When Simon woke up once more in his cabin, he was more frustrated than afraid. He'd worked so hard. He'd wasted weeks and months and the chance to return to Hepollyon to see Zoa again, and all for nothing.

"Not nothing," he sighed, "You finished a level, got a couple new words of power, and a whole lot of information about the Magi. You even toppled one of their pyramids. That's definitely going to set them back a ways, right?"

Or would it? He wondered. While all of that was true, he hadn't actually gone through any portals, and all of the solutions he'd were on future levels. So, were the changes permanent? He wasn't sure.

Simon took a deep, calming breath, but when he let it out, none of it made him feel any better. He'd sacrificed a lot for that run. He'd pushed himself in ways he never had before, and mostly he'd just gotten to watch the Magi brainwash kids. He might have learned a lot about someone that he was more and more considering to be his main enemy in the region.

Despite that, though, he hadn't gotten what he'd wanted out of it. If anything, he'd been teased by all the things he'd almost learned. He'd discovered a way to learn speechless casting without actually learning how to do much of it. He'd seen and heard several words used that he never got the chance to learn yet, as well. This included the ability to teleport and a way to make your enemies fall asleep!

While he would literally kill for either of those powers, if he got the power to put people to sleep, then he'd have to kill a lot fewer people going forward, and there was no way that wouldn't be good for rebuilding a positive experience score.

"Yeah, yeah, and if I'd learned how to teleport, then I could have gotten out of that room and continued the run," he berated himself. "If you didn't actually learn it, then it doesn't count."

He didn't allow himself to sulk for long, though. Sulking was worse than pointless; it was counterproductive, and he would have chastised any of his young students for it if he'd still been an instructor.

Truthfully, if he didn't have so many other things to do, he'd consider being an instructor again just to see how much better he could do at it now that he'd been both a student and a teacher. It was definitely something he wanted to try, but not nearly as important as sifting through the images he'd taken in his final moments inside the pyramid of lesser miracles or his need to complete more levels.

So, instead of doing that or even grabbing a bite to eat, he sat up and started dictating his personal to-do list for the next time he made it that far north to his trusty mirror. Once that was done, he told it all of the ghastly observations he'd made in what passed for the Magi's magic school in case he ever forgot, and then he commanded it, "Show me the pictures you took of the Dreaming Orb and the Magi's amulet."

When the mirror started answering with text, he knew he'd confused it and said, "No, don't ask what those are. Just show me the pictures you took in the final moments of my last life!"

This time, they started coming through, one after the other, in a fairly rapid-fire fashion while he tried not to notice how awful he looked on the reflective surface. Simon could have told it to pause at any moment if it wanted to study any of them in detail, but he didn't right now. He just wanted to make sure they were there. So, as soon as he verified that, he labeled them so his idiot mirror would know what he was looking for next time, and then said, "Alright, now tell me which levels are accessible."

While it started to write up the list of accessible levels, he decided that if he ever tried to infiltrate that group again, it would be as an adult. He'd simply shadow one of the Magi, kill them, and then take their place. If I did it right, and their servants didn't even notice the swap, I could probably get pretty deep access to those libraries, he pondered as he watched row after row of future destinations appear in the mirror.

It would be pretty easy. Now that he had a good idea of the layout of the place and he knew of their propensity for wearing masks, he could just walk into a library, announce himself, and start reading. Simon liked the plan, but not enough to go right back. The place still had a bad taste in his mouth, so instead, he reviewed the listed levels he could explore next.

'Level 9 - Ruins on a mountaintop and a wyvern.

Level 10 - A volcano in Ionar.

Level 11 - A dark forest at night with an owl bear.

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 - ?????"

Truthfully, Simon had expected more things to change after everything he'd done. "Well, maybe because I was so far out of my little sandbox, nothing I did affected too much, he told himself. Or maybe none of it stuck. It should have, though, right? I locked in level six and leveled a giant structure in the same run…

No, that can't be right, he decided. The lizard men are new. That level was definitely solved before. Didn't I have to deal with the werewolf level again, though? Where did that go?

