Death After Death Ch.11-14 (Patreon)

Ch. 11 - Another Way Out

When he left the cabin that day he never planned on coming back. If that damn path looped around then he would just take a different route. Anything that got him out of this crazy hall of mirrors was okay by him. He checked the satchel on the end of his spear one last time to make sure he wouldn’t lose anything, and then he started walking.

“There has to be a way out somewhere,” he mumbled to himself as he walked to the ruins of the temple. It was as good a place as any to get started. As he headed for the stream that would lead him there he decided that there had to be more to the ruins. Maybe a tunnel underneath, or a city further back amongst the trees. He couldn’t say precisely what he hoped to find, but he was sure he’d find something. Games like this always had shortcuts and secret paths, and so far the only thing he’d found that remotely qualified was a watery grave on the fourth floor. There was no way that was a secret passage, it was just a dick move.

He got to the ruins quickly enough, and spent an hour searching, but found nothing new. There were some inscriptions that were still legible, but it was in a flowing picture language that he was pretty sure had never been written on earth that looked sort of like cursive hieroglyphics, so whatever it was trying to tell him was lost to time. There was one spot next to the temple that was caved in that might have once led to a basement or a lower story of some kind - but he’d need rigging and a crane to find out. Reluctantly he abandoned the place and started heading further south along the river.

Simon wasn’t really sure that the river was south of course, but that fit the map he’d laid out in his mind. The river went north and south, and the path went east and west, so  if this really was as small a world as he thought, he should be able to get back to the path in a few hours if he just stayed in the same direction.

A few hours came and went though, and he found nothing familiar. There was no path, no ruins, and no other signs of civilization. Just a few small animals, some song birds, and endless trees. The only consolation was that this deep into the forest, the canopy was high and thick so there was very little in the way of underbrush. He tried to keep an eye out for goblin tracks, but that was difficult since he wasn’t too sure what they were supposed to look like. Around the middle of the day he reached a point of no return and spent a few minutes trying to decide if he wanted to turn around and sleep in a warm bed tonight, or if he wanted to keep going and sleep in the woods where anything might get him.

In the end he decided that it had to be the woods. He’d never find a way out if he could only ever walk half a day out from his cabin. So towards nightfall he walked away from the river to an ancient live oak. It looked very climbable, and he thought it might be a good place to spend the night. He was half right. After eating about half his remaining food, he tried to sleep. The lower branches were indeed wide enough for him to sleep on without serious fear of falling off, but it was incredibly uncomfortable. He tried to do it several different ways, but no matter how he maneuvered, he definitely wasn’t getting any sleep. In the end he climbed down in the dark and slept at the base of the tree. Whatever happened, happened he supposed.

In the morning he woke and was as surprised as anyone to be whole and uneaten. Between the thin blanket and the damp earth it had been freezing last night, but he’d still managed to get a couple hours sleep. He had a sausage for breakfast, and then he started following the stream again. He did this for half a day, growing more and more sure that he was making progress. Slowly he left the forest behind and entered a boulder strewn scrubland, but when he found the source of the small stream, he stopped to drink his fill before he left the spring behind.

The scrublands turned into hills, and from the tallest hill he could see he was surrounded by forest on most sides, with some marshy areas. He tried to avoid those, and instead re-entered the forest on the opposite side of the boulder field near sunset. By then he was most of the way out of food, and his water skin was completely dry. He sighed and found himself a place to sleep in the lightning damaged trunk of an elm. It was as safe and warm as he could hope for given the circumstances.

Simon tried to stay positive, but he knew that tomorrow was going to suck, and it turned out he was right. Tomorrow did suck, and so did the day after that. The forest went on forever, and despite the fact that nothing had killed and eaten him, he was kind of starting to wish that they would. He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for over a day and so he was miserable. That misery would last for two more days before he finally succumbed to exhaustion, and dehydration. When he eventually woke up in bed, he honestly wasn’t even mad that he’d died this time. He was grateful. Instinctively he started to wolf down the bread that was always waiting for him, before he stopped himself. He wasn’t actually hungry anymore, so he shouldn’t be eating out of habit.

