Death After Death

Ultimately, his plan was a simple one: bring what he needed, kill a few goblins, and chill out for a few months or years. “Lifetimes, maybe,” he mumbled as he laced up his armor again.

In between inventing Saturday morning cartoons that should have existed but never did and trying to remember what color Freya’s eyes were, he’d given a lot of thought about the mistakes he’d made in the dungeon, and the biggest ones was abandoning his search to find somewhere else to be rather than going ever deeper into the madness.

After all, he knew for a fact that the zombie level was huge. He’d wandered for dozens and dozens of miles in it. Surely other levels were like that too. So, now that he could summon fire on command, he was going to do what he should have done a long time ago. Grab some food from level one, some gold from level two, and use fire magic on level three to survive the freezing cold long enough to get down from those damn mountains and find some nice little medieval city to chill in for a while. He had no idea how long a pile of gold would keep him in women and wine, he thought with a shrug as he belted on his sword and scabbard, and wadded up his blankets into a satchel, but he was sure the food and the company would be better than here.

Killing the rats was almost a nostalgic experience for Simon. “Did you miss me,” he asked as he stomped the last one into oblivion before he picked through the potatoes and the turnips by torchlight. The root cellar was a dusty one, and much of the contents of both sacks were well on their way to spoiling, but he managed to find a few pounds of good vegetables and combined them into the sturdiest sack before he continued on his way to level two.

In his past few attempts, he’d gotten to the point where he could get through these traps in just a few minutes, but that was because he’d memorized each trap so thoroughly that he could identify each of them by the small scuffs and scrapes from the previous times they’d been triggered. He no longer trusted his memory, though. So, this time he took his time, slowly killing bats and searching hallways as he went. He still managed to avoid all of them, of course, and it took less than half an hour to scoop up a double handful of gold. In the end, all it cost him was a second torch, and that was immensely preferable to falling in that damn spike pit or getting crushed to death.

After that, the goblins were easy. His scabbed-over knuckles throbbed as he ran the first one through. It wasn’t a clean kill, and the little bastard had a chance to scream before he was silenced forever, which led to Simon being briefly pinned down by that damn archer until he took it out with the crossbow, but after that, it was a bloodbath in his favor, and though he was worn out by the time he’d finished chopping goblins into pieces, it was a good sort of tired, and he was grateful for the workout.

“You guys have had years to get your act together,” he gasped for breath as he berated the corpse of his final opponent. “But in all that time, you still haven’t figured out how to kill me or how to put an extra guard back in your cave. Pathetic.”

It was funny. Up until yesterday, he’d hated the idea of exercise and avoided it whenever possible, but something about being turned into a statue for years and years changed that. He might still hate the getting out of breath or the sweating part when he overdid it, but for the movement itself, he was very grateful.

Simon’s gaze drifted over to the stone door that led to the skeleton crypt before he got up and started walking down through the snow. He felt a little bad that he couldn’t go try that fight out on this run. It would be the best way to determine how rusty he’d gotten, but there was no way back, so once he was there, he pretty much had to keep going until at least the zombie level, which wasn’t happening. Not only did he have no wish to dredge up those memories again, but the next off-ramp from all the awful was what? The wyvern level?

The day passed slowly, and that night he was able to make himself a fire, but it was still harder than he would have liked. Even trying to think of literally anything else, an outrageous amount of fire belched out of him when he whispered, “G̴̝̈́͒͠ḛ̷͕̮̕͘r̵̛̫̮̔͠ͅv̴̿̀͠ͅu̷̝͚̜̎u̴͚͈̎ḻ̸̣̈́ ̸̦̟̜̈́̍M̷̪̹̪̓̓͒e̴̪̎i̴͓̗̔̔͆ͅr̸̹͓͚͐̅è̵̛͇̱̾n̴̩̜̍.” For a moment, he thought he was going to burn the tree he’d planned on using for shelter down, but those flames quickly went out, and after a few minutes, he had a nice little campfire to try to roast a potato over.

“Honestly, I can’t wait to get some other spell to handle this shit," he said, berating the fire even as it kept away the cold. “Like - why can’t we just have fire or even lesser fire. Hell - I’d take spark right about now. Anything but pyroclastic conflagration of doom!”

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He could feel the spell pulling a ton of mana from him, even on the near miscast he’d tried to accomplish. He was both looking forward to and dreading what would happen the next time he cast the spell at full strength. He’d made it detonate pretty strongly in the past, but it was clear that his time spent meditating while made of stone had turned his imagination or whatever it was that made these spells work even higher than it had been before.

