Death After Death Ch. 108-109 (Patreon)

Ch. 108 - Another Look

I mean, I was never getting out of here without fighting a dragon, Simon thought to himself as he looked up at the ceiling of his little cabin. After all the other weird levels, that was pretty much impossible, was it Helades? 

Still, despite his cynicism, he couldn’t help but smile. He hadn’t gotten see it of course, but he would, and despite the agonizing death he’d endured, that made part of him indescribably happy. On one level just the idea that something like that could exist was freaking cool, but the other part was even more important to him. He was going to face a dragon, and he wasn’t the least bit afraid of it. 

That was better than any level up in the world. After all, why should he be afraid of the dragon? The worst thing it could do was kill him instantly. He doubted he would have even had the thought to heal himself if the inn’s walls hadn’t shielded him from the worst of its fiery breath. 

Instant kills weren’t so bad, not that it mattered right now. He didn’t expect that he’d be going that deep for a while. There were more important things to do than running from level to level now that he had his answer. He wouldn’t get that chance again until level 40, and that was a long ways from here. 

“Mirror, show me a list of levels,” Simon said, as he sat up and rotated toward the thing. 

As he watched the screen begin to populate the list, he sighed and shook his head. It was literally just a list of levels, which was not helpful in anyway.

‘Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4…’

“No, stop, pause, not like that,” Simon called out. “I want them listed by their hazard, or place. Something.”

‘I do not understand,’ the mirror told him. 

“Like - level 1 is rats in the root cellar, and level 2 is bats in a dungeon, you know?” Simon answered, trying to be patient as he reached for the bottle of wine. “I want to put together a plan, and for that I need more information.”

The mirror paused for a few seconds, and when it tried again, it seemed to be going well, but some gaps quickly developed. 

‘Level 1 - Rats in the root cellar

Level 2 - Bats in a dungeon

Level 3 - …

Level 4 - …

Level 5 - …

Level 6 - Zombies in an inn

Level 7 - …’

It took Simon a second to realize why it had only populated a few of the levels, and left most of them blank, but he quickly figured it out. Most of those levels have no reflective surfaces of any kind, so it hasn’t actually seen them, or me in them, even. 

“Alright mirror, let’s try this again,” Simon said, “I’m going to tell you what’s in each level and you’re going to remember, and then print it all out for me, allright? Does that sound fair?”

Simon spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out what was on each level and repeating it back to the mirror. When he was finally done, the list was much more comprehensible.

‘Level 1 - Rats in the root cellar

Level 2 - Bats in a dungeon

Level 3 - Goblins in a cave

Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt

Level 5 - Slime in a sinkhole

Level 6 - Zombies in an inn

Level 7 - Carrion crawler in a sewer

Level 8 - Carnivorous plants in the ruins

Level 9 - Wyvern on a mountaintop

Level 10 - Fire elementals in Ionar

Level 11 - An owlbear in a forest

Level 12 - A Troll in a village

Level 13 - A demon in a church

Level 14 - Ghosts in a manor

Level 15 - Golem in a cave

Level 16 - Orcs raiding a village

Level 17 - Ice orb in a village

Level 18 - Plague in Hurag

Level 19 - Lizardmen in a swamp

Level 20 - Basilisk among the ruins

Level 21 - Ghosts in a cemetery

Level 22 - Rebels at a party

Level 23 - The Sea Seraph

Level 24 - Giant spider in a ???

Level 25 - Black swarmer on a farm

Level 26 - Werewolf in the mountains

Level 27 - Centaurs near Crowvar

Level 28 - Poisoned oasis

Level 29 - Cultists in a village

Level 30 - Ogre’s den

Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains’

When it was all said and done it was quite the list and Simon couldn’t quite read the whole thing without the mirror scrolling a little. He tried to get the mirror to put them all on a map, but he quickly found out that the mirror had no map.

“I’m going to have to draw one, aren’t I?” he sighed. “Oh well. It will be a fun project.”

He added that to his to-do list, fortunately he found one little feature that was more than a little helpful. The mirror wasn’t very smart, or even very knowledgeable, but it was more than capable of telling him which levels had been solved. Well, it didn’t use the word solved. It was capable of telling him which levels were ‘currently inaccessible,’ though, which in Simon’s mind amounted to pretty much the same thing. When he asked it to display only accessible levels, the situation became much clearer.

