No one was happy about how the battle at the main gate ended, least of all Simon. Strangely, though, none of the survivors bmed him for what had happened. By this point, he was more than a little used to being the scapegoat whenever anythi bad, but this time, it was the adventurers who were forced to retreat with their tails between their legs. They’d e as heroes, but no one saw them that way. Least of all, Simon; he khat in other versions of this same event, they were the ohat had unleashed the zombies across the nd.

  They vowed to make him pay, of course, but down two men and an arm that was going to o be amputated, he didn’t see how that was going to happen. In spite of everything, he’d probably have been willing to heal that horribly frostbitten limb. He probably could have do with a greater word of healing, but magic wasn’t oable for a few days, thanks to his heroibsp;

  These days, uttering a few words of power was no big deal, but back-to-back uses of a greater word felt like they were giving him throat cer. That was only one of the reasons he hadn’t tried the other words that had been burned into his memory, though.

  He reflected on that while he healed for a few more days and watched the zombies dwio almost nothing. The other was uainty. There was still so much he didn’t know. He didn’t even fully uand how the sword he carried owered, and he could examihose runes whenever he wanted. He o learn more, and though there were a couple opportuo do exactly that on this level, he had not yet decided whie would be more beneficial once he made sure the zombies were finally purged.

  Then, word came that an army roag. Simon thought he remembered this too, or at least a version of it. He certainly remembered fighting an army some nights; his nightmares would never let him quite fet something about an army losing, along with a castle and a mage. He was hoping to track that guy down one day, holy. If there was some officially saned order he could learn from, that would be worth the mistakes of a dozen lives, but so far, he hadn’t found his Hogwarts yet.

  That wasn’t a mistake he was about to make this time, though. This time, he could already see the pieces fitting together. If the army was as big as the rumors and his memory said they were, then they’d almost certainly found the remaining adventurers he’d let flee with their lives. That meant that by now, their words had turned him into the devil himself, which meant that Simon o either prepare for a fight or make himself scarbsp;

  To him, it seemed straightforward, but the people he’d saved weren’t very pleased wheold them he was going to have to disappear for a while.”

  “You ’t just leave,” Marken had wailed. “We need you! You’re the only ohat battle the zombies and the slimes!”

  “I think the army hahe up at this point,” he said fidently. “And I’ll be ba a few weeks to make sure things turn out all right. So, if you need help, just keep ahead of them, and I’ll be back to save all of you a sed time if I have to.”

  While that was true, it was ial. He had to e back to take the gate to the level; he just hoped the assholes didn’t burn this pce down first. He wasn’t sure what would happen if that was gone.

  Simon could leave now, of course. He khat. There were just enough embers left in Schwarzenbruck that part of him was worried that the zombie bonfire could reignite, and the st thing he wao do was e back here and do all of this ain. With his luck, he’d run into Freya, or Zombie Freya, and have a plete meltdown.

  So, he was going to do what he’d been wanting to do for a long time: he was going to look for patient zero. A long time ago, Freya had told him of a Neancer somewhere to the north, and right now, that sounded like as good a pce to start as any. If there was a secret order of mages somewhere in this world, he was sure they’d persist in most or all the levels, but the evidence of what had created the zombies would really o in this one point in time if it still existed at all.

  It wouldn’t really ge anything, of course, but maybe it would give him some uanding into how all of this started, and with any luck at all, that might give him some insight into what was increasingly being the seost important question on his list. Why now?

  The first question was obvious. He thought of it every day, even if he could barely bring himself to put it into words. What happened with Freya? Did he hurt her? Was she faithful? Could I have done more? He khe ao the st one, of course, but the rest? Well, they didn’t bear much thinking about. He would hold them way down deep like the terrible secrets that they were, and whe to level 30, he’d ask Hedes to ahem and give him what he deserved, whether that was absolution or nation.

  Those were the thoughts that preoccupied him as he slowly made his way north to a part of this world he’d never been to. He’d never crossed the Bck Fork, but from what he’d heard, the nd up here gher and rougher until civilizatioered out entirely. At least until you got over the mountains, that is. The whole reason the bridge was there was for trade, but that had been a dying thing for a long time, and no one seemed to know why.

  Still, he hoped he’d be able to find someoo ask for dires, but the entire road seemed to be practically abandoned. He came across two farmsteads and, after three nights of camping rough, a small vilge. All of them were burned out, and in the vilge, at least, there were still some zombies.

