to stand in the middle of an unknown chunk of magic, I stepped to the side.

  Attempting to cross the edge of the circle resulted in a spark, a static shock, and me being pushed back.

  "Don't move," ordered the guard, which did nothing to improve my perception of the situation. I'd just teleported into some sort of trap? The heck? But then why was he surprised?

  "You've been detected trying to leave the dungeon with something restricted or outright illegal," continued the guard. "I'm only surprised because normally the dungeon doesn't produce anything restricted. Please display everything you found in there, and we'll see what it is."

  Okay, that wasn't as bad as it could have been. I'd always wondered how they stopped people from walking out with combat skill crystals, or whatever other sort of item might be restricted, but nothing stopped us walking out of the Fluffy Meadow with the [Stealth] crystal. Maybe there were degrees of restrictedness? Or perhaps this chunk of magic infrastructure was something only in use in the royal canton?

  In any case, there was only one new item I'd found in there. "This thing?" I asked, taking out the lens.

  The guard whistled, obviously impressed. "An appraisal lens? Yeah, the dungeon should not have produced that. Not unless you did something silly like soloing the elder treant without magic, but you shouldn't have run into the elder treant in the first place."

  "Wait, there are extra bonus tasks beyond the bonus task? Dungeons give different loot depending on how you beat monsters?"

  The guard blinked. "You know about the elder treant? Don't tell me... And obviously you soloed it, because you were the only one in there... You did just take it down without magic?"

  "Uh... Maybe? I can't use magic yet, so I didn't have much choice."

  "How in the... An elder treant? With a dagger, while missing a bloody arm?! Why in the hells are you playing around in an E-rank dungeon? Go find yourself something more appropriate. Or, better yet, go see if the royal guard will sponsor you or something. You're wasting your time here. Sheesh, and to think I tried to talk you out of going in..."

  "Don't worry. Spend a few days with him, and you soon get used to his antics," claimed another voice.

  "Daniel?" I asked, turning to look. Their full party was there, waiting.

  "We figured you'd be done around about now," he said with a shrug. "We wanted to make sure we were next in line."

  "Fair enough. Oh, by the way, there was indeed a Mark. [Dungeon Subjugator I]. Another five percent to monster kill experience, and bonus free stat points for beating dungeons."

  "Nice to know. Thanks. But before going further, you might want to deal with that trap."

  "Oh, right," I said, turning back to the guard. "How does this work? You just confiscate the items?"

  "I prefer the term 'compulsory purchase'. We do compensate you for them, after all."

  He stepped into the circle, its edge posing no barrier to him, and took the lens, examining it closely.

  An appraisal lens sounded interesting. Why did it have to get requisitioned? The [Analysis] skill crystal I'd seen had been restricted, but it had still been for sale in a public shop, while combat crystals hadn't. And if it had been a skill crystal I'd found, what would stop me using it inside the dungeon?

  Also, the Brown Wolf adventuring party had openly suggested I find myself a combat Skill, and had never mentioned how hard they were to get hold of. Maybe there was an implicit assumption in there that I'd join the adventurer's guild.

  It sounded like I had more to learn, but maybe when I wasn't trapped in a magical formation that was, basically, a prison cell.

  "Yup, this is an appraisal lens, all right. Single use, of course, but even if it's the best treasure this dungeon will award, it's still only an E-rank dungeon. The stipulated price is fifty silver. Here."

  The guard retrieved five large silver coins from a pouch and handed them over. Fifty silver was a rather nice reward for a single use item, though. "What does an appraisal lens do?" I asked.

  "Let's you use [Appraisal], more or less. It's a Skill that will display a considerable amount of a target's Status."

  I blinked, glad it was single use. It meant the guard probably wouldn't waste it on me.

  As the guard stepped back out of the circle with the lens, the red magic faded and vanished, hopefully leaving me free once more.

  Oh well. The Mark was sufficient reward for conquering that dungeon. Once I started hitting up the D-ranks, I'd presumably get some even better rewards, but for now, it was time to return to the capital. I needed my arm back.

  Patreon.