Safely hidden behind a tree, leaning hard on [Expert Stealth], I listened to an entire village of goblins gibbering. The difference made by a chieftain had been immediately obvious upon finding the place. It wasn't as if they'd suddenly become master builders, and their shelters still looked like they'd blow over in a stiff breeze, but there was nevertheless some structure behind them. They were no longer arranged haphazardly.

  Likewise, the goblins themselves were better organised. The villagers were working in teams, rather than largely standing around aimlessly, and while the previous villages I'd dealt with hadn't looked underfed, these goblins definitely had more food to go around. If I had to guess, the increased productivity was going towards increasing their headcount. No wonder the guild wanted to nip such villages in the bud as quickly as possible.

  Even the guards were better placed, working in pairs and not leaving any blind spots approaching the village.

  Not that it had done them much good, as the pair of ears already stowed in my pack attested.

  To be fair, the village back in the Goblin Den had been similar, but that was a dungeon, so it wasn't obvious how much was 'real' and how much was just stuff the dungeon made up.

  I had already been looking forward to experimenting on this camp, even before my 'dream' had soured my mood. The Enshrouded had claimed that he'd had the [Guardian] Mark for years without being bothered by the local pantheon, and yet they'd ganged up on me the very first night I'd spent out of the capital. They wanted me to stop two worlds from colliding? How in the hells was I supposed to do that?

  At least the time limit was considerably longer than my life span. If I just ignored the problem, what difference would it make to me or anyone else I knew? Even if I did decide to deal with it, it could wait until after the dungeon break. One major problem at a time was enough. Nevertheless, I imagined the task would hang over me until I got around to it, like an annoying itch I couldn't do anything about.

  The immediate result was that my curiosity about the exact rules to gain bonus assassination experience had been augmented by a considerable amount of frustration. That was a fact that this village of goblins was going to lament, but only very briefly.

  The deciduous trees and lack of undergrowth meant less cover than I would have liked, but there was enough that I'd been able to approach undetected. The entire village was within my range, so I poked my head out from behind a trunk and fried a goblin with magical lightning.

  At the fifth stage, [Lightning Shock] was powerful enough to slay D-rank harpies in one shot. The E-rank goblin fared rather worse. The bolt struck him in the torso, and then kept on going. The goblin toppled, a smoking hole smouldering in his chest. Behind him, a shelter exploded into flame, a few fragments of burning wood blasting into the air.

  The organisation of the goblins shattered instantly, the little monsters running in every direction as they panicked. Some ran towards me, but only by accident. Despite my attack having all the subtlety of, well, lightning, none of them had seen me.

  Which made them all the easier to stab as they fled by.

  The chieftain emerged from the most hut-like hut, in the centre of the village, and emitted an extra loud gibber. About half the goblins abruptly reversed direction, forming ranks around the chieftain, while the rest vanished into the forest.

  That was rather irritating... I was going to need to hunt them all down if I wanted to claim full credit for this job. Perhaps lightning had been a mistake?

  Or maybe I just hadn't used enough. After all, the chieftain had been kind enough to gather half the goblins together for me, and I already knew [Lightning Shock] could pierce.

  A second bolt stabbed at the chieftain, despite the crowd of minions standing between us. It pierced through two, but was blocked by a third, who didn't survive the experience.

  The other fifty-ish goblins crowding the chieftain did, and this time, having expected trouble, a bunch of them pointed in my general direction. They hadn't seen me, though—[Lightning Shock] was bright. Nevertheless...

  Another bolt failed to earn me assassination experience. That placed the bonus experience cut-off at around the point of 'we've learnt of the existence of an attacker, even if we haven't got a good look at him'.

  "Thanks for being so educational," I told the charging goblins as I drew my daggers. It was a pity that I couldn't rapid-fire lightning; it meant I'd need to get my hands dirty. That wasn't a complete downside; burnt goblin turned out to smell every bit as bad as regular goblin. "Let me give you my thanks."

  A rather bloody few minutes followed.

  Had I really almost died in the Goblin Den? The goblins were wimps. Admittedly, there were no shamans or brawlers here, nor could the chieftain use magic, and their more structurally sound settlement didn't come with significantly better equipment. Not to mention that half the population had fled. Okay, so it was a rather easier fight than that within the dungeon, but even so... Was this really a C-rank mission?

  Stolen story; please report.

  Alas, however easy it was to kill goblins, I had to find them first. I had no Skills to track those that had fled, and instead was reduced to walking ever-larger circles in the forest, listening for their telltale gibbering. At least they didn't associate 'me' with whatever had attacked their village, meaning that once they spotted me, they happily charged to their doom.

  ... Which was a good point, actually. They had fled. Monsters shouldn't do that. The hostility of monsters towards humans should have made sure they attacked, however futile. It was a downside of [Expert Stealth] that I previously hadn't considered. Even right back in the Fluffy Meadow, I'd noted that the rabbits didn't turn aggressive until they saw me. If I was sufficiently stealthy that the monsters never guessed there was a human involved in their problems, their aggression wouldn't kick in.