What he needed to do was exactly what he did last time: cook the sausage, pack up some gear, and go explore in a different direction. This time he chose to follow the stream the other way, to the north of the path. His second trip also lasted three days, though they were a little more miserable and bug ridden than his first trip. The first two were in the forest like before, but then he found his way blocked as the stream he followed emptied into a swamp. He kept doubling back to find a way around it, but without much luck. This whole world was basically just forests and swamp, as far as he was concerned. There was literally nothing to find.

“Talk about broken,” he muttered, as he sat in his bed after his most recent death, and tried to think about what he should try now. There didn’t seem to be a way out here, and there definitely wasn’t one on the first or second floor of the pit. The third floor though - that was a possibility Simon realized. He’d seen goblins flee him out of the mouth of the cave, into what looked like a sub alpine valley. He could go down, kill himself some goblins, and then instead of going to fight the skeletons, he could go out and explore that world instead. It was a solid plan, and he congratulated himself for it. Just because this world was in its own little bubble of forests and swamp didn’t mean they were all like that. That one at least had mountain peaks. Maybe he could climb to the top of one for a better look around.

So that’s what he did. This time though he actually wore his armor. Even though he knew that hiking in it would be just awful, hiking with a few rat bites or goblin arrows stuck in him would be much worse. The fights down to the goblins were almost trivial, and Simon was embarrassed that he’d actually died several times to get through those floors the first time. The goblin’s didn’t fare much better because he was able to get the drop on them again. Before he left the cave he looked around to see if they had anything worth taking, but the half eaten deer carcass they’d been devouring looked none too sanitary, and even if this cave had a fire he didn’t relish the idea of spending the night in a place that stank this bad.

After that was decided, all he needed to do was decide whether he actually wanted to hike to the top of one of the nearby mountains to get a look around, or if he wanted to make for what looked to be a pass across the valley and see what lay beyond. Simon went with the easier option; he was going to walk through the forest to the far side of the valley. Unlike the previous forest this one was all pines and spruces, and there was still snow in the shadows under the shadows of some of the trees, so it was a completely different experience. He was glad that he chose the easy route pretty quickly too, because even walking slightly downhill, he was quickly exhausted.

At first he thought it was the armor that was tiring him out, but even after he took it off and left it behind, he was still sucking wind before he’d walked another half mile. At first he figured that this was some sort of debuff he was getting as punishment for not doing what he was supposed to, but after admiring the snow capped mountains on his third break he came up with a second more likely theory. He was somewhere way above sea level, like Denver or the Himalayas, and the air was just really thin. That made him feel a little better. At least it was this screwed up game’s fault and not his. He was only a little out of shape after all.

He made good progress throughout the day, and even found a pond to refill his water from after he broke the thin sheet of ice that covered it. Things were looking good. That was until it was time to try to find somewhere to sleep. As the sun started to set it got cold, really cold. It quickly got so cold that before he lost the light Simon could see his one breath fogging up. The last two nights seemed like a summer camping trip in comparison to this. Simon used his blanket and a bed of pine needles as best he could to stay warm, but he was soon shivering. He slept fitfully, but he managed to survive the night.

Simon started walking at sunrise as much to stay warm as anything else, and had to warm his water skin under his shirt to melt it before he could drink. When he finished all his food he actually managed to shoot a rabbit when he was stopped for a break, but the triumph from the momentous success was short lived when he realized he had no way to cook it. He carried it with him anyway, in case he found a fire along the way. He watched the sky with some trepidation as it slowly turned to lead, and the temperature never really rose enough for him to feel halfway warm. He regretted tossing the armor now to save weight, because that would have kept him a little warmer. Sometime in the midafternoon, it started to snow lightly. It was impossible to know when because the sun was hidden behind the clouds all day.

“Come the fuck on!” Simon yelled. “Can’t I catch a break even one damn day!”

It shouldn’t have come to a surprise, Simon realized, but somehow it still did. That bitch Helades had obviously designed every last aspect of this game to make him miserable, and it was working. He walked on, desperate to find any sort of shelter, because he definitely wasn’t dressed for a blizzard. Over the next few hours it started snowing harder and harder until he had trouble continuing. Simon huddled for warmth under the oldest, largest tree he could find, and after a couple hours of misery he finally fell asleep. Sometime during the night he froze to death and he found himself once again in the cabin.

“Well,” he sighed, “So much for a way out.”

