Like the previous goblin village, I tossed some stones at a tree in an attempt to attract attention and draw out a couple of the grotesque monsters. I didn't need to: it wasn't as if many of the goblins were armed, and I was not the same person that I'd been the last time I'd dealt with one of their villages. I had the option of simply rushing into the village and fighting them head on. It was more a case of the assassination experience bonus more than quadrupling my potential experience gains, so spending the extra time to take them out quietly was well worth it.

  Well, that and the fact that two dozen against one was something I'd rather avoid, however weak they were. They only needed to get lucky once, after all.

  The goblins nearest to me looked up at the noise, a few of them breaking away to investigate when it continued. The moment they were far enough away for the trees to block line of sight from the village, I moved. With [Expert Stealth] to mask my approach and [Dagger Expertise] to ensure my daggers slipped silently and effortlessly into the backs of their necks, all three were dead before they even realised they were under attack.

  That rather definitively answered the questions I had about experience rounding. Apparently, the System simply dropped partial experience points, else I should have got a nice, round five thousand. Still, I wasn't going to quibble over a couple of points. Not when I'd just gained over six and a half thousand for a couple of minutes' work, with the bulk of the camp still remaining to clear.

  Or perhaps quantifying the amount of work like that wasn't fair. It wasn't as if I could pop out to a goblin village every evening. I needed to factor in travel time and availability.

  Making more noise caused more goblins to look up, but no more left the village. Apparently, simply throwing stones wasn't suspicious enough, or perhaps was too suspicious. The original three goblins hadn't returned, after all.

  Trying a different strategy, I withdrew a little further from the village, ensuring I was completely out of sight, and then screamed.

  The distant goblin gibbering immediately cut out.

  Meanwhile, I leant fully on [Expert Stealth] and circled around the village, creeping in to find a scene much like the last time, with all the goblins staring at my previous location and not guarding their backs at all. I'd scythed through fifteen of them before unlucky chance—a dead goblin collapsing into one of their shelters, demolishing the thing in a loud clatter of falling wood—alerted the others.

  With only a few survivors remaining, they didn't stand a chance, despite the way the noise had attracted a couple more sentries.

  And that was it.

  No, I was forgetting. That wasn't it at all. No part of a goblin's corpse was valuable, but I still needed evidence that I'd cleared the village. Taking their right ears was the traditional method, which meant I had to revisit each corpse to partake in some mild desecration.

  Strangely enough, that was harder than fighting them. At least when fighting them I knew that if I didn't kill them, they'd kill me. Changing my mind and backing out wasn't an option. That was no longer the case, and my brain insisted that it would be far preferable to simply walk away from the smelly, disgusting corpses. They weren't a danger to me or anyone else, and lie detection Skills existed, so why did I need to subject myself (and my poor knife) to such abuse?

  I did my best to ignore it, although I did spend a moment to follow through that line of reasoning, which implied lie detection wasn't a common Skill among guild receptionists, or else was sufficiently unreliable that they needed more proof than someone's word. Maybe they'd had problems with corrupt receptionists, or lie detection was licenced in the same way as some other Skills and only guards were permitted to learn the Skills involved. I hadn't seen any skill crystals that looked related back in the shop at the trade town.

  It would be interesting to look up a similar shop in the capital at some point. I'd been putting it off for many reasons, such as my dwindling cash reserves, my lack of skill points, and the fact that everything I wanted in the short term was available directly from the adventurers' guild.

  With such ponderings helping to keep my mind off my morbid task, I finished collecting the ears. Twenty-six of them, one for each goblin I'd killed.

  ... Drat.

  No it wasn't. I'd missed two. Admittedly, I hadn't killed them, but there were still the first pair of sentries.

  Given what the treant had done to them, were their ears even sufficiently intact to collect? Still, I deemed it worth backtracking to check—I still needed more treant heartwood, and the fact that I'd encountered two in close proximity there suggested there might be more in the area.

  But first, it was time to make use of my dungeon reward.

  I looked forward to trying it out on a treant.

  I didn't have to wait long for my first opportunity. I hadn't even reached the site of my first treant battle when [Mana Sensitivity] pinged, warning me that a tree I'd come within a couple of metres of was slightly magical.

  After thinking that the first treant should have waited until I was closer, this one apparently had. It would have been nice to think that it was sensible enough to understand that attacking someone who was pulling a cart of monster bits—including the heartwood of two other treants—was probably a bad idea, but it was, after all, a monster. It didn't get any say in the matter, however suicidal.

