Simon y there for several minutes, just staring at the ceiling as he thought about the battle he’d just fought and the things he might have done differently. It was a battle he almost certainly o fad ohat he doubted he could have won without some serious preparation, but it had still been cool, in a way.

  Not the burning alive part, he thought wryly.

  The rest, though, even though he’d been deep fried in molten va, it had been kinda cool. Running just above flowing magma and sying elementals. It robably the most ematic thing he’d done so far i, and if anything, the lesson was that he still wasn’t thinking big enough. He’d spent what? Two years of his life on that run? Three? It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d spent ten, because he’d reset himself again anyway. He o get used to using more magic each run. He’d get a lot farther, he o.

  “Hey, mirror, ime I decide that I’m going to go to level 10 to fight a freaking volo, remihat it’s not a good idea,” he said, not b to look away from the rafters.

  “Actually,” he said, sitting up, “Show me my experience points.”

  ‘Experience Points: -993,361,’ the mirror typed.

  Benjamin tried to do the math on that. He retty sure he’d died twice sihe st time he’d looked, and that time, he was still at basically ive one million.

  “Well, I’m still basically at ive one million now,” he ughed. “Hmmm…”

  Two deaths, maybe three levels cleared, and no particurly good or bad memories. He had killed some pretty big monsters, though - maybe that ated for the shift. Still, even at this pace, it would take… three huhousand more deaths before he got back to zero?

  “There has to be a way to speed that up,” he said to himself. “Maybe if I meet whoever wrote that fug hey expin it to me.”

  He had no i in speeding things up right now, though. Instead, he went outside, picked up his fishing pole, ao the stream to do some thinking about everything he’d just gohrough.

  Especially after an ugly death, the st thing he wanted was to ght bad do it again. He o slow down and refle everything that was happening to him.

  By noon, Simon had caught and gutted two trout, but he still hadn’t e any closer to log his thoughts into pce. What was he supposed to do on levels eight and ten? One was ruins, and one was about to be, so what was the point? How would either of those make the world a better pbsp;

  The only thing he’d really lear trip, besides the fact that fire elementals definitely existed, was that the levels seemed to span a longer se of time thahought. If this was a game or a movie, then all of these bad things would be happening more or less simultaneously. The whole idea would be to stomp out every ember of evil before it could ignite some hreat, but this seemed more plicated. It was like a Rube-Goldberg Device that seemed almost random.

  This outbreak of zombies o be stopped, and this wyvern o be killed, but this pgue was okay to happen, and this town could totally burn to the ground. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to it.

  Worst of all was Gregor. In the grand scheme of things, he almost certainly didn’t matter, at least as far as the pit was ed. He and his family were just random NPCs that he probably shouldn’t have ever met. He had, though, and he’d grown attached to them, and it was a shame to see the bitter, broken old man that the fierce, kied boy had bee.

  Simon could bme himself, of course. He probably would no matter what, even though he k wasn’t his fault. As he fried his fish in ba grease over low heat, he couldn’t help but obsess about it though.

  The Gregor he’d known once upon a time would have still turned out okay, even without an arm. It was his missing father that had likely caused everything else to happen. He sighed and flipped his fish as he remembered the desperate battle that had caused him to get stabbed in the babsp;

  “So what’s the right ahen?” Simon asked himself. “Do I go bad stop the war?”

  Holy, it wasn’t the worst idea. Killing all of the goblins hadn’t solved that particur level, and the portal was an awful long way from the capital, but it wasn’t inceivable that was what he was supposed to do. After all, a war of succession would cost tless lives, but how the hell was he supposed to stop a war?

  He thought about that long and hard as he ate. Teically, this whole thing robably an eborate side quest, but some part of him wouldn’t accept that he o ght to 30 until he’d done something to save Gregor.

  In the end, he slept on it, but that didn’t ge his answer when he woke up in the m. He was going to py peacemaker. He just wasn’t sure exactly how.

  Simon geared up as usual and didn’t let those thoughts distract him as he killed rats, bats, and goblins. It was only when he reached the mouth of the snowy cave and looked out at the wintry valleys below that he made his decision. He was going to go to the capital and kill the King’s brother.

  “If there’s no brother, then there’s no oo dispute the line of succession, and if there’s no dispute about that, then there’s no war, right?” he told himself as he walked down the mountain.

  It made seo him, and that was all that mattered. Simon took it easy on the way down, aopped early the day the snowstorm always struck, using the time to build himself a small shelter of pine branches in the lee of a boulder. It was still cold, but with a good fire and a couple baked potatoes, it was hardly miserable, and he made it down the mountain without issue.

