This time Simon was mad, and he wasn’t fug around anymore. He dug through the drawers until he found the leather armor he’d seen earlier. He took the greaves from the set as well as the leather boots from where they sat drying by the hearth and put them both on. “Let those little bitches try to bite through this,” he said before he picked up a torch tht it from the embers of the dyih. He set the rest of the armor and the buckler aside. He didn’t really hat much prote. It would only slow him down. It looked much too hot and bulky to wear anyway. Simon was a big guy, and even though he was strong, cardio and tight leather outfits weren’t really his thing. This time he did decide to belt on the scabbard though. He didn’t really like the look of it, but he wahe long sword with him for whatever attacked him on the level, and he o keep his hands free for the rats.
After that he desded agaihought about talking to the mirror first, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it until he had a win under his belt. The ime he came back up, after he’d quered five or ten levels he could learn more about the system. It would make food reward for all his hard work Simon decided.
At least that was what he told himself. A small part of him was worried that if he waited, the anger over what happened would cool off enough that the horror of dying in such a painful way might overwhelm him. Seriously - he’d thought that the vague rush of fear and pain when he was hit by the truck was bad, but beien alive by rats until he passed out from pain had to be about the worst death there was. He’d never five them for that, and when he reached the earth floor he started looking around for some vermin to crush.
It turned out that Simon didn’t have to wait long. At some unseen signal, the same half dozen rats that swarmed him st time came at him again, but this time he was ready. He ran at them even as they charged at him, meeting them halfway and stomping two of them with wet g sounds before they even had the ce to attack him.
The remaining few died in a battle of attrition that sted over a minute, and though they mao bite Simon a couple times before he ehem, the oute was never in doubt. Seds ter he emerged out of breath but victorious. “Level One down - only what? y eight to go?” he said, reassuring himself that he’d basically already won - he just had to gh the motions. He sidered going back upstairs to get some wio wash out these cuts, but decided against it, and focused on finding the exit to the level instead. Afterall, there had to be a healing potion around here somewhere. He’d never pyed a game that expected you to do much fighting without them. Soon he was sure he’d be popping potion after potion like some fantasy world junkie as he made his way ever deeper.
The door seemed to be the only thing worth finding as Simon gnced around the bags of potatoes and boxes of junk before he ope. Behind the door was a narrow and slightly curvi of stoairs that led down to the level. That level turned out to match its stairs, and appeared to be some sort of underground hallway with brang corridors that were filled with darkness and stank of something old and sulfurous. Perhaps this was the tomb he’d finally be seeking, Simon wondered as he pulled out his sword and stepped forward cautiously.
He thought the art design could have blended better between the levels, but even still. Things were improving. Another few levels in and he might start to find some magical equipment or maybe even— when he reached the T jun, he turo the left but no sooner had he takeep forward thaopped in his tracks at the sound of a click eg down the hallway. He wasn’t positive, but Simon retty sure he’d just set off a trap. That was firmed moments ter when the wall just in front of him smmed hard against the opposing wall with a booming sound that echoed throughout the tomb. It would have easily crushed whoever had been unfortunate enough to be standing ihere, but fortunately Simon had frozen the instant he heard it, and so it only grazed his torch, before it started to slowly retract. In the faint grinding of the wall moving bato pce though, he could hear something else though: wings.
Something had been woken up by the noise and was headed towards him. Simon couldn’t make himself worry about that right now though. He was still ing to grips with the fact that he was standing in the midst of a minefield, and he aralyzed by that fear. The light he had was small and flickering, and it made it hard to tell the pressure pte he’d stepped on from any of the other stones around him. If he’d brought a spear or even a broom hahen maybe he could have felt the way ahead, but right now that would require dying again, and as painless as it would probably be to get crushed between two walls of stone, he just couldn’t make himself see the appeal to that grizzly prospebsp;
Instead he forced himself to turn towards the noise of the beating wings. They were getting closer. When the first one finally appeared Simon was almost relieved that they were just bats rather than something worse like imps argoyles. He pulled out his sword and reminded himself that bats were just rats with wings, and rats had already killed him once so it was best not to get too cocky even if they were nothing but easy experience points. With that thought in mind he slowly withdrew back towards the safety of the way he’d e. Hopefully there really weren’t any traps this way, because there was no way he could dodge both hazards at onbsp;
The fight didn’t go well exactly, as he filed about with his sword and his torch. The bats presented a much rger target as they swarmed around him screeg at least, and Simon was able to knock most of them to the ground before they mao bite him. Holy his own fear of their creepy faces and hideous squeaking noises were worse thaual bats. They were the very definition of bark being worse than bite, and if he had to guess he would say that whoever put them in this level did it to distract adventurers from traps rather than for a serious enemy. Halfway through the fight he hat if he’d just bothered to put on the leather jerkin or the mail hauberk he would have gotten through this fight without a scratch too. That was ohing he could do to improve if there was a ime. With any luck he’d never have to see this flaied traps. They were hard to see on s and harder to dodge than even boss attacks. Games would be better if they just left them out, he was vihis game wouldn’t result in a quick loss of hit points if he tripped ohough. At a minimum, being riddled with poison darts or something would be very painful, and would likely result in Simon having to start all ain with those damn rats.
So he took it sloing every suspicious looking stoh his sword and walking very slowly down the corridor in front of him. It was an effective strategy, and just to make sure he didn’t get lost he always followed the left wall whehere was a fork in the road. On his journey he found several more traps including a wall with impaling spikes, two dart shooters, and a deadfall that dropped rubble from the ceiling. There were only a couple more bats though, and o a time they were so easy to deal with that it made Simon feel like the sword master he wao be rather than the noob he khat he still was. It was also very slow and Simon found two dead ends before his torch started to gutter.
“Oh shit,” he said loud enough for it to echo down the halls as he finally noticed he was only a few minutes away from running out of light.
That left him with two choices, her of which was good. He could blunder around this level in the dark until he died or he could hurry up and take his ces with the traps. So he did what he knew he should do, and switched from methodical to fast. He still looked for traps, but he no longer checked every stohe bats might have oher purpose in this level after all: even after he lost his light they could still see him well enough te on his blood. Simon had trouble shaking that image as he started to walk faster down the corridor… being attacked by a whole swarm of bats in the perfect darkness of these tunnels until he was nothing but a desiccated corpse.
That was when the ground underh him suddenly fell away. One sed he was walking along sing the ground for traps, and the , the ground shattered and he was falling doit into the darkness below. He had just enough time tister that before he was impaled ohree foot spikes that lihe bottom of the pit. Simon would not have believed that pain like this could exist, but as he looked down at his body he saw that his left leg was stabbed through once, his torso was impaled twice, and his left arm was stabbed through the palm. Blood was literally p out of him as he half id and half crouched on his awful bed of nails. So much so that before the torch that had fallen beside him went all the way out on its own, the growing pool of blood s out instead, leaving him in the darkness with nothing but that horrible wailing sound.
It took Simon almost a mio figure out that the sound he was hearing wasn’t some distant banshee ing to finish him off - it was his own screams, g out in agony until his throat was raw. Silenly came when he eventually passed out several mier, and he once again woke in his owhis time Simon immediately felt his body to make sure he was actually whole. He could still feel the phantom pain of that awful trap. The rats were nothing pared to that, he realized as the pain and shock that slowly left him was repced by an overwhelming sense of dread. How was he supposed to fight monsters when he khat failure would be met by that sort of agony?
“This was supposed to be a game - a fug game!” he yelled at no one in particur while he balled up his fists and curled up on the bed. How was he supposed to beat a game that could hurt so badly that he was almost afraid to py it though.
