When Simon arrived at the level, he could still hear the golem thundering and crashing impotently beh him. The thing was bigger than the portal, so he doubted it could even make it across to follow him even if it could get up here, but out of curiosity, he shut the door, and the rumbling instantly ceased. When he reopehe door, though, the stairs he’d e up were repced by a differehat looked much less precarious.

  The way he’d just e up had obviously beloo some castle basement, dungeon, or something simir. This one just led down to an unremarkable root celr. He supposed he could go back down and sge some supplies, but he wasn’t really going anywhere where he needed more food. He was only a few floors left from his main goal now, and he hadn’t been hungry since he’d st camped on the wyvern level ho. Or was it days? It felt like lifetimes, and just thinking about that sweet little chapter of his life filled him with so much pairembled and leaned heavily against the door frame.

  “Just keep it together, Simon. You’re almost there. Almost. You do this,” he told himself, breathing deeply.

  He looked down at the book he was holding and tried to find some joy in that. This was a victory he would have killed for on any other day, but unless it had a resurre spell, he wasn’t going to get too excited. Still, he’d have to find some time to study it before he got too much deeper.

  “The pgue level seemed pretty quiet,” he said to himself. “Maybe I could do some research there for a few days.”

  Knowledge was the only thing that stayed with him betweehs, so he o make the most of this ugly bck book which meant that maybe he would need supplies, he realized. He started to think about what he might want for a short study session when he heard the first scream.

  “Oh, that’s right. This pce was utack, wasn’t it.” Simon said, finally recalling where he was. “Was it goblins? Or orcs? Did I fight them once already?”

  Simon racked his brain as he walked to the front door and looked down at the vilge that was on fire. When he saw the ice doorway, though, he finally remembered the st time he’d been here.

  “Oh yeah,” he muttered unhappily. “I skipped the whole thing, didn’t I?”

  He could see why he’d do that way, of course, the exit was right there, but somehow that didn’t feel right to him now. Maybe it was because he’d fought to defend enough vilges now that he knew how unprepared they were down there. People were dying right now, and just because he didn’t know them didn’t make it less real.

  He’d already made his decision before he k. There was only one answer, even if the past version of him hadn’t realized it. That was okay. He’d redo this as many times as it took to get it right.

  “Well, hopefully, that door will still be there in an hour or two,” he said to himself as he walked to the end of the pord tucked the book away. He didn’t think this would be too much trouble, and holy, killing something that could fight back sounded pretty good to him right about now.

  Simon drew his sword as he advanced on the vilge and took in the age. There were some shapes in the dark that told him he was definitely dealing with an orc-raiding band. The fact that the vilge hadn’t already been leveled told him it was a small ohough, so maybe this was the beginning of an outbreak.

  It was also the ce to try out his new spells, he thought, hopefully, as he advanced down the hill. The situation wasn’t looking too good. Half the houses were on fire, so he hoped that the people here had evacuated first, but that seemed unlikely given the number of bodies ireets.

  Simon sighed, w whose job it was to defend these people. The unity had her walls nor any sign of fortifications, so they clearly weren’t expeg this.

  When the first orear the edge of the settlement finally noticed him, it roared, “Fresh prey!” in approval. That had been one of his stranger discoveries in this life. Goblins didn’t seem to have a nguage, but orcs did. Most monsters he’d fought during his servi Crowvar did, actually. Gnolls, Orcs, and eveaurs did, though that st one made more seo him thaher two.

  Orcs didn’t unicate anything but very simple ideas, though, and right now, its only seemed to be hunger as it advanced on Simon with a crude club. That was okay. Simon’s only was oing out his new powers.

  “???D???n???a???r???t???h??? V???r???a???z???i???g???” he shouted. Distant lightning. As he spoke, he pointed his sword, and lightning shot from the tip of it, instantly crossing the 30 yards that separated the two batants and striking the or the chest.

  The orc fell to the ground without a sound. It was utterly anticlimactic, but Simon would take it. As he approached the corpse, he hat there wasn’t much of a found. Just a tiny char mark in the ter of its chest. Even though that probably meant he fried the heart, he stabbed it in the chest with his sword just to be sure.

  “Now, where are all your friends?” Simon asked the corpse as he looked around for more eo fight.

  He found them dowreet and to the left, where the vilges seemed to have takeer in a small church. There were a dozen of the savages attag the building at every door and window, and the fact that many of those positions were being defended by people with farming implements instead of real ons wasn’t a good sign.

