The trip back to Schwarzenbruck was not much more challenging tharip to the barrows had been. It was a few days longer because Simon chose to stay off the main road as much as possible. Both the rugged terrain and the extra days orail meant that he entered more zombies thaherwise would have, of course, but he didn’t mind that. They were only a nuisance when found in ones and twos, and every time he killed one, he freed some tormented soul.

  At this point, almost all the zombies he killed had the look of tradesmen or meraries, which expined where all the disrupted traffic had e from. Once, he even found aurned wagon that tained a variety of now-spoiled spices and bolts of beautifully dyed fabric. Simon probably could have sold it for a few s, but he didn’t feel like the hassle. Between his pilfered grave goods and the purses of dead men, he had more mohan he’d need for a long time.

  Despite his circuitous route, he made it back to the city ihan a week to find that the only uhat were assaulting it were the ohat were whispered about in rumors. While there was no evidehat a single one had been seen ihe city, the guards were out in force looking for anyone who seemed unwell, and everyoraded stories fearfully about what was to e.

  Of course, Simon was uned. Instead, he went to a different inn on the far side of town and treated himself to a real meal to reward himself for enduring his mediocre attempts at campfire cooking and day after day of cold hardtack. He had a roast chi to himself, and then after he was finished gnawing the bones , he had a few drinks while he caught up on the rumors.

  It was just as he’d heard whispered ireets. People were afraid, but the story of the Butcher’s Bill was the one he heard the most. That made sehe prospect of a rge merary pany traveling north but ing back with only a few survivors could be a shog thing. Simon wasn’t about to expin to him why the majority of those people had died, of course.

  He just listened and gave the same nonanswers as everyone else betweeions. Especially when they mentioned what a hero Kell was. There, he bit his torying to decide if it was worse that Kell would be remembered as a hero, or that st time it was Simon who had been remembered as the vilin. In the end, he decided to leave it alone.

  There were no rumors of ditions further to the south, though whether that was because people were so captivated by what was happening to the north or because there was simply nothing brewing, he couldn’t say. It holy could have beeher. Whole wars could be happening, and no one would notice, but Simon couldly bme them for that.

  Instead, he just enjoyed a good night’s sleep in a soft bed, and the day, after he refreshed his supplies and bought some paper to tinue his mapping project, he started south. Given the distances he was going to have to travel, a horse robably the right answer, but her his weight nor his endurance was where he wa to be, so he decided that he was going to walk instead, at least for the first part of the journey.

  Given hh the roads were in pces, it was clear that was the right move. The gap in trade caused by this disruption was clearly taking its toll on the lonely dirt road that shrough the custrophobic forest that was a dense mixture of pine and fir trees as well as oak and ash. It was clear that trying to keep the road open through such loerrain was a full-time job wheiced a felings growing in the road at various intervals.

  Teically, he’d been through here when he was a zombie, but he didn’t remember any of it. From that terrible experiehough, he khat somewhere beyond the trees y more farmnd, and after a few days, he reached it. What followed were a series of inns and vilges as he made his way south a. The tryside blurred together a bit after that.

  Some days, it rained, but most of the time, it was sunny, and though much of the Northnds seemed poor pared to pces he’d seen further south, they were mostly o him. Wheopped to ask for dires, people answered his questions without too much of an attitude, and in pces where there were no inns, farmers were happy enough t him a meal in the barn for a few coppers, even if they eyed his ons suspiciously.

  I spent what… two weeks… No, almost three north of the Bck River Bridge, he corrected himself as he reviewed his progress one night over a bowl of cheap stew that only tasted a little sour. Then, it was a week through the woods and ahree weeks through civilized nds.

  As he walked through his progress, he reviewed his map, ting dots, making them both a measure of distand time. He’d been on the road for almost two months. He’d found half a dozen vilges and a handful er towns. His map was also speckled with the approximate locations of vilges and ndmarks that were described by people that he hadn’t personally visited. He was still looking for a number of levels, like the demonic church, but so far, he hadn’t found one.

