This time it wasn’t a question of where he wao spend his time, it was a matter of how he wao spend this life, and Simo several days sidering that question. At this point his lives were stretg for decades rather than ending in weeks, so in a way, he ig what kind of py-through he wao have. Maybe pig my major would be a better choice, he added as he reflected on his previous life.

  It was that thought that made him decide he definitely wasn’t going to do what he’d pnned. Once he finished rec every fact worth remembering into his ever-expanding personal library, he’d thought about going to Liepzen and living a simir life for as long as he had the st time in a different library. It was sensible. The facts were all fresh in his head, after all. Surely, he’d be able to learn the most by paring what he’d read in Darndelle and the Broken Tower.

  But it sounded incredibly dull. He’d spent years reading and tinkering, and right now, he wao do what? Besides seeihena, he wasn’t sure, but seeing his sword leaning against the wall, called to him more than a little, and he wondered what entment he might put on it wheime was right.

  Strangely, though, he didn’t feel like enting anything. He wao in theory, but he kly how much work that was. It would be weeks and months to set everything up, depending on what he wao do, and right now, that all just looked like more waiting to him. Truthfully he was chaffing at spending so much time just talking to the damn mirror for day after tedious day, but he knew if he stopped, he’d never pick that back up again, and he’d fet an awful lot.

  “You know, you do a terrible job and holding up your side of the versation,” he told the mirror at one of the points he felt like giving up on this part of the projebsp;

  ‘I do not uand the point you are making,’ the thing said after only a slight dey.

  “Exactly,” he ughed. “That’s the problem.”

  Simon mao put up with the boredom for almost two weeks before he gave up. In that time his only real eai was hunting, fishing, and thwarting the increasingly aggressive goblin raids.

  Simon had ried to stay on this level for so long. Indeed, he remembered a time when he regarded staying here for five days as impossible. This time, though, he looked forward to the su raids that only intensified day after day.

  The first time they tried to burn him out was on day four. Simon didn’t even have to resort to magic for the half a dozen little bastards. He just took out the shaman with a well-aimed shot, then plinked off a few more of the buggers before they scattered. He’d been forced to use his crossbow ammo for that fight because he was saving his good arrows for hunting. Still, it worked well enough.

  After the shaman was dead, he hoped to see more new monsters he hadn’t seen before, but instead, it was just more angry swarms of goblins. Without the spells spshing against the side of his , though, he finally got a workout with his sword.

  Even five- or six-ohe goblins were only challenging in that he wasn’t half the swordsman he’d been a couple lives ago. Simon was happy to take that frustration out ohough. “o self,” he told himself, gasping for breath after he finished night eight’s fight, “Don’t stop sword fighting for like thirty years, between two lives.”

  Shogly, the st really good fight he’d had was against the monster in the volo, and that was a long time ago. Still, slowly, but surely some of it came ba, and by the time he decided he was ready to go, he felt like bandits wouldn’t be an immi danger for him.

  Of course, the skeletons almost proved him wrong. Simon hadn’t fought them in decades, either, and it was the first time he struggled against them in a long time. They didn’t wound him, of course, at least, not badly, but it took a little bit to clear the room enough that he could take down the death knight in a good fight.

  Afterward, he paused and took the Bckheart out of the knight’s chest to exami more closely. That, at least, was iing, and he paused only long enough to gather some silver and use a lesser word of earth to make a mirror so he could pare his current analysis to his previous notes. He decided he wasn’t far off. The thing used runes of Uuvellum to create anti-life and area effects, f the dead to e to life. Whether the inal sorcerer had done so to keep himself alive and if it had worked.

  “From my brief stint as a zombie, I’m leaning toward no on that one,” he decided before he put it carefully back. Thehered as much gold and silver as he could before he tinued on his way.

  This time, he didn’t dig down into the subchamber. Instead, he just took the exit to the Wyvern level.

  “A handful of silver is enough to get to where I’m going.” He decided. “I only have half a decade to waste before I go back to Ionar.”

  His logi that retty straightforward. The wyvern level was the level before the volo level. That meant that somewhere between tomorrow and a couple of years from now, he was going to fight that thing, and then about four years ter, his lover was going to refuse to marry him and send him away.

