As I relaxed, sinking slightly deeper into the comfortable sofa of the Society of Exploration and History, I found, much to my surprise, that I was enjoying myself.

  The man sitting opposite me—Viscount Jones, he'd introduced himself as—licked his lips nervously.

  "I see. This is a serious matter indeed. To have discovered such a valuable archaeological site, and yet kept it to himself... Such actions constitute treason. We shall need to move to secure the location immediately."

  But no mention of the lives that were sacrificed, I noticed. Alas, I couldn't have all the cakes.

  "You arrived together with a Knight of the Thorned Rose. May I assume they have also been informed of this crime?" he continued.

  "Yes," I agreed. "As have the houses of Arden, Boleyn and Dacre."

  The viscount's eye twitched.

  It was obvious to me now that this man knew. He had always known. But now he'd been officially notified, and other parties knew he'd been officially notified. Not only that, but they knew he'd been complicit; it was the only explanation for why Earl Alexander thought me to be in danger. Had I come here first, I'd have been murdered and the incriminating evidence destroyed. Thankfully, I hadn't. Now it seemed that this viscount was going to act as if he'd only just discovered what Count Harvent was doing, betraying his partner in crime in the process. If I guessed correctly, everyone else would let him.

  Politics was a strange game indeed, but it meant I got to sit in another opulent room, and this time make the person it belonged to uncomfortable.

  "I believe that Count Harvent requested and was granted a block on his citizens leaving the canton, due to low population concerns. Might I ask how you come to be here?" asked Viscount Jones, desperately clutching at straws.

  "I'm not from Harvent Canton. I just happened to be passing through and agreed to deliver a few letters since it was on my way."

  "You... passed through? A pleasant journey, I assume?"

  "Not at all. I got kidnapped. Twice."

  "Oh. I'm... sorry to hear that..."

  "It's fine. Both sets of kidnappers are dead now."

  "I... see... Well, it seems I have a lot of work ahead of me, so while I'm thankful this travesty has been brought to my attention, I really must get moving. My butler will show you out."

  "Thank you," I replied, glad that I'd invested points into Memory. His bitter expression as he spoke the word 'thankful' was going to stay with me for life.

  He'd described Count Harvent's actions as treason. If he was complicit, did that not make him, too, guilty of treason? Even if he was permitted to behave as if he'd only just discovered what Count Harvent was up to, that didn't mean he was going to get off scot-free, and his expression proved that he knew it.

  Feeling rather smugger than I perhaps should have done, I followed the butler out of the society's estate, meeting Sir Christopher, who was waiting patiently outside.

  "From your grin, I take it things went well?" he asked.

  "Poor guy looked like someone had rammed an entire sack of lemons down his throat," I answered. "It did indeed..."

  "... go well."

  "Hmm? What was that stutter, and where did the grin go? Did you just notice a problem?"

  "Oh, no. Not a problem. Not at all. I just rather unexpectedly earned a big pile of quest experience."

  Sir Christopher chuckled. "That shouldn't come as a surprise. You took on a dangerous task, with high stakes, and succeeded admirably."

  "Okay, let me rephrase that. I didn't know there was such a thing as quest experience."

  "Hmm... You were raised in a village, you said? Perhaps you've never come across it, then. Although, I've heard of people earning single points of experience simply for popping down to a shop to save an elderly relative a trip. I'm surprised you've managed to miss it entirely."

  Well, yes. I'd only unlocked a month back... I hadn't popped to the village store for Mum since unlocking. I sure as heck wasn't going to admit to only having unlocked a month ago, though.

  At least it made me feel a little better about getting hardly any experience on this trip. Still not what I would have gained from a dungeon, though. In terms of time efficiency, nothing compared to my time hunting solo in the Fluffy Meadow.

  "My parents aren't what I'd consider elderly yet, and certainly not what they'd consider elderly."

  Sir Christopher grinned. "Most people don't, in my experience. Let me escort you back to our headquarters. You may stay the night, and tomorrow we can discuss your sponsorship in more detail."

  "Uh..." I said, torn between not wanting to be stuck in an estate of nobles and the fact that it was getting late and I didn't have an inn booked, nor were the guards likely to take kindly to me trying to sleep up a tree inside a city. "Thank you. That would be helpful."

  Of all the letter deliveries, the first and last had been the only cases where I'd been invited in. The others had simply been taken by guards at the door, so I hadn't seen the insides of a wide range of noble estates, nor did I have any real idea who the other recipients were. Viscount Jones hadn't been happy to hear the list of names, though, so they must have served some purpose.

  "He knew," I said out loud as the knight escorted me back to his order's enormous estate.

  "Of course he did. Count Harvent needed a channel to sell any artefacts he recovers. Viscount Jones likely arranged for falsified paperwork, stating that they had been found at other archaeological sites."

  "But doesn't that defeat the point? I thought Count Harvent wanted the money?"