  Since he had the element of surprise, he decided to keep it. After all, he knew from experiehat taking on two orcs at once was a gamble, and three or four was a death sentence. Even though they might look and stink simir to their cousins, the hobgoblins, these bastards were twice as strong as a man, and it was only their stupidity that kept them from quering the whole world as far as he was ed.

  Simon looked around for who the leader might be, but when he didn’t see ahat stood out, he just decided tet the biggest bastard that was standing there wearing a loincloth and holding a broken sword among several other orcs waiting for their turn to kill a few human defenders.

  “Yeah,” he’ll do nicely,” Simon said to himself before shouting. “G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? V???r???a???z???i???g???!

  ”This time, he tried greater lightning, even though he k was a gamble. As soon as he’d figured out that these things were actually modur and that he’d knower and fire as opposed to greater fire fes now, he could have kicked himself. He would have killed to be able to cast lesser fire ur fire a huimes by now.

  That was especially true wheill hadn’t mastered flint and steel. Now he didn’t eveo use it for those occasions, especially because of the way the wreater exhausted him, but he absolutely for this experiment because he was going to do something he’d always wao do since he’d first started pying role-pying games in junih.

  He was going to summon lighting from the sky. Simon told himself he was doing this because it would be more deniable in case the people of this towhe magic-hating types, but really, he just wao see if he could. There were few ideas more magical to him than the idea of summoning a bolt of thuo smite his enemies, and as the jagged bolt of electricity leaped from the dark sky to the ground and the thunder shattered the night, he felt like he was somewhere between Zeus and Thor in the grand scheme of things.

  For a moment, the night was shattered by his spell, and he could feel the heat even where he stood twenty yards away, but as he approached the monsters, they all stayed standing inexplicably for several long seds, and he worried he’d done something wrong.

  Then he realized they’d just been paralyzed by the electricity and had stood there perfectly rigid before they all started colpsing like domihat brought a smile to Simon’s face, aook advantage of the fusion to strike down the first or his path before it knew he was there.

  That roar of pain caught everyone else’s attention, though, and soon it was him versus the only two left standing beside those that were still attag the townspeople’s st stand. It was a short but vicious fight, and the motherfucker closest to him broke his shield and probably his arm too on his sed swing. That wasn’t enough to stop Simon from running the orc through, though.

  For as long as he faced two enemies, he kept cirg slowly to his right around his target, always keeping the sed one in an inopportune position to coordiheir attacks. Simon had lear from some bandits that had been particurly frustrating to kill and much more talehan these orcs would ever be, but it served him well here.

  “Shit human!” the sed rowled as the first one slumped over dead. “Tough meat is the tastiest!”

  After he was down to a single oppo. Simon relied more on parries as, but mostly because he didn’t trust his left hand until he’d had a ce to heal it. The feeling of painful numbness reading, and he wasn’t sure if that was because of the strength of the blow or because the orc had mao cause some nerve damage.

  It didn’t matter, it was a ter problem, and even fighting defensively, he was still sure he could take this big ugly bastard down. A quice at the rest of the fighting showed that no one was in mortal peril, so he kept whittling away at the orc while dang out of reach. A slice here, a cut there, and soon enough, the monster could her grip his on nor move quickly as Simon cut important tendons ihing’s wrist and heel. After that, it was just a matter of finding the right opening and delivering a coup de gras, but eventually, Simon thrust two feet of steel through the orc’s heart a stand there fused for a moment as it bled out.

  Theuroward the st orc standing that was currently fighting three wounded farmers. He noticed he was limping as he walked, but he ig. He just o help bring the st one down, so they could end this and focus on the fires.

  He didn’t see the blow ing. He’d thought that he’d killed them all, but one of the bastards must have gotten back up from his lightning strike because as he walked to the church to see if there were any survivors he might be able to save with a little healing magic, he was suddenly struck hard in the back of the head.

  Simon whirled around, disemboweling the creature before it could make a sed strike, but the first one had done enough damage. He staggered back, dropping his sword as he raised his hand to his head and tried to remember the word to fix it. Wait, should he fix it, he wondered? Brains were delicate, and it was his magic that had probably ultimately killed…

  Mercifully, the world went dark, and he colpsed to the ground before he could finish the thought. He psed into unsciousness.