Ch. 12 - A Piece of His Mind

Simon sat up as he always did after another defeat by the pit and reached for the wine bottle. He was beginning to think that the bottle was the most important mechanic in the whole damn game. He raised the bottle to his lips to nurse the sting of the realization that there would be no way out besides going all the way to the bottom of this damn place before he stopped himself.

“Mirror - how many floors are there in the pit?” he asked, setting the bottle down. The contract had said less than a hundred hadn’t it? Did that mean fifty or ninety nine though?

‘There are 99 levels in the pit,’ the mirror wrote out in its glowing script.

“And I’ve gotten to the fourth floor right?” He did the math quickly. “Rats, bats, goblins, and skeleton’s. That’s four. Can you bring up my character sheet?” The mirror did as it was bidden and brought the sheet up immediately.

Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 4

Deaths: 10

Experience Points: -7260

Skills: Archery [Very Poor], Armor (light) [Poor], Athletics [Very Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Very Poor], Maces [Very Poor], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Very Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [None], Survival [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Below Average].

“So there’s been a little improvement I see,” Simon nodded, satisfied. He was especially gratified to see that his swordwork had improved after all the fighting he’d been doing on floors three and four. “Can you tell me how many skill points I get per level? Can I choose them or are they assigned by the game?”

‘I do not understand the question,’ the mirror typed slowly.

“Of course you don’t. You don’t understand anything. What else can you tell me about?” he asked, lifting the bottle again. “Can you tell me what lowest level someone has ever had when they’ve been beaten the pit is?”

He took a drink as the mirror started typing, but he almost spit it out when he read the answer. ‘No one has ever beaten the pit.’

“Excuse me? No one? Sounds like a broken game to me.” Simon said, trying to keep a brave face for this revelation. If no one had ever beaten it before, then maybe it wasn’t possible to beat. If that was the case he might be stuck here an awful long time while he ground out levels. Maybe not many people have played it before, he thought hopefully. “If no one has ever beaten The Pit, then are you allowed to tell me how many other people are playing it right now?”

‘There are currently 4,683,946 souls attempting to beat the pit.’ The number stunned Simon. There were about that many players on his favorite MMO. It was hard to imagine that not one of them had managed to beat the final raid boss for loot at least a few times, even if they didn’t have it on farm.

“That sounds like bullshit to me,” Simon grumbled, taking another drink of wine. “So you’re telling me that right now I’m playing a game that no one has managed to beat, and I’m stuck here dying over and over until I do? How is that fair? What kind of scam is this?” With every word he got a little angrier, as he started to understand just how terrible that answer was. The mirror kept trying to answer his question, but with each new question its answer started over, basically rendering it speechless.

The longer it took the more frustrated Simon became, until finally his rage boiled over and he took the only thing at hand which was the wine bottle, and threw it hard at the mirror. He immediately regretted the decision, because now he wouldn’t have any more wine until after he’d picked how he wanted to die again. The bottle didn’t shatter when it hit the mirror though. Instead it went right through the silvered glass as the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, revealing what looked like a doorway into darkness. Mounted on the wall where it was, Simon knew for a fact that there was only a layer of logs, and then the meadow, but the fantasy world didn’t seem to care much about physics, or things making sense. So, even though it was impossible, there was a secret door behind his mirror, and honestly that suited him just fine.

Simon stood up and walked forward. Tentatively poking his head into the darkness and looking around. What he saw was a darker and more somber version of the room he’d last seen Helades in, and as his eyes adjusted, he was pleased to see her sitting on her throne looking bored. “Finally,” he sighed, as he started walking towards her. “Someone who I can actually complain to.”

He strode up the dias, taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the top. “Your majesty,” he said, trying not to sound out of breath. “After a few days in your lovely pit. I think we’re going to have to look at other options.”

“Oh, are we now?” she smiled, but unlike the understanding she’d shown him in their last visit, this smile was cold and cruel. “This I’ve got to hear.”

“Y-you see,” Simon faltered. Her intensity put him on his back foot, and he couldn’t help but think that even if he was totally in the right she was going to find some way to screw him over again. “The mirror informed me that The Pit can’t be beaten, and—”

“Can be beaten and have been beaten are two entirely different things Simon. Please don’t prevaricate.” She interrupted. “Yes, millions have tried, and yes no one has succeeded, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be beaten, and it does nothing to alter the contract you signed.”

