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 . After all the other weird levels, that retty much impossible, was it Hedes?
Still, despite his icism, he couldn’t help but smile. He hadn’t gotte of course, but he would, ae the agonizih he’d ehat 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 ce 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 s begin to popute 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 pce. Something.”
‘I do not uand,’ the mirror told him.
“Like - level 1 is rats in the root celr, 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 pn, and for that I need more information.”
The mirror paused for a few seds, and when it tried again, it seemed to be going well, but some gaps quickly developed.
‘Level 1 - Rats in the root celr
Level 2 - Bats in a dungeon
Level 3 - …
Level 4 - …
Level 5 - …
Level 6 - Zombies in an inn
Level 7 - …’
It took Simon a sed to realize why it had only poputed a few of the levels, a most of them bnk, 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 yoing to remember, and then print it all out for me, allright? Does that sound fair?”
Simohe en mirying to figure out what was on each level aing it back to the mirror. When he was finally dohe list was much more prehensible.
‘Level 1 - Rats in the root celr
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 - ivorous pnts 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 vilge
Level 13 - A demon in a church
Level 14 - Ghosts in a manor
Level 15 - Golem in a cave
Level 16 - Orcs raiding a vilge
Level 17 - Ice orb in a vilge
Level 18 - Pgue in Hurag
Level 19 - Lizardmen in a s
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 - Bck swarmer on a farm
Level 26 - Werewolf in the mountains
Level 27 - taurs near Crowvar
Level 28 - Poisoned oasis
Level 29 - Cultists in a vilge
Level 30 - Ogre’s den
Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains’
When it was all said and do 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 otle 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, whi Simon’s mind amouo pretty much the same thing. When he asked it to dispy only accessible levels, the situation became much clearer.
‘Level 1 - Rats in the root celr
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 - ivorous pnts 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 - Bck swarmer on a farm
Level 27 - taurs near Crowvar
Level 28 - Poisoned oasis
Level 29 - Cultists in a vilge
Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains’
“So I’ve pleted 14 levels, huh?” he said, nodding at the muanageable list. Well, currently, anyway.”
It was impossible for him not to notie 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 wao 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 plete? Did he have an idea about what o be done? Was there any risk he could have another awful experiend get turned into a zombie or worse? Was there any ce to see his friends?
These were the criteria by which he rahe levels, and after he thought about it food long time, he went outside, grabbing the pole, a fishing again while he thought about it. He didn’t feel like bread or cheese after all, but some pan fried fish in a wiion 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 wao take a pass on that for now.
“If future levels are ging, it's almost certainly because I’m ging 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 ter level could easily be uh a new victory.”
He wasirely sure that was the case, though. Was Schwarzenbruck back because he saved the vilge, or because he saved the king? Though Hedes 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 tless lives he’d saved in the process would have a bigger impa history.
It was a fasating idea, and he would have loved to explore it more, but he still didn’t have enough text. If this was earth he could watch different things py out thanks to all the history csses 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 deg against it. He could spend a lifetime studying the history of each level, but that would get him no closer ton sying, or whatever y past it.
Part of him wao try to take out the volo 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, a home to cook them, what he eventually focused on was his body. He hadn’t even slimmed down pletely in his st life because it had been to short, but the differeween then and noalpable. Just sitting in the shade was enough to make him sweat and the walk home winded him, even though it was over level ground.
“Holy, this is worse thah,” he sighed as he relit the small stove. “Starting from zero.”
He wasn’t of course. He khat. His character sheet was filling out nicely, and when he checked it ohe fish was done cooking, he saw that he’d lost another 20,000 ive karma. He was making progress in every ceivable way, but waking up in this body… in his body, it was a reminder of how far he’d let himself go in his st 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 refle 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 zy.
Lazy. There. He said it. He’d been zy, and it had cost him. Looking through his life since he’d e to the Pit though, he was satisfied to hat there was almost no ziness in evide was just him w hard and learnihings, and holy, that felt good.
Simon nodded as he finished his meal and got ready for bed. Tomorrow he would desd 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 khat he was going to get some shit done, regardless. Right now he had 87 levels to go, and maybe by the time he died hat would be down to 85, or even 80.