“Damn it!” Simon cursed as soon as he felt himself lying fortably ba his own lumpy bed once more. It was a cheap fug death, and he pounded his fist against the straw mattress in frustration. Just like that, less than a week into that run, it was over, and he was back where he started.

  He’d been prepared to fight more zombies or maybe a neancer. He’d been banking on some wist he could sink his teeth into, and with any luck, a tome with a feords of power, but a trap? Right now, he wao vent his frustrations otle of wine or even the mirror, but he forced himself to calm down and y there with his eyes closed. While everything was still fresh, he took in every st detail and tried to make sense of a trap that felt like it had been id especially for him, even though that should be impossible.

  “No one even knows I exist anymore besides Hedes,” he whispered to himself. “That’s half the problem of this damn pce.”

  Instead, he focused on the dead body and the magic at py. Obviously, his decision to kill the zombie in the coffin had triggered the whole thing, but was the result of the people who’d inally buried the man, or had that spell been cast by whoever id the trap? That was unknown and more than likely unknowable.

  When Simo back, he could always check the inscriptions he’d seen here and there oones, but those seemed more like prayers or little summaries about the dead of the men that had beeombed in the barrow than anything that was actually useful.

  Had the paper repced a real one? Is that what the author had meant? How could he have known that whoever found it would have a life? He sighed, slowly sitting up before he reached for the bottle.

  “Mirror - does anyone i know that I’m not a part of their world? Like - that I’m an outsider and doing this over and ain?” he asked, expeg another plicated version of I-don’t-know.

  Instead, he leasantly surprised to read, ‘Some supernatural entities that dwell withi have realized that there is something unnatural on their world, though they are rare.’

  “Iing,” he answered, leaning forward. “ you give me examples or tell me if…”

  ‘Apologies, I ot,’ the mirror replied.

  “Of course not,” Simon shook his head. “I thought you were going to be useful, but instead, you ght back to being annoying like this. What you tell me about those entities?”

  ‘I do not uand the question. Please crify.’ it typed out.

  That was almost enough for Simon to break the damn thing, but instead, he turned his attention baore productive things and started ying out the gear he pnned on taking with him.

  Did he hope that he’d cleared the zombie level so he wouldn’t have to go back again and could finally sider Freya id to rest, or did this new wrinkle make him hope it was still an option to go back to and explore? Simon wasn’t totally sure, but he leao the former and not the tter.

  On his way out, he thought about asking the mirror if he’d actually cleared but decided he’d rather be surprised. At this point, good surprises were rare i, but he needed something to take his mind off the monotonous task that rat and goblin sying was quickly being. Nothing on the upper levels was really hard anymore, ah looked forward to and feared the challehat iably awaited him whe deeper into the pit.

  Of course, as soon as he ehe basement and shut the door behind him, he remembered what it was he’d been fetting. He meant t the hatchet and try to force open the door above him. He could use magic of course, he realized, but he shrugged it off.

  “ime,” he said as he tinued deeper. He had more important things to do than look at someone else’s .

  He cleared those first few levels quickly this time, not b to search them for any lohan it took to grab a few potatoes for the road and a sack of gold and silver in case he got to a level where funds actually mattered. Nothing he’d done on the goblin level had ged anything, but after he killed the skeleton knight and took its sword, he discovered two surprises.

  The first was that the door no longer led to the familiar crater of the slime. It had vahe sed was that it didn’t lead straight to the iher. Instead, the Skeleton’s tomb led to the sewers directly now. He uood the switch, but he found it disorienting just how easily the e between levels could be reshuffled. Just seeing it like this gave him a strange sense of vertigo, like something was wrong, but he forced it down.

  This might well be the end of an era, and he felt a little saddehat he’d never see Freya again, but he’d already made the decision that he’d known that he’d never see his Freya again when he’d buried her in the graveyard. Finding some new copy just tain and again with struck him as sad.

  Wreng his mind away from that, he forced himself to turn to the question at hand. Would the pit really be this easy? Had it always been this easy? He had at least four levels beaten now. It might even be more than that. If he knocked out two per run going forward, that wouldn’t even be fifty more deaths. He might even be able to knock all of those out in a few weeks or months of hard work.

