As I threw the final fluffy hide into the cart, I pondered how reading could never fully replace actual experience. Whether that was because the data was incomplete—the way the fungal hiver had lost dexterity when all four legs weren't planted, for example, where presumably the investigator who wrote the document had used a weapon type for which that detail simply wasn't relevant—or whether a bit of information simply couldn't be put into words in the first place.

  I'd read the guild document on common hunting requests, and how to retrieve various oft-requested body-parts, but while it could give the simple instruction to slide a knife beneath the skin, and where to start, how could it describe the precise pressure needed, or what it felt like to hit a ligament?

  As a result, not only was the first hide quite badly damaged, but I was utterly drenched in blood. So was the cart. So were the hides. The stuff had sprayed everywhere, despite the way I hadn't intentionally cut into flesh.

  I really needed to find a river to wash everything in. If I ran into more wolves, perhaps it would be advisable to drain them of blood before starting. If not... well, the first hide wasn't so badly damaged that it wouldn't be accepted. I'd certainly be docked reward money—I probably would even for my later, better attempts, too—but as long as it counted towards promotion, that didn't matter.

  Really, I shouldn't have been skinning them myself. A [Butchering] Skill existed for carving up bodies, animal or monster, and that would substitute for experience. I didn't have it, though, nor did I want to spend skill points on it right now. The 'correct' thing to do would be to bring the full corpses back and let the guild dismantle them, but I didn't fancy pulling that much weight, and besides, then the guild would deduct money for the extra work they needed to do. I'd lose either way.

  [Adept Foraging] pointed out the likely location of a river, and it was broadly in the direction of the goblin village, so I made my way there. It wasn't as if I had any Skills useful for navigating in a forest, beyond the hints offered by [Adept Foraging], so my strategy for finding the goblin village basically boiled down to wandering around with [Expert Stealth] disabled until I was attacked by goblins. I was trusting that with my armour and higher Constitution, another lucky stone to the head wouldn't cause me significant problems.

  As for treants... I was keeping [Mana Sensitivity] up, and just had to hope I'd stumble across some. At the first stage, the range on the Skill was rubbish, but it was enough to check a small bubble of trees as I walked.

  Despite apparently being a den of monsters, the forest was actually quite peaceful. Birds tweeted happily. Leaves crunched underfoot, the empty branches above swaying slightly in the light breeze. Some sort of bug was chirping in the undergrowth. The air was a little chilly, which was no surprise given the time of year, but even that was a benefit given that pulling a cart through a forest was rather strenuous work. Had it been the heights of summer, I'd have been complaining about the heat.

  And then a tree utterly spoilt my scenic walk by trying to tear my head off.

  Boughs creaked as what had looked like a perfectly normal tree until a split second earlier swung its branches. The ground heaved as roots beneath writhed and tore themselves from the soil. On the trunk itself, an arrangement of stubby twigs and a few wrinkles in the bark suddenly gave the impression of a face, despite no component actually moving.

  Apparently, I'd come across my first treant, and despite the advice in the guild, [Mana Sensitivity] hadn't warned me at all.

  I desperately ducked the first attack, then leapt away from my cart. The last thing I wanted was for it to be damaged in a fight; I'd be screwed if I had no way of getting the requested materials back to the capital.

  "If you'd have waited for me to get closer, you'd have had me!" I yelled as I eyed up the monstrous tree.

  It didn't respond, which wasn't entirely unsurprising—it wasn't as if trees had ears. It also probably wasn't true. I hadn't been walking directly towards it, and had I got closer, I might have spotted it with [Mana Sensitivity] before it could ambush me.

  Fortunately, treants were easy to kill. Just like the agarics of the dungeon, they had weak spots. A dagger to the 'face' would slay one.

  Alas, that 'face' was the heartwood I was supposed to collect. A dagger hole in the middle would surely cost me a chunk of my reward. Given that I'd already mucked up the pelts, I'd rather try to collect it in perfect condition. I didn't want to get myself a reputation as a sloppy worker.

  The monster's movements were slow—it was, after all, a tree—but it made up for it with size and mass. It didn't need to swing the trunk-end of a branch very quickly for the tip to end up moving at a decent clip. If not for the fact that each branch had only a limited range of movement, I'd have been overwhelmed. As it was, I dipped and dodged as I moved in, evading blows heavy enough to leave ruts in the soil.

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  The autumn's dropped leaves were blown into the air, interfering with vision, not to mention being slippery to walk on, but I still made my way inwards. Once I was close to the trunk, the roots became more of a problem than the branches. They were more flexible, moving like whips rather than clubs, but the treant couldn't deploy all of them, or it would topple over. They were also thin enough that, with the reality warping help of [Dagger Expertise], I could slice through them. By the time I reached the trunk, few roots were left.

