"My arm hurts," I informed the bright blue sky. The sun had long since risen, but I could forgive myself for oversleeping, given the night-time attack. I was really glad I'd bought [Danger Sense] before turning in. Without it, had I woken up any later, I would have suffered worse than a bite to an arm. "Heal."

  I flexed my fingers experimentally. Everything seemed to work correctly, but there were a few holes in my armour that I wouldn't be able to patch up until I returned to civilisation. Not a perfect start to my trip, but I'd gained nine levels in a single day, which was frankly ridiculous. It was a reasonable trade-off. If I kept exchanging armour for levels at that rate, I'd end up with quadruple-digit Stats before my armour ran out.

  Or at least, I would if monsters were careful to never attack me in the same place twice, which seemed unlikely. The buggers were rather inconsiderate when it came to things like that.

  There was an argument that if monsters could bite straight through it, my armour was rather pointless, but it had presumably absorbed some of the bite's momentum before giving way. Without it, my injury would probably have been worse, and if the bite had crushed bone, it would have taken more than a few casts of [Heal] to get me back into top condition. Hopefully, by the time I was taking hits to areas my armour had already been destroyed, my Constitution would be high enough to compensate.

  Not that I could imagine the Constitution I'd need to survive a braccus tyrant chomping down on me.

  "Suppose I should get going," I mumbled. "Should I be worried that I've only been out of the kingdom for one day, and yet I'm already talking to myself?"

  Probably not, I decided. If I ever answered, that's the point at which I'd need to worry.

  Also, given the giant wall around the royal canton, how come I'd walked straight out of the kingdom without so much as a waymarker? There were no walls or watchtowers here. Perhaps they thought that no army could invade through the Jungle of Braccus, and any individuals or small groups capable of travelling that way wouldn't be the sort of people who would be impeded, or even spotted, by any sort of basic defences.

  What about monsters, though? To not have defences implied the monsters never left the jungle, which, as last night had proven, was blatantly not the case. Heck, monsters had chased me out multiple times yesterday. Maybe the chasing was the point: as long as they didn't see humans, they'd never leave the jungle, in which case stationing watchers within sight of the jungle would be counterproductive.

  In the end, the exact reasoning didn't matter. The kingdom's borders were the business of its leadership, not me. My job was to survive the Jungle of Braccus and stop this world colliding with another.

  Or perhaps my job was to die, but what I was going to do was survive the Jungle of Braccus and stop this world colliding with another. At least, as long as that whole worlds colliding thing was real, and not made up by the gods to get me killed.

  Hmm...

  That was an option I hadn't previously considered. Reasoning helped draw links between disparate facts, and Processing helped to think more quickly, but there was no Stat that could pull knowledge from nowhere. My Reasoning was pointing out that the guild master seemed to implicitly trust the Archbishop, enough so to agree to me heading out here despite personally thinking that it was a terrible idea. That was certainly a point in favour of this job being legitimate. Still, as far as I was aware, we had nothing but the word of the gods that the whole 'worlds colliding' problem was a real thing.

  My Reasoning also pointed out that given past examples, if the gods wanted me dead, they wouldn't faff around inventing a fake existential threat. They'd just fry me with lightning. The problem was probably real.

  Still, to find out for sure, I needed to get there first. Thus began another day of training, during which a major difference between this jungle and dungeons revealed itself: dungeon monsters respawned. The jungle's didn't. It would take more than one night for them to breed, or whatever real-world monsters did to increase in number.

  I walked into the jungle in the same place I'd entered the previous day, and not a single acid crawler landed on my head. I didn't want to work my way deeper in, so instead was forced to walk further along the border. It wasn't as if I needed to travel an unreasonable distance, but there was a limited amount of distance that was easily accessible. There were crags and valleys where the jungle met the roots of the mountain range, and crossing them required further detours.

  Still, there was enough easily accessible treeline available for another day of hunting, and [Mapping] let me avoid the areas I'd already cleared, so I picked an unhunted spot and began the slaughter.

  There were no new monster types, and the only incident that was even remotely interesting was another pack of six raptors attempting to flank me by sending out two of their number while the rest hid behind a tree and ran out while I was distracted. Thankfully, between [Danger Sense] and all the Stat boosting I'd done yesterday, they didn't pose a threat.

  The hunt was enough to net me another pair of levels, thankfully without suffering any unwanted personality shifts in the process. In turn, that gifted me sufficient skill points to purchase and max out the D-rank [Wind Blade].

  As expected, there was no evolution offered, but I'd be fixing that soon enough.

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  As for what the unevolved version of the spell could do... I pointed at the trunk of a tree. "Wind Blade!"

  The spell itself was quiet, which fitted well with the purpose of me buying it. I still needed to call out the Skill name—albeit not quite as loudly as I just had done, if I leaned on [Expert Stealth] to quieten it—but even if I yelled at the top of my voice, it would still be quieter than the crack of thunder from [Lightning Shock]. The blade hitting the tree was quite loud, too, but again, still far quieter than a peal of thunder.

