Chapter 4: Level Two
This time Simon was mad, and he wasn’t screwing 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 to relight it from the embers of the dying hearth.
He set the rest of the armor and the buckler aside. He didn’t really need that much protection. 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 wanted the long sword with him for whatever attacked him on the next level, and he needed to keep his hands free for the rats.
After that he descended again. He thought 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 next time he came back up, after he’d conquered five or ten levels he could learn more about the system. It would make for a good 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 being eaten alive by rats until he passed out from pain had to be about the worst death there was. He’d never forgive 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 last 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 crunching sounds before they even had the chance to attack him.
The remaining few died in a battle of attrition that lasted over a minute, and though they managed to bite Simon a couple times before he ended them, the outcome was never in doubt. He emerged out of breath but victorious. “Level One down - only what? Ninety-eight to go?” he said, reassuring himself that he’d basically already won - he just had to go through the motions.