NOVPUBSimon spent the rest of the day contemplating Helades words, but in the end, he decided that he couldn’t wipe the slate clean, at least not intentionally. Asking him to make a decision that would erase so many things he’d already done was hard enough. Asking him to start over completely was too much.
He knew exactly how he’d stop Freya from becoming a vampire, of course. He could probably even conscience going to the tomb and destroying the Blackheart when he was done. He should have done that a long time ago.
If I had just learned how to make rune blades on my own, I wouldn’t have been so stuck on the skeleton’s knight’s sword for so long, he reminded himself. And if I hadn’t been sure I needed the blade to defeat whatever was causing the volcano to erupt, then I wouldn’t have to erase decades of history in Ionar.
He sighed at that, as much because he seemed to be the cause of Ionia’s troubles as because of what his fixation would cost him. Some of his best years would almost certainly be undone when he was finished, but there was nothing he could do about it.
“I just have to keep improving the painting,” he said, reminding himself of Helades words.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized he’d been doing all of this wrong. Trying to move ever quicker into the future was like building a tower that grew ever more unstable with each level. He hadn’t known better before, but he should have. Once, he’d had access to more gold than he could use, and now he had to use magic to melt down scraps just to scratch together some starting funds.
It was just one more avoidable mistake, though, and he wouldn’t obsess over it. He would learn from it. Next time, he’d find someplace to keep such valuable objects so he’d have resources to fall back on from life to life.
He’d have to, too, if she wasn’t willing to give him any more information on what he was supposed to do. While he felt confident he could solve most levels in a single try now, it was probably naive of him to think that any of them could be solved the way she wanted in half a dozen attempts.
“If she wanted me to be that specific, she should have left better instructions,” he complained with a sigh.
He could only intuit so much if she wasn’t willing to give him more details, but the sheer nature of each level said a lot. Each one had an entrance, an exit, and a fairly obvious problem. Her position was that he was going too far past that problem to solve other things, and that those additional actions had undesirable consequences.
Simon could see that, but he didn’t really see another way to handle it. Was he just supposed to let all those other people die? Wouldn’t all heroes try to do exactly what he’d done? If he interpreted her words and deeds as strictly as possible, then didn’t that mean on level four, he was only supposed to kill the zombies between the entrance and the exit? That seemed unlikely.
“Haven’t I already tried that before, though?” he wondered aloud.
Simon couldn’t remember. He was pretty sure he had. Even in situations where the goal was neatly between points a and b, though, it was hardly clear. The skeleton knight was proof enough of that. Killing it seemed to be the whole point for a long time, and then, suddenly, he’d found the dark heart hiding beneath its breastplate the whole time.
He made himself a simple dinner and spent a little bit of time thinking about each level and how his interactions with them would ripple out from them depending on what he did. He even brought up the full-level list and tried to recall how each one had affected the levels around it. In the past, he would have disagreed ardently with the Goddess’s advice, but seeing the monster Freya had become made it easy for him to believe he’d done a few things wrong here and there.
When all of that was said and done, he only had one more question. “What am I going to do once all that’s done?”
The question was simple, but any answer he could think of was hopelessly complex. If he really wanted to understand the effects his actions had or didn’t have, then the right move was probably to find somewhere out of the way and have a nice quiet life before he speed-ran the levels he had a clean solution for and re-solved them. He wasn’t too concerned about that. At this point, most of the levels he’d struggled with for so long were child’s play. The real dilemma was not how to solve future levels but how to spend his future lives.
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Simon fell asleep contemplating all of this and set off immediately the following morning after first light when it was still cool enough that a thin coating of frost still clung to the grass, and he left dark footprints in his wake. His dreams had been dark, dismal things that shed no light on where he’d go once he accomplished his current mission, but he still had lots of time to decide that.
“Perhaps this is the life I become a baker and learn to make that pizza,” he told himself as he set off toward the mountain that marked the way north. Simon had packed well enough that his bags were heavy, but he wasn’t concerned. Rest breaks were free, and he needed the workout.
