"Usually, if a village builds a palisade, they do so on the outside," commented Ryan.

  "Not to mention they normally enclose an area slightly larger than this," added Felicity, walking in a circle around the construction, a task which took only a few seconds.

  "It does seem a bit silly making it so tall, given how small it is," agreed Lee.

  "Maybe this isn't a dungeon at all, and they're just raising some really bouncy pigs?" laughed Ryan.

  "... Are you lot actually coming in, or are you just gawking?" complained the guard, who was standing outside an open wooden gate in the wall, glaring at our group.

  "Just double checking what we need to do," said Daniel, who had the documentation provided by the guild out, as if he hadn't memorised the entire thing long ago.

  Obviously, the place would be bigger on the inside than the outside, but I had to agree that an enclosure that was almost as tall as it was wide did look rather disproportioned. At least the tree trunks in use were narrow, or it would have looked really stupid.

  As for the task, this one was made for me. To successfully conquer this dungeon, we needed to clear it without being detected. The rules around what 'detected' meant were somewhat complex, hence why Daniel was triple-checking, but as far as I was concerned, it all boiled down to not letting the kobolds realise there were intruders in the dungeon.

  The others weren't even going to try. They'd enter the dungeon, to ensure they got the experience and Mark, but they'd just hang around the entrance, hiding and staying out of sight, while I snuck in deeper on my own. I needed to reach the boss—a kobold chieftain, much like the goblin chieftain, except that this one wouldn't be a strengthened version—and then assassinate him.

  I wouldn't be able to assassinate mobs on the way through, alas. It wasn't explicitly disallowed, but there was a chance a body would be discovered, or one would make too much noise in their death throes. On the other hand, there was no rule that I had to take the teleporter out of the dungeon. I could assassinate the mobs on the way back out.

  "What happens if we climb over the wall?" asked Ryan, looking up appraisingly.

  "You can't," answered the guard.

  "Who says? A bit of climbing gear, and I'm sure I could manage."

  "No, you literally can't. You know what dungeons are like for ignoring geometry. The palisade looks four or five metres high from ground level, but from above it's at least a few kilometres. Maybe it's possible to fly over it, but for an E-rank dungeon, why would anyone capable of such a feat bother?"

  "... Dungeons are stupid," I opined. "Speaking of, are you done, Daniel? I'm the one who needs to do the work this time, not you, and I remember what that document says word for word."

  "Fine. Let's get going."

  Had the village been real, the gates would have been guarded by kobolds, if not the entire palisade. Also, the village would be... well... organised. Structures arranged into streets. Fenced-off gardens that obviously belonged to a specific structure. Dirt tracks. There was none of that. Huts were positioned seemingly at random, in equally random orientations. There were several dirt tracks, but they weren't connected to the huts or each other, and none of them seemed to go anywhere. There were random fenced squares between the huts, with equally random collections of root vegetables growing in each—things which [Farming] informed me preferred completely different types of soil, and should never be grown together.

  It was as if someone had heard of a 'village', and knew it was a small settlement of discrete residences, but didn't understand the details. That sort of thing seemed like a common theme in dungeons. Even the Slime Pit was the same, in retrospect; all those rooms, filled with furniture, but with no organisation. It could never be mistaken for the inside of a real ruined structure.

  Some of the garden squares contained kobolds, doing an impression of farming that might have fooled anyone who didn't have [Farming]. With my knowledge, I knew full well they weren't doing anything useful. They did have eyes, though, so our group quickly ducked around the side of the nearest hut, before one spotted us.

  "I'm not sure we can hide here," whispered Daniel. "It's too exposed. There's no cover."

  "Are you kidding?" I whispered back, thumbing behind me.

  Daniel looked where I was pointing—the wall of the hut—in incomprehension.

  "Wait here," I sighed. "I'll be right back."

  This would be a risk, but it didn't really matter if I messed up: we'd only just entered, so restarting wouldn't waste much time.

  I shuffled around the hut's corner, ducked under the windows—which, thankfully for my plans, had no glass—and knocked on the door. Then I retreated, rushing past my confused party in the opposite direction, and vaulted through a rear window as quietly as [Expert Stealth] would permit.

  There were three kobolds in the hut. They were short, scaly things, with six little horns sticking backward from their heads. Bipedal, no less humanoid than a goblin, and frankly, a lot better smelling. If not for the claws they had at the end of each finger, I might even have called them cute.

  Cuteness never saved the horned rabbits, though, and it wasn't about to save these kobolds.

  All three were staring at the door, with none of them making a move to open it. It was entirely possible that they weren't intelligent enough to comprehend the concept of doors in the first place. Just because the dungeon had spawned them inside a reasonable facsimile of a hut, it didn't mean they knew how to use it.

  In fact, now that I paid attention, the table and chairs looked distinctly gnawed.

