"Are these... all for your own use?" asked the shopkeeper haltingly, staring at the pile that had built up on the counter. "Not that it's my place to tell you how to plan your build, but be careful of spreading yourself too thin."

  "I'm nowhere near stuck-up enough to get mad at well-intentioned advice," I answered. "But they're certainly not for immediate use. I'm planning ahead a bit. Well, a lot, really."

  The shopkeeper glanced down again at the pile of crystals. The pile creaked ominously, threatening to topple.

  "I can believe that," he said. "Again, far be it from me to convince you not to give me money, but wouldn't you be better off buying crystals when you need them? You'll need to store them safely for months or years."

  "Hmm... True. It's just that... Well, where I'm from, shops like this didn't exist. I suppose there's part of me that's concerned if I don't buy something now, I won't get another chance. Maybe I could do without this lot."

  I shifted the pile of common occupational Skills off to one side. That left the big one of [Mana Sensitivity], along with every identification Skill I was permitted to buy. This shop didn't have combat skill crystals to sell, licenced or otherwise, else my pile would have been even bigger.

  Next level, I was going to finish off [Expert Stealth]. It had served me so well up until now that I felt it deserved it, and there was always a chance I could earn an evolution for it. I didn't know anything concrete about how B-rank Skills were obtained, but I half remembered someone mentioning needing to use the lower-ranked Skills in impressive ways. Between escaping the knight who killed Leo and a town-sized mob, not to mention all the assassinations I'd carried out, if that was the only requirement, I should get something. After that was [Mana Sensitivity] and either [Identify Monster], or, if I'd joined the adventurers' guild by then, something that would aid my handling of my daggers.

  Changing weapon was an option, too, but given the amount I'd already invested into [Expert Stealth], continuing the backstabbing route seemed like a sensible plan, and it was easier to backstab someone with a dagger than anything heavy and unwieldy.

  Then again, the bigger species of monsters might not even notice getting pricked by a dagger... Maybe the adventurers' guild had advisors for these sorts of questions.

  "Better, but still seems like a lot of crystals to buy at once. That'll be one gold and four silver," said the storekeeper.

  In the spirit of experimentation, I paid with one gold coin and one of the larger silver-coloured coins. He didn't seem surprised, which proved that the larger coin was worth at least four silvers, but not so much more valuable that he couldn't make change.

  He didn't make change. He closed the large silver in his hand, and when he opened it again, it had been replaced by ten smaller coins. He returned six of them to me.

  "Thanks," I said, packing my new crystals away in my backpack and trying not to look surprised. Merchants must have Skills too, after all. I may have even seen the one that did that—or at least a lower-ranked form—but glossed over it because, despite the size of the pile of crystals I wanted, there were even more that I didn't. "And I hope you've learnt a valuable lesson about discrimination."

  "I assumed you were one of the local brats, killing time," he shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first, and won't be the last. It's not like we've had rich travellers passing through here in a while, and even when we did, it's not like they made a habit of buying skill crystals. Not really the sort of goods you buy in the middle of travelling."

  I didn't feel I could reject that, given that I was indeed dressed like the locals, and if not for my weird circumstances, I wouldn't be buying crystals either.

  I waved and left, heading to the north side of the town, down its main road. It seemed the single road ran from the south gate all the way to the north, cutting the town in half. Maybe the road had been here first, and someone had built an inn alongside it to take advantage of travellers, and then someone else had built another, and things snowballed until there was an entire town built up around the road.

  So, the large silver coins were worth ten times the small ones, despite not being ten times the weight. Then it seemed likely the pattern held for all coins. A large copper was worth ten times a regular one, a silver ten times a large copper, and a gold ten times a large silver. That meant the gold coin I'd just handed over was worth ten thousand coppers.

  For anyone who'd led a life that only dealt with coppers, the value was pretty daunting. No wonder serfs so rarely freed themselves.

  I made one last shopping stop, exchanging a few large coppers for enough food to refill my backpack, then I was out of the town and back on the road. There wasn't even any sort of exit procedure. The guards just watched disinterestedly as I walked out.

  The day proved uninteresting, although road traffic picked up, and I passed the odd caravan, carriage, or group of people on foot. None paid me too much attention, possibly because I was still using [Expert Stealth] not to hide, but to look like I fit in.

  Most people I passed didn't give experience, but the occasional one did. Perhaps, had I not been putting in effort not to stand out, they'd have seen me as an opportunistic target.

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  There were a squad of soldiers on horseback, too, each horse a towering black beast that looked like they could just headbutt their way straight through an average wall.

  I couldn't help but notice that the royal canton had a lot of guards and soldiers. Quite aside from how many were at the canton's outer wall, there were more on the town wall, and now there was this patrol, which had twenty people in. Cargellen Canton was supposed to be safe and well protected, but I'd never seen so many soldiers around there. Combined with the wall, I really wondered what they were defending against.