“But if no one has—” he tried to interrupt her, but she continued to speak over him, giving him a glare that suddenly made him feel very small.

“Truth be told I can only think of a handful of heroes who’ve ever gotten past level 50, but you insisted this was the incarnation you wanted, and now there’s nothing I can do. My hands are tied here Simon.” She frowned as she said that last bit, obviously mocking him.

“You’re not sorry,” he said, clenching his fists to try to avoid doing something stupid.

“You’re right. I’m not,” she agreed. “I thought you still had potential. I thought maybe a few dozen more lower incarnations might yet moderate that impenetrable sense of self importance that you have, but maybe The Pit was the best choice after all.”

“Why’s that,” he asked quietly, almost afraid of the answer she’d give him.

“Well, the simple version is like this,” she said, looking right through him. “Originally this pit was something else. It was… I guess you could say an attempt to fix a broken world, but it never quite worked unfortunately. Now it’s not that anymore. Now it’s just a garbage can.”

“A garbage can?” Simon swallowed hard, not sure he wanted to hear the rest of this.

“Yeah. You know. A place where you put garbage.” She smiled, and though she didn’t quite come out and say it, he knew that she was calling him garbage right now. “There’s millions of different people in their own version of the pit, but almost all of them have one thing in common: they’re weeds that I’ve plucked from the garden of life to allow other plants to bloom in their absence.”

“That’s monstrous,” he said, staggered by the revelation.

“It is, she agreed. Truly monstrous. Fortunately I only encourage the devils that never quite manage to make their way to hell to give it a try. Their pain and suffering - their bad karma to use a term of your world lets me make everyone else’s lives that much better.”

“You put me in here just to make me suffer?” Simon asked, practically boiling over with rage. He was having a hard time listening to her after that revelation.

“No,” she shook her head, but she didn’t stop smiling. “I didn’t put you here. You did that. I even tried to discourage you, not that you’ve ever listened to good advice in your life, and now here you are. Suffering for the greater good of everyone.” That line took all the force out of his anger. In a single moment he went from wanting to punch the goddess, to wanting to cry. He might not agree with anything else she said, but she was right about one thing: this was his fault. That wasn’t something he was going to let her see through.

“Fine, what’s done is done. You aren’t going to let me out. I get that, but I’m going to beat The Pit anyway, with or without your help. I’ve never met a game I couldn’t beat.” Simon spoke with certainty, but he’d never been less sure of anything.

“Now that’s not fair.” she pretended to pout. “I’d love to help you if you come with a problem that actually needs help, but you’ve only gotten to level 4. You’ve only dipped your toes in the water, so it’s hardly something I need to bother with, now is it?”

“Well maybe you could tell me what level I need to be to get past the skeletons on the fourth floor at least.” If she said she was willing to help him, then maybe he could weasel a little bit of information out of her to make her prove it. “It kind of feels like the room is full of fifth level skeletons, but their leader might be level eight or ten? Is that about right?”

Helades did something completely unexpected to them. She didn’t mock or rebuff him. She didn’t answer his question. She just laughed. Long and loud, until she was doubled over and there were tears in her eyes.

“Levels?” she asked finally when she’d finally manage to stop the hysterics. “Simon. This isn’t one of your video games. You don’t level up. The levels the mirror shows you are just as deep as you’ve managed to get in the pit. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“No levels?” Simon asked, crushed more by this than anything else she’d told him so far. “But if there are no levels then how am I supposed to beat the awful monsters you’ve filled your dungeon with?”

“Have you tried being less pathetic?” she asked flippantly.

That was the last straw for Simon. Rather than punch her or yell at her or draw the sword he’d forgotten to bring with him, he turned on his heel and started walking down the stairs. He told himself it was because attacking a divine being was never a good idea, but really it was that he couldn’t stand to let her see him cry, and right now all he wanted to do was go regret his life choices in private.

“When you find a real problem, and you aren’t just looking to pout, you’re welcome to come back,” she shouted behind him as he walked back towards the door that led to his cabin, “But if you come back just to waste my time, I’ll find some very creative and painful ways to make you learn your lesson. Good luck Simon!”

