Killing so many of the C-rank acid moths had resulted in a nice Mark upgrade from [Monster Slayer II] to [Monster Slayer III], boosting the experience bonus.

  Despite the opinion of Duke Isunbloot, most of the monsters I'd been fighting had not been from the beast category, so the dungeon bonus from the [Raptor Steppe] did very little, only boosting the experience gain of the braccus raptors. [Monster Slayer III], on the other hand, applied to every monster equally.

  Given the number of acid crawlers scrabbling their way across the jungle floor, it seemed I was going to make good use of it, whether I wanted to or not.

  "Wind Blade!"

  A strike below the 'head' of an acid crawler struck its acid sac, showering the area in green gunk. The pair of crawlers on either side screeched as the stuff splattered onto their skin, bubbling and hissing as it ate into their flesh. It made me wonder what their sacs were made of to safely store the substance, given how rapidly it seemed to corrode everything it came into contact with.

  With that small group of acid crawlers distracted, I focused on another, dodging their acid spit and stabbing into their brains. "Wind Blade!" I shouted again, aiming at an acid moth that had just descended from the canopy.

  "How in the hells are there still so many of you?!" I complained as a mass of white flesh surged between a pair of trees. "Wind Blade!"

  At least the bunching meant that a single spell could take out more than one of the monsters.

  The fight once again became a running battle, with me needing to constantly retreat to avoid getting drowned by pure numbers.

  Another level rolled in before the fight ended, which this time was because the monsters dried up rather than my Mana or Stamina. Still, I was down by more than half in both.

  I also couldn't help but notice that most of the monsters seemed to be coming from one direction, all the thick clusters of crawlers always coming from the same route from deeper within the jungle. Should I risk heading that way to see where they were coming from? Probably not, but I couldn't shake the idea of it being a dungeon. Maybe a build up from repeated breaks, or maybe a break had happened recently.

  I wanted more levels before heading deeper into the jungle, but if there were only acid crawlers and acid moths around, it couldn't be too bad. Besides, I had levelling gains to spend.

  And there it was. Not a perfect Path, but the one I'd decided on. Magic was better than daggers. More versatile. More interesting. More powerful. My daggers had served me well during my early levels, but it was time to move on to better things.

  I frowned a little at that thought. It was somewhat... extreme. Magic was certainly more versatile, but I still needed to spend skill points on a spell for every different thing I wanted to do with it. More interesting, yes, I'd give it that. And more powerful... Well, yes, that was probably true, too, but it came with costs. A mage without Mana was nothing but monster bait, and I had nowhere near the amount of Mana I'd have needed to take out as many monsters as I had today with nothing but [Wind Blade].

  Back when I'd first learnt [Dagger Proficiency] and [Mana Sensitivity], I'd expected there to be monsters that daggers couldn't deal with, but that wasn't the same as no longer having any use for daggers. The right tool for the right job. There were advantages and disadvantages to everything. Magic might be more interesting, versatile, and powerful, but that didn't automatically make it better.

  Perhaps I'd been levelling a little too quickly the past couple of days, and this magic bias was a bit of past-me leaking. It would have made sense for him to have been a mage, given the other signs.

  That served as a reminder that I was rapidly coming up on two-hundred-and-fifty points of Memory, even without spending more points on it. Given what had happened at one-hundred—the point at which I should have earned [Eidetic I]—I wasn't looking forward to reaching the point at which I should earn [Eidetic II].

  I distracted myself from that worry by reading the description of [Archmage]

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  Ouch. The wording seemed fairly unequivocal that it wouldn't just cost me a single point of physical Stats per level, but all of them. The way it was worded even sounded like it would cancel out [Perfectly Balanced], although I'd presumably lose that before buying the path anyway, thanks to my lagging Memory.

  On the other hand, a cost reduction on all spells, along with tripled Mana, was certainly a reasonable trade, particularly since it meant I could get final stage E-rank spells completely for free and D-rank spells for only a single skill point. I merely begrudged the fact that I needed to make a trade at all.

  Which brought me on to Stats. There was much to be said in favour of dumping everything into physical Stats, raising them as high as I could in advance of my Path. But in the past couple of fights, it had been Mana that came closest to running out. There was also the concern of past-me's influence. Would Reasoning and Processing help keep my mind clear?