  The damage was rather lacklustre, alas, cutting a gouge into the bark of the tree and showering the area with splinters, but failing to slice deeply into it, let alone fell it. Even at the cost of twenty Mana—ten less than that of [Lightning Shock]—the price/performance ratio fell short. Still, there were advantages and disadvantages to everything. There was a reason daggers were still in use despite the existence of swords, and likewise for swords and spears. I wanted the spell for its ability to deal damage at a distance without alerting every monster for miles around to my presence, and I couldn't imagine the soft and squidgy acid crawlers holding up as well as a tree.

  With [Wind Blade] maxed out, I was left needing one more level of [Heal] and four of [Noise] before I qualified for [Archmage]. Boosting [Float] instead of [Noise] wasn't an option, because [Float] came under the element of air. Still, it had saved my life, so I couldn't begrudge it the pair of skill points it had cost. It would also be handy should I ever find myself falling off a cliff.

  Sixteen more skill points before I could get [Archmage]. Another twelve after that to evolve [Danger Sense] and [Mapping]. More if I wanted any of the evolved Skills above the first stage. It was a lot. Maybe more than the week's worth of time I'd allocated to grinding up my level, particularly if I kept needing to climb and descend the mountains to access different areas.

  Though I didn't really need to evolve [Mapping] before heading deeper into the jungle; the current rank and stage were sufficient to retrace my steps if I needed to get out. Nor did I need to max out all the evolved Skills. Evolving [Danger Sense] would be a sensible precaution, but was even that an absolute requirement? It depended how much risk I was willing to accept.

  This entire mission was risky as heck, but I wasn't sure if that made additional risk worse or better...

  I didn't need to decide now, anyway. I could spend a few more days hunting and see how it went. And so I jogged to the next length of treeline and once again crept into the jungle.

  In a fit of originality, two acid crawlers attempted to drop on my head.

  "Wind Blade," I said, launching a blade of air at one while I stabbed at the other. The stabbed one died instantly, unable to cope with having a foot of metal shoved into its brain.

  As expected, [Wind Blade] did far more damage to the acid crawler than it had to a tree, completely bisecting the monster. Blood and guts burst from both halves, but the front half continued to twitch. A glob of acid went flying past my face, [Danger Sense] thankfully providing me with enough warning to barely dodge the unexpected attack. And then the monster died.

  Yes, other acid crawlers I'd fought had survived stabbings to non-vital spots, but I hadn't expected one to be able to counterattack following a complete bisection. Another downside compared to [Lightning Shock], which stunned any acid crawlers I hit with it. I'd need to work on my aim to make sure I hit their heads if I wanted to score an instant death.

  I didn't have time to dwell on it, though, because I could see patches of moving white everywhere. The caterpillar-like monsters were rounding trees and descending from the canopy in far greater numbers than I'd previously seen. Given the damage [Wind Blade] had done, I could imagine the scent of blood was stronger than other battles, but that didn't explain the numbers. I'd used [Lightning Shock] in the past without attracting this many. The monsters really were denser here than elsewhere.

  Not that it mattered. It just meant more experience for me.

  "Wind Blade," I half-muttered, half-shouted as I made the first move, aiming it at a monster on the ground as I kicked off a tree and leapt up to stab an acid crawler making its way down the trunk.

  Speaking Skill names was weird. Maybe it was related to how the difference between farming and [Farming] was obvious to both speaker and listener, but the names of spells and active Skills had a minimum volume, and any attempt to go quieter just resulted in being forced to speak louder. If you couldn't speak louder—and some of the experiments in that area had been rather interesting—then the Skill simply failed. But it didn't need to be comprehensible, leading to the odd situation that you could cast spells underwater for as long as your air lasted, but then you were out of luck. And probably drowned.

  The slaughter continued, the noise of the fight attracting acid moths and yet more crawlers, but no other types of monsters. But the flow of monsters did not stop.

  In the end, I was forced back not because of the danger, but because my Stamina and Mana were in danger of depleting. Some monsters followed, but once they were dealt with, the tide finally ended.

  "The heck?" I asked rhetorically.

  Of course, nothing answered, but there had to be a reason there were so many monsters around. I'd killed over fifty acid crawlers, and over twenty acid moths. Not only were the numbers high, but the crawler to moth ratio was off. There were B-rank acid moth matriarchs in the jungle, and it was possible there was one around, but the bestiary hadn't said anything about them attracting their lower-ranked forms. Then where were they all coming from?

  Perhaps I should ask where any monster came from. There was one source I knew that could result in masses of monsters, and that was a dungeon break. It was possible there was a dungeon around here somewhere that spilt out acid crawlers and acid moths once a decade.

  Not that there seemed much point in looking for it—it was only a possibility. But I was certainly going back in there to clean up the rest of the monsters as soon as my Mana recovered, and if I happened to run across it... Well, it wouldn't hurt to stick my head in.

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