As she finished speaking he strode across the threshold into the cabin. No sooner had he done so than the shattered fragments of the mirror all spiraled up into place and reassembled like it had never been broken in the first place. The only thing that had changed was that he’d lost his wine bottle and his optimism that he was starting to turn a corner.

Ch. 13 - Real Progress

Hopelessness was Simon’s first reaction. He didn’t have any levels. This wasn’t even really a game - it was just a cosmic joke, and he’d made a terrible mistake. He felt sadness begin to bloom inside him, and the world blurred for a moment as his eyes teared up. Simon hated to feel sad though, and he hated people who wallowed in self pity like this, so he reached for the only thing he had to hold back those tears: anger.

Alongside the deep sadness that had been building inside him since his conversation with Helades was a deep undercurrent of rage. Rage that she could treat people like this, especially him! Simon had suffered through countless lives that were a terrible fit for him because she had decided that she knew best, but she was completely wrong, and this only proved it. Now the only thing that there was left to do was to take his revenge. Simon picked up the sword and looked at the mirror. Now that he knew where she was he could go back in there and give her a piece of his mind, maybe turn the tables on her and show her what it felt like to die over and over again even, since he was sure he couldn’t actually kill a god.

He quickly decided against this plan. Simon was a man of action, and when he saw a problem, he fixed it. That was true in video games, and it was true in his own life when he decided the only way out of the awful life he had was to kill himself. If Helades had seen that as the cry for help it was then… no, Simon shook his head. He was so angry he was getting off topic. Confronting the goddess after her threats of a painful end if he were to waste her time - that was just asking for trouble.

The only real revenge he could show her now was to make progress and find out just how broken this pit really was. If four million people had tried and failed to beat it then there had to be a pretty game breaking bug further down inside the thing.  He would find it, then he’d come back to her and use it to prove that she’d signed the contract under false pretenses with him. He wasn’t a lawyer, but he was pretty sure that loopholes were how heroes got out of pretty much all their deals with the devil. Since Simon was so much smarter than the average gamer, he knew that he’d have no trouble doing just that.

Simon looked around the room with a new sense of clarity now that he’d decided what he needed to do. Rather than just grabbing a couple weapons and heading back down into the pit, he proceeded to lay out everything methodically on the bed. All of the armor. All of the weapons. All of the gear. Everything.

The first thing that was obvious was that there was no way he could take everything with him. He had to take the leather armor of course, and the chain hauberk would be a must for dealing with the skeletons, even if it might make sneaking on the goblin floor difficult. This time he decided to bring three torches instead of two, and the flint even if it seemed defective. After that all he needed to do was decide on weapons. This Simon decided to bring the crossbow down, along with the sword and its scabbard, and the flanged mace. He seemed to remember something about clerics using bludgeoning weapons in dungeons and dragons because the undead were weak against them, so maybe that would help him along the way. In the end he shoved everything he didn’t need right now in an old rucksack, lit a torch, and then grabbed the spear and headed down the stairs.

For the first few minutes he felt incredibly clumsy and overburdened by everything he was bringing with him, but it was better that than the alternative. Simon breezed through the first two levels in minutes, taking risks he wouldn’t have normally, and trusting his instincts in a bid to keep up with his anger. The very last thing he wanted to do right now was calm down before he faced off against the Skeleton. He was counting on that anger to fuel him, and overcome its soulless stare.

It wasn’t much of a strategy, honestly, but it was working. It was equally important for the goblin’s floor too though, because he was trying to move fast but be as stealthy as he’d been on some of his best runs. Simon hurried to the part of the cave where he usually encountered the patrol, then he lit a second torch and tossed them both in separate directions. Once that was done he waited in ambush and killed the goblin as it approached to investigate. The only thing he did differently than his previous runs was that he reloaded the crossbow in the dark before he continued on.

This time when he reached the bonfire, he chose to try something different with the dumb bastards. He launched a quarrel at the biggest greenskin sitting by the fire, and then he charged the rest yelling. The result was exactly as he expected, and they ran without a fight. Simon had no doubt that given a few minutes they’d regroup, buty he didn’t really care about that. In a few minutes he’d be gone and they wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

Simon only paused on his rampage when he finally reached the chilly hallway at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the crypt. There he took a quick break, set down all the equipment he didn’t expect to need, and took out his mace. “Remember,” he reminded himself now that his anger was starting to fade, “You don’t need to kill him the first time. You just need to endure his gaze attack.”