  Perhaps, for now, I should even things back out. I'd have more free stat points to spend by the time I had the skill points to buy [Archmage]

  I blinked a few times, suddenly finding myself rather unsteady on my feet. That had been the most stat points I'd ever spent in one go, and it was enough to feel despite how high they'd grown.

  I needed to rest anyway, to wait for my Mana to recover before making another attempt at seeking the source of the monsters. I spent it doing some light exercises, ensuring I was used to my body, but all that Processing made absorbing my increased strength and speed a simple task.

  And then it was back into the jungle, where the poor monsters had no idea what hit them.

  I could leap higher than the lower branches, giving the acid moths no space to dust me from outside of my range. I somersaulted through the air, kicking off one moth to leap to the next, all while the carpet of acid crawlers beneath spat upward, trying and failing to hit me. Where moths fell onto the carpet, they released clouds of their acidic dust, burning the flightless monsters, while I simply landed on branches to avoid the mess.

  I felt great, but all it took was to cast my mind back to the braccus tyrant to remember that I wasn't invincible.

  ... I shouldn't be somersaulting through the air. I should be at ground level, making a fighting retreat as I took out moths with [Wind Blade]. Darn. I'd spent too many stat points and ended up on a bit of a high.

  I was really rocking it, though. I barely needed to dip into my Mana reserves at all.

  By the time I'd cleared out the remainder of the horde, another two levels had rolled in, leaving me only one away from the third growth milestone. The third. I'd almost caught up to my parents, if not already overtaken them, a mere two months after unlocking. I'd already been advancing at more than the ten times speed offered by [Ancient Soul], but this outing was making all my previous attempts at power-levelling look like child's play. The monster density was simply incomparable to any dungeon I'd visited, and while places like the Harpy's Aerie might theoretically have unlimited monsters, the five minute respawn time was simply too long.

  Maybe it was the Stat high speaking, but I was starting to feel it was a pity I hadn't come here sooner. Not to head into the jungle, but to skirt its edges, killing everything that made a home there. Not that I'd have survived. However careful I was to not draw too many acid crawlers or moths, a pack of braccus raptors would have got me. That five minute respawn time and the consistent monster types and behaviour may have lowered the Harpy's Aerie's experience rate, but they also made it safe. When wandering the Fluffy Meadow, there was no chance of a colossal worm randomly snapping you up.

  "Wind Blade," I chanted, throwing out another of my spells and bisecting a moth fluttering up within the canopy.

  [Mapping] showed that the path I'd taken into the jungle while fighting the monsters had been almost a straight line. If the monsters had run out, the source should be somewhere in the vicinity. [Mana Manipulation] detected nothing of note, nor was anything visible, so I edged further along the line, as usual employing [Expert Stealth] to the fullest to give myself a thin veneer of safety.

  I blinked, then hurriedly leapt backward. Nothing seemed to change.

  I didn't utter a rhetorical 'the heck', because as much as I'd taken to talking to myself, I was in highly hostile territory, trying to be stealthy, and so talking to myself would be rather counterproductive.

  I did think it quite loudly, though.

  Even after getting the notification, and hence being alerted to its presence, I could barely see where jungle ended and dungeon began. [Mana Manipulation] picked up nothing whatsoever. To be fair, I'd never noticed anything from other dungeons either, but I hadn't really been looking, and I hadn't had [Mana Manipulation] for long enough to have got into the habit of paying attention to it. But if dungeons weren't magical, how did they manage to pull off such ridiculous feats of spatial manipulation? The ring wrapped around my finger was very magical, and operated on a far smaller scale than a dungeon.

  This one certainly acted on a significant scale. Looping around the area revealed that the entrance was between a pair of trees, much like The Fungal Garden, and the view between them was totally different to the view from their sides. Were the trunks not so thick, the discrepancy would have been obvious. Equally weird was that the entrance worked from either side; I could loop around the trees and step between them from the 'back', and still see through into the dungeon. Somehow, regardless of the side I looked in, I saw the same patch of dungeon. Space was blatantly being horribly tortured between the pair of trees, and yet I'd detected nothing.

  Perhaps dungeons were so magical that they blinded my Skill, somehow. Or perhaps they hid their mana.

  Not that it mattered. The important question was whether I wanted to risk the dungeon. It was C-rank, so the acid moths would be regular mobs. The boss would be a B-rank acid moth matriarch. Given what had happened in my previous run-in with a B-rank monster, trying again before getting [Archmage] seemed ill advised. And yet, while I was pretty sure my Stat high had worn off, I didn't immediately leave.

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