  While he stood there pting all of this, he opted to take both swords with him this time. The frost sword wouldn’t be useful in all cases, as he’d learned with the adventurers, and this time, he really wao hack the carrion crawler into pieces but didn’t see ice helping with that job. He could think of a level ing up he’d absolutely for, though.

  “I never have actually killed this thing, have I?” he asked himself as he strode into the sewer. Truthfully, he didn’t think that he did. That made him smile. If all it took to never have to walk in this disgusting sewer again, he’d gdly kill fifty of the little bastards. In fact, maybe that’s what he was supposed to do, he realized. Maybe the giant pile of bodies it retreated to each time he wou was a of some kind.

  It was with that thought in miered the foul pce with his tord his sword at the ready before he whispered, “Aufvarum Barom.” He wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from minht. But a gentle glow filled the surrounding tunnel. It wasn’t enough to let him see all the way to the far end.

  That was fine, even if it made hiding impossible, he thought with a nod. He sheathed his sword so that he could free his hands to pull out his short bow and kno arrow to the string. Now, he could experiment with how this spell was supposed to work and hopefully make sure he never had to e babsp;

  Simon found the creepy crawler a few mier. This time, it wasn’t perched on its favorite corpse. Instead, the soft blue light seemed to have alerted it, and it was waiting on the ceiling just past the first bend, waiting to surprise whatever came around the bend.

  Unfortunately for it, Simohat it was ing, and he released an arrow into its soft, fleshy body before it could react. Then, as it screeched in pain and tried to run away, he hit it again. Ohird shot, it lost its grip on the ceiling and spshed into the foul water.

  He waited there for almost five minutes for it to surface or strike him again, but other than a few weak motions that might have been its tentacles in the first few seds, it never reappeared. Once he was sure that there wasn’t a horror movie ambush just waiting to grab him as the monster suddenly returo life just long enough t him into the sewage, he tinued on to the mound of bodies jammed against the grate at the end of the T-jun.

  He’d pnned on burning the whole thing down but realized now that he was standihat it was a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Greater fire might still do the job, even though they were pletely sodden by the vile wastewater. Burning them would definitely fill the small tunnel with the most disgusting smoke he could imagine, and if he used too much, he might cause the pile of bodies to explode.

  Even after the pgue city and Schwarzenbruck, bodies still weren’t something he wao touch if he didn’t have to. So, instead, he decided he was going to flush them.

  “Oo,” he said seriously, visualizing ripping the heavy metal grating off the wall.

  Adding minor seemed like it would be too little, and Major always felt like overkill. Just pin force would be suffit, he decided. Strangely, though, nothing happened. He felt the magic course through him, and he heard the rusting bars creak uhe invisible strength his will imposed on it, but it wasn’t enough to actually do the job.

  “Huh…” he said in bafflement. “Who would have, thought.”

  Simon refocused and tried again, adding a bit more oomph to the spell. “Gervuul Oo,”

  This time, the metal gave with a terrible shriek as he ripped it into two pieces ahe debris flying in opposite dires, opening up the hole into a dark abyss that might well be the only waterfall i worse than the ohat had killed him on the goblin level. One mihe flow of sewage had dammed the water pletely, and the , with nothing to hold them bay further, they started toppling oer the other into the void, and the water level quickly retreated from the very edge of the ledge he’d been walking on to almost a foot lower, so it no longer felt like he was in stant danger of falling into el.

  For the briefest instant, he saw something glittering amongst the refuse, but before he could see any more than that, it was gooppling into the abyss.

  “Oh well,” he said with a shrug, “If it was important, it will be here ime, I guess because I sure as hell ain’t going in after it.”

  Holy, he hoped he was doh the pce forever, and it was only when he was climbing toward the dder that would take him to the surface that he wondered, “Wait, if these sewers are under a ruins, then why are the corpses so fresh?”

  The answer was obvious. The sewers and the jungle ruins above had no more to do with each other than the sewers and the front door of the inn had. He wondered why it had taken him so long to put that together, but si didn’t really matter, he set that aside and tinued on. He had some pnts to kill.