The rats weren’t even the faihreat to Simon anymore. He stomped one, kicked two, and skewered three on his sword in a series of precise thrusts. Then he spent a minute looking for the seventh rat before he decided that only six had spawhis time.

  “I wonder why that is,” he said to himself as he flung the ugly colle of rodents from his bde and resheathed it, so he could look around, “more importantly, though - what the fuck is there to this room beyond the rats?”

  It was a fair question. If he’d defeated any level i, it was this one. He’d killed every creature in here dozens of times by now… but apparently, that wasn’t enough. The first few times he’d been through here, he’d poked around but hadn’t found anything but turnips and potatoes.

  This time, he tore the pce apart methodically, a shelf at a time, but he didn’t find much more than that either. For a while, Simon thought that there might be a and that the rats wouldn’t t as defeated until he killed it, too. After all, that’s what he’d done on the lizardman ir, wasn’t it? He’d smashed the s, and that ir was almost certainly pleted now.

  In the end, with the room in ruins, he gave up. He even tried digging a little bit, and in a final twist of fate, he closed the trap door and then tried to reopen it to see what might be on top of this level, wherever he really was now. He hadn’t been able to reopen it, though. Wherever that door led to now, something heavy was sitting on top of it.

  All in all, it had been a waste of time, but he had lear least ohing, aime, he might bring an axe down to hack through the door and see if he could find out something new. So, he pocketed a few potatoes he could roast on the road, and then he went down another level. He wasn’t quite sure which level he wao explore this time, but wherever it was, he would definitely o eat.

  Simon exercised the same thhness orap floor, making it a point to sy every bat and trigger every sirap he came across… once he found the exit, of course. There were a couple, like the spiked pit, that could make esg afterward difficult. On this floor, he found absolutely nothi all. He even dug to the bottom of the chest to make sure that there was magic item hidden in it, and then he emptied it and checked underh.

  There was nothing there, though. “Very fug funny, Hedes,” he cursed, ly sure what he was supposed to do with this floor, either. “How could anyone say I didn’t do a hundred pert clear of this pce?”

  It ossible that he might o take something from here and use it in another level, of course. He seemed to recall that Hedes might have mentiohat in one of their versations, but that was a really long time ago, and he wasn’t sure. If that were true, the situation would be hopeless though. Having to clear 99 levels was bad enough, but if he had to use them in bination with each other… well, he couldn’t do the math in his head, but that was a lot of binations.

  Whe to the goblin level, his torch was already low, but Simon didn’t care. He kept it burning until he found the first guard, and theinguished it ihing’s face like a cigarette butt before drawing his bow. He didn’t even try to muffle the awful screams the goblin made. He wahem to charge him.

  After that, he cleared the level like a medieval first-person shooter. Every shot was a headshot, and there were no surprises left to find. When he reached the mouth of the cavern, he saw the st two goblins running away, aook them out with two well-aimed shots in the back food measure.

  Ohat was done, he recovered the arrows he could, though he decided that there was no way he was walking all the way down the slope to where the st two goblins were just for two lousy arrows because it would mean walking back up again. Ultimately, he decided that even if the thing he o do to beat this level was somewhere down there, he was going to skip it this trip because he wao go deeper.

  “There’s literally aire world down there,” he grumbled. “The gates should be somewhat close to the thing I’m supposed to dht?”

  That would have been the logical thing, but he wasn’t so sure that logic always applied to The Pit, or to Hedes for that matter. Still, if he was going to be thh about this, he couldn’t just skip this level. So, he explored the area around the outside of the cave to get some fresh air in the hopes he would find a sed gobli nearby. That was not the case, so ohat was done and Simon had rested, he went ba, and using part of the goblin bonfire as a orch, he went baside, looking for something he might have missed.

  He found nothing, though. The only things in the cave besides the filthy goblin warrehe river, which went down to nowhere, and the tomb entrance. Simon was definitively not going back down that nightmare waterfall, so after a couple hours of searg and a quick lunch break, he desded into the tomb.

  Here, he was tempted to use his magical force word to shatter the skeletons proactively, but something about the idea of spending a week of his life doing what he could do just as easily with his mace made him feel dirty. He wasn’t going to stop using magic, of course, but as he shattered the first skeleton and moved toward the sed and third before they could rise, he promised himself he would only do it when he o.

