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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “No thanks,” he chuckled to himself. “I already have a mountain, and I don’t need another.”

  The day passed slowly, and that night he was able to make himself a fire, but it was still harder than he would have liked. Even trying to think of literally anything else, an eous amount of fire belched out of him when he whispered, “G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????.” For a moment, he thought he was going to burree he’d pnned on using for shelter down, but those fmes quickly went out, and after a few minutes, he had a tle campfire to try to roast a potato over.

  “Holy, I ’t wait to get,” some other spell to hahis shit, he said, berating the fire even as it kept away the cold. “Like - why ’t we just have fire or even lesser fire. He’ll - I’d take spark right about now. Anything but pyrocstifgration of doom!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  When Simon reached out to hand the other man the bag, he dropped it just before the bandit could grab it, and as the other man’s gaze watched it fall to the path, he reached up and grabbed him by the hair, bringing his head down hard against the other man’s forehead. He’d been aiming for the bridge of his nose, but he hadly headbutted anyone before, so his aim was a little off. The bandit crumpled, but Simon held him up, intending to use him as a human shield for arrows that never came.

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

  “G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????,” Simon spat, letting his indest rage out in the form of rippling white fire that expanded out from his fiips like a wave, instantly starting the whole se of forest that the men were hiding in on fire.

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