Death After Death

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

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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 31 - Dragon in the mountains’

“So I’ve completed 14 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.