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“Why would they bother to kill me?” he wondered aloud, but he had no answers. His mind started to race with secret conspiracies and secret, shadowy forces that were secretly opposed to his efforts, but all that faded away as soon as he stood and felt how much heavier he was than he’d been only a moment ago.

“Damn it,” he cursed softly. On the bright side, he didn’t feel old or tired anymore, but that was hardly a win since now he needed to drop fifty pounds of lard and gain thirty or forty pounds of muscle all over again. He considered that but pushed it aside. More important things needed to be done first.

“Mirror, is the ship level still accessible?” Simon demanded.

The mirror instantly sprang to life and asked, ‘Could you be more specific in your request? Many floors of the Pit contain ships.’

“Oh, for fuck\'s sake…” Simon sighed, counting the floors off on his fingers. “Level 23, the level I was just at. Is it still accessible?”

‘It is not,’ the mirror typed, ‘That level is currently completed and not required to be repeated.’

“Well, at least there’s that,” Simon smiled as he reached for the wine. “What about levels 24, 26, 27 and... You know what… just show me the list of levels that are currently accessible, please.”

The mirror complied, bringing up the same ever-shrinking list it always did.

‘Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt

Level 6 - Zombies in an inn

Level 10 - Fire elementals in Ionar

Level 13 - A demon in a church

Level 25 - Black swarmer on a farm

Level 28 - Poisoned Oasis

Level 29 - Cultists in a village

Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains’

Simon noticed that the rat level was gone, which meant that his attempt to burn them out worked. Something in that basement had been evil, and now it would no longer spread. He’d never managed to figure that out, but that was good enough for him. Even better, solving it didn’t appear to have opened up anything new. The centaur level also appeared to be gone, which was something he’d been hoping for but not something he’d been even remotely sure about, given how Schwarzenbruck kept coming up like a bad penny.

He took a long swing off the bottle before he put it back down and considered his next steps. He could try to fix Freya’s level again. He could skip it and finally see if all his hard work on the demon in the church had paid off, or he could move on and try to make progress.

“What I should probably do is take care of the damn fire elementals so I can take out the zombies, but…” As he spoke, his words trailed off as he remembered that giant magma monster. He wasn’t exactly feeling up to fighting that thing, either.

To do that, I’d have to make a forge and get some armor, then I’d have to engrave wards of fire protection, and… Simon shook his head. That wasn’t what he needed. What he needed was to figure out what was powering the frost sword and some of the other things he’d seen. Surely the only way to power magic items in this world wasn’t by using himself as a battery, was it?

“Well, it’s not like you’ve seen very many around, have you,” he quipped to himself.

It was a fair point. He had not. Why was that, though? Was that because they were hard to make, greatly coveted, or feared by simpletons that thought that all magic was evil. Honestly, I’m going to go with D, all of the above, he thought to himself.

Simon spent the next half hour going through things with the mirror to make sure everything he thought he’d saved was still there. Fortunately, it hadn’t forgotten any of his maps or notes about medicine or the words of power. It occurred to him that given that some of these insights occurred to him only when a given word was written in a different language or written in a different way that he saw them from another angle, he should probably try writing them down in saying them in every language that he knew.

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Such a task would be easier said than done, of course, since they were all hopelessly jumbled together, and he had nothing to write with. Still, the next time he went to a trade city, he resolved to try to listen carefully to the differences to see if there was some way he could undo this terrible tangle in his mind. Helades had given him a wonderful gift, but it was also a curse now that he needed a little fine control over it.

It didn’t matter; he scolded himself for getting too negative. He’d figure it out. It was just another long-term project.

Short-term projects were simpler. He could either take the most efficient move and go after the volcano, he could take the easy win and see if he really had figured out the devil’s summoning circle, or he could try getting to the dragon again and see what it was that awaited him there since he had almost no clue what actually happened in that level.

“Honestly, I don’t even need to kill the volcano or whatever,” he told himself as he relit the stone from the hot coals and started cooking up his sausages. “The doors lead from the market plaza to the palace, so the goal is somewhere around there. I probably just need to get the survivors to safety.”

Well, one particular survivor, he thought to himself, annoyed with how lightly Helades treated the average person in her world.

Simon spent that lunch trying to digest his meal and trying to digest the idea that he could just cheap out and do the level the easy way, but that didn’t go down as easy as the sausage. He wasn’t just going to sacrifice the city because Helades didn’t care about it. What he really needed, he decided, was to get there before the eruption somehow, and stop it.

Was that even possible? Simon had no idea. It really depended on what started it. If it was just some natural event, then he probably didn’t have a very good chance. However, if there was some evil cultist, he could stop… Well, that was something to think on.

Simon was in no hurry to get on the road that day. He let all these thoughts percolate in his head as he tried to decide what he wanted to do, and he went to bed early.

In the morning, he woke and was surprised to decide that his answer was none of the above. What he wanted to do more than anything was stop the volcano, but there were too many steps and too many unknowns between here and there, so he was going to take a break from all that and do something else. He was going to figure out where this cabin was on his map.

It was a small goal, but given how much of his little world he’d already charted, it was an important one. Helades tried to make it seem like going deeper in the Pit was all that mattered, but the longer he was here, the more he decided that understanding how all the pieces fit together was what was really important. He could probably never know everything, but with some effort, he could learn enough to see the big picture, and that would probably be enough.

After all, he decided as he got up and started packing just enough for a little wilderness exploration. That meant he brought all of his basic gear and his leathers, but he was only going to bring his sword, his knife, and his bow. As much as he loved his shield and appreciated having a mace and axe, just thinking about carrying that much without a proper pack was exhausting at this point.

Getting ready for this made him think about the last time he’d tried this particular trip. That, in turn, forced him to flush with shame as he recalled dying of exposure twice, trying to find his way out of there. It wasn’t even like the goblin level where he’d died in the blizzard. Here, he just… ran out of water and walked in circles until his flabby body succumbed to dehydration.

That wasn’t going to happen this time. He promised himself that as he started heading toward the highest point, he could see on the horizon. He wasn’t sure if he was actually going to try to summit the snow-capped peak. If he found a nice pass, or other signs of civilization, it would be a hell of a lot easier to go around.

Still, aside from him getting winded after less than a quarter mile of stomping through the brush, the day went well. Simon pushed hard on the first day to make sure he got as far as possible from the one goblin nest that he knew about. That was no guarantee that there weren’t others, of course. Goblins were like roaches, and they rarely traveled alone.

That night, he slept without a fire, and the next day, he finished off his bread. It was only when the woods started to thin out into scrubby foothills that he started looking for game to hunt for dinner that night. The last time he’d been here, the woods seemed to go on forever, but this time, keeping more or less in a straight line, he’d gone through them in perhaps fifteen miles. That raised other questions, of course. Who would build a cabin in the middle of nowhere? It was something he’d probably never know the answer to, but it was something he thought about as he tried and failed to find some measure of civilization.

That night, Simon almost went hungry, but toward sunset, he found a snake small enough that killing it was easy and big enough that it might have meat worth eating. He lopped its head off quickly enough. Gutting it was harder and messier, but eventually, he had it wrapped around a stick and roasting over a low flame.

It wasn’t the best food he’d ever eaten. It was tough and gamey, and he kept having to pick out little bones. That said, It was better than going hungry, and it was a reminder of how far he’d come. Old Simon would have rather starved than eaten this, but even a shitty meal would give him the strength to keep going, and he had a feeling that he would have a lot of walking to do before he finally got his answer about his current location in the world.