  Actually, now that I phrased it like that, that was probably why the second one had let goblins climb its branches, leaving them with no hope whatsoever when it attacked them. It didn't have the same must-murder-now instinct towards them that it had toward humans.

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  In any case, the moment I twitched and looked around, it started moving, realising it had been spotted. Branches swung and roots started ripping themselves from the soil.

  "Stab," I declared, thrusting my dagger toward an approaching branch.

  Purchasing the Skill hadn't filled my head with every single detail of its execution, but I knew enough. It essentially did nothing but increase the reach and power of my thrust. My actual blade was only a handful of inches long and an inch-and-a-half wide, but with the Skill, reality reacted as if it was larger. Not much—maybe another half-inch to the width and a couple of inches to the length—but it didn't need to be.

  The branch splintered, fragments of bark spinning through the air. A gash opened up, piercing all the way through. The stab wound was thin, but it was long enough that it almost severed the branch.

  Given the speed with which the branch was moving, combined with the way the treant was flexing it, the scraps of wood that survived weren't enough. The branch snapped at the wound, half of the bough arching through the air and landing on the ground with a thud, dead.

  "Nice," I said, somewhat impressed. I followed that up with, "Shit!" on account of the second branch approaching from the other direction, which I barely managed to duck. "Right. Shouldn't get distracted in the middle of a fight."

  I charged the monster, and this time I was far more effective in severing its weapons than in the last fight. The first stage D-rank Skill couldn't do much to the thicker parts of the branches, nearer the trunk, but the roots didn't stand a chance. It took half the time to reach the trunk and carve out the heartwood than my previous fights.

  Despite taking far less time, I felt rather exhausted afterwards.

  How many times had I used [Stab]? Memory stirred and provided the answer 'seven'. So, ten points of Mana per attack. Finally, a use for it, but spending Mana apparently left me just as exhausted as using Stamina.

  Well, I could do something about that easily enough.

  Now everything was perfectly balanced.

  Breath immediately became easier as my Mana leapt by a hundred points. So, I needed to remember that I couldn't spam the Skill indefinitely, but ten times in a single fight wouldn't be a problem, and I could perform it almost forty times before I was outright rendered unconscious through lack of mana. It was worthwhile.

  It did, however, make me wonder how much Skills like [Cross Chop] cost. The bandit leader hadn't spammed it repeatedly while fighting, so presumably the cost was significant, even to someone of that level.

  That was a problem for the far future, though. For now, I had more treants to hunt.

  The original pair of goblins did indeed have intact ears, and it wasn't hard to find more treants around the area. By the time night fell, I'd killed three more of them and collected my quota of heartwood. The only disappointment was that I hadn't found more wolves with which to replace my ruined hides.

  After considering my next move, I decided to begin the journey back. The trees with their fallen leaves didn't provide much camouflage, and I knew goblins could climb. I couldn't hide my cart, and given that the contents were somewhat bloody, I couldn't be sure they wouldn't attract anything. The safest option was to leave the forest immediately and travel through the night. I could rest up tomorrow, back in the safety of the sapphire city.

  Of course, I could 'decide' whatever I wanted, but merely deciding something did nothing to solve the problem of how I was supposed to find my way out of the forest. I normally used the location of the sun as a rough guide to direction, but it had practically set. I knew where the east was right now, but in half an hour, I'd risk getting completely lost.

  Oh well. In the worst case, I wandered around the forest all night and found my way out in the morning, or if it got too dark—the moon was still more than half lit, but not all of that penetrated the canopy—I'd hunker down somewhere and stay awake until the sun rose again.

  Thankfully, luck was on my side and I found my way out of the forest while the sky was still a deep navy, the sun having dipped below the horizon but the sky not yet completely black. It wasn't a huge surprise—the goblin village must have been quite close to the edge to have been noticed—but was still nice.

  From there, the moonlight was more than sufficient to find the road and begin my trek back to the capital.

  Much to my surprise, I wasn't the only one travelling through the night. Dawn was starting to break and the capital had just come into view when I passed a trio of other travellers. They looked at me curiously as we passed each other.

  I felt a little niggle as Reasoning pointed out that they had no luggage. That was... unusual. Where were they going without even bringing a backpack?

  "Hey, Robin!" called one of them, and I turned without thinking.

  He grinned evilly as all three of them drew blackened knives without uttering a single further word.

  Crap.