 ‘Level 1 - Rats in the root cellar

Level 2 - Bats in a dungeon

Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt

Level 6 - Zombies in an inn

Level 7 - Carrion crawler in a sewer

Level 8 - Carnivorous plants in the ruins

Level 10 - Fire elementals in Ionar

Level 13 - A demon in a church

Level 21 - Ghosts in a cemetery

Level 22 - Rebels at a party

Level 23 - The Sea Seraph

Level 24 - Giant spider in a ???

Level 25 - Black swarmer on a farm

Level 27 - Centaurs near Crowvar

Level 28 - Poisoned oasis

Level 29 - Cultists in a village

Level 30 - Ogre’s den

Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains’

“So I’ve completed 13 levels, huh?” he said, nodding at the much more manageable list. Well, currently, anyway.”

It was impossible for him not to notice one entry on that list of course. The inn. Freya’s level. Not my Freya, though, he corrected himself before he started to spiral. It was something he had to handle eventually of course, and though he wanted to do it immediately, he didn’t have to. He could choose to tackle other levels first. 

So, since he wasn’t in a hurry, he reviewed each level and thought about it carefully. Was this level going to be easy to complete? Did he have an idea about what needed to be done? Was there any risk he could have another awful experience and get turned into a zombie or worse? Was there any chance to see his friends?

These were the criteria by which he ranked the levels, and after he thought about it for a good long time, he went outside, grabbing the pole, and went fishing again while he thought about it. He didn’t feel like bread or cheese after all, but some pan fried fish in a wine reduction sauce sounded pretty good. 

By that evening, Simon had decided that he was definitely going to dig a little deeper into the rat level, and that after that, he was going to check out what that shiny thing was in the sewers, even if it was disgusting, but he still couldn’t decide if he should dig deeper into the new Schwarzenbruck or if he wanted to take a pass on that for now. 

“If future levels are changing, it's almost certainly because I’m changing the past,” Simon reminded himself as he gutted his first fish. “So I should definitely focus on those first, right? After all - anything I do in a later level could easily be undone with a new victory.”

He wasn’t entirely sure that was the case, though. Was Schwarzenbruck back because he saved the village, or because he saved the king? Though Helades seemed to think that the former was more important based on the location of her portal, he was certain that preventing a war and the countless lives he’d saved in the process would have a bigger impact on history. 

It was a fascinating idea, and he would have loved to explore it more, but he still didn’t have enough context. If this was earth he could watch different things play out thanks to all the history classes he’d been forced to attend over the years, but here and now? Not so much. He only had the roughest idea of geography; history was far beyond him at this point. 

“Maybe I should fix that?” he thought before deciding against it. He could spend a lifetime studying the history of each level, but that would get him no closer to dragon slaying, or whatever lay past it. 

Part of him wanted to try to take out the volcano beast again. He was fairly certain that the frost sword from the crypt tied into that somehow, but there was no way that he was doing that until he lost some weight. 

Though Simon tried to keep his eyes on the bigger picture and his goals as he caught two more fish that afternoon, and went home to cook them, what he eventually focused on was his body. He hadn’t even slimmed down completely in his last life because it had been to short, but the different between then and now was palpable. Just sitting in the shade was enough to make him sweat and the walk home winded him, even though it was over level ground. 

“Honestly, this is worse than death,” he sighed as he relit the small stove. “Starting from zero.”

He wasn’t of course. He knew that. His character sheet was filling out nicely, and when he checked it once the fish was done cooking, he saw that he’d lost another 20,000 negative karma. He was making progress in every conceivable way, but waking up in this body… in his body, it was a reminder of how far he’d let himself go in his last life and that pained him. 

Simon didn’t think much about life in his basement room anymore because it was simply too depressing. He still remembered his games fondly of course, but the person he sometimes caught in the reflection of his monitor… Well, he didn’t like to think about it. Even with how he’d sometimes been unfairly treated by the people in his life, he still should never have gotten so lazy. 