With those final words he charged into the room and started to attack the skeletons that had not yet started to stir with all the fury he could muster. He quickly figured out why Cleric’s use maces - they turned the brittle skull’s of his opponents to nothing but bone shards and powder without any of the difficulty of having to aim with his sword. Fully half of the bastards died for good before they could rise a second time to try to kill him, and Simon managed to kill several more before he could feel the cold gaze of his nemesis on him.

It was an achievement that he could be proud of, but he forced himself not to look. As far as Simon was concerned all that the appearance of the knight had done was start the clock, and killing every skeleton but the boss was a timed event. So, he kept his head down and focused on killing these skeletons one at a time until his right arm ached and he was panting so hard that he could see his fogged breath. This was definitely harder than they made it look in the movies, but the fewer skeletons there were facing off against him, the easier it got. By the time he was down to three opponents, it wasn’t much more difficult than whack-a-mole down at the fair. Let the first one swing, parry the second one, and then crush the skull of the one that was getting ready to swing.

Simon was almost surprised to discover that when he killed the last one there wasn’t one after that. Well, none except for the knight. He’d spent the last few minutes of the fight moving his little mob around the room trying to stay away from the big bastard without ever meeting his gaze, and he’d actually been successful. So successful, that now that it was time to actually face the monster, he could barely bring himself to. Simon struggled to think of something else he might do instead. Maybe he could try that gate again, or retreat into the hallway and take a break. Maybe he could… Simon stopped the desperate spiral of his thoughts and dropped his mace. Instead he put both hands on the grip of his longsword and looked slowly up at the terrible enemy walking towards him and forced himself to meet its unholy gaze.

He felt the fear washing over him, but he tried to ignore it and move past it. His father always told him that courage wasn’t about not being afraid, but about being afraid and doing what needed to be done anyway. Simon had never understood what he meant by that corny line, but face to face with evil, he had a much better idea. He could feel the panic in his heart, looking for any excuse to run screaming. He could feel the stiffness in his limbs just waiting to become full blown paralysis again, but he struggled not to give in. At the final moment, when his skeletal executioner raised his sword to cleave Simon’s skull in two, he managed to finally unfreeze and deflect the blade with an overhead block.

The knight was faster than the other skeletons he faced, but still slow, and Simon saw an opening to stroke back, but couldn’t quite make himself take it. Instead he stepped back, giving ground and readying himself for another parry. He did this over and over again, using the precious time to catch his breath. Each strike he blocked felt like the end of the world, but every time he managed to divert the terrible blow left him that much more confident that this was something he could actually do. He could kill this bastard.

For the first time Simon followed up his parry with a tentative swing that was short of the target, but it still made the skeleton step back slightly. After that the fight changed completely. Instead of simply trying to smite him in a single blow, it became much more like a knightly duel. Swords flashed and blows were met with such force that sparks struck, and each time Simon worried that his sword would shatter like it had last time, but it held. Eventually he figured out that mystery, when an errant blow rebounded off the platemail and his sword got painfully cold.

That was great. It wasn’t just a deadly skeleton with only a very tiny weak spot that was its face and neck, but he had to make a clean kill or his sword would quickly freeze so hard that it became brittle. Normally that was something that Simon would complain about, but right now he was too focused on killing this bastard to let it bother him. He was finally starting to understand the ebb and flow of the fight for the first time, and that was when he decided to go for it. He followed a party with a feint, and then a second blow to knock the knight’s sword away, and only once all that happened did he try to strike the skeleton down. Unfortunately his opponent turned its head and Simon’s strike was deflected by the gorget.

That was fine, Simon thought. He’d just try again. Unfortunately he’d never get the chance, as he was run through seconds later by a thrust from the knight that came faster than expected. The blow was almost through Simon’s heart at least, he thought as his consciousness faded. He still felt the painful tug of something against his soul in a way he’d never felt with any of his other deaths, but was unsurprised when he woke up once more in his own bed.

The difference between this time and all the other times though was that this time Simon woke up with a smile on his face. He might have died, but that fight was definitely a success, and after a quick bite to eat he was going to go back down and fight the bastard again. He’d do it as many times as it took until he was past this floor and on to the next one. He was going to show that uppity goddess how stupid she was to try to screw someone like him over if it was the last thing he did.