  In the end, the skeletons of the tomb were even less of a challehan he remembered them being, and he made a point to disarm the knight, sending its bde flying before he beheaded his old nemesis. Ohat was done, he had a look at the skeleton knight’s armor rather than the bde. After all - no one had made a sword that nice for the dead. This man had wielded it in life and been buried with it.

  As Simon suspected, the gauhemselves had runes of prote, and the scabbard had boundary nullification ruo turn it off to dispel the effect when it wasn’t ihat didn’t surprise him, though he did wonder if he’d caused some kind of cold effect like the temple he’d visited on all the worlds that he hadn’t resheathed the sword.

  “Hedes said that items drain a lot of life force, so who knows,” he told himself as he pried free one of the gaus and then put it on to put the sword away.

  Maybe that was all he had to do for this level. Maybe it hadn’t ted before because he hadn’t put this thing away. It was only when Simon was about to put it ba the tomb that he realized he was being a moron. He didn’t have to put it back. He had to take it with him.

  Not even because that robably the victory ditioher, but because he wao wield a badass frost bde! He ughed at how hyperfocused he’d been about what he was missing and that he’d almost fotten how much he actually wahis thing.

  He smiled as he belted it on, leaving his normal sword behind in its pce. It was a little heavier and a few inches lohan what he was used to, but it felt good there. Since he’d first e into The Pit, Simon had wanted a magic on, and now he had one. More importantly, this was something he could study when he had the time to uand a bit more about magid magic items.

  It was with that fidend a smile on his face that he walked into the level to face the slime. Here, he was certain there could be any number of things to do with this level si en to the sky. He’d ried to climb the walls of this sinkhole before because they’d looked awful crumbly, but for a few months of his life, he imagined he could jump up there pretty easily.

  He wasn’t going to, though, not today. Today, he’d thought of a new synergy he was going to explore that he’d never sidered before. He turned his attention to the stream that stood between him and the door and tried to decide where the slime was hiding.

  He probed the water several times with the sword, leaving a little yer of ice before he found it. The clear ooze reared up to strike at him, but Simon jumped back clumsily, almost nding on his ass. Cursing the body he was stuck with, he retreated before his enemy as he circled around it and maneuvered to the door.

  It was only when he was right in front of it that he put his pn into motion. “Oo Uuvellum!” he shouted. Force barrier. Idly, he wondered if using two words was two months or if it was still just one, but he didn’t let that stop him from imagining the ft wall of invisible force that would spring ience for a moment to stop the thing from eating his fabsp;

  As it ftteself out against the invisible wall, he stabbed it in the ter of its mass, f it to keep that shape to some extent as it began to freeze solid over the few seds. Its periphery still writhed and reached for him, but with its ter frozen, its movements were sluggish and iive. Soon, it was nothing but an ice cube that was round on bottom and ft on top, and that was just about what Simon wanted.

  He tried to push it but found it didn’t slide as well on the rough stone as he’d hoped.

  “Modern problems require modern solutions,” he said with a ugh, using his water skin to create a path in front of the slime, which quickly froze. He repeated this several times until he had a wide, slick track of iove the slime on. Then he pushed forward the frozen block of slime like it was that curling game that people pyed in the Olympibsp;

  Whe to the door, he didn’t eveo turn the handle. He’d gotten enough momentum that he just forced the door open ahe fifty or sixty pounds of ice cttering across the room, where it knocked over the table.

  Simon was winded by the effort but not so distracted tet that there was almost always a zombie to his right as he entered. Even as he stepped inside, he pulled his sword free, and this time, the thing didn’t even have time to charge him before he’d quickly beheaded it.

  He was admiring his own handiwork when the door flew open. His knuckles went white on the hilt of his sword as he heard it. He knew what that meant even before he turned around.

  She opened her mouth and poihe pitchfork at him, but before she could say a word, he yelled, “Back the fuck off,” holding his sword at the ready.

  She made to jab him with her pitchfork, but he sliced the end off effortlessly, leaving her with nothing but a pole that was a foot shorter than it had been. She looked at it and at the fog of densation that was ing off his sword a bit more seriously now and stepped babsp;

  As she did, he advanced. She tossed down her now worthless on and raised her hands in a gesture of surrehat wasn’t enough to stop him fring the tip of his sword close enough to her hat he was sure she could feel the uhly cold radiating off of it.