Chapter 21: Just a Barmaid
When Simon woke up in the fresh air and the empty bed of his cabin, a small part of him had died. He felt more hurt by Freya’s death than he had been by any of his deaths. The pain he felt as he thought of her was worse than the first time the skeleton knight had killed him or the time the slime had suffocated him to death. His disused emotions had stayed in their lockbox where they belonged for so long, that feeling this sense of loss for a sweet young woman was devastating.
Freya had actually liked him. She thought he was funny, and cute, and now she was dead. He would have happily died a dozen times to prevent that, but now he would never get the chance.
Or would he?
It was only after he’d spent several minutes just laying there and feeling sorry for himself that he realized she was still down there on the sixth floor. Maybe not the version of her that remembered him, but she was still the girl he’d been close to falling in love with. Surely if he saved her again, and they spent a few days together it would be just like it was before, wouldn’t it?
With that thought in mind, Simon quickly started to get ready. He’d promised himself he would take the levels he had on lock nice and slow to use them for practice, but he threw all that out the window, charging into the depths as soon as he was geared up. He didn’t even bother to bring food - just his weapons, his armor, and a single lit torch. It was all he needed. This wasn’t about learning or even progressing. This was about Freya and filling the hole in his heart that should never have been there in the first place.
He rushed heedlessly through level after level, killing what he needed to and no more to get past the next challenge. Being apart from his girl when he knew exactly where to find her was a special kind of torment. The only thing that even slowed him down was the slime, but as soon as he forced it from the water, he burned it to ashes with two simple words. He was a little surprised at how much more effective his fire spell was than it had been last time, but he didn’t have time to try to understand why.
He just rushed on to the door that led to his favorite besieged inn. In the backroom where he always appeared, he found the same zombie that always tried to eat him, and Simon dispatched it with a single wet crunch of his mace. Then, he turned, ready to go find Freya, when suddenly the door burst open, and the blond girl with the pitchfork that had killed him not so long ago was standing there.
“Who are you,” she demanded. “Who are you and how did you get in here?” She jabbed the air a couple of times just as she did before, but this time Simon was actually still capable of speech as he had nothing but a scratchy throat. The woman was the same busty blond wearing the same dirty blue dress as last time. Her eyes were hard, and she had a bloody bandage covering a wound on one arm. Even if he didn’t have first-hand experience that she was the killing type, he would have believed it just from her appearance.
“Woah, easy there!” he said, backing away. “I’m a friend of Freya’s. I’m not going to hurt you.”