Death After Death

Chapter 3: Level One

Sword in hand, Simon opened and closed the door several times to ensure he hadn’t lost his only way back before stepping outside. Once he was sure this door would stick around, he began looking for the dungeon he was meant to defeat. There wasn’t much out there, though. He didn’t see an evil castle, any ruins, or even a suspicious-looking cave.

All he saw was a scene out of a postcard or computer wallpaper. There was a flower-speckled meadow cut through by a brook, a picture-perfect forest, and some distant mountains. There weren’t even any wandering monsters or anything. Other than his cabin and the trail, nothing here had ever been touched by man.

Simon sighed in disappointment, wondering why a divine being would bother to put a dungeon a mile or two down a path from him when she could just as easily have put it right there, at the edge of the forest or something.

He wouldn’t let this setback ruin his day, though. He’d find the damn thing and then show Helades how baseless her worries were. At least it was bright and sunny, and after a while, he’d walked far enough from the cabin that he couldn’t see it, but he still couldn’t find the damn dungeon.

He passed the time trying to figure out how this game was supposed to work without much to show for it. He’d tried ‘Status,’ ‘Profile,’ ‘Character Sheet,’ ‘Character,’ Statistics,’ and ‘Skills’ without any pop-up or interface. In retrospect, he should have asked the mirror for help before he left, but that problem could be fixed when he returned.

At least he decided not to wear armor on this initial expedition. He couldn’t imagine how hot it would be to wear all that boiled leather in direct sunlight like this. He doubted he’d need it anyway. Low-level enemies were usually stuff like zombies. They were easy enough to dodge. He was certain he’d find something better than that starter armor in the first five floors anyway.

After another mile passed, though, he still didn’t see anything. He’d come far enough that the meadow was gone, and trees were crowding uncomfortably close on both sides of the path. Simon knew that time was passing because the sun was slowly moving across the sky, and eventually, he had shade again.

He was grateful for that because he was starting to get thirsty, but it also made him wonder how many more hours it would be until sunset. When was he supposed to turn back if he didn’t find what he was looking for? That thought weighed on him as the forest grew darker, but he set it aside when another bend in the path revealed more grassland opening up before him.

Simon decided to give it another hour, and if he still didn’t find anything, he’d ask the mirror since the function ‘Map’ didn’t do anything either. It turned out he didn’t need an hour, though, because, a few minutes later, he could see a small building in the distance. It wasn’t much, but it might be a mausoleum or the entrance to a crypt. That would suit him fine. Tombs were always good reasons to have dozens of levels of treasures and traps. His smile brightened, and his steps quickened. However, when he finally got closer, the shape resolved into nothing but another cabin.

Was this a shared world, he wondered as he approached it cautiously. If there were other players here, did that mean there was PvP? Simon readied his sword as he reached for the door. He flung it open but found no one inside. It was an empty room that was practically identical to the one he’d left. Whoever had been here last had even left all the drawers open and taken a bite out of the cheese…

This last observation was what finally made him realize he’d somehow come back to where he started. Since he’d walked in one direction without stopping, that should have been impossible. He didn’t think the impossible was something this world worried very much about, though.

Simon tried to visualize what a world that took three hours to walk around would look like exactly, but what he came up with didn’t make any sense. That would make the world something like two miles around, which was silly. Clearly, he needed to consult a higher power to get some answers.

“Hey, mirror - where’s the damn dungeon at?” Simon asked.

‘Dungeon?’ the mirror printed across the screen. Obviously, it wasn’t too bright.

“Yeah, the dungeon - you know ‘The Pit’?” Simon asked, exasperated, “The place I’m supposed to go slay monsters?"

‘The Pit is here. It always starts here.’ the screen answered.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“Yeah, but here, where? I don’t see anything.” Simon wondered if it would be worth the seven years of bad luck he’d get for shattering it to get his sense of urgency across. He decided against it. Not because he believed in luck, of course, but because this thing had answers he needed.

‘You can descend to the next level underneath the bed.’ the mirror wrote slowly, finally giving him an answer that made sense - even if it didn’t make sense. Who would put a dungeon under a bed, after all?