  Which meant that in the meantime, he’d fight and maybe do a little expl. Simon’s map had rgely been filled in through the Kingdom of Brin and up to the Northnds. Likewise, he’d traveled past Ionia all the way to Abresse and the seas beyond that.

  So his bnk spots were mostly Ionia in the west and the mountainous Kingdom of Chiara in the mountains to the east of all of this. Chiara was almost a plete mystery, but in Ionia, at least, he knew where the cities along the coast and on the isnds were.

  The Kingdom was a rge peninsu surrounded by a scattering of isnds off the coast to the west and south. Knowing the names on the map and what those pces were actually like, though, well, there was a world of differeween those two.

  And this time, ohe volo exploded, he was going to start purging other parts of this supposed curse. At least, he would once he learned more about it. He was resolved. In this life, he was going to solve Ionia. Well, probably not solve, he corrected himself. I doubt I go fix everything, then e bad kill the wyvern a decade from now, and Hedes will let that t.

  Uand was a more doable goal. By the time this was done, he was going to figure out everything he o know to fix it. “That should be easy enough,” he said to himself as he made his way down the mountain.

  He spotted the wyvern half a dozen times over the few days, and each time, he crouched behind a boulder or a tree and waited for it to turn toward him. Fortunately, it never did. However, on the sed day, someone else’s fortune obviously wore out, and Simon spotted it carrying the corpse of someone back to its .

  “That’s probably the thing I’m supposed to prevent,” he decided. Simon didn’t take the failure to heart, but he did decide to go and iigate where it was the wyvern had taken off from, even if it meant a little extra walking.

  He spent the trip w just how many levels had minor, almost petty events. “Kill this owlbear, and those children live. Stop this pgue in that vilge, but let everyone die first,” he said to himself, looking for the logic. “Oh, and don’t fet t this vilge food so everyone doesn’t starve to death.”

  He’d hoped that his inteudy of history for a few years would have given him a better perspective on this issue, but he still found it more than a little fusing. All he could do was hope that if he found this guy’s wagon or whatever, this level would make a little more sense.

  Simon was huffing and puffing that evening when he found the site of the battle. There was no wagon, but even so, it retty unmistakable. There were other corpses, along with the remains of two horses. The first y atop the dead man, and the sed split into two gory halves. One half of it y in the middle of the road where a vulture had cimed ownership, and the other half of it a tree where the ravens were having a party.

  Simohem alone and decided that he wasn’t camping anywhere here. Before he left, though, he took the purse off the corpses, and then he dug through both sets of saddlebags. Mostly, he found camping supplies for people traveling light. He helped himself to some of those si would reduce his need for hunting.

  More iingly, though, was a sealed letter that he found on the half a horse. There was no name on it. All there was was the impression of a sig ring on the wax seal. Simon thought it looked like Brin Hearldy, but he wasn’t a hundred pert sure.

  Ihere were some names, but not enough that he’d ever find who this had bee for. ‘Dearest Antonia, we have beerayed. If this letter reaches you before the worst should befall you, I urge you to kill your brother and flee south. I will meet you in Abresse. Look for my ship. L.’

  “So, this woman never gets this letter, and the worst befalls her, and what? She gets killed? He gets heartbroken and its suicide?” he said aloud as he talked himself through the sequence of events. “I ’t even find who sent it because he didn’t even sign his damn name!”

  Simon crumpled up the letter and threw it away. Thearted walking to the northwest. He couldn’t sleep until he put some distaween himself and the wyver, but even without the frustratier, going this way was clearly the right choice. He’d never gohis way around these mountains before, and he wao approach Ionia from a new dire.

  That was one part of the world where he knew what went where, thanks to the map in the Queen’s library. This time, instead of approag the northern reaches of Ionia through the mountains and starting in the south, he was going to travel around the mountains to the north and then travel south along the shore. It would be a lot of walking, but he was sure he could find plenty of paying merary work. The people of Ionia weren’t very trusting, but they weren’t especially peaceful, either, and during his time in the capital, he’d never seen a sell swo hungry.