  At least all the hunting was worth another level. Not that I had any good idea what I should spend the skill points on. [Float] was tempting, but having dreamt of real flight, the name was sounding a little sedate for me. I'd bought [Noise] to distract monsters like goblins, as an enhancement to my assassination, but then the goblins had been so weak that I'd ended up not using it. Had I not used lightning, and stealth-attacked the entire camp instead, it would probably have been more useful.

  I still wasn't sure which direction my build was heading in. Heck, after spending the day hunting down stray goblins, I was tempted to spend the points on a tracking Skill.

  The stat points were easier to spend, at least; spells were expensive in terms of mana, and if not for the five-minute spacing between monsters in the Harpy's Aerie, I wouldn't have had the staying power to cope.

  And so with over a hundred goblin ears stuffed into a sack—I really needed to get my hands on some spatially-expanded storage at some point, especially if it was smell-proof—I made my way back to the sapphire city.

  Nothing interesting happened on the way back, but after nineteen hours in a dungeon, I'd woken up quite late. Throw in the time spent hunting down the runaway goblins, and then travel time, and the guild was unfortunately closed for the night by the time I arrived. I hadn't even realised the guild did close.

  I still had a sack of goblin ears.

  There were definitely elements of this outing that I hadn't quite thought through. Lacking anything better to do with them, I was forced to bring them back to my rented inn. Tomorrow, I was determined to look for a basic storage item. With the gold coins paid for the harpy queen feathers, surely I could find something? It didn't need to store a house. Just a few smelly monster bits.

  ... Although, from now on, I'd probably be dealing with things bigger than goblins, and their 'bits' would get quite large. Darn it.

  And then my train of thought was distracted by spotting the note upon my pillow.

  "Seriously?" I asked the empty air. "We've been introduced now! You can just talk to me instead of leaving notes!"

  The empty air didn't respond, which may have had something to do with the way this note was written in completely different handwriting than the last. It was neat, but was more serif than letter. Writing it must have taken an age. It seemed a bit of a waste. Doubly so given the flowery language, that took far too long to get to the point.

  'I have been tasked with writing this note by the great lord Herak'w'mee, who feels that you are not treating your appointed task with the seriousness it warrants. He feels, given your current personality, that you may respond more positively should the Marks of [Hero] and [Chosen One] be mentioned to you.'

  I paused at the end of the sentence to blink a few times. It was always obvious when someone mentioned a Skill. I'd struggle to put into words why, precisely, it was so obvious, but the simple fact was that it always was. It was something about the intonation. Even without any effort on the part of the speaker, the difference between farming and [Farming] was unmistakable.

  It was the same with writing. The books in the guild library had had a certain weight about words that referenced Skills. Despite no apparent font changes, I immediately knew. But this letter was different. Those words didn't just have a weight to them. The simple act of reading [Hero] made my eyes sting, but reading [Chosen One] felt like being smacked in the brain by an entire bloody mountain. I needed to wait for my eyes to stop watering before I could read on.

  Why the difference?

  One obvious difference was that this note was obviously delivered on behalf of a bloody god. One who was pissed that I wasn't running off into the dinosaur-infested jungle right this second, and thought he could bribe me with cool Marks.

  ... I had to admit, they weren't necessarily wrong. What perks would [Hero] or [Chosen One] bring me? I may well want them, but not enough to go running into a monster-infested jungle right this second. Even if I survived the monsters, I'd just get lost. There was preparation needed!

  'Should that be insufficient, he would also like you to know that should you not depart on your divine quest within the week, a series of divine revelations will publicise the identity of the architect of this world's destruction.'

  ... Bugger.

  Okay, so talking about divine stuff confirmed this was related to my dream, but they didn't actually say what was so cool about [Hero] or [Chosen One]. On top of that, this 'Herak'w'mee'—however the hell that was supposed to be pronounced—was bloody blackmailing me. I didn't need to draw upon the full power of my Reasoning to come to a horrible suspicion that the architect was me.

  But within the week? I was supposed to have centuries! Didn't he know the royal canton was on lockdown? How would the Enshrouded take it if I told him I wouldn't be clearing the Deep on account of having been eaten by a dinosaur?

  I'd like to think that a god wouldn't send me on a suicide mission, if only because it wouldn't achieve anything, so maybe the dinosaurs were wimpier than they looked? And, yes, the casualties among the kingdom's army had been lighter than projected. But even if so, I couldn't imagine anyone being happy about me asking to leave the royal canton in the next three years.

  Still, I'd already had a mob after me once, and I wasn't too enthused about experiencing a repeat. If a single bandit could stir up as much trouble as he had, what about a god claiming I was the reason the world was going to end? I'd have to at least ask about it, and if I was turned down, I'd have to get whoever delivered the letter to pass a note back telling Herak'w'mee to wait a few years.

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