Death after Death Ch. 17-18 (Patreon)

The next two chapters will post on 11/28!

Ch. 17 - Lost in Translation

“So there are actually other people here,” Simon said, testing his voice again as he lay on his bed. “Cute one’s too.” He smiled as he lay there. Sure, she’d killed him, but that was almost understandable. That sort of thing happened all the time in zombie movies. What really mattered is that there were cute girls in The Pit and that zombies weren’t so tough after all. There was even beer! He just had to get down there, without trashing his voice again.

Somehow he’d have to find a way to kill the slime with one spell, or with none at all. Even if he did that though, it raised a whole new series of problems. It was easy enough to copy a single set of sounds from one goblin, but did the pit really expect him to learn 50 different languages for 99 different floors? That was more than a lifetime of work,  assuming he could even find a tutor.

Simon sat up. “Mirror - how do I improve my magic skill? How do I make it so I don’t feel like shit every time I say those words?”

‘Focus and practice,’ was its cryptic reply. Because of course Simon hadn’t thought of either of those things before himself.

“Fine, if you’re not going to say anything useful about that, then I want to talk about a very serious problem with this place with Helades.” Simon got up and picked up the wine bottle. This time he didn’t plan to throw it though, he just wanted to enjoy a drink without having to swallow with a throat that felt like it was made of broken glass. “The UI for this whole place is kind of awful, but the languages are going to be a real problem.”

‘What is the problem with the languages in The Pit?’ The mirror asked, one character at a time.

“Well, since the main point of language is to be understood, and I can’t, you know, understand them, I’d say they aren’t doing their job very well,” Simon’s voice dripped with sarcasm, but he was sure that it went over the head of the machine or spirit or whatever was inhabiting the mirror.

‘I could teach you,’ the mirror typed. ‘Which language do you wish to learn?’

“Teach me? You? You can’t even tell me basic facts about this game… I mean, place.” Simon laughed derisively. “Tell me - how many languages are written or spoken in The Pit?”

‘There are 5,486 languages spoken in the pit, and there are 8,933, different forms of writing.’ The mirror displayed that like it was a perfectly reasonable fact, but the numbers staggered Simon.

“So you think that in addition to learning to fight 100 different kinds of monsters I should learn a thousand different languages? You think that that’s reasonable?”

‘What alternative would you suggest?’ the mirror asked. ‘Strictly speaking, no communication is required to complete all 99 levels.’

“I’d suggest that you let me talk to the boss and let me work it out with her before I have to break you again,” Simon threatened. “I’m sure she can cast a spell or give me an amulet of translation or something and fix this problem with a wave of her magic wand.”

The mirror stayed dark for almost a minute, and for a second Simon thought that he’d scared the thing off with his threat. Finally it started typing, and as it did a potion appeared on the table in a flash of light.

‘Her radiance, Goddess Helades, lady of life and death has seen fit to answer your plea.’ the mirror typed. ‘This potion will enable you to understand all languages in The Pit…’

Simon liked the sound of that, and looked away from the mirror even though it was still typing, to focus on the potion. It was dark like ink, with the faintest swirls of light inside. He was grateful that she’d finally seen reason on something, but the way Simon saw it, this potion just proved his point. If she could have solved his problems so easily, then the fact that she hadn’t done so was just further evidence that she wanted him to suffer.

He pulled out the cork and started to down the vile contents. It turned out that it didn’t look like ink. It tasted like ink too. Ink that had been vomited up by an evil librarian in the depth of hell. That didn’t stop Simon though. This was the first magical item he could actually touch without burning himself, and he wasn’t going to screw up something as simple as drinking a potion. That’s probably what that screwed up goddess wanted - to give him the answer and watch him waste it. The joke was on her though; he was going to use it to beat her at her own game.

It was only when he’d finished downing the vile potion that he looked at the mirror to finish reading the rest of its message, ‘...though it should be noted that the process of absorbing that much knowledge will take some time and it will be extremely painful and the elixir is best used in small doses over several days.’ Simon brushed off the warning and moved to sit down in his chair, but even that small motion made the world feel like it was shifting. He could feel something building now in the back of his skull. It was pressure, combined with the faint haze of colors as he looked at the glowing monitor. It was almost like every light had a sort of aura to it now.

That word triggered a memory about his mother and her migraines, but that memory and the idea that he might be in the process of experiencing something like that only outran the oncoming pain by a couple seconds. He leaned heavily on the chair as memories and after images of languages he’d never heard, and words he’d never spoken began to barrage him. Simon tried to sit down so that he could put his head in his hands and try to shut some of the light out, but somehow he managed to entirely miss the chair and land on the floor with a thud. He wanted to rise, but suddenly that felt like too much effort. The words were coming fast and furious now. He was in a text maelstrom now, and no two words were from the same alphabet.

