I peered at my notification in surprise. I'd worked our assigned eight hours, so why did I get extra experience?
"Dad? I got more experience than I expected. Twenty-five..."
"Ssh!" he exclaimed, looking around to check if anyone else had heard. Thankfully, no-one else was in range. "I thought we told you not to spend skill points!"
"Skill points? What does that have to do with anything?"
"Occupational experience is boosted by your relevant skills. Twenty-five percent per stage. Haven't I explained that?"
"Not that I remember."
So if I maxed out [Farming], I'd get double experience? And if I evolved it into a higher-ranked skill, presumably I'd get even more? That sort of thing was why the combo of doubled levelling gains and ten-times experience worked together so well. The extra skill points meant extra experience, which meant more skill points. If I'd spent one of my extra two points, I'd have levelled up again today, and could have maxed out [Farming] a mere two-and-a-half days after unlocking my System. A normal person would have taken nearly seventy. Over two months of working without a single day off. That was far more than twenty times my time, and I'd have had a skill point left over.
It was a shame I wouldn't be able to evolve the skill anytime soon. To get the experience, I needed to utilise it fully, and the effects of me using a skill above E-rank would be obvious to anyone who saw me. Nonetheless...
A couple of extra [Farming] levels wouldn't give me away, and I wanted my level to be as high as possible before we entered a dungeon.
Hiding my abilities from Simon would be tough, but he'd been in the cart when I'd lied about my Mark. I could blame it on that.
"Say, Dad... That thing you offered to do next time you were in town. Could you please do it?"
"Your mother didn't think it was a good idea..."
"No, she was worried about what came after. That part doesn't have to happen."
"After? Drat. You were awake?"
"Hard not to be... You two weren't as quiet as you thought."
"But if you clear a dungeon and then just come back here to farm, what's the point?" asked Dad.
"Levels and skill crystals. Whatever we decide later on, it wouldn't hurt to have more experience under my belt, ready for when the time comes."
"I can check," he conceded. "It's not as if villagers hunting weak monsters for some extra experience is uncommon. But you're to get your mother's permission first."
Damn.
Oh well, I had a few weeks to convince her, and there was no time like the present to get started.
"Mum?" I asked the moment the three of us were alone in our home. "Would you be against me earning experience in a dungeon if I didn't try to sell any loot or otherwise stand out?"
"Yes," she answered simply. "Stats aren't everything, and even if they were, yours are 'only' doubled. You have no combat Skills and no weapons. It's too dangerous."
"What if I said I had a way to get weapons?"
Both parents peered suspiciously. "How?" demanded Dad.
"Uh... I don't want to get anyone else into trouble, but I swear to you it's nothing illegal. They aren't stolen or anything."
"Nothing illegal? I can't imagine anyone in this village has anything more than a kitchen knife that they'd be willing to lend you," said Dad.
"Well... I say weapons, but even a small stone can be a weapon if you throw it hard enough."
Dad blinked.
"Old farming tools?" asked Mum, realising my point, but getting the details slightly wrong. "I suppose pitchforks aren't called the spears of the peasants for nothing."
She paused to think for a moment.
"You're obviously serious about this," she said.
I nodded.
"If there is a low-ranked dungeon around here, it will likely be busy. Other serfs and peasants wanting to earn a bit of extra experience. New adventurers from the town getting their first Skills. You said that an adventurer mentioned it being the source of the baron's [Farming] skill crystals? Then I expect it to be full of resource harvesters. Even if you don't try to sell the loot, you'll stick out like a sore thumb if you head in there alone."
I winced as I debated telling her about Simon. I'd promised not to, but if I just promised not to go alone without naming names, she'd instantly guess who I was going with anyway. It wasn't going to be anyone younger than me, since they wouldn't have unlocked their System access. It could be someone older, but the year above us contained no-one but Lana, and anyone older than her would likely have got any wanderlust out of their systems already.
"I'll come with you," continued Mum. "A mother helping to power-level a child should be normal enough not to attract attention, and everyone will assume that the bulk of the work was done by me."
Oh, hell... That threw all sorts of wrenches into the plan...
"Why've you gone pale?" asked Dad.
Mum sighed. "Let me guess: Simon."
I firmly kept my mouth shut.
"Thought so," continued Mum. "Another guess, then; he hasn't told his parents because he doesn't think they'll approve."
I clamped a hand over my mouth. How was she even doing that?!
"Going with Simon is a bad idea. It'll be impossible to hide from him that you're far higher level than you should be. Even if he doesn't notice immediately, he'll figure it out in hindsight, once he gains a few levels himself."
"He's deliberately not spending any points on mental Stats," I said, giving in. Mum had obviously worked out exactly what we were planning, somehow. I'd heard Dad talk about magical mum senses before. Maybe it was a Skill rather than a mere skill, but if so, I wished she'd spent the points on [Cooking] instead.
"Doesn't matter. The difference is too extreme. If you work the fields each day, you'll be level seven at minimum by the time you enter the dungeon. That's fourteen in every Stat. Simon will be level two. When he gains a couple more levels and realises he still can't move as fast as you on that first trip, he'll notice something is up. Even more so when you rapidly increase in power while running the dungeon."
