"How can you be a D-rank adventurer and not know how parties work?" asked Daniel.

  "Because I work solo. It's never been relevant."

  "Well, how do you think party members like Felicity get their experience if they don't fight?"

  "I assumed she just tapped the monsters with her staff, so that she counted as one of their attackers."

  "... You expect someone with no melee Skills to join the front line of a fight?"

  "Throw a stone, then. So, I take it parties share experience?"

  "Exactly."

  "Not all experience," clarified Felicity. "Only kill experience. Skill experience isn't shared, and everyone gets the same quest experience whether they're in an official party or not."

  "Skill experience isn't shared?" I repeated. That sold it, then. I'd got almost as much experience from this fight as the last one purely on the weight of assassination bonuses, so if that experience wasn't shared, I was better off sticking with these guys. Alone, catching goblins by surprise was tough. In this group, they served as enough of a distraction to let me pick goblins off with impunity. The fight hadn't been dangerous at all, and I wouldn't need a day of healing up afterwards, so against my expectations, fighting in a group was more efficient.

  Heck, I'd be happy repeating this fight a few more times, to get another couple of levels.

  "So, how do we sign up as a party?" I continued. "After that, I'm more than happy to work through the other dungeons' bonus rooms with you, if they have them."

  "Really?" complained Lee, sounding disappointed.

  "Oh, come on. That went flawlessly."

  "I beg to differ," said Felicity, who was inspecting Stacy carefully. "Heal."

  "Thanks," said Stacy, in what I was fairly sure was only the second word I'd ever heard her speak. Her voice echoed oddly inside her helm.

  "Stacy could have avoided injury if she'd used her active Skills. She was probably just saving Mana in case of emergency."

  Stacy nodded slowly.

  "Still makes it imperfect," said Felicity. "I don't object to continuing, though, as long as we collect intelligence beforehand. I suspect that Robin could have ended that somewhat quicker had he attacked the chieftain from behind."

  "I wasn't sure I'd do any useful damage," I replied.

  Although I was starting to get ideas in that area... The way Daniel had used [Stab] was an inspiration, not simply using it as an attack in its own right, but as an enhancement to an attack of his own. He'd activated it just as his spear had impacted the goblin chieftain. I saw no reason why I couldn't do the same, even if it took me a few attempts to get the timing down.

  There was something else that would help, too.

  And that was the third one down.

  Huh. Not the most useful effect in the world, but I suppose it would let me travel more quickly while carrying heavy baggage. I'd been hoping to buy a storage item at some point, though, after which it wouldn't be all that useful.

  I suppose it would help should I ever move to full metal armour, but my stealthy focus made that unlikely.

  "The chest contains a skill point crystal," said Ryan, who'd opened it while the rest of us had been talking.

  "Woah," said Daniel. "Not the sort of thing I'd expect to find in an E-rank dungeon. It's even better than the stat crystal. It'll sell for a gold or more, easy."

  "Wait, you want to sell it?" I asked, aghast.

  On further thought, we hadn't discussed what to do with the loot. That seemed a bit of an oversight.

  "Of course," replied Daniel. "It's only fair. It's not like we can share the crystal."

  "No, but don't you have another dozen dungeons to visit? You can't share one crystal, but you can share out six."

  "Believe me, this sort of discussion always just ends in a big fight. We'll get different loot from each dungeon, everyone will want the same thing, and there'll be an argument over who gets what. Our party sells all loot, and if there's a particular item that someone wants, they can pay the rest of the party for it."

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Okay, I could see how that was fair, but still... Disposing of a skill point crystal seemed horribly short sighted.

  "What if two people want the same thing?"

  "Then whoever bids the highest gets it."

  "Fine, then. It's not like it actually changes anything. I could still buy one in six crystals from the profits of the other five. More pertinently, back to parties: how do I officially join?"

  "We need to visit a guild branch. You wanted to return to the capital to read any literature they had on bonus rooms, anyway, so we can do it while we're there."

  "Uh..." I mumbled.

  "What? Having second thoughts?"

  "It's just... It's not a great idea for me to return to the capital right now."

  "Why not?"

  "Oh, please don't tell me we've fallen in with some sort of criminal," said Lee.

  Even Stacy seemed to be glaring, which was a neat trick given her complete lack of visible face.

  "In the interests of full disclosure... Someone in the capital doesn't like me very much, and the last time I was there, I was attacked."

  Not exactly a full disclosure, but close enough. If I used the word 'assassins', or admitted I'd killed a foreign prince, they'd bail on me in a heartbeat.

  "... What?" asked Felicity.

  "They didn't hurt me, but even so, I wouldn't want to be seen with you in the capital, just in case you get dragged into my mess."

  "Okay, now I'm having sixth or seventh thoughts..." said Lee.

  Even Daniel licked his lips nervously. "You say 'attacked'. You mean like, wanted to show you up? Or break a leg? Or..."

  "I got the impression they would not have minded me being dead," I said, taking refuge in technical correctness. Not that I expected anyone in this group to have lie detection Skills, but after their offer, lying to them felt wrong.

  Daniel sighed. "And they're based in the capital? Fine. There's a guild branch in Tyle, where the Meandering Warren is. It's where we were planning to go next, anyway, and they're sure to have information on their local dungeon, even if they don't have the full library of the capital."