  "I cannot speculate as to his reasons, but even if sold officially with falsified documentation, his cut would be larger than had he carried out the excavation legally. He's not paying official explorers or adventurers. But, rather than the money, it's likely the goal is to find artefacts for his personal use. In the past, artefacts have been uncovered that slow ageing, for example, and Count Harvent would never normally be permitted to keep such things. Or there's always the possibility that he's discovered some great weapon with which he plans to usurp the throne."

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Seriously?! That happens often?"

  Sir Christopher sighed. "Thankfully not, but it's not impossible. The dwarfs went somewhere, after all, and being wiped out by an ancient super-weapon is one of the more popular hypotheses. The usual high-end finds are artefacts that provide absolute immunity to a single spell element, or double experience gain. Skill crystals that hold evolved Skills, or that don't require skill points to activate, or that grant skill points. Such things are incredibly valuable, but not unheard of, and similar magical items can be obtained from high-rank dungeons."

  Doubled experience gain? Would that combine additively or multiplicatively with my existing boost? Probably multiplicative, given that other boosts, such as the five percent extra for killing humans, were multiplicative.

  ... I wanted one.

  The remainder of the walk was occupied by small-talk, and I soon found myself in a bedroom of the estate. The concept of 'guest rooms'—rooms which were kept and made up just in case an unexpected visitor turned up and needed to stay the night—was another alien one, but given the size of the estate, they probably felt they could spare the space.

  It was quite a lot of space, too, the single room being almost the size of our village shack. The bed was enormous, there was another one of the sofas under a large window—a glass window—and a desk against the wall opposite the bed. There was even a wardrobe next to the door, once again ornamented with finely carved wood. Given that every possession I owned fit into a single backpack, I didn't feel the need to use it.

  "Would Sir like dinner before bed?" asked a maid—the same one as earlier, whose mouth had immediately started twitching again as I'd looked around my borrowed room with stunned awe. Awe had obviously not been the correct reaction.

  "Yes please, assuming by 'dinner' you mean that someone will bring a reasonable amount of food up here, and I'll be able to eat it without requiring any sort of special education or Skills."

  The twitch once again made itself known, and this time she wasn't entirely successful at preventing the snort of laughter, even if she did manage to restrict it to a mere 'pfft'. "I'm certain that Sir will be able to cope," she said, then left my room, closing the door behind her.

  The moment I was alone, I brought up my Status.

  First thing; if I was going to spend any time here, whether as guest or member, my problem was one of knowledge rather than brute force. I might as well even out my Stats. I'd get twice the number of free stat points from the next level onwards, anyway.

  I remained still for a few moments, trying to enjoy the rush, but the truth was that there wasn't much of one. Unlike my first level, where two points were enough to double a Stat, ten points wasn't even a twenty percent boost anymore. If I wanted to chase that feeling again, I'd need to save up a ton of points and dump them all at once.

  With stat points spent, I was left with skill points. I'd already decided what I wanted to do with them, but now I was having second thoughts about using my skill crystals; there was a decent chance I'd have the opportunity to learn a combat skill tomorrow.

  Bah. No evolutions available. A pity.

  As for skill crystals... I was tempted to use the [Mana Sensitivity] one just so that I didn't have something worth an entire gold coin sitting in my backpack, but [Identify Monster] would be more immediately useful for adventuring.

  In the end, I decided to wait. Quite aside from the possibility of tomorrow containing combat skill crystals, there was also a very good chance that it would contain advice. I had no real knowledge of what I was doing. I didn't know how magic worked, or if [Mana Sensitivity] would evolve into something that let me cast spells. I'd bought the skill crystal on impulse, because it was the first magic-related Skill I'd seen. I didn't know how many different combat Skills were required to be effective, either. If I needed multiple passives, or the Skills were useless at E-rank, saving a single skill point was insufficient.

  I didn't even know what sort of ability was expected at each adventurer rank, or the sorts of jobs each rank would take on.

  I wasn't too worried about a skill point shortage. Given a few days in the Fluffy Meadow, I could easily earn plenty more. Heck, with my current stats, I could doubtlessly clear the dungeon. No longer would I need to run from the boss. I knew the royal canton had dungeons around, from the mentions of dungeon breaks. The problem was whether they had any E-rank.

  Or, indeed, D-rank. If I was strong enough to clear the Fluffy Meadow, surely I was strong enough to deal with D-rank mobs.

  Decision made, I waited for the maid to return with my dinner, served on a plate as heavily decorated as the tea-cups. Steak and an assortment of vegetables, but continuing the ostentatious theme, every last slice of carrot was artfully arranged on the plate, small amounts of sauce drizzled over the edge with millimetre precision.

  It didn't taste any better than what I'd had at the inn, back in the trade town. If anything, I'd preferred the cheaper food.

  Yeah, this place was far too... showy. Even putting aside the morality issues of the knights sitting here in luxury and ignoring injustice happening only a few days away, I still couldn't see myself living here. Food should be filling and nutritious first, and taste good second. Who cared what it looked like? There were far better things to spend that effort on.