He tried to breath slowly, forcing himself to calm down. He could do this. He could endure this fresh hell that Helades had inflicted on him.  Closing his eyes didn’t help, he realized belatedly, and breathing deeply didn’t do much either. Even if he shut out the offending light the words still came. He could hear them now as much as see them. Whispered words in a hundred different voices began whispering, but that many whispers still added up to the sound of a roaring jet engine. That was when Simon started to scream. Every aspect of this torment got worse minute by minute. It was like having the worst hangover of his life times a hundred while he was at a particularly loud rock concert.

After less than an hour of enduring the tide of words he thought about killing himself. He only decided against it, because he was sure that the potion wouldn’t carry over to his next body. He would leave that behind along with his wounds. Only the knowledge forcing itself into his brain would carry over. So he had to endure this. There simply wasn’t another choice.

Simon managed to get to his feet long enough to make sure the door was barred, and then he crawled into bed and waited for death to take him. Mercifully he slipped into unconsciousness within the hour, but his dreams weren’t any better than his waking life. There he was drowning in ink while the whales deafened him with their song, one sonic blast at a time, and by the time he woke up again, he was convinced he was bleeding from his ears.

Over the next two days he slipped in and out of his troubled sleep. He tried drinking the entire bottle of wine to dull the pain. Nothing helped, there were just interludes where the barrage of knowledge soaking into his mind wasn’t quite so bad. He had plenty of time to hate himself for not following instructions, and plenty of time to hate Helades for doing this to him, but neither of those helped either. Eventually, though, Simon woke up to the surprising sound of silence. The goblins had apparently not managed to break in and murder him in his sleep, and a throbbing headache was all that remained of his torments. It was a monster of a headache that was at the upper end of normal, and no longer the sort of thing you could only experience through malicious magic.

The very first thing he did was brave the sunlight to get some more water. He’d been out for half a day, and there was no way he could face the goblins let alone the skeletons like this. He slowly stumbled to the stream, squinting hard. He would have given away both his magic words for a good pair of sunglasses right now, sadly that wasn’t an option. The pit had no cash shop for cosmetic items. Once he had drained his skin once more he set out for the only place he knew of that he could test to see if this had worked without resorting to combat: the temple ruins just south of the path.

As always the trip there was utterly without incident, and when Simon arrived at the eroded marble he got the surprise of his life when he could actually read the writing that had survived on the walls and columns of the most sheltered areas. It was like going to Egypt and suddenly remembering that you’d actually majored in hieroglyphics in college. The knowledge was just there like it had always been there.

Despite his throbbing head, Simon was too intrigued to stop, and spent the next couple hours reading every scrap of writing he could find. They might just look like swoopy, flowing pictographs, but to him they had a whole set of meanings as well as enough cultural context to understand what they were saying. He read about the teachings of an ancient healing god, Kanuthep. It seemed like sort of a fertility/healing god to Simon, which struck him as kind of half ass. They could have made up two different gods so the symbolism wasn’t quite so crowded. Most of the writing on the temple he found was an epic poem about the day of flowers, which was their version of the end of the world, after all the warriors had killed each other and there was nothing left to do but let the flowers bloom.

That struck Simon as vaguely creepy, and also somewhat like the plot of a manga. It didn’t quite make sense to him in that specific Japanese way that they did so often. It was honestly pretty boring stuff. Normally Simon would have given up after like ten minutes of dealing with this artsy bullshit, but he’d suffered greatly for this superpower, and he was going to use it every chance he could.

Finally that accidental persistence paid off when he struck paydirt. Near the end of a pillar talking about herbal remedies and their uses which he didn’t give a shit about, there was a section about a prayer that you could recite before the gods. Most of it seemed like it was boilerplate nonsense like a catechism or whatever, but the last part was just two words, and Simon doubted that it was a coincidence. After all, the only spell he knew was two words long, so, taking a moment to sound them out and make sure he got them right, he said, “Aufvarum Hjakk.” This time he didn’t yell the incantation because his head wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t think it would make that big of a difference though.

When nothing happened though, he sighed as he stood up, unsurprised that nothing had happened. Of course it was too good to be true there was no way Helades would leave a healing spell around right outside The Pit, he thought as he started to walk away, would she? That thought stopped Simon in his tracks. That’s exactly what she would do. The purpose of the pit was to get hurt and die, over and over for her entertainment. The only thing that would make that better is if help was right there the whole time, but it was in a dead language no one could read.