Lazy. There. He said it. He’d been lazy, and it had cost him. Looking through his life since he’d come to the Pit though, he was satisfied to note that there was almost no laziness in evidence. It was just him working hard and learning new things, and honestly, that felt good. 

Simon nodded as he finished his meal and got ready for bed. Tomorrow he would descend and start taking care of things on his to-do list. He didn’t know if he was going to spend any time in Schwarzenbruck, yet, but he knew that he was going to get some shit done, regardless. Right now he had 87 levels to go, and maybe by the time he died next that would be down to 85, or even 80.

Ch. 109 - Step by Step

Simon woke up once during the night, dreaming that the goblins had tried the shutters, but when he went outside, there were no fresh tracks, so he lay back down until sleep took him. He didn’t fear goblins anymore, but bravery wouldn’t be enough to stop them driving a spear through his guts or ripping out his throat. They were like raccoons but more murdery. 

Both creatures could open doors and latches, of course, but one of them only wanted to knock over your garbage cans and feast on your trash. The other wanted to feast on you. Well, goblins probably would be perfectly happy to feast on whatever was in my trash can if I had one, Simon mused as he lay there, falling back to sleep. 

In the morning he took his time getting ready, and prepared as well as he’d ever done. He didn’t even forget the axe, though he did desperately regret that he would have to cary a sack for of junk around rather than a real backpack. He’d have to get one of those made at the first opportunity. 

In the root cellar Simon killed every last rat without difficulties, and it was only when that was done that he slammed the trapdoor shut and then started to hack it to pieces with the axe. It was awkward work because he was swigging a hatchet against thick wood above his head, and it took several minutes to make an real progress as wood chips rained down on him from above. 

Part of him worried that someone would investigate because he was being so loud, but the rest of him kinda hoped that they did. Chopping away at the boards from such an awkward position was a pain. Finally, after a couple minutes of creating a slowly deepening series of overlapping cuts, he threw the axe down and picked up his mace, shattering the weakened board. 

Simon reached up and tried to move the bar that was holding it closed, but he found no such object. Instead there was something heavy resting on it. 

He fished around a little and was gradually able to push whatever it was out of the way, but the whole time he did so he worried something would chop his arm clean off. They didn’t though, and when he finally freed up the trapdoor and pushed it open he found a dark room. 

When he finally figured out where he was, though, he had trouble believing it. The furniture had been knocked over and smashed, and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and grime, but he would have bet his life that this was his cabin. Just dirtier, and maybe older. 

Simon crawled up out of his hole, and with a word, he ignited a torch so he could get a better look. It didn’t answer any questions, though. He could see signs of goblin damage, but there were human tracks in the dirt, too. There wasn’t even enough left of the mirror to ask it a question. He tried, but its words were scattered across the slivers and shards of glass so thinly that they were little more than a blue shimmer. 

Simon went outside next, and looked around, but the nighttime view didn’t look too much different than what he was used to. He walked to the temple, and found it slightly more overgrown than before, but otherwise unchanged, and he saw a bonfire in the woods that hinted at goblins, but opted not to investigate that further because he didn’t want to be distracted from the question at hand with a pitched battle. 

“Why would a portal take me forward in time but nowhere in space?” he wondered. He didn’t have an answer, though he was sure that there was one he was missing. Simon eventually strolled over to the river, using that as his mirror, and asked, “Mirror, can you tell me how far I’ve traveled into the feature?”

‘The future?’ the mirror asked. ‘I don’t understand. This is the present.’

“Yes,” Simon agreed. “It’s my present, but it's the future of the last level. Can you tell me how much time has passed between where I was and where I am?”

‘I cannot,’ the mirror answered. ‘Time has passed, but it does not flow for me the same as it does for you.’

“What does that even mean?” Simon asked in frustration. 

‘I cannot say,’ the mirror typed in glowing blue letters that wavered on the ever-moving surface of the water. 

Simon sighed and snuffed his torch before he walked back toward the bonfire he’d spotted earlier. He hadn’t planned to fight, but after the mirror pissed him off, he was looking for something to take it out on. He would have, too, except that when he got there, he didn’t find the few goblins he expected. He saw dozens cavorting in the flickering firelight and froze. 

