Chapter 34: True Immortality
He wasn’t in the swamp long before they struck. Simon’s only warning that he was under attack was the spear that missed his head by just two feet, embedding firmly in a large mangrove tree at head level not far from him.
A lizardman, he thought excitedly as he raised his shield and unsheathed his sword to charge the creature. This was one of the enemies he’d been waiting for.
He regretted that decision when two more emerged from the stagnant water beside the first, but only a little. After some of the awful floors he’d been through lately, it was nice to see something he could actually fight. What was he supposed to do against cold and disease? He was here to fight, and lizards were something that could fall beneath his blade.
That was the idea, at least. He took the next spear in the shield. Apparently, these walking lizards were freakishly strong, though, because the blow ripped right through the wood in a way the skeleton knight’s blows never had and gouged into the flesh of his arm deeply.
Simon hissed in pain but didn’t stop charging through the shallow water, and he beheaded the first one he reached in a vicious blow that he hoped would scare off its compatriots. It didn’t, though. Instead, as Simon let his back swing carry him around, the one that still had its spear jabbed at him hard enough to pierce his leather armor and embed the tip several inches into his guts before he pulled back.
A dozen deaths ago, that pain might have been enough to make Simon retreat, but now it just pissed him off.
“You think that’s going to stop me?” he growled before he lunged at the thing. Its fellow warrior clawed at Simon, but those claws barely pierced his boiled leather. These things were certainly strong. They might even be dangerous in packs like this, but Simon was over a foot taller than them and had a huge reach advantage. He also had a little thing called steel on his side and quickly cut them to pieces in a series of frenzied strikes that left him winded when he was finally surrounded by the bodies of the dead.
Only once the killing was done did Simon realize why they’d attacked him: he practically stumbled onto their crude encampment without realizing it. As he walked towards it, he quickly noticed that the portal to the next floor was hanging in the doorway of the closest hut, showing him a picturesque view of an endless desert. As he approached it, he realized that this camp was certainly big enough that this wouldn’t be their only hunting party.
That meant that he needed to be fast, Simon decided as he shoved the cloth he used for wrapping his cheese into the wound to slow down the bleeding while he winced in pain. Healing could wait until he was on the next floor. Still, before he left this one, he decided to send them a message of his displeasure and began to wreck everything he could get his hands on between here and there.