Chương 236: An End to Suffering

Ch. 236 - An End to Suffering Even as Simon slipped away into the darkness and the burning wound in his heart slowly extinguished, he worried that something terrible would happen to him. What if the demons find a way to steal my soul? He wondered. That was his last conscious thought before the darkness took him. When he woke up in his own bed, he felt like that dark moment of oblivion between lives had taken longer than usual, and as he studied the knots on the wooden beams over his head, he worried about that.

Was it just in my head, or was it like those deaths with the skeleton knight? He asked himself. Simon wasn't sure, but rather than worry about it, he sat up. There was something more important he needed to test. He reached for the sour red wine he'd long since grown used to and took a sip. This wasn't to get drunk, though he suspected he could if he wanted to. It was to remind himself of what sustenance tasted like when it was something other than blood.

While it wasn't like ambrosia or anything, he was pleased to find that neither his body nor his corrupted palette was repulsed by it. He tried a bit of bread next, with slightly better results.

"Thank fucking god," he said to himself as he appreciated that moment. He didn't linger. Instead, he stood to test the sun next. That caused more hesitation than Simon would have liked. He opened the door, but he paused at the threshold, and he had to practically force himself to step outside into the light.

"Six or seven decades without the sun," he said to himself as he stood there, feeling that unfamiliar warmth on his skin. While the taste of food had underwhelmed him after so long, this was more intense than he'd expected. He'd spent the best part of a century being afraid of the sunlight. Now it felt almost taboo to be standing here like this, but it thrilled him so much that he didn't even mind that, at least for the moment, he was doing it as a fat piece of shit. He stood there for several minutes.

Then he walked to the stream for a drink of cold, clear water, and appreciated the fact that he had a reflection once more. It was only when he started to sweat that he finally went back inside, mumbling the words of lesser flesh shaping that would allow him to shed two dozen pounds over the next ten minutes. He'd evaluate again after that. For now, now that he'd made sure he was really living once more, there were things he needed to do and record while they were still fresh.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most useless of them all?" he asked as he walked back into his cabin.

'I do not know,' the mirror responded dryly.

"You!" Simon said.

"Tell me, do you even know where I've been the last few decades?"

'I was unable to locate you,' the mirror wrote.

'Though I did attempt to find you on many occasions when I heard your voice.'

"Well, it's nice to be wanted, at least," Simon said, letting go of the issue. He'd called out to the mirror in an attempt to activate it lots of times, but it wasn't the mirror's fault he didn't have a reflection when he did it.

"For now, why don't you make it up to me by helping me take some notes."

'I will document whatever you require,' the mirror agreed. Simon spent the rest of the day and part of the following morning telling it what he'd done and making notes about his theories related to hell and the widening Murani war. Once, after dinner, he used another word of flesh shaping to make more of his excess fat melt away, but he remembered his experiments with harvesting the goblin's strength in his last life and felt no need to rush things.

He was fairly certain that that experiment, combined with the half healed injures he'd had when he'd been turned and his questionable diet, was what had made him so freakish in his last life. It was a good theory, but he'd never know for sure. Finding out would require ghastly experiments that he wasn't willing to conduct to confirm. Throughout this effort, there were a dozen times he was tempted to take a break and ask the mirror to show him his progress, but he resisted.

It was only when he couldn't think of anything else to add, and he'd reread all of his notes on summoning circles that he finally said, "Alright, mirror, show me my character sheet." The mirror complied instantly, and all the familiar words reappeared once more.

'Name: Simon Jackoby Level: 33 Deaths: 44 Experience Points: -312, 664 Skills: Agriculture [Poor], Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Below Average], Armor (heavy) [Poor], Armor (medium) [Below Average], Art [Above Average], Athletics [Below Average], Baking [Poor], Cooking [Poor], Craft [Excellent], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Below Average], Healing [Above Average], History [Above Average], investigate [Excellent], Maces [Average], Navigation [Above Average], Research [Excellent], Ride [Below Average], Search [Above Average], Sneak [Above Average], Spears [Below Average], Spell Casting [Excellent], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Average] Transformation [Average] Warfare [Above Average].

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Words of Power: Aufvarum (disperse, minor), Barom (illusion, light), Celdura (plan, shape), Delzam (cure, order), Dnarth (connection, distant, hidden), Gelthic (ice, death, weakness), Gervuul (greater, power), Hyakk (flesh, healing), Karesh (location, protection, understanding), Meiren (creation, fire, life), Oonbetit (focused, force, motion), Uuvellum (anti-, null, boundary), Vosden (earth, growth, metal, strength), Vrazig (lightning, ruin, quickening, wind), Zyvon (transfer, plants, water)' There wasn't anything unexpected there, not really.

If anything, he'd expected to have more negative experience points than he had. He was at negative 100, 000 after a year or so as a zombie and negative a million after a century as a statue. He would have thought that decades bricked into a wall would have earned him nearly as much, but that didn't seem to be the case.