Ch. 14 - Level Five

Simon rushed back down to join the fight again, delaying only long enough to take down the same gear he’d brought the previous time. His second fight went almost as well as the first and he succeeded at knocking a few of the knight’s teeth loose before his head was struck from his shoulders. So he went down a second, and a third, and a fourth time. This wasn’t about finishing the level, or even about beating the skeleton at this point. This was about improvement. Simon could feel the movements becoming more natural and his reflexes speeding up with every bout he had with the unholy warrior.

After a time Simon lost count of the number of time’s he’d fought and died to the grim skeletal warrior and he was only able to reconstruct it afterwards when he took a break and reviewed his character sheet after a fight where he had come within an inch of finally shattering that nightmare warrior’s vertebrae.

Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 4

Deaths: 23

Experience Points: -8265

Skills: Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Below Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Very Poor], Maces [Poor], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Very Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [None], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].

He’d died eight times. He was pretty sure. Eight more deaths, but his experience points had only dropped another four thousand. “That means I’m gaining more than a thousand experience points with each death than I’m losing, doesn't it?” he asked himself before taking another mouthful of cheese. In the end it didn’t really matter. He couldn’t actually spend the experience on anything. It was just a gauge of progress. It was also likely one more way that Helades thought of to twist the knife, he thought grimly. It didn’t matter. On either this attempt or the next one, Simon was sure he’d defeat the knight and be one step closer to shoving the whole thing in her face.

Simon stood up and stretched before he started gearing up again. He had a good feeling that this time was going to be it. He was going to take that asshole’s head and show him how it felt to die for once.

It took him several minutes to realize what a stupid thing he’d said, but by the time he’d opened the trapdoor, he was shaking his head with disgust at his own thoughtlessness and looking forward to a little murder as a pallete cleanser. “Why would skeleton’s need to know what it felt like to die, dumb ass,” he muttered as he went down the stairs to stomp some rats. “They already died at least once to become skeletons.”

This time his trip to the skeleton was practically a speed run. Simon’s improvement on his character sheet was definitely mirroring the results he was seeing in the real world. This time he didn’t suffer a single scratch, and on top of that he managed to decapitate two goblins with a single slash. He wished he could save a screenshot of that. It was an epic moment.

It had only taken him perhaps ten minutes to go from the cabin to the skeleton’s tomb, and it took less than half that time to crush the skulls of all the lesser skeletons into a fine powder. Then he was finally alone with his nemesis. Simon tossed away the mace and pulled out his shield. Normally in video games he never went with a sword and board. As far as he was concerned, it was just weakening your character, when you could choose two swords or a giant badass sword instead. Right now Simon didn’t have a giant two handed weapon, and he’d learned in previous fights he wasn’t really coordinated enough to use two swords at once effective yet. The shield was easy though. It had saved his life a dozen times so far.

Simon wanted to keep his victory streak alive, so as soon as he was ready he barreled into the knight. This was something he’d learned in the last fight. The skeleton warrior was slow, and didn’t do as well when you were really aggressive with it. So that’s just what he did: he played rough. Even with the steel armor, the skeleton weighed less than Simon, so he shield checked it when it raised its sword to strike hard. It worked almost as well as a good faint for keeping its sword anywhere but where it should be. The fourth time Simon did this he almost managed to impale the bastard through the skull, but at the last moment the skeleton jerked it’s head, which succeeded in avoiding what might have been a fatal blow at the cost of losing its helmet.

After that it was all over. Simon rained down overhead blows against the skeleton’s now uncovered weak spot until the tenth or twelfth strike scored a glancing blow. It only resulted in a glowing crack that went from the left orbital through the temporal plate, but leaked more of that evil blue light. After that strike the knight just got slower and weaker, and thirty seconds later Simon succeeded in striking the thing’s cursed head from its shoulders. It was a good thing too, because he definitely wasn’t in the shape he needed to be to keep this up much longer.

“That’s right!” Simon yelled, his chest heaving. “That’s the last time you get to kill Simon Jackoby, bitch!”

