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“Freya! Did you fucking kill Freya?” Simon shouted.

That was enough noise to attract attention, and he heard a moan from the next room, followed by the sound of the board on the window giving out. By this point, Brenna was weeping openly and slumped against the wall, slowly sliding down it.

As far as Simon was concerned, that was an admission, but he wasn’t exactly sure of what, and he wasn’t willing to kill her until he got some answers. So, instead of doing something rash, he barked, “Wait here. We’ll pick this back up in a minute.

Then he embedded his sword in the floor to partially bar the door and pulled out his mace. The two zombies in the room were familiar sights, and neither one held any challenge. He quickly reduced them to corpses before he struggled to block the window with the table.

It was only once all that was done that he returned to his sword and his sobbing prisoner. He ignored her for the moment, though, and instead, he pushed his slime-cicle out into the main room to let it start to thaw out. He imagined that the process would take all day, at least, but he was in no hurry, and he wanted to see how it endured being cryo-frozen like that because, if it did as well as he expected it to do, then that was his answer to the zombie apocalypse that had been unleashed.

He’d thought about it a lot since his last death, and he couldn’t think of another reason why the slime level would be right before the zombie level unless the slime was there to eat the zombies. It was something he’d never given a single thought to until the mirror had mentioned finishing a level, but now that it had, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. What would finishing the goblin level entail? Killing the goblins, right? Only that didn’t seem to be enough. He’d figure out why that wasn’t working later, but with the zombies, there simply wasn’t another answer.

If he’d killed them all by burning down the city, then they would never spread, and all the chain reactions would never happen. Not only would thousands of lives be saved, but it would change all the future timelines. He couldn’t imagine anything more he could do than release something that could eat all the zombies, one at a time, and while he had to admit the possibility of having to deal with a zombie slime was non-zero, it was still worth a shot.

Plus, while he waited to see what would happen, he could dig into Brenna’s story, execute her, and then get hammered. He had no idea how that would impact his experience points, but he didn’t care, and he doubted even Helades would blame him for having a drink, he decided as he hung his mace from a belt loop and picked his frigid long sword back up.

“Okay, we’re safe now, so let’s start over. Are you going to try to stab me again?” he asked.

Brenna silently shook her head, so he continued. “Okay - well, my name is Simon, and Freya was … she was very special to me, and the way I heard it, you threw her to the wolves so—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she sobbed, “You know nothing, nothing!”

“Why don’t you tell me then?” Simon asked, eyeing the closest tankard and deciding he’d rather just get himself a clean one because that one had probably been sitting there growing mold for days.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said before spitting on the ground. “You’re a disgusting knave that threatens women. You have no honor.”

“And you’re a woman with about… three or four hours left if memory serves.” Simon smiled wickedly at that, and it wasn’t until he looked meaningfully at the dirty bandage on her arm.

She defensively covered it with her hand. “It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s barely a scratch.”

“I’m sure,” Simon said contemptuously, sheathing his sword. As much as he wanted to strike her dead right now, killing an unarmed woman didn’t sit right with him, and he decided he might feel better about it after a few drinks. “Is that what the innkeeper told you when one of these bastards got him too? That it was just a scratch?”

“How could you possibly know that. You weren’t here for any of these things,” she said, her voice growing more and more shrill as she spoke. “You must be a sorcerer - it’s the only explanation.”

“Well, that too,” he agreed, pulling himself a pint and sitting down at the bar where he could watch his ice cube and his ice queen. “But the reason I know—” she started trying to talk over him, but he just spoke even louder, “The reason I know is because the last time I was here, you turned me into a fucking zombie, you crazy bitch!”

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“I did?” she turned pale for a moment before her denials returned. “I couldn’t have. That’s nonsense. I’ve never been a zombie, and I’m not about to change that, no matter what a vile creature like you says.”

As Brenna spoke, she crept cautiously into the main room of the bar. She pretended that she wasn’t afraid, but he could see her words had cut, and he wondered if Varten had felt this good when he used his final moments to hurt Simon with his words. In Simon’s case, though, everything he said was true, and as far as he was concerned, that made everything he said cut all the deeper.

“That’s fine,” Simon said, offering her a mock toast from where he was seated.

“You aren’t just going to kill me?” she asked. “Isn’t that what you came here for?”