  When he reached the road to Wellingbrooke, he found the familiar bandits just where he’d left them, and he flipped Luken a silver as soon as the man opened his mouth to begin his familiar speech. Simon didn’t dohe highway robbery exactly, but he was tired of killing this group over and ain.

  “Such a generous traveler,” Luken Smiled, “Maybe you’d pay extra for some prote; after all, it’s a—”

  “A man that travels alone is the sort you and your friends should worry about the most,” Simon said, not even b to slow down as he walked by the cocky highwayman. “Do yourself a favor. Take the , keep the ge, and live to fight another day.”

  For a moment, he thought that the bandit was going to give the signal, and they were going to have to do this dance all ain. He didn’t, though. For whatever reason, the man just stood there a him pass, and none of his hidden friends struck either. It was good. It retty much the best oute for everyone; he was down a silver he didn’t really need, and they weren’t aain on his already bloody hands.

  In Wellingbrooke he stayed at his least favorite inn, but when he paid for his room he fixed the woman behind the ter with a stern gaze and said, “I know what you see, and I want no trouble. You uand? I’ll be gone in the m.”

  She scowled and short-ged him but otherwise said nothing. The food was det, but he resisted the urge to have a few beers, knowing how that had turned out in the past. In the evening, he still embedded his dagger deep into the door frame to lock the door the best he could, but no oried to sneak in and murder him. It was a nice ge of pace, and he made a mental o do that again if he ever came this way so that ime he could get a little drunk and py dice with the other men downstairs.

  Today wasn’t the day for drinking, though. It was time for more traveling. Simon paid the ferryman to cross the river, enduring twenty minutes of his prattle before he reached the far side and began heading due east toward Liepzen.

  He’d sidered getting a horse, but he wasn’t in that much of a hurry, and he definitely o lose some weight. So, he walked all the way to the capital of the region. Building his map of the way the world was id out in his mind as he went. He stayed in one more inn and shared the fire of two merts headi. In both pces, Simon entered meraries eager to swear allegiao the King’s brother, Duke of the northern nds of the Kingdom of Brin.

  Simon said he po do the same, but only to make friends. In truth, he had no idea how he’d aplish what he o do. Deg to kill the man was ohing, but aplishing it was quite another. So, he ughed and joked and tried not to get too drunk at eater as he learned pieces of the truth.

  Apparently. the King’s son was weak and young, and as the aging man got sicker and sicker, war betweewo ts appeared all but certain. Simon already knew all that. Actually, he knew more than everyone else; he khat the King would die within weeks and war would begin shortly thereafter, reag the sleepy town of Sny a few months from now. That was a certainty unless he stopped it. What he didn’t know until now was that the Duke was a hard but well-respected man who would surely bee King in the absence of the 12-year-old heir and his scheming advisors.

  That was almost enough to make Simon ge tactid go after the boy instead, but murdering a twelve-year-old simply wasn’t going to happen, and he was sure that there would be less chaos if the legitimate heir took the throne.

  So, when he walked into Liepzen, he was a man on a mission, and the beautiful gothic architecture of the capital city aside, he quickly made his home at the inn closest to the cathedral that was frequented by the royal family. This wasn’t because he had the gold to pay food food and a inn, though. It was because here he could see the path of the ts as they strolled by several times a week with their ente as they prayed for the health of the king from his third-story window.

  It was in the sed week he was staying there, after looking at the proud warrior and the young prihat he finally pulled the trigger, so to speak. He’d been putting it off for days even after he formuted his pn, but ohe skies clouded over and he saw the approag carriage, Simohat he was out of time.

  “Dnarth Vrazig,” he whispered from his window as the man made a spee the steps of the church. Distant lightning.

  It was a hundred yards away, and Simon hadn’t beeirely certain it was going to work, but then a single bolt of lightning arced down from the stormy sky above, striking him and the guard closest to him.

  Simon wi that. The st thing he wao do was get anyone else hurt, but he doubted very much that either of them would survive.

  A few mier, he roven right. her of the men would ever rise again. Simon mourhe dead a bad about what he’d done, but weighed against the bodies of the thousands of people who would have died if this hadn’t happened, he wasn’t really sure what to say.

  At least he got the effect that he wanted. By the time dinner came around, the small inn acked with people gossiping about Duke Brin, who was struck down by the gods for hubris and daring to upset the order of things by seeking to repce the true heir.

  Simon smiled at that. It was a nice, expnation that a simple medieval mind could believe, freeing him up to go pay Baron Corwin and his son another visit.