Christmas Bonus Chapter: Chapter 171: Not this Run
Simon spent most of that afternoon beating himself up. It wasn’t even about the sword after a while. It was about being fat, the way he’d left things with Elthena, the mystery of his evil twin, starting over again in the Pit, and even the fact that he’d spent 40 lives with so little to show for it. Somehow, despite all the progress he’d made so far, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for himself as he considered how pointless all of this was.
It’s not like you have a limit, he grumbled at himself as he packed and prepared to do this all again. You can do this a million more times if you have to.
Though true, those thoughts didn’t help. Living the same life a million more times was not exactly the silver lining he’d hoped it would be when he’d thought of it. It certainly didn’t help with the idea that he was going to have to face down a vampire and a dragon sometime soon.
Either one was terrifying, and though the dragon would at least end in a quick death. With the vampire, he didn’t even have that guarantee. He was going to need more than stakes to fight such a monster. He needed to come up with one hell of a plan for that.
“Not this run, though,” he reassured himself. “First, I'll deal with the mess I left behind last time; then, I'll deal with future levels.”
Those words rang hollow to him as he considered his plan for what he needed to do next. “What I need to do is not fuck up the timeline!” he said to himself glumly as he considered how easy it would be to do just that while he went out for a walk.
“If I fight the wrong guy… hell, if I kill anybody,” Simon sighed. “Even saving people will have some repercussions. What am I supposed to do for half a decade that doesn’t save or kill anyone?” He wasn’t sure, but he needed to think of something.
Eventually, after a couple of hours, he decided that the best he could do was distance. He could stick to the big cities far from Ionar as he could and just do his best to blend in. “Maybe I’ll become a scribe or a mapmaker or something,” he told himself, trying to find alternatives to the mercenary and healer paths that had been his favorite for so long.
With that decided, he kept himself busy until sunset. That night, in bed, he tossed and turned rather than getting any real sleep. So, eventually, sometime after midnight, he got up and dressed silently in the dark. He could stay here for days, but there wasn’t any point to that. Not when he knew where he was going next.