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Simon wasn't sure, but right now, he didn't really care. He cared about the way some of those reopened levels made him feel. He could very easily investigate level nine and then solve it. In fact, that was absolutely the next move he was planning to make. After that, though, he was far less certain.

By this point, Simon knew he should be facing the levels in the order he found them so that he wouldn't have to unsolve future levels, but somehow, knowing that was true wasn't enough to make him want to face Ionar again, not yet. It wasn't the only pain point, of course.

Along with the coastal city, Crowvar and Darndelle held mixed memories for him, and while he wanted to see what the problem was in the graveyard now that the dark heart was out of the picture, he was saddened that the orphanage that the city had once built in his name had never existed.

"I could deal with the owl bear," Simon told himself. "Then, once it's dead, I could follow those kids and make sure that woman never becomes a monster who thinks it's a good idea to slaughter everyone."

That was a fine idea, but it didn't quite feel right. Simon got to his feet and began to pace, feeling conflicted.

"I could find somewhere to spend a couple of years digging through the pictures I took. I don't have any money, but I'm sure I could get some in Ionar from the palace before I move on," he said, "Or I could dig deeper into the Pit, which is what I should have been doing last life, instead of wasting my time in that fucking hellhole."

Simon was a little surprised by that outburst of rancor, but that was probably growing annoyance that he was back in his fat ass body as much as anything, so to lift his spirits, he grabbed his apple, then went outside and sat in the shade of a large tree to eat it.

"To grind or not to grind, that's the question," he said bitterly, biting into the ripe red fruit.

He spent a good twenty minutes there, just enjoying the warm breeze and the feeling of freedom that had been denied him for nearly half a year. When he got up, he thought about planting the core and trying to work a similar spell to the one that had made him young, but that seemed too dramatic for a little weight loss.

"What are you worried about, man?" he asked himself as he bent to plant the thing. "You fuck up your body, you can get a new one. It wouldn't even take ten minutes."

That was true. Transforming his body into someone else who wasn't even recognizable as himself had taken away a lot of fear about this. So, instead of going right back into the house, he took a moment to visualize himself at his peak performance, and then whispered, "Celdura Hyakk," and he felt his entire body tingle as things began to reorganize and move around.

First and foremost, his gut shrank. He could see that without a mirror. As he held up his arms, he saw ever so slightly more definition, too, more than that he'd have to go inside to see. As he walked, there were a few muscle cramps and one brief, sharp pain in his gut that made him worry that he'd done something wrong, but all of those quickly passed, and when he returned inside, he looked like a new man.

While Simon wasn't the strongest or the most handsome he'd ever been, he was a lot closer to average than the overweight guy he started out every run as, and that was nice. One more word of flesh shaping might even get him there, but a word of major flesh shaping was probably overkill. That could wait for a day or two; he wanted to let everything shake out before he pressed his luck.

"Well, that's progress, at least," he said to himself as he sat back down on his bed. He still didn't know what he should do, but he felt better about who he was, and when he was reading from the mirror, it was impossible not to see himself sitting there in the background.

"Let's pull up my character sheet next, and after that, we can figure out what in the hell to do," Simon said, feeling a little better about everything. He might not have gotten everything he'd wanted, but he'd made progress, and none of the Magi had trapped his soul in a bottle for half an eternity; in the Pit, that was pretty much all you could ask for.

'Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 33

Deaths: 45

Experience Points: -82,461

Skills: Academics [Average], Agriculture [Poor], Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Below Average], Armor (heavy) [Poor], Armor (medium) [Poor], Art [Above Average], Athletics [Average], Baking [Poor], Cooking [Poor], Craft [Above Average], Deception [Above Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Below Average], Healing [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 [Below Average], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Average] Transformation [Average] Warfare [Average].

Words of Power: Aufvarum (disperse, minor), Barom (illusion, light), Celdura (plan, shape), Delzam (cure, order), Dnarth (command, connection, distant, hidden), Eszloum (soul), Farzehl (alter, manipulate, twist), 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), Weylera (because, on condition of), Zyvon (transfer, plants, water)'

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