None of the monkeys showed the slightest concern over Solomon's weapon being free. Nor did they seem to care how many of their number had already died. He couldn't see any trace of fear as they screeched at him and rushed forward.

Solomon moved forward to meet them. He had no intention of standing still and acting the target. This time, as he reached the lead monkey, he took a more cautious swing. Rather than an underhand strike for power, he swept his hatchet in a more horizontal swipe. He caught the monkey in the side of the neck. It was enough to send it to the ground.

More importantly, the axe head slid right out of the wound. That left his hatchet free for a backhand swing to fend off the next monkey in line, knocking it away. He caught the third and final monkey in their little phalanx with a straight kick. On the follow through he stomped down and pinned it to the ground before bringing his hatchet around for an overhead chop that split its skull wide open.

He would have liked to finish off the other two, but he was distracted by a flicker of motion in his peripheral vision. He turned just in time to see two more monkeys flying towards him. He caught one on his shield, while the other clung to his side and started trying to gnaw through his jacket.

Solomon grunted, lifting the shield up and away from his body. He whipped his hatchet around, almost like he was trying to reach back and scrub his back. The strike caught the gnawing monkey squarely in its spine, causing its legs to droop and hang limply in the air. It still held itself in place with its hands and continued chewing away. His jacket was holding together, but he could feel the skin underneath tearing open.

With a yell, he brought the shield down, scraping the monkey off of his side. He saw a flash of light as its spine healed. The monkey leapt to its feet just in time to take a soccer kick to the chest as Solomon punted it away.

Reminding himself that he had to keep moving, Solomon turned the follow through of the kick into a run, following the arc of the monkey's flight. It fetched up against the trunk of a tree just a split second before he crashed into it, leading with the body of the monkey that was holding onto his shield and still clawing away at his arm.

Once both of them were pinned in place, two quick chops were enough to finish them off. Solomon shook his shield, letting both bodies fall to the ground, then turned around. The mob had been thinned out to the point that he didn't need to run any more. He could hold his ground and let his enemies come to him.

A few moments later, Solomon stood alone in the middle of the clearing. He was surrounded by mangled bodies, he was covered in blood, he was covered in other things, but he was alive while his enemies were dead. For the moment, that was enough.

Congratulations on completing a successful combat encounter! Your Bladed Weapons Mastery has been raised to level 5. You have been awarded 5 Grid Points!

Solomon sighed. He really would have liked to know how the system evaluated his skills. Even without digging into the details, he could tell that it was getting stingier with the level ups as time went on. He'd done a lot more work slashing his way through the monkeys than he had when he'd killed the boar that had gotten him to level four.

To be fair, they were called skill levels, not effort levels. Objectively speaking, it wasn't like he could have gotten that much better at swinging his hatchet around in such a short period of time.

Although, come to think of it, that raised another question. His hatchet was something he'd put together using the skills the system had granted him to make improvised weapons. How was it, then, that using it was giving him credit for using a bladed weapon instead of an improvised weapon? He turned to the system, hoping the help system would give him a straight answer.

For once, it did.

Improvised Weapon Mastery relates to the use of a weapon built with locally sourced materials, or the use of any weapon in a fashion other than originally intended.

That tracked with what he'd seen so far. His gear was all made out of components he'd purchased from Mort rather than gathered in the dungeon. Therefore, none of it was considered improvised weaponry. The only time he'd been able to improve the improvised weaponry skill was when he'd used his shield as part of a flying takedown, which was certainly outside of the intended use of a shield.

Solomon kept the thought in the back of his mind as he worked over the battlefield, rendering the monkeys down for parts. He wasn't arrogant enough to think that he was going to find some sort of exploit in a multi-verse spanning system that had easily altered reality on a planet-wide basis. On the other hand, it was only common sense to try to figure out what sort of behavior the system would reward. He'd done well for himself so far just rolling with the system notifications as they came in, but that was just luck, really. He needed to figure out a better plan if he wanted to succeed in the long run.

He groaned as he stood up and cracked his back. HP healing or no, stretching out made him feel a little better. Whatever his dreams for the long run, in the short run he was going to have to kill some more monkeys.

The good news was, the monkeys were so much more social than the boars had been that he had to have already cleared out a decent area of the forest. If he was lucky, he might have gotten all of them. This hadn't been a really lucky day so far, though. Solomon intended to do a circuit of this middle region of the forest, making sure that the monkeys were gone.

Then he could take a peek at the center of the forest and find out what his last challenge on this floor was going to be.

At some point, too, maybe he'd get lucky and find some running water. As useful as the HP healing system had been to this point, part of Solomon wished he'd been given an HP cleaning system instead.