  Alas, the patrol didn't ignore me. I was treated to a suspicious glance as they approached—I was, after all, a kid travelling alone—but then one of the riders at the front held up a hand and the entire group came to a sudden stop.

  "[Murderer II], and he has [Expert Stealth] active," declared the rider. "Physical Stats all over fifty."

  I suddenly found myself the focus of a lot of unwanted attention. No weapons were drawn, but there was a haze of vigilance hovering over the group that threatened that should I misbehave, my future could get very pointy, and also very short.

  "Bandits, and I have a letter of passage if you'll let me take it out of my pack," I said by way of explanation, unwilling to open my pack without permission in case doing so resulted in getting skewered.

  "Please do," said one with the fanciest plume sticking out of his helm, which I guessed made him the boss.

  He read Sir Galahad's letter with interest.

  "Everything seems to be in order," he said, sounding a little surprised by that fact. "You swear that all of your human kills have been bandits?"

  "There was one that I do not believe would meet the technical definition of 'bandit', but he was trying to burn down a village and kill everyone in it, so I think he still counts in spirit. But yes, every other kill was a genuine bandit."

  "And you have no business in this canton other than delivering mail?"

  "I was planning on joining the adventurers' guild once I was done, but I'm not sure you'd count that as 'business'. Nothing aside from that."

  "Adventurers? You must be older than you look, to have Stats like that, but you can't be that old. And you have a noble trusting you with sealed documents. Don't waste your skills joining the adventurers' guild. Join the army."

  "I... uh... I've never really considered that as an option. I don't really know what the pros and cons are."

  "Consistent pay, no need to source your own gear, more pleasant working environment, safer, access to better Skills and curated levelling plans. And, of course, the opportunity to make the kingdom a better place. Consider it."

  The soldiers I'd met in Harvent Canton sure as hell hadn't been making the kingdom a better place, but I obviously refrained from saying that out loud, holding my tongue as the patrol resumed their ride to the south.

  Despite my recent splurging, I didn't want to spend all of my looted money, because I had no idea when I'd be able to replace it, so despite passing a couple of inns built alongside the road, I slept rough, utilising a handy copse by the roadside. Sleeping up a tree was somewhat nostalgic; I hadn't done it since crossing the first forest.

  And then, around noon of the next day, the sapphire city came into view. I'd heard of sapphires, but never seen one. I just knew they were some sort of expensive, blue gemstone. If a regular town had houses built from brick, and everyone in the capital was even richer, then I'd thought that maybe building their homes out of gemstones was common sense to them.

  As far as I could tell from the outside, I'd been wrong.

  The wall that surrounded the city may have had a slight blue tinge, but aside from that, it looked much like any other defensive wall I'd seen.

  Except bigger.

  It was taller even than the wall that surrounded the canton, and I couldn't even see the spire of a temple over the top of it. It enclosed a far larger area than any town wall, stretching from horizon to horizon. Sunlight glinted off a hundred spear-tips as soldiers marched its battlements. A couple of dozen towers stabbed the air, arranged periodically along the wall, flat topped, with strange contraptions mounted upon them. I had no idea what they were, but I could guess what they were for, given the sharp tip of silver I could see upon each one. Weapons, but not the sort of weapon one would carry. At least, not without hundreds of points of Strength.

  The sheer amount of firepower on display was ridiculous. It had reached the point that once I arrived at the gate—which I had to actually queue for—I felt the need to ask about it.

  "I can't help but notice there's a lot more guards and soldiers around than in my home canton," I said as I handed over my letter of passage. "Are you expecting some sort of trouble?"

  "Nah. It's another three years until the next dungeon break, but it's not as if we can disband the army and rebuild it each time."

  "Sorry, the next what?"

  The guard gave me a look. "Sorry, but I don't have time to give you a lesson on how dungeons work. Please place your hand on this device."

  I couldn't deny the queue behind me, so I went through the same entry procedure as the trade town, all the while wondering what a dungeon break was. I could hazard a guess from the name, and the fact it required an army to deal with: three years from now, a big pile of monsters would pour out of a dungeon and attack the canton.

  But if that was the case, and the royal canton was so well defended, wouldn't they devastate other cantons?

  There was one obvious possibility, but it seemed rather surreal: that the massive wall around this canton wasn't to protect from an external threat. It wasn't to protect the royal canton at all. It was to protect the rest of the kingdom. The dungeons that would 'break' were inside the royal canton, and the enormous, well defended wall was to keep the monsters in.

  As I headed up the street, following Sir Galahad's directions to the headquarters of the Knights of the Thorned Rose—he'd been very clear about which letter I was to deliver first—I decided that I'd rather get clear of this canton before the three years were up.