  “Son of a bitch,” Simon cursed as he figured that out just before he pulled out his mad started braining the bastards.

  These zombies were old and slow and hreat to him, but where there was ohere were probably more. Does that mean they’ve spread north, too, or to the coast? That was the thing about zombies; in a movie, they were impossible to hem in, and some always got free to start the process all ain.

  “Heldes - if you wao actually stop these things, why not just portal me to the dude that made them before he raises the first one?” he shouted in frustration.

  She didn’t answer, but fortunately for him, at least, zombie tracks were remarkably easy to track. If they’d been fresh, anyone could have do, but as it was, he was able to follow the weeks-old marks with his meager hunting skills as he moved north along the road before setting out to the west.

  As he went, the scrubby pins and their patchy trees soon gave way to foothills that stood in the shadow of the giant, gcier-dotted mountains that loomed over his head to the north. They were simir to the Himayas, or at least the pictures he’d seen, and much taller than the mountains on the goblin or wyvern levels.

  Simon uttered a prayer of silent thanks when he saw he wasn’t going to have to hike up that monstrosity. Even if he had been in shape, it would have been miserable. As he was right now, it might well have beehal.

  Instead, the tracks broke west, heading toward the sea, which was still at least fifty miles away. He never got that far, though. Instead, he found a single zombie stu a rock crevice, and within a day, a very suspicious-looking barrow mound that had obviously been breached retly and the bsted ruin of the stone door y scattered about.

  “Now this is what I wanted, right here,” Simon said, appreciating that this was exactly the sort -style dungeon crawl he’d craved when all this started.

  In a way, that was a marker of how far he’d e. While he erfectly happy to explore this, he was hardly excited about it. Any number of nasty ambushes could await him down there. He stood there at the dark entrance, weighing the pros and s of going ih oing in with a light.

  “Ah fuck it,” he whispered, eventually deg that seeing where he was going trumped hiding when it came to undead sihey could probably see in the dark even if their master couldn’t. “Aufvarum Barom.” Lesser light.

  Immediately, his mace began to glow with a dim blue light not so different from a glowstick, and he began to desd into the mound. He had no idea what to expect. On the one hand, the hill this thing was built into was less than a hundred feet across, but oher, with his luck, it could be an infinite warren filled with the u dead.

  Fortunately, it turned out to be a little closer to the former thaer. The thing was still bigger thahought, but only because the custrophobically tight hallway sank into the earth as it wound its way to the ter. There were burial niches along the walls that were fortunately empty, though there were enough bone shards on the ground to make him feel pretty sure that not many of them had ever made it out of this pit.

  That, of course, raised a bigger question. If the uhat were here had been sin here, then how did the zombie outbreak start? There were no clear answers, but eventually, the room opened up inter burial chamber that he hoped would fix that.

  This pce was definitely a tomb. The giant stone sarcophagus stood open in the ter, and a steel sword pihe still squirming oct of the thing in pce. If it couldn’t escape, though, Simon was ined to ig for now as he studied the rest of the room.

  There were several burnt-out dles and signs that some sort of ritual had taken pce, but nothing crete. It was only after searg the pce for several mihat he noticed that the simple on the head of the zombie was made of paper.

  Simon reached for it and unfolded the thing to find a h tents that were as baffling as everything else so far. ‘Sorry, I o borrow this. Maybe we meet again in your life and discuss why.’

  It didn’t e right out and say it, but to him, it felt like the note was addressed specifically to him, or at least to the Pit’s hero, if not Simon himself. He only realized that it ended with a threat after he picked it up, but he didn’t care too much about that. Simon took the opportunity to crush the skull of the only danger in the room, but even as he did so, he realized he’d made a mistake.

  First, the runes on the coffin glowed for a moment, and then that spread to the walls in a faint ripple of old magic. He turo face the glow at the same time, he drew his sword, fearing an ambush from behind. None of that was enough, though, because he wasn’t attacked. Instead, the heavy stone ceiling above him just gave way.

  “Gervuul Oon—” he shouted, trying to bst himself free and open a skylight above him.

  There was no time, though. In the split sed, he’d taken to e up with a pn, he was crushed to death by hundreds of pounds of stones, and he died instantly.