  In any case, I wasn't here to inspect the furniture. I was here to make monsters bleed. With their muzzles, clamping a hand over one's mouth to silence them as I slit a throat would be tough, and with their scales, slitting a throat would likely prove noisy regardless. Likewise, I could only [Stab] two at a time, and the third would assuredly hear the Skill invocation. I needed to take them out without being detected.

  Maybe I should find another hut with only two?

  No, there wasn't time. The one closest to me was beginning to turn, having lost interest in the noise at the door. It was time to put my triple-digit Stats to use.

  I closed the distance, not slashing his throat, but plunging my dagger into the back of his neck, aiming upwards and severing the brain stem. He died instantly.

  I didn't catch him, letting him fall instead. The noise when he hit the floor wouldn't matter; the sounds of dagger meeting scales and spine had caused the other two to react, and they were already turning. They'd heard something suspicious, but they didn't yet know there was an intruder.

  I took a silent step between them, plunging in both daggers at once before they'd finished turning. The pair died without laying eyes on me.

  The first monster hit the floor with a thud, followed a split second later by the other two.

  Three digits of Dexterity let me move fast, at least compared to these kobolds. Likewise, their scales completely failed to stand up to [Dagger Expertise] with three digits of Strength behind it. There was no need for active Skills or complex assassination tactics when I could simply move faster than they could react.

  And as another bonus—albeit a small one, given I was sharing experience with five others—each one awarded the same experience as a goblin.

  Kobolds disposed of, I hopped back out of the window.

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  "All done," I told Daniel. "Now you have an entire hut to wait in, and the kobolds don't seem to know how doors work, so no-one should come in as long as you close the windows. Just be careful not to tread in a kobold."

  "...," replied Daniel, his face twisting in quite eloquent ways to say everything that his words had failed to convey.

  "And you weren't seen?" whispered Ryan.

  "Nope. None of them had a clue what hit them."

  The others shared a glance, then shrugged and climbed into the hut through the back window. The sight of them all hunched over, trying to be stealthy, was rather amusing. Looking like you belonged wasn't a trick that would work in a dungeon, but even so, the sight of five people in a row hunched over would be incredibly eye-catching and suspicious from a distance.

  Not that it was a problem, as such. Their lack of stealth Skills was exactly why they were waiting while I soloed this dungeon. The experience gain had proven [Fragment of the Past] was working as advertised, and I had a bunch of assassination experience to earn.

  Starting with the boss.

  Daniel had been correct when he'd complained about the lack of cover, but it didn't matter as much for someone on the move as for those trying to hold still. The 'farming' kobolds acted like mechanical golems, bending over, standing, taking a step and repeating. Evading their gaze was simple enough. The huts were the greater problem, since I couldn't see the kobolds inside, and hence had no idea what direction they were facing. Thankfully, only two sides of each hut held windows, and not all of them were open. The wooden shutters would prevent me being seen through the closed ones.

  I ducked and weaved through the village, and no sound of alarm went up behind me. The way to the boss was simple enough; he was in the hut at the centre. With the palisade visible, the direction was easy enough to find, which was fortunate, given that the chief's hut appeared no different to any others. A knock at the door attracted his attention, meaning he was facing away when I slipped in through the back window.

  "Stab."

  Huh. Apparently Stacy wasn't the only one who could one-shot a boss.

  And, with the Mark obtained, it no longer mattered if I was detected.

  The teleporter formed, occupying the bulk of the hut, but I ignored it. I looted the chest—another five-hundred point experience crystal—and then it was time to engage in some protracted stabbing. The kobolds—stuck in huts with limited fields of view, or working fields in mechanical patterns that made it trivial to sneak up on them—were sitting ducks. It wasn't just the bonus task of the Kobold Village that was made for me, it was the whole damn dungeon.

  I'd scored another thirty assassinations by the time I reached the exit, even if a few individual kobolds had spotted me in huts that contained three or four of the monsters.

  Not quite enough for two levels, but it got me one, and put me on the border of the next.

  And yup, there were two extra free stat points. Not that I needed them all right now.

  And there was the last of the Marks for triple-digit Stats.

  Oh? So was Processing the Stat responsible for strengthening my senses? That was rather interesting, even if the effect of the Mark wasn't immediately obvious. I couldn't suddenly see perfectly out of the corner of my eye.

  But, putting Stats aside, there was a disappointment: I'd only gained two skill points. The same as usual. Yes, it was expected, but even so...

  I was left one short of what I needed to buy [Dagger Mastery], my first C-rank combat Skill, and an important step towards ensuring that any future assassins would find me a somewhat different opponent to the first set. And Daniel still had a skill point crystal right there.

  Oh well. We were about to assault three villages' worth of orcs. I wouldn't have long to wait, even without the crystal.

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