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He knew this wasn’t a game, of course, but the metaphor still worked. Who was to say that if he got far enough off track from what he needed to do, the magic at work here didn’t just put him back to start all over again? As a theory, it was worth exploring, but the only way to do that would be to walk all the way down that damn mountain again.

Simon sighed loudly at the thought. Just because he’d been able to survive a blizzard and hike for miles didn’t mean he wanted to do it over and over again. It would be worth it if he could spend a month or a year in civilization but for a single night?

“Kind of a pain in the ass,” he told himself as he lay back on his bed and tried to brainstorm something else that might be a better use of his time. All of his other ideas eventually led through the zombies, though, and he had zero wish to go there yet. No matter what he found, he was sure it was going to hurt. It always did.

So, after wasting half an hour, he finally grudgingly got ready and started the whole ordeal all over again. This time the only real change he made was to gather a couple smaller coins from the hidden treasure hoard on level two just in case he ran into someone that couldn’t make change for a whole gold piece. He didn’t know how many of one kind of coin exchanged for how many of another, of course, and the likelihood of being cheated was still high, but he could figure all that out later.

The trip through the snow was uneventful, and though he was still annoyed that he had to light his campfires with a flamethrower, he made it work. Once, on the second day, he smelled the smoke of someone else’s campfire, which told him someone else was out here, but he didn’t investigate.

“It’s probably just more bandits,” he told himself.

This time when Simon finally reached that main road, he thought about trying the other direction, but he was hungry, and he’d already spent the last three days wandering around the wilderness, so he wasn’t eager to spend a fourth when he knew where a perfectly lovely inn was. Instead, he strolled down the road like he didn’t have a care in the world, and though ambushing the ambushers would have been funny, he just let things play out as they had the first time, just to see what would happen.

“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,” Luken said, stepping out into the road in just the same way as he had the last time.

“See, if you had just taken my money last time and let me by, you would never have had to see me again,” Simon said with a smile. “And if I did happen to come back through, you could have had a repeat customer, but you went and got greedy!”

That didn’t stop him from walking forward, though, and though Luken put his hands on the hilt of his sword, he didn’t draw it because the only thing Simon had in his hands was a large sack.

“Excuse me, sir,” Luken said, trying and failing to hide his confusion. “I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure, however, a mere six pence will see you on your way with no harm done.”

“Yeah,” Simon agreed. “You said that last time too. This time though, I brought a little change.”

Simon didn’t pull silver out of his bag or even copper. Instead, he pulled out eight inches of steel in the form of his dagger and stabbed the other man in the heart before his sword was halfway out of his sheath.

Luken started to crumple, but Simon grabbed him by the collar and started to walk to the side of the road, using him as a body shield. “Next time, maybe just let me pass, and I won’t have to kill you every single time I walk this path.”

“But I…” A volley of arrows flew at Simon just as Luken gasped his final words. One went wide, just missing Simon’s head, but three embedded into the man he was using as a shield.

Simon winced as he saw the pain play across the other man’s face before the light left the bandit’s eyes. He knew exactly what that felt like, and he felt bad for the guy. At least it was a clean death, though. Simon tried hard to make sure that was what people got whenever he could, but when it came to a forest full of archers, sometimes that couldn’t be helped.

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He waited for a lull in the action, then he leaned around to one side of the trunk and yelled “G̴̝̈́͒͠ḛ̷͕̮̕͘r̵̛̫̮̔͠ͅv̴̿̀͠ͅu̷̝͚̜̎u̴͚͈̎ḻ̸̣̈́ ̸̦̟̜̈́̍M̷̪̹̪̓̓͒e̴̪̎i̴͓̗̔̔͆ͅr̸̹͓͚͐̅è̵̛͇̱̾n̴̩̜̍,” as he channeled all his rage and anger into a gout of flame that eradicated the vegetation between him and the bandits that were trying to kill him. The energy surged through him so hard that it grayed the edges of his vision for a moment, and when the fiery streamers subsided, he slowly pulled out and loaded his crossbow to make sure there weren’t survivors.

He knew, of course, that the kid he’d spared last time was still out there somewhere. If he’d been on the other side of the road last time, he probably was this time too, which meant that he might have to take the feral bastard down. Secretly, Simon hoped that the little brat had run off because the last thing he wanted to do was shoot a starving kid in the back, even if that decision might come back to haunt him.

