Death After Death

“Mirror, show me my stats,” Simon said as soon as he got home and started to armor up. The mirror obliged quickly as always, and showed him what he knew to be basically a fake character sheet within seconds.

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 6

Deaths: 26

Experience Points: -7820

Skills:

Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Poor], Maces [Below Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].’

“Can you add the spells I know to that?” Simon asked, in between bites of cheese. “You know, for completeness?”

The mirror obliged, adding a section to the bottom it labeled words of power, which made him laugh.

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 6

Deaths: 26

Experience Points: -7820

Skills: Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Poor], Maces [Below Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].

Words of Power: Aufvarum Hjakk Gervuul Meiren ’

While he was a little disappointed that learning a second spell hadn’t increased his spell casting ability at all, Simon was pleased that his level to death rate was increasing. He couldn’t focus on either of those though, because now that he could read the language and understand the strange words they no longer sounded like mysterious magic words to him. Instead, they sounded like boring abilities from a JRPG with a bad English port. Large burning? Small healing? It was like they weren’t quite conjugated right or something.

Still, the information cheered him up. That meant that there were probably at least four other spells out there just waiting to be found. “If there’s a Large burning, then there has to be a medium and a small burning too, right?” Simon asked himself as he belted on his sword and started to pack everything else away. “Who knows. Maybe there’s even a huge burning or a …Mega Burning!” He said that last one with great theatrical flair, but the only thing that happened was a burst of laughter before he lit one of his torches and headed downstairs.

It was kind of ironic that this was finally starting to feel like the game it should have been, only after Helades had made it very clear it wasn’t. Simon didn’t care. It was a useful metaphor, and one that he was sure was giving him an edge over the countless losers that had come into the pit before him. Now he just needed to figure out how to cast them better, so they hopefully didn’t hurt quite so bad, and he could start breezing through this place.

As he effortlessly slew the bats and the rats, Simon couldn’t help but think about it more. It might not be a “game” like the goddess had said, but it was starting to feel exactly like what he would want to see in one. It had monsters that were easy to kill, a miniboss on level 4, actual spells that worked, and he’d even found his first NPC. Technically she’d killed him, of course, but that was only because she’d thought he was a zombie. It was an honest mistake. All he needed now were some magic items, and some exposition about why the pit existed and what terrible demon he had to fight at the end, and he’d be able to start wrecking shit.

Simon did slow it down a little this time, though. The last few times he’d gone through the goblin floor and the skeleton crypt, he had done it through brute force, as he tried to rush it. This time he focused on stealth and good clean kills. If he wanted to meet that blond babe that had murdered him, then he wanted to do it without being banged up too badly, and there were plenty of other parts of his character sheet he could be working on besides just swords.

Once again the only part of the dungeon that was any challenge at all at this point was the skeleton knight, and Simon managed to take him down in just over a minute, this time by dual wielding his sword and mace. He got the timing on his parries right, then smashed the bastard’s face in, a couple of times, and the knight quickly crumbled into dust where it belonged. After that, he took a short break, trying to visualize the spell he wanted to cast for what came next. There was definitely more than words to casting these spells. Somehow, intent and visualization seemed to matter as much as the way he said the words. For Simon that was a small problem, since despite the fact that he was obviously a very imaginative person, he wasn’t very good at picturing things like that in his mind’s eye. It was easy enough to recall the things he’d seen on TV or in video games, but even trying to picture those same ideas - things he should have known incredibly well, like pixels flared around his character when he cast the shield spell or launched a fireball in his favorite game, Descent into Darkness 2 were difficult to recall.

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Only his favorite waifu, Princess Anmelda was easy to recall, and even her details were a bit blurry, especially if you were talking about some of the outfits he didn’t have her wear very much. He sighed. It was honestly a little ridiculous. If he knew the words, then the magic should just work. He should just be able to cast [Fireball] and annihilate his opponent, because things would be a lot easier in the next level if he could just cast his large burning spell one time and still be able to talk some sense into that blond woman before she skewered him again.

