Morning came, and with the departing darkness also departed my last-but-one excuse for putting off the next leg of my trip. If I was honest, I'd spoken to Old Three-eye hoping that she'd tell me to turn back. Alas, she hadn't. Even if she had, it was doubtful she'd have given me a reason concrete enough to risk a lightning bolt to the face.

  I descended the final slopes of the mountain, heading toward the luscious green treeline, the beautiful, inviting plantlife belaying the deadly howling and roaring sounding from deeper within.

  Thankfully, I still had my final excuse before stepping in. Not that it would last me long.

  Before leaving the sapphire city, I'd loaded up with food and water, but the guild master had advised I purchase potions and equipment, too. I'd taken that advice to heart, and while the gold coin cost of healing potions precluded me from buying them up by the dozen, there were other purchases that I deemed equally important. Spare daggers. A magical monster repellent that would let me sleep in relative safety. An enchanted trinket to purify water, in case my journey took longer than expected and my stored supplies ran out.

  Those purchases also included a few skill crystals, and with the extra level I'd gained from the Raptor Steppe combined with the points I'd saved since learning this deadly trip was on the cards, I had just enough skill points for a Skill that would prove utterly vital once I stepped under the canopy.

  The process of consuming a skill crystal and immediately raising it to D-rank barely taxed me at all, which was a welcome benefit of my increasing Processing. I only hoped that D-rank would be sufficient. [Compass] would let me know the direction I was heading, while [Mapping] also let me know where I was and where I'd been. If my dream counted as 'being' somewhere, and being so far above the ground didn't spoil things, then even the first stage of [Mapping] would be sufficient to retrace my route despite the homogenous ocean of trees. If not, I hoped it would at least let me perform a methodical search of the jungle.

  Buying the Skill left me with a strange sense of hereness, but I couldn't point in the direction of the tower, nor could I pick up the route I'd taken in my dream. I couldn't even point in the direction of the sapphire city or my home village—at D-rank, the Skill didn't work that way. I could pick up the route by which I'd walked around the mountain, though, and with the significant distance at which the odd sense ended, my flight path above couldn't be far out of range.

  Assuming it was out of range at all. It might just be that the dream didn't count for the purposes of the Skill. Annoying, but not something I could do anything about. I didn't have further skill points to throw around, and even if I did, I'd have wanted to spend them on the next skill crystal I'd brought with me: [Vigilance]. Not that it would be any help at E-rank, either. I was doubtful even the D-rank upgrade, [Danger Sense], would be useful against the higher rank monsters of the jungle. Otherwise, I'd have been tempted to get it instead of [Mapping], no matter how lost I ended up as a result.

  And I would have ended up lost. I hadn't truly appreciated the sense of scale at the time of my dream. From ground level, the trees towered over me, taller than the temple spires or the royal palace. I couldn't even say with certainty how tall, because the huge, dense canopy shielded the tree-tops from view even from the outside of the jungle. As a corollary, it implied the jungle was vast—despite being so high up, it had stretched from horizon to horizon. Wandering it randomly, I'd never find the tower.

  In any case, with that Skill learnt, spending some stat points wouldn't hurt. At least, so long as I didn't spend them on Memory.

  There was something of a trade-off involved; I could get caught in situations where an extra fifty points of Strength or Dexterity would prove useful, and by spending the points now, I'd screw myself over later. Likewise, I could easily get caught in surprise situations where I wouldn't have time to spend stat points, and an even spread now might let me escape a future ambush that would have killed me had I saved the points until I needed them. Spending an even fifty and keeping the rest seemed a fair balance.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  And with that, I'd expended my final excuse for procrastination. It was time to step into the Jungle of Braccus. Despite not being able to retrace my route, I could approximately orientate myself because I knew which of the mountain peaks I'd flown over and the direction the mountains had receded into the distance. My hope was that if I walked in the right general direction, I'd stumble across my previous route at the point it descended.

  If that failed, I was going to need to search the jungle for the distinctive please-go-away effect. Having experienced it once, I was reasonably sure I'd recognise it if I hit it again.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped between two of the enormous trees.

  Something made a quiet whuffing noise above me.

  I leapt backward just in time, a caterpillar the size of my leg slamming into the soil where I'd been standing a mere half-second earlier. It whipped up its 'head', a ring of eyes focusing on me. A circular mouth opened up in the middle of them, a ring of teeth within, but I was already moving. A glob of green gunk whizzed past, hissing and steaming where it hit the ground in a way that made me really glad I'd dodged.

  Thank goodness for the bestiary the guild master had lent me. In my experience, caterpillars were not only a lot smaller and not so toothy, but they also didn't spit big blobs of acid. Without the prior warning, I may well have died having taken less than ten paces into the jungle. Heck, if those soldiers of Harvent Canton hadn't intercepted me on my first trip toward the mithril mountains, I'd have walked into this place completely unaware... As evil as they were, I had to admit that their attempt at forcible recruitment had saved my life.