“I mean - you aren’t here every time I come through, Brenna, but once I saw you, murder was definitely at the top of my agenda,” he agreed, “but now that I remember how much I despise you, I’ve decided that’s better than you deserve. So, I’m only going to grant you that mercy if you decide to tell the truth.”

This caused her to explode again, hurling angry words about everything from his manhood to his mother, but Simon ignored them all. She couldn’t affect him, and anything she tried to do to change that only amused him more.

Oh, he’d try to talk to her, of course, but it didn’t work. She had no interest in telling him anything about Freya, and trying to drag it out of her with torture struck him as distasteful. He’d much rather have her torture herself and keep his hands clean.

This went on for an hour, but it wasn’t until his slime started to show signs of life that she threw the mug at him. To her credit, she waited until Simon appeared distracted, which he was, but it didn’t take much effort to whisper “Aufvarum Oonbetit Uuvellum,” and conjure a weak, shimmering wall of force to interpose itself between her projectile and his face.

The look on her face was worth burning a week of his life, honestly, and he laughed when she got a look of pure horror on her face. He didn’t let his appreciation of the moment distract him from noticing how much smaller the word for minor had made the barrier, though. It was an interesting fact because he would have expected the minor to refer to the strength of the barrier, but it also changed the size, which could be inconvenient. The extra three syllables also meant he only got the shield up just in time, which meant he would probably forgo them in the future.

None of that reflection made her look of shock or the follow-up reaction to run into the other room any less funny, though. “You’re a monster!” she yelled through the door. “You’ve sold your soul to darkness!”

“Yeah… But you did it first,” he agreed, finishing his drink and pouring himself another.

Things were quiet for the next hour, and it was only when he was on his third glass, and he was watching the slime start to undulate like a sea anemone, that she finally emerged again. Brenna definitely wasn’t looking so good.

“Did you do this to me?” she asked, looking pale as she sweated profusely.

More than anything, this reminded him of her the last time he’d seen her when she bit his neck enough to give him déjà vu.

“I didn’t,” he said with a shrug, “but if you’re ready to talk, I’d be happy to put you out of your miss-sery.”.. He noted that he slurred his words slightly and that he might want to try to avoid spell casting until he could pronounce all the complicated words properly once more.

“W-what do you want me to say,” she gasped, “Please… I’m begging you…”

“All I want to know is what you did to Freya,” Simon repeated patiently. “You’ve had all afternoon, and you still haven’t said a word.”

“It was that bitch that bit me,” Brenna spat.

“Really?” Simon asked. “Then show me the bite mark.”

For a second, she froze like a deer in the headlights, and Simon was sure he’d caught her in a lie. Then she opened her mouth to speak but vomited blood instead before she could even reach for the bandage to show him the truth. After that, she fell to the ground and began to seize. Black veins crisscrossed her pale skin now, and her eyes had gone completely bloodshot.

“No one says I have to save you,” he whispered to himself.

This woman had killed him on one occasion and killed the woman he loved countless times. There was no way anyone in the world could fault him for letting them happen. After all, it wasn’t like he’d bitten her.

But if that was the case, why did he feel so bad about the whole thing? He should be overjoyed to see this bitch get what she deserved, but instead, he just felt like shit. He watched her convulse on the ground, knowing it was too late to cure her.

He rested his gauntleted hand on his mace, certain that he should put her out of her misery now and be done with it, but it wasn’t until the slime finally worked up the energy to begin sliding toward the dying woman that he finally sprang into action.

She’d gotten a taste of her own medicine, but he knew exactly how awful it felt to suffocate to death as the acidic body of the slime eroded your flesh, and combining that with the maddening hunger was a bridge too far for him to do to someone with a face and a name.

Using it to eat a city full of damned strangers was one thing, but letting it feast on Brenna right in front of him was too close to a snuff film for his tastes, so just before its first pseudopod reached her, Simon took two steps forward, pulled his mace off of his belt, and slammed it down hard enough of the girl that it shattered her skull and pulped the brain inside it in a single blow.

She’d only just started to rise, and one blow was all it took to cut her puppet strings and drop her back into the embrace of the other monster he’d unleashed on this town. He thought about looking at her bandage before it ate her but decided he wasn’t interested in her version anymore.

“Well, this was fun,” Simon said, pouring out his drink. “But I think it’s time I go look for survivors before you unthaw and go out on the prowl.”