Simon sighed and stood. Now that he was thinking about her, all hope he had of practicing his visualization of anything but her cleavage was completely gone. This time he wouldn’t give her the chance to stab him, of course, but he’d feel much better about the whole thing if he didn’t have to rough her up in the process. Now that he theoretically spoke whatever crazy language she’d been using before, he should be able to use his words to get what he wanted, as his mother had always told him growing up.

He slid the sword into the water the same as last time, and waited for a moment, and then he circled to the north side of the cave intent on trying to just bypass the slime without casting that terrible spell, but he almost lost a foot as the thing lashed out at him from the water, and quickly retreated. This time Simon got far enough back that he’d have a few seconds, and really focused on not just the slime catching fire, but the way that the flames came out of his hand in a nice tight beam, that looked less like the flaming lightning that the shaman had thrown around, and more like one of Iron Man’s repulsors. If he was going to have to imagine something, then he was at least going to stick to what he knew to boost his odds of success.

When he opened his eyes again, the slime was less than ten feet from him and closing fast. “Gervuul Meiren!” Simon shouted, throwing every ounce of anger and hate he had into it. The result was just as painful as it always was, but much more effective than the last couple of times he’d cast the spell. He felt reality twist very slightly around him, and then a veritable fountain of fire erupted from his hand. It wasn’t quite the tight beam he’d imagined, but it didn’t exactly spray everywhere either. The increased focus combined with the shorter range meant that most of the flames ended up exactly where they belonged: burning the giant booger monster that was trying to eat him to a crisp.

“That’s what you get!” he shouted before spitting, this time he was pleased to note there wasn’t any blood, and he only sounded vaguely hoarse rather than like the living dead. It was an improvement, but he hoped in time he could do better. Casting these spells wasn’t just painful, but there was an element of dread attached to them, and he didn’t like it. The whole system needed a redesign, honestly.

Simon took the time to refill his waterskin here, even though he didn’t need to, because the water that trickled down from the forest stream above was utterly delicious. Once that was done, he took out his mace and walked over to the well-worn tavern door and opened it.

This time as soon as he stepped in he whirled around looking for the zombie that had attacked him last time, but he didn’t see it anywhere in the room. Simon shrugged. He’d planned on caving the thing’s skull in, but one less thing to fight was fine by him. He walked over to the table and picked up a tankard of warm beer and looked around the room. That was when he noticed the body on the floor.

He had mixed emotions about how he should feel about the death of a near stranger that had been practically beheaded. On the one hand, he was sad that someone had killed such a beautiful woman. She should have been an Instagram model or a TikTok girl, not zombie bait. On the other hand, though, she had killed him last time, so he wasn’t exactly sad to see her dead. “Guess you shouldn’t have killed the hero of this story. Maybe then someone would have saved you,” he said quietly before raising a glass in the memory of the beautiful barmaid that would never have the chance to kill him again.

That was when he heard a crash and a scream from somewhere else in the tavern. Simon set the mug of warm beer down and with a mocking salute to the dead woman he readied his mace and opened the door to the next room. This was a common room in a bar. At least it used to be. Now it was a war zone.

Several bodies lay strewn about the floor, but only two people were actually moving. The first was a brunette woman holding a meat cleaver defensively as a zombie slowly advanced on her. The second was the decaying remnants of some kind of viking warrior. It was a seriously metal Halloween costume, but as an enemy it was a little lackluster. That zombie wasn’t the problem. The real problem was the place where they had broken through the boarded up windows. Simon could see dozens of the bastards milling around outside, and if they all started coming in here, that might be a real challenge. Simon advanced on the one that was about to take a bite of the girl. She wasn’t as pretty as her friend had been, but that didn’t mean he should let her die.

The zombie barely had time to turn and face him before he delivered a two-handed blow that caved in the side of its face, and sent it tumbling to the floor. Simon looked up at her, smiling, but her response was to stare vacantly at him and keep pointing the knife in his direction. He shrugged mentally as he turned to deal with the window. She probably wasn’t going to kill him. So, as long as he kept her safe for a few minutes, maybe he could actually find out what was going on around here for once.