How’d there get to be so many? He wondered. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing here?

Honestly, he doubted it. He wasn’t really feeling up to fighting so many. Even with magic, it would be damn hard to keep from getting stabbed, but when he heard the sound of a branch snapping nearby him, Simon didn’t hesitate. 

“Gervuul Oonbetit,” he declared, sending an invisible guillotine of force expanding out in front of him like a ripple on a pond. 

At head level, it took out whatever it was that had attempted to sneak up on him, along when more than a few on this side of the fire, but it also sliced cleanly through several trees which crashed down on the gathering sending screaming goblins scattering in every direction. 

Simon had hoped to snuff the flames of violence with a clean strike, but instead, he’d sent the scurrying every which way, spreading embers in all directions. He took that as his cue to leave, and he ran for his life back to the cabin. Realistically, he could probably take out four or five at once, but once they found him, it would get ugly, and he’d probably be swarmed by double that. He had no interest in losing a life so quickly, so he just left. 

It was a sidequest anyway, he reasoned as he shot back down the stairs and headed for the dungeon. 

There, he took a break to calm himself before he did anything stupid as far as the traps were concerned. “Maybe this level is about taking all the cash out of here,” he wondered aloud as he began to ease his way forward. “Maybe someday some adventurers will find it, and it will cause problems down the line?”

It was the best thesis he had so far, and he dug into it as he slaughtered the bats that attacked him. He couldn’t take the treasure with him, but he could very easily use a word of earth to seal that passage shut so no one else could get it either… but then he’d no longer have a comfortable place to stock up on gold with each trip. That made the question a dicier one. He had a theoretical solution, but should he use it?

Simon debated that long and hard once he’d finished off the bats and made his way to the secret passage that opened to reveal the treasure vault. There, he reluctantly sealed the gold into a wall after he’d taken a pouch of gold and silver for his own use. 

“From now on, shit gets harder,” he sighed before saying, “Vosden,” and sealing the treasure away behind a thin wall of stone. He’d imagined it to look as close as possible to the rest of the wall, but it came out a little discolored. He wasn’t sure that was going to matter. 

After that came the skeleton crypt, but they were as easy to defeat as ever. There, Simon did a little experiment and used the minor word of earth to turn a silver piece into a palm-sized mirror rather than pour his water out on the floor. That worked pretty well, though he had to use the word twice to beat it fully down to the size he wanted. 

Even that wasn’t a waste, though. He learned that a word of earth could affect metal and that it didn’t work as well as it did for stone. He didn’t need to ask the mirror any questions this time, though. He just wanted to record the sigils on the sword because, this time, he wasn’t planning to take it with him. 

Simon briefly considered destroying it to see if that would complete the level, but he didn’t for a couple reasons. The first was that he was pretty sure he was going to need the thing the next time he decided to try taking out the fire level, and the other reason was that the idea of fucking with the runes without completely understanding them gave him serious flashbacks to the frost orb. 

“Don’t try to disarm a bomb until you know whether you need to cut the red wire,” he muttered to himself as he finished with the sword. 

After that, he made some notes about some of the other heraldry just in case he wanted to try to figure out why this place mattered one day. Once that was done he sorted out his bag, and it was only when he was halfway through with that, that he e realized he was dragging his feet about the next level. The tavern had become a scarier place to him that a dragon's lair, and he would have laughed if it wasn’t so sad. 

“I won’t stay,” he told himself as he gripped the skeleton knight’s key a little tighter. “Whether she’s there or not, I’ll skip it and just keep going.”

Simon waited until he believed the words he’d just spoken. Only then did he get up and walk toward the gate. He opened it cautiously in case the next level had revered itself to zombies, but it hadn’t. Instead, it was the same bustling inn he’d seen the last few times. 

Simon shut the door behind him and walked into the common room. He saw Freya sitting there with the same adventurers he’d seen the time before last, but that just made him walk faster. True to his word he left without a backward glance, and when he slammed the door in the sewer he finally slumped against it and allowed himself a moment for the regret to wash over himself before he pushed on. 

Hopefully he’d solved one level already, but he had a lot more to do between now and whenever it was that he died, and he wasn’t going to let her distract him.