Simon didn’t bother to ask the thing another question - he just grabbed one of the bed posts and jerked the bed away from the wall. Made of rough wood and a straw mattress, the bed didn’t look very comfortable, but it wasn’t exactly heavy either. After a few seconds of manhandling, it revealed a hidden trap door. Only slightly out of breath, Simon reached down and opened it, which showed him a dark root cellar with dusty wooden stairs leading down. From here, he could only make out the shapes of boxes and bags against the walls, but there was nothing that looked particularly interesting.

He shrugged. At least this was a start.

“Alright, let’s do this,” he said, cracking his knuckles before hefting his sword and descending.

Something this weak probably wouldn’t even have zombies, he decided. What would he encounter first, then? Goblins? Yeah, it probably had to be goblins. He couldn’t think of anything else weaker as he descended the stairs while he looked around for danger.

Looking around meant that he wasn’t watching his feet, though, so he had no idea what he stepped on that sent him tumbling down the stairs. One second, he was standing, and the next, he fell face-first toward the dirt floor. There was a violent cracking sound followed by darkness, and then he suddenly sat up in his bed again.

Had he just died for the first time? How embarrassing.

He considered asking the mirror but decided he didn’t want to know. Instead, he stood up and looked around the room. The only differences were that his longsword was where he’d picked it up and that his cheese was uneaten.

Simon took a bite from the loaf of bread this time to see if these changes would happen again if he died. Then he looked for a torch. After all, he decided, death from falling down the stairs didn’t really count. It was like the real-world equivalent of glitching through the floor and falling to your death. It was silly, but it happened.

The important thing was to prevent it from happening again; to do that, he needed light. So with a torch in hand, he spent a few minutes trying to find a tinder box or a flint and steel. He located a chunk of what might have been flint on the fireplace mantle, then took a few minutes to strike sparks from his dagger with it. None of them caught the torch on fire, though. Reluctantly he was about to go back downstairs without it when he decided to check to see if the fireplace’s ashes had any coals underneath.

Fortunately, they did, and after a little trial and error, Simon had a lit torch in his left hand and a longsword in his right. He was now ready to face the goblins or whatever lame-ass creature this game wanted to throw at him. With a little effort, he pushed the bed aside again, and this time he focused on his footing as he descended the stairs.

The basement was just a root cellar, and he doubted he would find any loot worth searching for here. A quick look around didn’t reveal anything worth fighting, though. Maybe the first level was just a puzzle dungeon, then? That was common enough in games like this. The zombies were never in the church basement - they were in the bricked-off sub-basement and…

That’s when he heard the skittering, but before he could turn to face it, he felt something bite his left calf hard.

“Jesus Fuck!” Simon cried out, reflexively kicking back against the thing, sending whatever it was flying. He could feel warm blood soaking through his sock and dripping into his sneakers from the bite.

Whatever it was had gotten him good. He whirled around, brandishing his sword and torch simultaneously in different directions to ward off any new blows.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” he called into the darkness where he’d kicked his small assailant.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. Half a dozen rats not much bigger than the average-sized house cat suddenly swarmed out of the shadows, sprinting for him like he was their last meal. Simon stepped back, swinging his sword twice, but the little buggers were fast, and all he managed to do was kick up dust before they were on him.

He managed to kick one away, and he thought he might have stomped a second one, but his legs were on fire from their bites. He would have never thought rats could seriously hurt a grown man. However, now that he could see their large protruding incisors, it was hard to see this as anything but being attacked with small chisels or garden shears. They could still tear you to pieces, but it would be a slow, painful process.

“Get off me!” Simon screamed, feeling yet another bite on his legs.

Even worse, he could feel one trying to climb inside his right pant leg. Without thinking, he stabbed down, skewering the rat as well as his foot. In the time it took him to pull the blade out, though, another rat bit into the Achilles tendon of his left foot, sending him tumbling to the ground.

After that, all Simon could do was try to crawl up the stairs before he gave up on that and covered his face with his hands when one of them went for his eyes. The assault continued for a few minutes before he mercifully passed out from blood loss. The biggest surprise was that no matter how many times the awful creatures attacked him, it never stopped hurting.

In the end, even more than the pain was the shame of what had happened, and Simon’s final thought before he woke back up in his bed was that he couldn’t believe he’d been killed by something as weak as a rat.