Chapter 150: Blow Off
He really was, he decided as he crouched down and pushed the chest of rare and expensive herbs off the chunk of stone floor that had come with it and let it clatter down the slope, scattering the contents everywhere. As much as he hated to waste them, they didn’t matter anymore. Win or lose, he was done with this town as soon as this fight was done.
If he lost, he was going to die painfully, and if he won… well, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He was probably going to try to track that asshole down, even if he was fairly certain that was impossible.
No way, that was me, he told himself as he bent down and started putting on his armor, starting with his sabatons and greaves. Never in a million years would I wipe out a whole damn city.
It was more than that, he realized, though, as he got dressed as quickly as he could and did his best to ignore the sound of volcanic rumblings. The crown that man had been wearing, whoever he was. That was the crown from the barrow mounds, which meant he’d caused at least two disasters. He might have even been the one to leave the message on the wall in the foothills near Crowvar, and if he was… well… Simon’s mind boggled at the thought.
Suddenly, he stopped putting on his armor as he realized something. “Fuck… if I beat this thing, then this spot is going to be gone. I won’t be able to come back here and try to ambush the asshole.”
That was a painful choice as he realized he could either leave and come back to try again or he could handle this right now. That asshole wanted him to solve this level made the whole thing that much worse.
“He definitely knows how the levels work, at least,” Simon grumbled as he agonized over the decision. As he struggled to put on his armor a piece at a time, the encounter replayed over and over in his mind. Had he done everything he could? What should he have done differently?
Now he thought that maybe the crown protected the wearer in some unspecified way instead of giving him some perverse telepathy. He didn’t say anything when my lightning spell failed, did he? He wondered.
It didn’t matter, he decided, tugging the straps on his breastplate tighter before belting on his sword. The guy might have put up a protection from lightning spell before Simon got there. If he really was half the mastermind that he claimed to be, then he knew all the details before they happened and could have prepared for everything a hundred different ways.