"Maybe I'm just getting better at coping," he said dismissively as he reviewed the details. Or maybe I enjoyed all of the killing more than I want to admit, his brain whispered darkly to him. His skills had adjusted quite a bit, and he could see that he was getting pretty bad at baking and cooking, which was about right considering how little contact we'd had with food in the last century or so of experience.

"Alright, then," he said after another minute or two of looking.

"Show me the levels that are currently accessible." The mirror complied even before he was finished speaking, bringing up a very short list.

'Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt Level 34 -???'

"That's it?" Simon asked. The mirror didn't respond to that. Even though he'd never found the way out of level 33, and he'd somehow brought a Vampiress into it, it counted as solved now. That was, meant that there was only one level between here and unexplored territory. That felt pretty good. He should have been gearing up to explore it right now. Still, he hesitated. There was one other question that he wanted to ask.

"Helades, it's been a while, and I know I haven't gotten to level 40 or anything yet, but would it be possible to have a moment of your time?" he asked, addressing the mirror. There was a short delay, as he presumed the thing had to call her up somehow, then the light drained from the glass, and the glass fell away to find her in the same dark throne room he'd encountered her in so long ago. Back then, he'd been kind of a jerk, and she'd given him help appropriate to being a jerk.

This time, he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for, but after reviewing his decades-long journey as a monster, he felt a little lost, and he needed to recenter himself. Like it or not, she really is the center of the universe, he reminded himself as he respectfully approached the throne. She was a capricious entity.

She seemed so warm when he'd first killed himself so many deaths ago, and she could be quite understanding when she met him on every tenth floor as she'd promised to do, but both other times he'd tried to contact her like this, she seemed much less approachable.

"Mr. Jackoby, it's been an age," the goddess said almost warmly.

"What is it I can do for you?"

"Helades," he said with a slight bow.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me. I know you can't answer any questions for me—""I cannot," she agreed, "But I can ask you one. What is it you think you're accomplishing here? You've come so far, but for what purpose?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I'm solving levels and saving people as I descend further into the pit."

"And for a time, you were doing it marvelously," she agreed with a tight smile, "I mean it. You did better than I ever thought someone like you would. But now you've gone a bit off track."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I just beat level 33. I'm like a third of the way done."

"Oh, how I wish that were true," she answered.

"You're so far off track that the world looks nothing like it should at this point. Your obsession with that woman created a whole dynasty of vampires, you know. I doubt anyone could save that particular version of events now."

"I'm doing the best I can," Simon replied, feeling the anger beginning to build inside of him. He was past blaming this Goddess for everything, but it was clear she saw him as nothing more than a pawn and a defective one at that.

"As for Freya, all I did was try to keep her from becoming a zombie."

"No, you're changing the future, everywhere, and in all things, and that's not the point." she sighed.

"The Pit is a tightly prescribed set of circumstances that allow one man the opportunity to act at many different points in time to usher in a Golden Age. I've told you all this."

"You didn't say I'd be running into evil versions of myself from the future," he said, trying not to sound too exasperated. He still remembered well the time she had shredded him with mirror shards for his insolence and had no wish to repeat the experience.

"Is that what you think happened?" she asked with a widening smile.

"Simon, time travel is difficult, and as far as you should be concerned, it goes in only one direction. Recursive loops are far more than you can handle. They're almost more than I can handle. Don't worry about distractions. Worry about the Pit, Simon."

"Well, you said I've already blown it," Simon shrugged, "But even if I reset all of those levels and do them all again, there's no rhyme or reason to what I'm supposed to do when I get there."

"A hero shouldn't need anyone to hold their hand," she said in a tone that implied her patience was wearing thin.

"I agree," Simon said, "But the hero that should be there in that moment would have a lot more information than I do. They would know who people are and what things are going on."

"That's a fair point," she conceded, surprising him.

"But there is a fine line between a Goddess interceding in cases like this and simply solving the problem. I'm afraid the latter is not an option in this case. Some things may happen by the hands of mortals or not at all." Simon nodded at that.

"I've spent the last lifetime as a monster, and I'm just not sure what to do now. I know that I need to return to the barrow mounds and wipe out my mistakes before they metastasize into the future I just saw, but what's the point? It will undo all the projects I've already done."

"We all undo good work so that we may replace it with better work, Simon," she answered, softening for a moment.

"You are an artist now, or at least you were for a life or two. You should know that almost as well as a goddess."

"It seems like such a waste, though," he said regretfully.

"The you that was went as far as he could," she answered with a shrug.

"The you that is may do even better. If you're going to change one level to make the future a better place, why stop there?" Simon opened his mouth to continue his point, but she spoke over him.

"Still, if there is nothing more pertinent, then I must ask you to leave. I'm a very busy woman. I'm sure you'll figure out what comes next, eventually."

"Of course," Simon said, biting his tongue. He bowed as he withdrew, but that word, eventually, stuck in his mind like a thorn for hours after he'd walked back into the day-lit world, and his mirror had restored itself.