Simon turned around and walked back to the piller. This time he didn’t just say the words. This time he forced his mind to quiet and imagined his terrible headache fading away. Even if he never cared much for the whole “power of positive thinking” that his counselor always tried to get him to do, it was impossible to deny the link between the fire spell and the vividness with which he imagined his enemy bursting into flames by now. When he opened his eyes, he said it again, “Aufvarum Hjakk.” This time he was only a little surprised that his headache blew away like dandelion fluff in a breeze. The words still felt wrong to him, and they still carved their way into his soul, but they were nowhere near as violent or as hard on him as the other spell had been.

Simon smiled. This was real progress.

Ch. 18 - Rematch

With that progress fresh in his mind, Simon wasted no more time. He wanted the rematch, and he was going to get it on his terms. Not only did he need something he could take his migraine induced medication on, but felt practically invincible. He had two spells now. That made him a real live magician in his eyes. He could hurt things and heal things now, which made him pretty much unbeatable.

At least it would when he got better at it. He still wasn’t as good at fire magic as a goblin, and that was honestly a little embarrassing, but progress was progress.

“Mirror, show me my stats,” Simon said as soon as he got home and started to armor up. The mirror obliged quickly as always, and showed him what he knew to be basically a fake character sheet within seconds.

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 6

Deaths: 26

Experience Points: -7820

Skills: Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Poor], Maces [Below Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].’

“Can you add the spells I know to that?” Simon asked, in between bites of cheese. “You know, for completeness?”

The mirror obliged, adding a section to the bottom it labeled words of power, which made him laugh.

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 6

Deaths: 26

Experience Points: -7820

Skills: Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Poor], Maces [Below Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].

Words of Power: Aufvarum Hjakk Gervuul Meiren ’

While he was a little disappointed that learning a second spell hadn’t increased his spell casting ability at all, Simon was pleased that his level to death rate was increasing. He couldn’t focus on either of those though, because now that he could read the language and understand the strange words they no longer sounded like mysterious magic words to him. Instead they sounded like boring abilities from a JRPG with a bad english port. Large burning? Small healing? It was like they weren’t quite conjugated right or something.

Still, the information cheered him up. That meant that there were probably at least four other spells out there just waiting to be found. “If there’s a Large burning then there has to be a medium and a small burning too, right?” Simon asked himself as he belted on his sword and started to pack everything else away. “Who knows. Maybe there’s even a huge burning or a …Mega Burning!” He said that last one with great theatrical flair, but the only thing that happened was a burst of laughter before he lit one of his torches and headed downstairs.

It was kind of ironic that this was finally starting to feel like the game it should have been only after Helades had made it very clear it wasn’t. Simon didn’t care. It was a useful metaphor, and one that he was sure was giving him an edge over the countless losers that had come into the pit before him. Now he just needed to figure out how to cast them better so they hopefully didn’t hurt quite so bad, and he could start breezing through this place.

As he effortlessly slew the bats and the rats Simon couldn’t help but think about it more. It might not be a “game” like the goddess had said, but it was starting to feel exactly like what he would want to see in one. It had monsters that were easy to kill, a miniboss on level 4, actual spells that worked, and he’d even found his first NPC. Technically she’d killed him of course, but that was only because she’d thought he was a zombie. It was an honest mistake. All he needed now were some magic items, and some exposition about why the pit existed and what terrible demon he had to fight at the end, and he’d be able to start wrecking shit.

Simon did slow it down a little this time though. The last few times he’d gone through the goblin floor and the skeleton crypt, he had done it through brute force, as he tried to rush it. This time he focused on stealth and good clean kills. If he wanted to meet that blond babe that had murdered him then he wanted to do it without being banged up too badly, and there were plenty of other parts of his character sheet he could be working on besides just swords.

Once again the only part of the dungeon that was any challenge at all at this point was the skeleton knight, and Simon managed to take him down in just over a minute this time by dual wielding his sword and mace. He got the timing on his parries right, then smashed the bastard’s face in, a couple times, and the knight quickly crumbled into dust where it belonged. After that he took a short break, trying to visualize the spell he wanted to cast for what came next. There was definitely more to words than casting these spells. Somehow intent and visualization seemed to matter as much as the way he said the words. For Simon that was a small problem, since despite the fact that he was obviously a very imaginative person, he wasn’t very good at picturing things like that in his mind’s eye. It was easy enough to recall the things he’d seen on TV or in video games, but even trying to picture those same idea - things he should have known incredibly well, like pixels flared around his character when he cast the shield spell or launched a fireball in his favorite game, Decent into Darkness 2 were difficult to recall.