  Thanks to the bestiary, I also knew the monster could only spit acid twice: the stuff was stored in a sac in front of its throat, and once empty, it would take hours to produce more. It was simple enough to keep my distance, wait for it to launch a second glob, then rush forward and stab the thing through one of the upper eyes, piercing the brain beyond.

  Did regular caterpillars have brains? At least, in the discrete-stabbable-organ sense? The question had never previously arisen, so I didn't know: a regular caterpillar wasn't big enough to think about stabbing individual organs. Really, the monster seemed to have very little in common with regular caterpillars. Aside from their general shape and array of stubby legs, the only trait they shared with their non-monstrous brethren was the way they evolved into C-rank acid moths once they'd eaten enough.

  Certainly, killing a regular caterpillar wouldn't get me double the experience of an orc.

  And, speaking of eating... Further thuds sounded in the jungle as the smell of spilt blood wafted over the trees. Despite being D-rank, and being worth two orcs of experience, the acid crawlers were among the weakest members of the ecosystem, and yet, in another departure from most caterpillars, the things were carnivorous. Where, then, were they supposed to get their meat?

  I hid behind a tree and watched as another half dozen acid crawlers approached the corpse of the first, hoping to get their fill. They were scavengers, and while the instinct of any monster would cause them to attack me on sight, left alone, they wouldn't normally attack anything. Their acid was for defensive purposes only.

  Monster ecology was actually rather weird, now that I thought about it. Monster meat provided no nutrition to humans, and yet these caterpillars ate other monsters, evolving from it if they could get enough. I needed to travel light to avoid being targeted by a colossal worm, and yet the worms didn't eat the dinosaurs, which were far stompier and meatier than I was, on top of being tasty treats to the fortress eagles. What did the worms eat when they couldn't get human? Unlike dungeon monsters, real-world monsters were supposed to require sustenance. The jungle had no regular animals—put a herd of deer or boars in here and they wouldn't last a minute. So much didn't seem to make sense, and I had no idea if that was because I was lacking knowledge, or if monsters cheated somehow.

  I'd seen dungeons spawn monsters. Did that happen in the real world, leaving the monsters in a continuous cycle of starving and respawning? If not, why hadn't there been a concerted effort to, for example, wipe out goblins and orcs in the royal canton, solving the monster village problem for good? If it did, then what the heck was spawning them? But if not, what exactly happened to a real-world monster that didn't eat? I'd assumed they'd starve and die, but maybe it just weakened them? But if so, why did the worms have a concept of effort versus reward? Did they simply think there wouldn't be enough of me to taste?

  This felt like quite important, basic information, that perhaps I should have considered earlier. Not that it was particularly relevant to anything I'd done or would be doing in my immediate future.

  While I'd been pondering, the group of acid crawlers had reached their fallen colleague, and all were focused on consuming as much of its flesh as possible before the others beat them to it. I was more than willing to take advantage of that focus, running a loop around the feeding frenzy and slashing each monster across the back of the head, bisecting their brains. The one opposite me spotted me, hissing as I approached, but too late to resist.

  It was rather nice of them to have built themselves such vital organs but not quite have mastered the art of skulls to protect them.

  With even more blood spilt, a few additional crawlers approached from further afield, and this time, they had one of their evolved counterparts with them. A colourful, moth-shaped monster with purple body and green wings. Green dust drifted from those wings with each flap, hissing as it landed on the soil. The leaves it fell upon blackened and smoked.

  Now I wished I had the skill points for the third and penultimate skill crystal I'd brought with me: [Wind Blade]. [Lightning Shock] was nice, but it was loud, and would be likely to attract a level of attention I wouldn't survive. A long-range offensive spell that could be used stealthily would be very useful.

  With that option unavailable, I simply grabbed a few stones and threw them very hard. The moment I stepped into view, the acid moth hissed and swerved, not heading directly for me but rather over my head, presumably aiming to dust me in powdered acid. I was hoping my stones would inflict sufficient injuries to the thin, fragile wings to ground it, but I had no such luck. Rather, they simply bounced off.

  It seemed I needed the extra Stat boost already.

  I threw another stone while dodging globs of acid from the trio of crawlers, which had spotted the altercation and joined in. This time, despite not piercing the wing, something went crunch and the injured wing ceased flapping properly. The moth spiralled as it gradually lost height, eventually coming into range of my dagger.

  With the moth down, taking care of the three crawlers was simple enough. If they'd had the intelligence to coordinate their acid attacks, I'd have been in trouble, but thankfully, they did not.

  That was almost forty thousand experience earned in a mere handful of minutes, and I was yet to venture more than two trees deep into the jungle. At that rate, it wouldn't be long before I'd have the skill points to use the other two crystals.

  In fact, perhaps [Lightning Shock] wasn't the liability I thought it was. Here, on the outskirts, where monsters were comparatively weak, it could be seen as an opportunity.

  "I cast summon experience!" I shouted, pointing a finger at the sky. "Lightning Shock!"

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