The trip north to Schwarzenbruck took almost three weeks. Along the way, Simon enchanted his dagger with the runes of lesser transfer to deal with the rising carving for life essence that got a little stronger every day, and he added runes of force to his sword to give him a vorpal blade that would give him the edge he’d grown used to in any fight.
Those weapons might attract the wrong sort of attention, but then, his negative experience was likely to do just the same thing. He couldn’t shed the fog of gray-black smoke that was his aura, but he’d read enough accounts and met enough people that could, that he was sure it was there. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to enjoy his brief time in the positives before Freya ruined that for him.
Simon didn’t attract any crazies or religious zealots along his way north. The worst that he faced was a group of bandits who attacked him after he had no coins to give them, two nighttime goblin raids, and half a dozen blisters. None of that troubled him too much. While it was not as pleasant to be a mortal once more as he remembered it, there was no way he was ever becoming a vampire again.
Instead, he tried to take each hardship for what it was and stay positive. The nights his hunts didn’t go so well, leaving him with little to eat? Well, that was just the world trying to help him with his weight loss plan. The bandits that wouldn’t see reason and leave a poor man in peace? They refilled his own empty coin pouch, whether they wanted to or not. And the goblins? Well, they were still little bastards, but when one of them bit him in the arm when he’d over-extended himself, they were a clear sign that he’d lost his edge and had some work to do.
Really, stranger than the food, or even the sunlight was the use of weapons again. In his last life he’d become almost an animal, and part of him missed tearing his enemies apart with raw, impossible strength. It disgusted him on some level, but then, his weakness now disgusted him too, which meant that he was just going to have to get strong in other ways all over again.
Though the way north was long and hard, most nights, Simon was just happy he didn’t have to find a coffin or a cave to sleep in every night. Even a night beneath a tree in the rain was infinitely better than a day spent in a freshly cleared goblin den, so it was easy to count his blessings, however small.
Some villages had bounties on goblins, so he saved the ears to pay for warm meals and soft beds as he hoarded his few coppers and silvers. Eventually, he found his way to Schwarzenbruck and its great black bridge. That wasn’t his goal, of course, but it was his sign that he was almost there.
Simon only realized as he entered the gates that he’d never been to the place before the zombie plague. He’d been here after it had never happened, but even so, it somehow looked different like this, and he lingered there for the first time in a long time. He even stayed at the inn that was so familiar to him for the night. Freya didn’t work there, but then she was probably about twelve now and a little too young for such places.
The barkeep was the same, though, and Brenna worked there. She was younger and prettier than he remembered her. She didn’t even seem like the complete bitch she’d become in a few years. In fact, as she served Simon his stew, he was surprised to find that he didn’t even hold a sliver of the grudge he once had toward the woman who had once turned him into a zombie.
Is that because the world hasn’t yet turned her into an awful bitch, so it’s not this Brenna’s fault, or is that because being a vampire was worse in so many ways? He wondered as he ate his meal. It was a philosophical question that needed no answer, but he spent most of the night pondering it before he set off north toward the barrow mounds in the morning.
That cursed place was still three full days at a good pace, but he took four because a day of rain slowed him down, and he took shelter in the shade of a large stone plinth rather than get needlessly soaked. Simon had never journeyed through this part of the world while it still lived and breathed, so he was surprised to find that every small farm and hamlet he came across still had people in it.
The smith he’d used to create his plate mail a few lives ago was even hard at work when Simon walked through his town. That was a moment of real vertigo for him, and for a second, all he could think about was the day he’d seen Freya come down that road with a bite on her arm and the survivors of Kel’s folly in tow.
That will never happen now, though, he told himself, not after this. Any number of other disasters might befall these people, of course. Eventually, armies would march through this spot, and he didn’t imagine that fate would be kind to them, but that was a problem that was decades away. All he could do right now was take zombies off the table.