Only his favorite waifu, Princess Anmelda was easy to recall, and even her details were a bit blurry, especially if you were talking about some of the outfits he didn’t have her wear very much. He sighed. It was honestly a little ridiculous. If he knew the words then the magic should just work. He should just be able to cast [Fireball] and annihilate his opponent, because things would be a lot easier in the next level if he could just cast his large burning spell one time and still be able to talk some sense into that blond woman before she skewered him again.

Simon sighed and stood. Now that he was thinking about her all hope he had of practicing his visualization of anything but her cleavage was completely gone. This time he wouldn’t give her the chance to stab him of course, but he’d feel much better about the whole thing if didn’t have to rough her up in the process. Now that he theoretically spoke whatever crazy language she’d been using before, he should be able to use his words to get what he wanted as his mother had always told him growing up.

He slid the sword into the water the same as last time, and waited for a moment, and then he circled to the north side of the cave intent on trying to just bypass the slime without casting that terrible spell, but he almost lost a foot as the thing lashed out at him from the water, and quickly retreated. This time Simon got far enough back that he’d have a few seconds, and really focused on not just the slime catching fire, but the way that the flames came out of his hand in a nice tight beam, that looked less like the flaming lightning that the shaman had thrown around, and more like one of Iron Man’s repulsors. If he was going to have to imagine something then he was at least going to stick to what he knew to boost his odds of success.

When he opened his eyes again the slime was less than ten feet from him and closing fast. “Gervuul Meiren!” Simon shouted, throwing every ounce of anger and hate he had into it. The result was just as painful as it always was, but much more effective than the last couple of times he’d cast the spell. He felt reality twist very slightly around him, and then a veritable fountain of fire erupted from his hand. It wasn’t quite the tight beam he’d imagined, but it didn’t exactly spray everywhere either. The increased focus combined with the shorter range meant that most of the flames ended up exactly where they belonged: burning the giant booger monster that was trying to eat him to a crisp.

“That’s what you get!” he shouted before spitting this time he was pleased to note there wasn’t any blood and he only sounded vaguely hoarse rather than like the living dead. It was an improvement, but he hoped in time he could do better. Casting these spells wasn’t just painful, but there was an element of dread attached to them, and he didn’t like it. The whole system needed a redesign honestly.

Simon took the time to refill his waterskin here even though he didn’t need to, because the water that trickled down from the forest stream above was utterly delicious. Once that was done he took out his mace and walked over to the well worn tavern door and opened it.

This time as soon as he stepped in he whirled around looking for the zombie that had attacked him last time but he didn’t see it anywhere in the room. Simon shrugged. He’d planned on caving the thing’s skull in, but one less thing to fight was fine by him. He walked over to the table and picked up a tankard of warm beer and looked around the room. That was when he noticed the body on the floor.

He had mixed emotions about how he should feel about the death of a near stranger that had been practically beheaded. On the one hand he was sad that someone had killed such a beautiful woman. She should have been an Instagram model or a Tik Tok girl, not zombie bait. On the other hand though, she had killed him last time, so he wasn’t exactly sad to see her dead. “Guess you shouldn’t have killed the hero of this story. Maybe then someone would have saved you,” he said quietly before raising a glass in the memory of the beautiful barmaid that would never have the chance to kill him again.

That was when he heard a crash and a scream from somewhere else in the tavern. Simon set the mug of warm beer down and with a mocking salute to the dead woman he readied his mace and opened the door to the next room. This was a common room in a bar. At least it used to be. Now it was a warzone.

Several bodies lay strewn about the floor, but only two people were actually moving. The first was a brunette woman holding a meat cleaver defensively as a zombie slowly advanced on her. The second was the decaying remnants of some kind of viking warrior. It was a seriously metal halloween costume, but as an enemy it was a little lackluster. That zombie wasn’t the problem. The real problem was the place where they had broken through the boarded up windows. Simon could see dozens of the bastards milling around outside, and if they all started coming in here that might be a real challenge. Simon advanced on the one that was about to take a bite of the girl. She wasn’t as pretty as her friend had been, but that didn’t mean he should let her die.

The zombie barely had time to turn and face him before he delivered a two handed blow that caved in the side of its face, and sent it tumbling to the floor. Simon looked up at her, smiling, but her response was to stare vacantly at him and keep pointing the knife in his direction. He shrugged mentally as he turned to deal with the window. She probably wasn’t going to kill him, so as long as he kept her safe for a few minutes maybe he could actually find out what was going on around here for once.