Chương 295: A Wasted Chance

Ch. 295 - A Wasted Chance Simon didn't even bother to open his eyes when he felt the familiar bed beneath him. Instead, he drew the breath he'd been denied and said, "That's not how things were supposed to go." He allowed himself a moment to contemplate the situation and decide if his death had been caused by his overconfidence or other factors he should address, but eventually decided it was just bad luck. He'd been aware of his surroundings, acted fast, and struck his enemy down in seconds.

It was only bad luck that the stinking carcass of the owlbear had crushed him the way it did. It was pretty ironic that I finally got staked, though, he thought, smiling slightly. That joy vanished as soon as he opened his eyes and saw the same Simon that he always found on this level. The original, worthless me, he thought, looking down at himself with distaste. Every time he came back, the failure he'd once been was there to greet him, and really, he was getting sick of it.

Simon stood, glancing at the mirror he stood in front of it before he closed his eyes and concentrated. For a moment, he allowed himself to feel how soft and weak he was. He rolled his neck and shoulders, feeling the way his body settled heavily around him like a suit of armor made from whale blubber.

"Time to do something about this," he said to himself as he started imagining the best version of himself. Even the best version of Simon was not an Adonis. He didn't ripple with muscles or have hair down to his shoulders. He just looked the way that Simon usually did after a few years of life. He had defined muscles, visible collar bones, and no more fat than any peasant he might encounter on the road. He was just the way a man should be, and once he'd fixed that image of himself in his mind, he said the words."

Gervuul Celdura Hyakk." This was the first time he'd tried to use a greater word of flesh shaping. It was probably overkill, but he was sick of looking this way, and he had no wish to use a normal word once now and once in a few hours or a day. The change was sudden, and once the magic had taken hold, Simon opened his eyes so he could watch what was happening without tainting the effect. While the shifting of his skin was disturbing, it was the pain that was worse.

A greater word was perhaps five times more magic than he needed for this effect, so it happened in the space of seconds, and the pain of that, as organs shifted and fat sublimated, was so bad that it almost brought him to his knees. It would have if it had taken more than a few seconds to complete. When the process ended as abruptly as it had started, he only took a staggering step forward and examined his face in the mirror.

"Fucking hell," Simon whispered, bringing his hand to his cheek. It was an impressive display, but it left him wishing he'd learned the word that the Magi had for lesser increase. That would have really made things easier.

Simon flexed and moved, making sure he hadn't done anything tragic to his body, and when he was satisfied that, except for a little soreness, he was fine, he checked his character sheet briefly on the mirror, noting that he'd gained one death, and less than a thousand experience from the last time he'd checked.

"Well, it's not like it would have the chance to change much," Simon reminded himself.

"That was just a few days ago." After that, he checked the accessible levels and noted somewhat glumly that the owlbear level had, in fact, been solved, which dashed his plans.

"I guess someone really wants me to go take care of Ionar," he sighed.

'Level 10 - A volcano in Ionar. Level 12 - A bridge troll and an abandoned village. Level 16 - A village in the midst of an orc raid. Level 19 - Lizard men in a swamp. Level 20 - A Basilisk amongst the ruins. Level 21 - A haunted cemetery. Level 22 - A costume party. Level 27 - Centaur raiders near Crowvar. Level 34 -?????" Simon had been planning to take the levels mostly in order, but he'd been willing to allow himself a decade-long sidequest with the kids.

That was harder to justify now that he'd have to track them down. In theory, he could find them, of course. He knew where that road was. He could go, build a hut, and build a quiet life just waiting for that group to come down that road, but that would be years of effort and more than a little petulant. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Not that handling Ionar won't be years of effort, too, he thought as he grabbed some wood and stoked the lingering coals in his stove with them so that he could make some lunch. Realistically, he could go to Ionar right now. He even had an idea for how to beat the lava titan, but doing it the fast way would lock in the partial destruction of that community forever, and he no longer had a shortcut level to get him anywhere close. Queen Elthna hadn't even ascended to the throne yet.