The next day he made good time and rewarded himself with frequent rest breaks, even as the sky began to darken and the wind began to pick up. The second night was fine, too, except for the blizzard, of course. He knew it was going to happen, though, so he built up quite a stash of firewood before the snow started to fall, which was just enough to get him through the night. After that, the snow was deeper, and travel was slower, but he didn’t mind too much because now he could see the snow line. Another day, or maybe two, and he would be clear of this winter weather and thin air, and then he could make real progress.

“I might even be able to find something to hunt with my crossbow,” he said hopefully. It was just too wintery up here to find any small animals, and he understood that, but he was getting really sick of eating potatoes that were half burned and half raw, but that was all going to end soon, he was sure of it.

The best part about his current view, of course, was that he could see a road, and where it crossed a river in the distance to his left, he could just barely make out what might be a town or a village. If there were people, then there had to be an inn, right? That was how fantasy worlds worked. So, in two or three days, he’d be kicking his feet up by the fire and eating roast pork or rotisserie chicken while he listened to a bard sing about whatever it was bards sang about.

It turned out he didn’t have to wait three days to meet people in this world. He’d barely had to wait two. Simon had been on the main road for less than an hour when he encountered bandits, of all things.

“Sorry, sir, but we’re going to need for you to pay a toll for the upkeep of this fine road if you want to travel any closer to Wellingbrooke,” a thin-lipped man in patched green robes said, stepping out into the road. Simon took some small joy as he intuitively knew that he wasn’t being spoken to in English; he might not know what the language was called, but that didn’t stop him from knowing how to speak it.

Simon hadn’t noticed them a moment ago, but now that he knew what he was looking for, he could see three more in the brush ahead. Two had bows, but one just seemed to be watching. That probably meant that there were just as many as he couldn’t see, which made this eight-on-one. He didn’t like their attitude, but he liked those odds even less, so if they just wanted a coin or two, it was a simple enough decision.

“Sure,” he said, looking around at the ruts and the weeds. It was clear that this road had seen very little maintenance for a long time. “And how much is it that the roads require today?”

“For a smart, well-armed man like you?” the bandit smiled, “A mere half-shilling. Six pence will see you on your way with no harm done.”

“Fine,” Simon said, setting down his sack and pulling out a gold coin as he realized the real problem here was that he had no small change. He made a mental note to fix that even as he stood up. “I doubt you have any intention of making change, so why don’t you take this and call it a tip.”

He knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he saw the greed in the other man’s eyes. The bandit licked his lips before announcing unnecessarily loudly, “What’s that then? A gold sovereign? Maybe you should just hand over your whole purse so we can do the math for you.”

Simon had naively hoped that paying too much would save him some trouble, but it turned out to have exactly the opposite effect. He saw a fourth man move in the bushes not far from the first three at the mention of gold, and he heard a bowstring tightening. Since he wasn’t feeling like getting shot right now, he didn’t refuse the demand. Instead, with a shrug, he reached forward, offering the sack to the other man, feigning fear even as his rage began to bubble beneath the surface.

When Simon reached out to hand the other man the bag, he dropped it just before the bandit could grab it, and as the other man’s gaze watched it fall to the path, he reached up and grabbed him by the hair, bringing his head down hard against the other man’s forehead. He’d been aiming for the bridge of his nose, but he hadn’t exactly headbutted anyone before, so his aim was a little off. The bandit crumpled, but Simon held him up, intending to use him as a human shield for arrows that never came.

“Alright,” a voice called out from the bushes. “It’s clear that Luken underestimated you. If you’ll put him down, we can—”

“G̴̝̈́͒͠ḛ̷͕̮̕͘r̵̛̫̮̔͠ͅv̴̿̀͠ͅu̷̝͚̜̎u̴͚͈̎ḻ̸̣̈́ ̸̦̟̜̈́̍M̷̪̹̪̓̓͒e̴̪̎i̴͓̗̔̔͆ͅr̸̹͓͚͐̅è̵̛͇̱̾n̴̩̜̍,” Simon spat, letting his incandescent rage out in the form of rippling white fire that expanded out from his fingertips like a wave, instantly setting the whole section of forest that the men were hiding in on fire.

There were screams after that, but Simon ignored them. Instead, he dropped his hostage to the ground, and, ignoring the wave of exhaustion that passed through him from the spell, he drew his sword and moved to the nearest tree, using it for cover while he looked for any survivors.