"Did Stacy just one shot a boss?" I asked as I checked up on the bonus blue box.

  Short and to the point. While each dungeon gave a five percent boost to a particular monster type, this was a bonus five percent to all monsters. Not a huge boost, but every extra helped.

  "It may be a boss, but it's still just a D-rank monster," shrugged Daniel.

  "Yes, but dungeon bosses are normally complicated, multi-phase things."

  I certainly hoped something like the fungal hiver wouldn't turn out to be a regular mob in a D-rank dungeon. That would be... unpleasant.

  "The goblin chieftain wasn't complicated. If Lee was a little faster, he could have beheaded the regular version of him in one strike."

  "I almost got him," muttered Lee.

  I guess they weren't joking around when they'd claimed the regular version of the Goblin Den had been easy. Then again, they were a C-rank party, so that was only to be expected.

  "Anyway, that's the third dungeon conquered. Anyone need healing?" asked Felicity.

  "Yes please," said Ryan. "My ears are still ringing from those ghosts."

  "Wow. It must be bad if you're delaying opening the treasure chest," laughed Lee.

  "Ha ha," replied Ryan dryly, not laughing at all.

  "Heal," said Felicity, wrapping Ryan's head in the warm light.

  "Do you get experience for that?" I asked as the freshly healed Ryan headed for the treasure chest, which had finished forming, along with the exit portal.

  "Of course," she replied. "As long as there's something to actually heal. I can't just cast it on anyone."

  "So... If someone were to cut themselves, then have you heal them, over and over..."

  Felicity blinked. "Uh... I suppose that would work? It wouldn't really be worth it, though. Heal takes fifty mana a cast, so it's not like I can cast it over and over, and the experience isn't that good."

  "Hmm..." I said, non-committally. I was slightly bothered by the way stealth was giving me so much experience. It didn't seem fair, which quite possibly meant that I was missing something.

  But now that the dungeon had been cleared—or, more accurately, conquered—perhaps I could go some way towards discovering what that 'something' was.

  Nope, no sudden epiphanies.

  I wasn't even sure what that meant. That tiredness or intoxication wouldn't blunt my decision making so badly? That the next time a goblin bashed me in the head, I wouldn't end up in a feral rage?

  "Oh, wow," said Ryan, staring into the cubic chest. "A [Purge Undead] skill crystal!"

  That was somewhat ironic... Not that we could have made use of it, given the dungeon's bonus-task restrictions. "And you're going to sell it, rather than give it to Felicity?"

  "I don't have the skill points for it, even if we kept it," she said.

  "You don't? I don't think I've ever seen you cast anything other than [Heal]."

  "Twenty to get [Mana Manipulation] to stage five, then there's [Light], [Heal], [Purify], [Cure], [Barrier] and [Identify Plant]. How many points do you think I have? There's a reason I haven't picked up a weapon proficiency."

  "You have [Identify Plant]?"

  "The guild receptionists have this way of making you feel really stupid if you mistakenly hand in cowthistle..."

  I'd never asked the group what Skills they had. While it was generally considered impolite, we were working together. Knowing each other's Skills would be helpful. The problem was that they'd then ask mine, and I wasn't sure how much I should lie. What would I need to skip to make them sound plausible? Would it be enough to simply skip over the likes of [Farming], [Adept Foraging] and [Fishing]? It was unlikely I'd end up using any of those Skills in front of them for as long as we remained in the royal canton.

  "So why do you have those spells if you don't use them?"

  "I do! It's just that since you joined us, there hasn't been the need. I couldn't use [Light] in the Meandering Warren because of the task restriction. No-one's been poisoned, we haven't had to drink dirty water, we haven't been gathering herbs. I did use [Barrier] in the Goblin Den bonus room, but apparently you were too busy sneaking around to notice."

  "Huh. Fair enough."

  "Anyway, shall we get going?" asked Daniel. "The plan was to clear the Kobold Village today, too, and then we can worry about the orcs tomorrow."

  "Fine," I said, stepping into the teleporter.

  The white light flickered, and then I was standing back outside of the graveyard gates, in the bright sunlight of high noon.

  "One second," I asked as the others appeared. "Just want to check something, now that we're out of the dungeon."

  "Huh? What?" asked Daniel as I took a few deep breaths. Why I was getting so worked up, I had no idea. Nothing would happen. Nothing whatsoever. And even if it did, we were safely out of the dungeon. I even had a healer to hand!

  I winced as something struck the inside of my head like a gong. It felt like the ghosts' screeching, except that this felt less like an attack. Not a deliberate attempt to harm, but simply something trying to force its way into my head that didn't belong there. Or perhaps out of my head would be more accurate.

  "Hey. What's wrong?" called Daniel, somewhat alarmed.

  "Heal," chanted Felicity, but the warm light did nothing whatsoever.

  "Seriously! What's going on?!" exclaimed Daniel, his alarm now far beyond the point at which the word 'somewhat' was applicable.