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"So, you think I should abandon him? Can't I just hold back? For that matter, does it matter if he does find out? He's not exactly going to blab."
"Tell me: why does he want to delve a dungeon? Curiosity, levelling, or... perhaps to earn money for something?"
I didn't answer. There didn't seem much point; Mum could obviously read my mind.
"If it was that easy to pop into a dungeon and come out with enough money to buy full citizenship, then ask yourself why more people aren't doing it. And I'm not talking about children like you, either. Your Dad and I have Stats that vastly exceed yours, and it'll take you more than a few weeks to catch up, so why haven't we considered freeing ourselves?"
"Because even if you could fight monsters, you wouldn't be strong enough to clear the dungeon, and materials from monsters like slimes wouldn't be enough to buy citizenship?" I guessed, deciding I should put a little work into this conversation.
"Exactly. If me and your dad worked together for months or years, every evening after our fieldwork, giving up every last second of our free time, then maybe we could gather the money. Or, alternatively, we might just get ourselves killed. The time and risk mean that it isn't worth it. Not for us, and not for Simon. It needs an advantage like yours."
"So, what? You think I should convince Simon to drop out?"
"He obviously hasn't had this conversation with his parents. But that's part of what concerns me. If he's prepared to do something as desperate as throw himself into a dungeon without acquiring relevant information or consent first, then what else might he do to get his citizenship? Sell information, perhaps?"
"No. He wouldn't do that, although if he finds that I can do it and he can't, I wouldn't put it past him to beg for the money."
Mum sighed. "People change. Worse, the System changes people. But I'll respect your decision. If you're willing to pay him off to keep his mouth shut, then I suppose it's not the end of the world if he works out your Mark's specifics."
"Thank you, Mum!" I exclaimed. I was worried in the middle there for a bit, but in the end, it was a perfect success!
"Is it bad that I have more doubts about this plan now than before you managed to convince your mother?" mumbled Dad, who'd kept his mouth shut through the entire conversation. "You realise that if you're seen working together, and he buys his citizenship but you don't, people are going to wonder why? Well, whatever. I suspect that even if I tried to stop you, you'd just run off on your own."
"That is not a good reason to go along with him," chastised Mum.
"No, but you giving the go-ahead is."
Mum peered. "That's a rather cunning trap, coming from you."
"Thank you very much. Despite opinions to the contrary, I do try."
Not having any idea what they were talking about, I wandered over to the sideboard to help prepare dinner. All the arrangements had been made, and now all I had to do was patiently wait a few weeks for the pieces to fall into place. There was still scope for things to go wrong—there might simply turn out to be no dungeons within commuting distance, for example—but assuming our plans held firm, I had weapons, information and a party. It was almost like being a real adventurer already!
Of course, having a plan and nothing else to do to prepare meant that the following few weeks dragged like molasses. Far from the first day of fieldwork, when time had flown by, it felt like I was spending forty-eight hours a day pulling up weeds. Even the continuous stream of levels didn't help my mood, with my increasing Stats meaning that the two per level ceased to feel like such a huge boost. Mum still advised against spending my stat points, but after the next day I did at least put the last skill point into [Farming].
I dismissed the prompt with a sigh. If it became known that I was delving a dungeon, perhaps I could get away with evolving it before the seventy days a regular farmer would have taken, but no way could I get away with it three days after my System unlocked.
Instead, I continued the days in the fields, building up stat and skill points that I was unable to spend.
Despite how it dragged on, time still passed. We began the harvest, and before long, it was Dad's turn to drive a cart to the town. Or rather, to Greenhold, I corrected myself, determined to break out of one or two of my lower-class habits, even if they were only inside my head. He came back with the news that there was indeed an E-ranked dungeon only an hour's jog away from our village, and that it was open to all, with information about it given away freely. Simon would be disappointed to find that even full clears wouldn't raise much money—as Mum said, there were good reasons why every serf didn't buy citizenship—but the place apparently rained E-ranked skill crystals.
Lana came through, providing us with half a dozen pitchfork heads—sized smaller than usual to keep the weight manageable—with Boris's full blessing. As Simon had said, the material was just going to be discarded anyway, and the blacksmith was fully for the village's youth trying to better themselves. It had been his father doing something similar that was responsible for his position as blacksmith in the first place.
Dad chipped in to fashion some hafts for the pitchforks, which was a requirement I hadn't considered. In retrospect, it was obvious. All our long-handled tools had wooden hafts, and Lana was a blacksmith, not a carpenter. Why had I assumed that she'd do it?
Mum had also, apparently, had a quiet word with Simon's parents at some point. Or at least, I assumed that was his reason for walking up to me in the field one day, slapping me across the face, hugging me, then walking off without uttering a single word.
Either way, it worked out in the end, so Simon, Mum and I found ourselves heading towards the dungeon, following Dad's inexpert directions. The weight of Stats was immediately obvious, with me and Mum needing to slow down to allow Simon to keep up. With my increased [Farming] stage, I'd gone beyond the level seven Mum had guessed, and had very nearly made it to the double digits.
By the end of the day, I intended there to be no 'nearly' about it.