With his opponent dead, Simon did a little victory dance and kicked the skull away from him, noting that it still had a small glimmer of that evil light left in its eyes, and he wanted nothing to do with it. God only knew what kind of crazy respawn mechanics a monster like that might have. He did reach down to pick up the sword. Anything that looked that good after being down here for decades or centuries had to be magical.

“Fuck!” Simon cried out, dropping the hilt as soon as he picked it up. The thing was still so cold that it burned him. He tried warming it with the torch, but it didn’t seem to do much good, which was a shame, because he desperately wanted to wield a magical sword, but he supposed he could always pick it up next time. By this point he had to admit to himself there was almost certainly going to be a next time, but that didn’t bother Simon. If he could beat an undead skeleton knight, he could beat just about anything. At this point he’d take getting through a floor or two on the first try, he decided as he bent down to pick up the key to the next level. That would be a real victory.

The key turned in the lock easily enough, and as the wrought iron gate creaked open, it forced Simon to make a quick look around. The sound was straight out of a horror movie, so it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least if all the skeletons he had just killed rose up as one for the second phase of the fight. They didn’t though. For once the game, no, not the game he corrected himself. For once the pit hadn’t tried to screw him over. He smiled as he started walking down the hallway. Things were looking up.

Even though he knew he should take things slow on his first trip through a new floor like this, he just couldn't slow down the frantic pace he’d set for himself on this run so far.  It was working great. As long as he stayed on the offensive, he felt like nothing could take him down. At least that was the plan, but as the hallway slowly morphed into a cavern, he suddenly found himself walking into a cave that was so beautiful that it stopped him in his tracks while he bathed in its beauty.

The cave was the product of a sinkhole somewhere just below the surface, and through the large hole in the center of the roof almost 40 feet above him sunlight streamed through the opening in such a way that the cavern walls danced with small rainbows as the sunbeams cut through the spray. It was a magical site that was pretty much the opposite of the horrors he’d faced on the last level, which was strange enough for him to make Simon suspicious. Stranger still though was that there didn’t seem to be anything to fight. This was just a cave cut down the middle by a stream, and on the opposite side of the cave was a door. So, it was obvious where he needed to go, but other than a small crystal clear stream that he wouldn’t even have to jump over to get across, what wasn’t clear was what was going to be trying to stop him.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Simon yelled, banging the pommel of his sword against the wall several times to try to attract whatever monster was bound to be waiting for him.

Nothing came rushing from some dark crevasse to kill him though, and when the echo of his challenge died it was silent again, save for the pleasant noise of the waterfall and stream. Could whatever was supposed to be here to fight him have wandered off, he wondered? Was it invisible and lying in wait, or was it crouched on the cliff above just waiting to jump down and pounce on him? Simon couldn’t say, but he was extremely wary as he walked halfway into the cavern for a look around.

At least he was for another minute. After that he just felt stupid. Why was he worried so much? Even if there was a monster waiting to pounce he’d come right back to life, and with the surprise gone, the thing wouldn’t stand a chance. Even with his immortality inspired bravado he still didn’t move forward though. Maybe this room wasn’t about monsters at all - maybe it was an environmental hazard of some sort. That was what the trap room was, right?

So if this room was a trap, then what was going to kill him? Was the thing going to cave in? Was the stream poisonous or made of acid? Simon slowly walked up to it, sniffing the air for any sign of gas, but all he could smell was nature. Goblin’s had definitely never lived in this cavern before. Tentatively he prodded the stream with his sword, looking for any sign of bubbling that might indicate it really was made of acid. Nothing happened though.

He shrugged and pulled the sword out, and then he leaned down to take a closer look. That was when the thing lying in wait lashed out at him. Suddenly a clear pseudopod of slime shot from the water and wrapped around Simon’s face. He pulled back immediately, but the thing followed him, extending even as more and more of the slime’s bulk emerged from where it was hiding in the stream.

Simon tried to scream, but he couldn’t. He stabbed the thing repeatedly, even trying to slice it in half before he dropped his sword and tried to claw the good from his face to free his airway. He couldn’t though. It was too awful. It was like the time he drowned, but somehow this was worse, because he could feel the thing crawling down his throat even as his skin started to burn and his vision began to fade. The thing was devouring him whole like a formless and nearly invisible anaconda, and every time he fought it, it just found another bit of flesh to wrap around.

When he finally blacked out from lack of oxygen, Simon was more than grateful.