  "Are you sure about this?" asked Felicity. "Getting tangled up in this sort of thing is exactly what we've been trying to avoid."

  "I'm definitely against it," said Lee. "I don't do this often, but I'm calling an override vote. Sorry, Robin, but if this is the level of bonus room, we don't need you, and we don't want to borrow your trouble."

  Stacy, whose silent gaze had been boring into me the entire time, turned to look at Lee. "Wrong," she said.

  "No I'm not. You weren't going all out. Nor were we. All five of us have plentiful mana left. The fight wasn't even close."

  Stacy continued to stare, or, at least, her helm remained pointed at Lee.

  "What I believe Stacy is so eloquently failing to point out was that without Robin, we wouldn't have been able to get in to the bonus room," supplied Daniel.

  "That wasn't proven," grumbled Lee. "It might just have been bad luck."

  "Besides, I still think I could have forced my way in," said Ryan.

  "So you're against it, too?"

  "Not necessarily. I wouldn't mind picking up [Murderer I], if not something higher. Gets you some respect when guards inspect you."

  "No it doesn't. It gets you a heck of a lot of suspicion," I supplied.

  "You're sixteen. We're not," clarified Ryan.

  "Fair."

  "Wait, you've killed people?!" asked Felicity.

  "Only in self defence, aside from one who was trying to slaughter a village."

  At that, Ryan actually laughed. "I was on the fence, but I like this kid. I'm going to vote we keep him with us."

  "So that's one against and one for," said Daniel. "I assume you're against it, too, Felicity?"

  "Yes," she agreed. "Sorry. I'm sure he's a nice person, but if we associate with him, we're putting ourselves and maybe even others around us in danger."

  "What about you, Stacy?"

  The helm turned to face me again, remaining silent for a few seconds. "For," she said eventually, without offering any elaboration for her reasoning.

  "Okay, so that's two for and two against. Not enough to override me," said Daniel. "Robin sticks with us, and we head for Tyle. Let's get out of here, pick up his armour and get on the road."

  "We're going to regret this," said Lee.

  For my part, I intended to do my very best to ensure that they didn't. I had no qualms about removing my enemies, but I equally wanted to protect my allies. While these people weren't aiding me out of altruism—except possibly Felicity's first [Heal]—they were still doing their best to keep things fair.

  The six of us stepped into the teleporter, appearing back outside in a flash.

  "Success?" asked the guard. "None of you look singed, at least."

  "Yeah, they all died without getting a single fireball off," confirmed Daniel. "And now, if you'll excuse us, we have a bunch more dungeons to conquer."

  "Just don't bite off more than you can chew," he said.

  My new breastplate was done, so I returned Daniel's and strapped my own atop the scorched hole in my armour. We also restocked on food, Tyle being a day's travel away. Maybe two: I knew where it was—it held an E-rank dungeon, so it had already been a part of my route—but with Stacy and her full plate mail in our group, I'd need to adjust my estimated travel time upwards.

  Half a day of jogging later, during which Stacy showed no signs of discomfort, I revised my timings back down again. At the rate we were travelling, we'd arrive late in the evening.

  If anyone held us back, it was going to be Ryan. He was drawing laboured breaths, sweat dribbling down his face as he struggled to keep up.

  "How do you jog long distance in all that gear?" I couldn't help asking.

  "She was built like a brick outhouse even before she unlocked her System," said Lee, answering for his stoic teammate. "Now that she's dumped most of her stat points into Constitution and Stamina, it's more like a mithril outhouse. I've seen her stand in front of a charging boar and catch it. A bit of plate mail is hardly going to slow her down."

  "Oh? You knew each other before System unlock?"

  "Yup. We're all from the same town. Chaj, up north of the sapphire city."

  I'd never heard the town name. If it was in the royal canton, it couldn't hold a dungeon of E or D-rank.

  Before I could ask about it, Ryan stumbled, sprawling forward.

  Stacy caught him, heaved him onto her back, and continued running without so much as breaking step.

  "Huh..." I commented. There wasn't really much more to say. Presumably she'd put some points into Strength, too, or she'd never be able to carry the weight, but her Stamina must be insane. No wonder she'd been the party member tasked with holding the attention of the goblin chieftain.

  We continued running in silence for another ten minutes, at which point Daniel broke the silence. "Your Stats are too high."

  The silence continued for a few more seconds, until it twigged that he was talking to me.

  "Pardon?"

  "I said your Stats are too high. You claimed to have over a hundred Constitution, but I saw the way you danced around those goblins, and if I'm any judge, your Dexterity is just as high. You didn't flinch picking up or wearing a heavy lump of metal, so you must have put some points into Strength, and now you're jogging alongside us without breaking a sweat, so you must have decent Stamina, too. You talk too eloquently for your age, and you had a route planned out and memorised between all the low ranked dungeons of the canton. Maybe you're just naturally mature, but I suspect you've been putting points into mental Stats, too. It's too many."

  "I had a Mark at unlock that gives me extra stat points," I said.

  "Really? Lucky you, I guess."

  "Just who the heck have you made us group up with...?" muttered Lee.

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