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  It occurred to me that at some point I'd sat down, clutching my head, as if squeezing it would help keep the contents on the inside. For similar reasons, I had my eyes screwed shut.

  "Hey, are you okay?" asked someone else, and I realised with alarm that I didn't recognise the voice.

  No, of course I recognised the voice. It was Hayley! She'd been my favourite concubine for almost a decade, for goodness' sake! How could I forget her voice?!

  ... Concubine? What the hell?! I didn't have any concubines. I was a virgin! I was sixteen!

  No, I was coming up on a hundred and fifty. I had grand plans to celebrate the occasion, and the required soul crystals were almost fully charged.

  I... I...

  "Hey! Snap out of it!" yelled a voice, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking. Such impudence! How dare anyone touch me?! Whoever it was would be losing their arms, at the very least.

  "Robin!"

  Robin? Who was... Wait... What?

  I blinked and opened my eyes, staring into the alarmed face of... what was his name? Right, Daniel. Felicity and Lee were standing behind him, looking equally alarmed. And there was Ryan, who looked more interested than anything else, and Stacy, who didn't look anything on account of any looks being buried under a considerable weight of plate mail.

  And I was Robin, right? Yes, Robin and not... and not...

  Hadn't I just thought I was someone else? I... couldn't remember.

  "I... I'm okay. I think," I said, trying to climb back to my feet.

  "Like hell you are! What the fuck was that?!" demanded Daniel.

  "I... uh... I don't really know," I admitted.

  "This isn't the time for messing around. Tell us what just happened!"

  What was I supposed to say? I had no idea. I'd... dreamed of being someone else? But that 'someone else' was me. And I'd known things. So many things... but all that knowledge had drained from my head like water through a sieve. There had been... a voice? Someone other than Daniel? Someone important? Or had I just imagined that?

  But I needed to say something. No way would my teammates accept a half-arsed excuse. If in doubt, take refuge in the truth.

  "You must have noticed I'm... well... too high level for my age, and too strong for my level?"

  My party members shared a glance.

  "The thought had crossed our minds," Daniel admitted.

  "I have a Mark that gives me increased gains per level, and a flat multiplier to experience. It's not entirely free. That was the backlash."

  "Backlash?! Are you saying that's normal for you?"

  "Not exactly. It's never been that bad before. Maybe it would be best if I refrained from spending stat points on Memory in the future..."

  'But why not?' whispered a small voice in the back of my mind. I'd known things. So many things. So many secrets, known to me alone. So much power in my hands. In this world, I wanted to protect myself from assassins. I wanted enough power to guarantee my freedom from any who desired to use me. What better way would there be than to remember? The memories may have faded, but the impressions were still there, and I couldn't imagine that person not being 'free'.

  After all, that other person was me. The obvious conclusion was that I'd had a brief glimpse of my prior life, on some other world. Everything he had was mine by birthright.

  "So, you suffer each time you spend stat points on Memory? That's... rather weird..."

  "Yes, it is. Alas, there's not anything we can do about it. Let's just head for the Kobold Village."

  "Are you sure you're up to more fighting?"

  "Yup, I'm feeling fine," I lied.

  Frankly, if not for the earlier zombie incident already ensuring my stomach was empty, I'd have thrown up again for certain.

  It was amusing that everyone else had stopped mentioning the smell. Their noses must have protectively shut down, too. I still hoped we'd find a river on the way to the kobolds, though.

  The others were dubious, and I couldn't blame them, but with my insistence I was recovered, they had little choice but to begin the trek to the next dungeon.

  As we ran, I looked up the details of that Mark.

  I was glad I was running at the back of the group, because it meant no-one saw me stumble. Was that retroactive?

  No, darn it. But even so... Did that mean another twenty percent multiplier to experience? Another two free stat points per level? Given the way the System rounded down, I couldn't bank on bonus skill points or fixed stat points, except perhaps on Mana and Stamina, but I wasn't going to rule it out completely. An extra skill point every five levels would be nothing to sneeze at.

  I had no idea what [Eidetic I] was supposed to do, but surely this was better. Furthermore, the 'I' implied an 'II', and maybe even more. [Fragment of the Past] lacked the I, but [Eidetic I] certainly had one, and if the first edition had been altered like this, it was reasonable to assume the next one would be, too. If I wanted to clear the Deep within the three year limit, I needed to stack as many boosts as possible, and if the only downside was a minute or two of temporal confusion, well... That was a small price to pay.

  By the time we came across a stream deep and clean enough for me to wash in, I'd convinced myself that the experience hadn't actually been all that bad. Totally worth it for a flat twenty percent boost to experience, even if there were no additional stat or skill points whatsoever.

  Once we'd reached the next dungeon—a palisade inside a village, apparently part of the dungeon and not the villagers walling it off—my decision to not spend further points on Memory was completely forgotten.

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