"So it's going to cost me two decades to save it the old-fashioned way, then?" he said to himself as he considered his plans, "Best not screw it up then." As Simon fried up his sausages and grasped the bread in their grease to make himself a nice sandwich, he pondered where he should go in this life. Hepollyon came to mind first, but he dismissed it almost as quickly. Though he felt like he'd been close to a breakthrough when it came to how he saw the world, he couldn't bring himself to do that.

Feeling a wave of nostalgia, his next thought was to go back to Baron Corwin's land and settle down. Gregor had probably been born a few years ago. It would be a while before he grew up into a fine young man, and Simon would love to see that. He quickly decided against that, too. Remembering the time he'd almost run into himself, arriving in that town only a few days after Daisy kicked him in the head, Simon decided that crossing paths with himself was a terrible idea.

"At a minimum, I could undo everything I accomplished on level four and make everything that much worse." Simon considered all of those things as he ate and decided that he needed to go somewhere where no one knew him, which, ironically, made Brin's capital a good capital. Except for the few lives he'd spent trying to avert war, he'd spent almost no time there, and it would let him look at several things that interested him, including just how deep the Unspoken's claws were sunken into the kingdom.

There's still a chance I could fuck things up there and undo something important, Simon thought as he deliberated. Ultimately, he decided not to go for that reason. The idea that he couldn't visit these places for the most tenuous of reasons was frustrating, but it wasn't as if he didn't have a whole wide world to explore. How many other hidden wonders out there, like Hepollyon, are just waiting to be found? He asked himself.

I can always visit some of the cities again in the future when they aren't important anymore. That cheered Simon up because that was exactly what he was doing as he solved levels. He was moving forward into the future. Level 33 was about seven decades into the future, and when you stacked on a few decades more, he'd been over a century into the future.

He'd seen both how much that had changed the world and how little it had as well, but if he could start each run a century into the future, well, that would finally let him see the impact of some of the decisions he'd made so far. Instead, he decided to check out Abreese. Even a small risk of undoing what he considered to be a well-tied-off portion of history was too great of a risk for him these days. He was tying up loose ends now, not unraveling them.

While the southern city-state wasn't as large as Brin's capital, it was a place he'd only ever been to on the ship levels, and he had fond memories of his time spent learning to heal people there; theoretically, his two unrelated timelines there wouldn't even overlap, which was important to him for reasons he couldn't quite into words.

"I wonder how Abresse is this time of year, anyway," Simon said to no one in particular as he tried to imagine the life he should live this time and what his priorities were. He needed to be able to fight, but more than that, he needed to focus on his magical studies. Was an urban location the best place for that? Probably not, but when things progressed from theoretical to practical testing, he could always move out into the country.

Being a doctor was a very lucrative profession if he didn't give his services away for free like he had on his last visit. This time, Simon didn't linger in his cabin. He just geared up, marked his blade with runes of lesser transfer, and headed out, seeking to outpace the lingering annoyance that his situation had ended up like this. It wasn't even that he had to waste decades. He'd find some way to spend that time. What bothered him was that he had to go back to Ionar in a way that wasn't on his terms.

As he began hiking, though, that metamorphosized into a more philosophical outlook. What if he had to do this again.

"What if I decide I need to solve level 99 like this?" he asked himself as he tricked through the wilderness at the southeast corner of his valley.

"Would I really spend two hundred years just chilling to wait for the right moment?" He was pretty sure that he would. It wasn't even technically impossible. The hardest part wouldn't even be avoiding detection now that he could change his face with ease. It would be finding something to do for all of that time.

"Especially something worth doing that doesn't get anyone's attention," he muttered as he climbed up the steep slope. When he reached the ridge top, he found a large boulder to scale for a better look. Below him, the steep slopes gave way to verdant lands. The landscape was pleasant in a way that he would have enjoyed painting if not for the lack of any specific point of interest. If there had been a city or even a waterfall, it would have made a lovely picture.

Instead, the best it could muster were scattered clumps of patchy forest, a winding, sluggish river cloaked in swamp, and a couple scattered hamlets and farmsteads too small to be called a village.

"Oh well," he said with a shrug.

"I've had worse starts."