Simon woke up once during the night, dreaming that the goblins had tried the shutters, but when he went outside, there were no fresh tracks, so he y back down until sleep took him. He didn’t fear goblins anymore, but bravery wouldn’t be enough to stop them driving a spear through his guts or ripping out his throat. They were like ras but more murdery.

  Both creatures could open doors and tches, of course, but one of them only wao knock over yarbage s a on your trash. The other wao feast on you. Well, goblins probably would be perfectly happy to feast on whatever was in my trash if I had one, Simon mused as he y there, falling back to sleep.

  In the m he took his time getting ready, and prepared as well as he’d ever done. He didn’t even fet the axe, though he did desperately regret that he would have to cary a sack for of junk around rather than a real backpack. He’d have to get one of those made at the first opportunity.

  In the root celr Simon killed every st rat without difficulties, and it was only when that was dohat he smmed the trapdoor shut and then started to hack it to pieces with the axe. It was awkward work because he was swigging a hatchet against thick wood above his head, and it took several mio make an real progress as wood chips rained down on him from above.

  Part of him worried that someone would iigate because he was being so loud, but the rest of him kinda hoped that they did. Chopping away at the boards from su aosition ain. Finally, after a couple minutes of creating a slowly deepening series of overpping cuts, he threw the axe doicked up his mace, shattering the weakened board.

  Simon reached up and tried to move the bar that was holding it closed, but he found no such object. Ihere was something heavy resting on it.

  He fished around a little and was gradually able to push whatever it was out of the way, but the whole time he did so he worried something would chop his arm off. They didn’t though, and when he finally freed up the trapdoor and pushed it open he found a dark room.

  When he finally figured out where he was, though, he had trouble believing it. The furniture had been knocked over and smashed, and everything was covered in a thick yer of dust and grime, but he would have bet his life that this was his . Just dirtier, and maybe older.

  Simon crawled up out of his hole, and with a word, he ignited a torch so he could get a better look. It didn’t answer any questions, though. He could see signs of goblin damage, but there were human tracks in the dirt, too. There wasn’t even enough left of the mirror to ask it a questioried, but its words were scattered across the slivers and shards of gss so thinly that they were little more than a blue shimmer.

  Simo outside , and looked around, but the nighttime view didn’t look too much different than what he was used to. He walked to the temple, and found it slightly more rown than before, but otherwise unged, and he saw a bonfire in the woods that hi goblins, but opted not to iigate that further because he didn’t want to be distracted from the question at hand with a pitched battle.

  “Why would a portal take me forward in time but nowhere in space?” he wondered. He didn’t have an ahough he was sure that there was one he was missing. Simoually strolled over to the river, using that as his mirror, and asked, “Mirror, you tell me how far I’ve traveled into the feature?”

  ‘The future?’ the mirror asked. ‘I don’t uand. This is the present.’

  “Yes,” Simon agreed. “It’s my present, but it's the future of the st level. you tell me how much time has passed between where I was and where I am?”

  ‘I ot,’ the mirror answered. ‘Time has passed, but it does not flow for me the same as it does for you.’

  “What does that even mean?” Simon asked in frustration.

  ‘I ot say,’ the mirror typed in glowing blue letters that wavered on the ever-moving surface of the water.

  Simon sighed and snuffed his torch before he walked back toward the bonfire he’d spotted earlier. He hadn’t po fight, but after the mirror pissed him off, he was looking for something to take it out on. He would have, too, except that whe there, he didn’t find the few goblins he expected. He saw dozens cav in the flickering firelight and froze.

  How’d there get to be so many? He wondered. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing here?

  Holy, he doubted it. He wasn’t really feeling up to fighting so many. Even with magic, it would be damn hard to keep from getting stabbed, but when he heard the sound of a branapping nearby him, Simon didn’t hesitate.

  “Gervuul Oo,” he decred, sending an invisible guillotine of force expanding out in front of him like a ripple on a pond.

  At head level, it took out whatever it was that had attempted to sneak up on him, along when more than a few on this side of the fire, but it also sliced ly through several trees which crashed down ohering sending screaming goblins scattering in every dire.

  Simon had hoped to snuff the fmes of violeh a strike, but instead, he’d sent the scurrying every which way, spreading embers in all dires. He took that as his cue to leave, and he ran for his life back to the . Realistically, he could probably take out four or five at once, but ohey found him, it would get ugly, and he’d probably be swarmed by double that. He had no i in losing a life so quickly, so he just left.

  It was a sidequest anyway, he reasoned as he shot back dowairs and headed for the dungeon.

  There, he took a break to calm himself before he did anything stupid as far as the traps were ed. “Maybe this level is about taking all the cash out of here,” he wondered aloud as he began to ease his way forward. “Maybe someday some adventurers will find it, and it will cause problems down the line?”

  It was the best thesis he had so far, and he dug into it as he sughtered the bats that attacked him. He couldn’t take the treasure with him, but he could very easily use a word of earth to seal that passage shut so no one else could get it either… but then he’d no longer have a fortable pce to stock up on gold with each trip. That made the question a dicier one. He had a theoretical solution, but should he use it?

  Simoed that long and hard once he’d finished off the bats and made his way to the secret passage that opeo reveal the treasure vault. There, he relutly sealed the gold into a wall after he’d taken a pouch of gold and silver for his own use.

  “From now on, shit gets harder,” he sighed before saying, “Vosden,” and sealing the treasure away behind a thin wall of stone. He’d imagi to look as close as possible to the rest of the wall, but it came out a little discolored. He wasn’t sure that was going to matter.

  After that came the skeleton crypt, but they were as easy to defeat as ever. There, Simon did a little experiment and used the minor word of earth to turn a silver pieto a palm-sized mirror rather than pour his water out on the floor. That worked pretty well, though he had to use the word twice to beat it fully down to the size he wanted.

  Even that wasn’t a waste, though. He learhat a word of earth could affect metal and that it didn’t work as well as it did for stone. He didn’t o ask the mirror any questions this time, though. He just wao record the sigils on the sword because, this time, he wasn’t pnning to take it with him.

  Simon briefly sidered destroying it to see if that would plete the level, but he didn’t for a couple reasons. The first was that he retty sure he was going to he thing the ime he decided to try taking out the fire level, and the other reason was that the idea of fug with the runes without pletely uanding them gave him serious fshbacks to the frost orb.

  “Don’t try to disarm a bomb until you know whether you o cut the red wire,” he muttered to himself as he finished with the sword.

  After that, he made some notes about some of the other heraldry just in case he wao try to figure out why this pce mattered one day. Ohat was done he sorted out his bag, and it was only when he was halfway through with that, that he e realized he was dragging his feet about the level. The tavern had bee a scarier p that a dragon's ir, and he would have ughed if it wasn’t so sad.

  “I won’t stay,” he told himself as he gripped the skeleton knight’s key a little tighter. “Whether she’s there or not, I’ll skip it and just keep going.”

  Simon waited until he believed the words he’d just spoken. Only then did he get up and walk toward the gate. He ope cautiously in case the level had revered itself to zombies, but it hadn’t. Instead, it was the same bustling inn he’d see few times.

  Simon shut the door behind him and walked into the on room. He saw Freya sitting there with the same adventurers he’d seeime before st, but that just made him walk faster. True to his word he left without a backward gnce, and when he smmed the door in the sewer he finally slumped against it and allowed himself a moment for the regret to wash over himself before he pushed on.

  Hopefully he’d solved one level already, but he had a lot more to do between now and whe was that he died, and he wasn’t going to let her distract him.