Chapter 79: Good People
Simon lay there for several minutes, just staring at the ceiling as he thought about the battle he’d just fought and the things he might have done differently. It was a battle he almost certainly needed to face and one that he doubted he could have won without some serious preparation, but it had still been cool, in a way.
Not the burning alive part, he thought wryly.
The rest, though, even though he’d been deep fried in molten lava, it had been kinda cool. Running just above flowing magma and slaying elementals. It was probably the most cinematic thing he’d done so far in the pit, and if anything, the lesson was that he still wasn’t thinking big enough. He’d spent what? Two years of his life on that run? Three? It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d spent ten, because he’d reset himself again anyway. He needed to get used to using more magic each run. He’d get a lot farther, he needed to.
“Hey, mirror, next time I decide that I’m going to go to level 10 to fight a freaking volcano, remind me that it’s not a good idea,” he said, not bothering to look away from the rafters.
“Actually,” he said, sitting up, “Show me my experience points.”
‘Experience Points: -993,361,’ the mirror typed.
Simon tried to do the math on that. He was pretty sure he’d died twice since the last time he’d looked, and that time, he was still at basically negative one million.
“Well, I’m still basically at negative one million now,” he laughed. “Hmmm…”
Two deaths, maybe three levels cleared, and no particularly good or bad memories. He had killed some pretty big monsters, though - maybe that accounted for the shift. Still, even at this pace, it would take… three hundred thousand more deaths before he got back to zero?