  I jabbed my daggers into the trunk, on either side of the 'face', then tore upward, leaving two great gashes. Sap bled out with surprising speed as the treant trembled, the consistency more like blood than the thick, sticky substance I was used to. Another few swipes, and I'd cut all around the heartwood.

  The treant trembled one last time, then, very slowly, fell over.

  A tree toppling turned out to be quite loud. A fact that was rubbed in when, in the middle of carving out the heartwood, a stone pinged off my helmet.

  "Couldn't you wait until I was finished?" I complained as I turned, secretly pleased that the hit hadn't done a thing despite the last one almost stunning me.

  Unlike the last time, the goblin in the tree was obvious. A benefit of the time of year, and the fact that this forest was deciduous.

  The monster gibbered, apparently rather surprised that I wasn't falling over. Then it pulled another stone from its belt.

  This was going to be a pain. How did I fight back when it so definitively held the high ground? Maybe I needed to prioritise a long range magical attack over [Dagger Mastery]... Besides, boosting [Mana Sensitivity] would give me a better chance of spotting the treants.

  The best option I could come up with was to keep my distance until the goblin ran out of stones, then charge it and hope it came down or that I could climb a little and slice off its ankles.

  And then the branch it was standing on jerked sideways.

  The poor goblin had no hope of keeping its balance. It toppled and fell, emitting a high-pitched squeak as it tumbled. Two more branches swung together like the handclap of a giant, catching the falling goblin right in the middle.

  The small monster burst, its blood raining onto the soil around the trunk of the treant as fragments of bone and chunks of flesh splattered the surrounding forest.

  "Kill stealer!" I yelled, once again to no response.

  Although, treants were worth more than double the experience of goblins, so... the trade was acceptable. I just needed to make very sure that one never caught me between its branches like that.

  Nevertheless, I hesitated rather than rushing in. The last thing I wanted was more goblins turning up and pelting me with stones while I was trying to dodge lethal branches and roots. Instead, I went back to harvesting the first treant, doing my best to keep an ear out for more goblins. My decision turned out to be correct, because it was less than a minute before another stone pinged off my helmet.

  I had to hand it to these goblins; they were excellent aims with a sling. That was two for two on head-shots. Better than the last batch, which had only scored one. Thankfully, they didn't seem to comprehend the concept of a helmet.

  Turning around, the new goblin was standing on exactly the same treant as the first one.

  "Seriously?" I complained, half-heartedly throwing a rock of my own at it, in the hopes of at least getting some team-kill experience. Alas, it dodged easily. "Did all the blood splatters not warn you? So much for a good trade..."

  The goblin gibbered in incomprehension. Then it died. Messily.

  "Oh well," I sighed. At least multiple goblins turning up implied I was close to their village. Had this been a wandering patrol, multiple goblins would have turned up at once. One at a time implied sentries.

  Then again, if they were sentries, shouldn't they know about the treant? Or would that require more intelligence than they had? They built villages, for goodness' sake. Crude, yes, but villages nonetheless. That had to require some sort of comprehension of cause and effect, surely? Maybe the treants usually left them alone? It wasn't until they'd been standing in its branches for a while that the treant attacked.

  Wherever they'd come from, no further goblins attacked during my harvesting of the first treant, or the murder and harvest of the second.

  So, what next? Should I continue to the river, or try to find the village? Village, probably. I'd only get bloody again otherwise.

  Given the direction I'd been travelling in, and the direction the goblins had attacked from, I could hazard a guess at the location. Throw in the approximate distance the sentries had been the last time I'd come across a goblin village, and I could make a fairly good guess of where I needed to go.

  I activated [Expert Stealth], which pointed out that dragging a hand-cart with me was a bloody stupid thing to do, but what was I supposed to do with it? Now that it was loaded, I couldn't exactly stuff it up a tree without everything falling out. Besides, being up a tree wouldn't be an impediment to goblins. Or, knowing my luck, the tree would turn out to be a treant.

  Instead, I tried to drag it as quietly as I could, suddenly and painfully aware that one of the wheels was squeaking. Being soaked in blood probably hadn't done it much good, nor had being pulled through the damp forest with its floor of decaying leaf matter.

  Thankfully, it didn't seem to attract attention, and it wasn't long until I came across the goblin village, even if, much like the last one, the collection of barely standing shelters stretched the definition of 'village' to breaking point.

  Inside, a couple of dozen goblins were going about their day, gibbering at each other with their strange vocalisations that didn't quite seem to be a language, completely unaware that they were about to die.