No arrows came at him this time, so Simon finished off his fallen foes, then helped himself to the coins in Luken’s pockets as the only restitution the man could offer for wasting his time before he continued on his way.

The rest of the journey was utterly uneventful, and this time when Simon reached the village of Wellingbrooke, he went straight for the inn and paid for a real meal and a drink in his stolen silver. The proprietor still gave him the stink eye as she made change, but right now, Simon just didn’t care. He wanted something warm and filling. It turned out that dinner wasn’t for hours yet, though, so she brought him cold cuts smeared with stone ground mustard on some bread that wasn’t quite stale, but it would be in a few more hours. While it wasn’t as good as the dinner he’d eaten here last time, just being able to taste something as simple as mustard again was amazing, so he made do.

Simon whiled away the rest of the day much the same as he’d done the last time. This time the only difference was that he stretched his legs exploring the hamlet before dinner rather than sitting in his room, and after dinner, he did a bit less drinking and a little more winning. Surprisingly Yars turned out to be just as good a loser as he was a winner, which Simon thought was a rare trait. Rather than bluster when he’d turned into the night’s biggest loser, he just patted Simon on the back and said, “Now, you be sure to stick around for a few days and give me a chance to win all that back!”

That was enough to make Simon smile as he wandered up to his room and made himself comfortable on the lumpy mattress. Last time he fell asleep like a rock, but this time he found himself laying there, staring up at the ceiling for the better part of an hour once he got tired of tossing and turning as he worried as soon as he closed his eyes his small victory was going to be snatched from his hands and he was going to be put back in that awful little cabin again. He knew that Helades didn’t want him to be happy, of course. He’d known that from pretty much the first minute he’d met her, but to think that she would just break her own game or punishment incarnation or whatever and snatch him back to the pit just because he’d figured a clever way out of her clutches, it was just…

Simon’s endless internal monologue came to a screeching halt when he heard the door swing open with only the faintest scraping sound as it brushed against one of his boots. The room was dark, but not entirely pitch black, so he could see a short shape as what he could only imagine that brat he’d spared earlier snuck into his room to finish him off.

His muscles tensed as he lay there, waiting to pounce, and it was only when he saw the gleam of light on the edge of the blade that he reached up and grabbed the slender wrists of the wielder, yanking it away from them in a brief struggle, and sending them backwards hard enough into the shutters to knock them open.

Simon was surprised by two things then. The first was that he was holding a meat cleaver, not the dagger he’d expected, and the second was that the person that had been about to strike him dead wasn’t the young boy but the innkeeper herself.

“Just what in the fuck is going on,” Simon spat as he gestured at her with her own weapon, making her shrink away from the reprisal she feared.

“I just… you were…” The woman was older than him, but not by much, and all the poison that had been in her gaze until now had been replaced with fear.

“Out with it, woman,” Simon yelled, not caring who heard. “Choosing to keep your reasons for assassinating me a secret will cost you your life!”

“I-I would never harm a fly,” she whimpered nonsensically, “But th-theres a darkness in you. Anyone who trucks with evil so much has to—”

“Evil?” he asked, utterly baffled by the accusation. “I’m the damn hero; what are you talking about. There’s no evil here except a crazy woman with a meat cleaver!” To emphasize his point, Simon buried the weapon into the wood of the windowsill.

“The taint of your spirit does not lie!” she hissed, and then seeing him weaponless, she chose that moment to try to dart past him and down the hall.

Simon was baffled by her words and didn’t try to stop her. He just stood there stunned for almost a minute as his intoxicated mind tried to work through everything that had just happened. It was only then that he realized her next move might be to rally the town watch or a few brave adventurers to strike him down. It was that thought that finally spurred him to action, and he began to pack.

He supposed that it was bad news that people could see the ’taint of his spirit,’ whatever that was supposed to mean, but as he quickly packed his things, he decided that, ultimately, this was good news. After all, the crazy bitch that had sent him back to his own private hell hadn’t been Helades. It had only been some innkeeper with a magic power he just hadn’t seen before.

He could work with that, even if he wasn’t sure if she was seeing the magic he’d used, his connection to the pit or something deeper like his massive experience point debt, but either way, it was useful information and something to watch out for.