  There were any number of other locations, though. There was even the distant capital city of Liepzen, not so far away. It was still over a week away by foot, maybe even two. He was tempted to stop there and check it out, but it was a distra to his main mission. No matter how much he might want to make random side trips while he was in the area, he o get to Ionar.

  Despite his careful trag, though, it still surprised him when he went into an inn that seemed to be vaguely familiar, only to find an all too familiar face standing behind the bar. She looked at him a moment and frowned before she made ge and told him whi it was he’d be staying in. Simon had fotten a lot of things during his travels, but he would never fet a woman who had killed him.

  That was only then that he realized how far he’d e. He was in Wellingbrooke, which felt like the crossroads to half of his adventures with a murderous old woman who could see things, including the darkness in his aura.

  He still wasn’t sure what that meant, though, but it was clear that it wasn’t as sinister as it once was. After all, the st few times he’d e through, she looked at him like he was the devil, and this time she merely looked at him like he was just a piece of shit, which, in some texts, he probably was.

  Ethically or spiritually, though? At this point in his life, with the exception of the occasional grave robbing or revenge killing of someone who really deserved it, he always tried to do the right thing.

  That night, after Simon had eaten and shared his news about the roads to the north of Wellingbrooke with the locals, he went to his room. There, he wedged a dagger in the door frame of his room just in case the proprietor ged her mind about him, and then, in that dark room, he produced his mirror and decided it was long past time to have a very specifiversation with it.

  “Mirror, show me my experieal please,” Simon said. The mirror would fit any amount of writing he requested on the small surface, but if he asked for too much, the spirit that trolled all of this would shrink it down so that it was utterly unreadable. So, rather than ask for his whole sheet, he asked only for the relevant bit.

  ‘Experience Points: -748,292,’ the mirror typed out promptly.

  “That’s… that’s a big ge,” he said, looking at the number. It had dropped at least a huhousand since he’d st reviewed it, and probably more like a hundred and fifty thousand. He retty sure he didn’t even bother to look at his character sheet after his st death, but the one before that, well, he wasn’t sure about that either. It had either been two or three deaths since he’d st checked,

  Even if it was a big ge though, there were really only a few pces he could have shed that maive points. He’d spent a lot of time healing the si Abrese and even more time fighting a war against the taurs around Crowvar. He’d gotten a lot of satisfa from both of those, but he’d also helped a lot of people.

  Even after all this time, he wasn’t sure if the number had more to do with the effect his a had or how he felt about it. “If I stab Varten to death, does that number go up or down?” he wondered aloud.

  ‘I do not know the ao that question,’ the mirror typed, making the other data fade away.

  Simon shook his head, pletely unsurprised that was what the thing had dohat was what it always did. It was so literal that it was barely a step above the puter-style interface it very clearly had.

  “That’s fine,” Simon said. “I don’t need you to tell me. I’m going to find out for myself.”

  He put away the mirror and got ready for bed, but his mind was already rag. Not even the vague worry that an old woman might try to kill him again in the middle of the night was enough to dull that excitement.

  Simon had explored the magic system of the Pit extensively. He focused oain skills to try to improve them enough for the value on his character sheet to click over from fair to good ood to great, as if it mattered at all in the grand scheme of things. The ohing he hadn’t dohough, was to try to uand that mysterious experienumber.

  So, that’s what he spent the several days doing. Taking some of his precious paper, he kept a small journal. Every day, he’d write the starting number when he woke up, and then in the evening, he’d write the ending number and list a few of the things he’d dohat day. Sometimes, it was ‘had a good dinner,’ and other times, it was ‘slept in the rain.’

  Slowly but surely, patterns started to emerge. For starters, except on his most miserable days, he seemed to gain at least ten points. Simply existing and leading a normal life seemed to heal whatever karmic wounds he’d caused to himself. Oer days, though, he could get twenty or even thirty points. Helping people seemed to spike that number, but so did simply having a nice day.

  It was hard to say for sure one way or the other when the world seemed tent enough to leave him in peace. That was when he arrived in Sny.