Death After Death

After reassuring himself that he wasn’t still bleeding from half a dozen horrible wounds, the first thing that Simon did was to reach for the mostly full bottle of wine that was sitting on the bedside table as always and drank deeply to steady his nerves. He had never been much of a drinker, and much preferred smoking a bowl or two to a six pack, but right now he only had this awful sour grape juice to drown the horrible memory of those spikes piercing his body. He would have chugged any swill to try to forget the memory of that terrible pain. He hadn’t known anything could hurt that bad in his whole life. Even now, with the memory receding, and the sensations fading he still shuddered if he tried to think about the moment he’d tried to pull himself off the spikes in that pit.

“This isn’t how this is supposed to work!” he declared suddenly, turning toward the mirror. “There’s supposed to be hit points and skills. I’m supposed to gain experience, not get fucking tortured to death!” He was mostly just looking for a reason not to have to go back down there and deal with those terrifying traps again, but to his surprise the mirror lit up and a response started to “type” for lack of a better word in a flowing script that looked like it was being entered one character at a time. Apparently, it spoke back every time it thought you were talking to it, even if you were just thinking out loud. He didn’t know if that feature was handy or annoying.

‘The Pit is exactly as described in the contract you signed.’ the screen printed as a ghostly version of the contract materialized in the background. ‘Would you like to review it?’

“I don’t want to review that. I want to review my character sheet.” Simon insisted. “I want to see my level and my skills and…” As he spoke the screen changed. Materializing what looked to be a sort of crude character sheet, like whatever spirit was in the mirror was trying to grant his request.

Name: Simon Jacoby

Level: 2

Deaths: 3

Experience Points: -2740

The negative experience points meant there was some kind of penalty for death, since he’d died three times. That wasn’t the worst system in the world though, and even with those deaths he was still leveling up, so he could work with that. As realistic as everything felt in this game, that was probably a better choice than one of those timed debuffs that had gotten so big in popular titles recently. His eyes moved past that minor issue to the rest of the screen which was a long list of skills: Archery, Armor (light), Athletics, Cook, Craft, Deception, Escape, Investigate, Maces, Ride, Search, Sneak, Spears, Spell Casting, Steal, Swimming, and Swords. They didn’t have any numbers beside them. Instead, they had words, and the words next to almost every one of his skills was ‘very poor.’ As he continued his increasingly frustrated review, he was surprised to find that only two skills that weren't ‘very poor’ was swords which was rated ‘poor’, and spell casting, which was rated ‘None’. He was insulted by the evaluation.

“Well, that’s completely wrong. I can cook almost as well as use a sword, and I’m great at both,” he said mostly to himself. Even leaving aside ramen and pizza, cooking had hardly ever been a problem for him. He was a master of the panini press and as long as he got the good sauce from the store his spaghetti always came out great.

As if to prove the screen wrong, he got up and set down the half empty wine bottle so he could pick up the sword, giving it a few mock swings. “Does this look very poor to you, you stupid mirror?”

‘Your swordplay shows very few signs of improvement since your initial arrival.’ the screen printed with no hint of irony, which was ridiculous. It was a mirror. What would it know about sword fighting anyway.

“Well then I’ll just have to go outside and level it up before I go fight whatever’s in store for me after that awful trap level.” Simon marched outside with his sword, and after he found a nice shady part of the meadow he started swinging. He didn’t have any formal sword training like Aikido, or anything like that, but he’d been watching action movies and martial arts movies his whole life. It was pretty much what he did these days when he wasn’t gaming, so he had an excellent idea of what he should do and how he should swing - he just needed to practice a bit and work on his endurance, and he’d be fine.

While he practiced, Simon thought about the screen he’d seen. That was a big help to him. Before that he was horrified of dying like he did before, but now he could tell himself that he was at least leveling up, and that those deaths were worth it. Even if he had to die ten or twenty more times, which seemed unlikely, he would get better every time. He’d probably have something weak to practice on when he got to the next level too. Zombies probably, which would be great. He’d much rather face those slow bastards than another floor full of cheap traps, but he wanted to get deeper where he could find a scroll or a spell book and start learning magic. If there was a skill for it, then it had to be an option, and he would find it. Being able to magically heal his wounds or kill the most annoying monsters from a distance would make this whole ordeal infinitely easier.

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As Simon started to break out into a sweat, he finally stopped practicing his overhead chops and thrusts, and decided to take a break. It was starting to get warm out here, and even though he was in decent shape, he wasn’t really used to a world without air conditioning just yet. Once he was rested, he thought about doing another round of practice swings, but he decided to go into his house to snack on that loaf that always reappeared when he respawned. Practicing on an empty stomach was counterproductive anyway; it could lead to heat stroke and muscle cramps. At first he thought he would breeze through this game so quickly he wouldn’t need that feature, but now it was nice to know that a halfway decent meal would always be waiting for him here.

“Show me my character sheet,” he told the mirror between bites, eager to see what effect his practice had.

As it faded into existence though, Simon noted with disappointment that neither his experience point totals nor his rating of (Poor) had budged at all. He sighed in frustration. “This is one of those games where you only get experience from killing things I guess.”

If that was the case then he decided that he might as well go find something to kill. He thought about looking through the forest and seeing if there were any easy wandering mobs out there to grind, before eventually deciding that it would be too hot out there if he was wearing armor. That only left the dungeon, he decided, which had been nice and cool so far.

Simon swallowed hard at that thought. Maybe he would wait a little longer before he went back down there. After all - half the wine bottle had made the idea almost tolerable, so finishing it would do him almost as much good, he decided, picking it back up and taking a swig from the bottle before helping himself to the cheese. After all, he thought, it would be wasteful if he left all this uneaten no matter how terrible the wine was. It would all be replaced if he did happen to die again, so it’s not like he needed to ration it.

“Mirror - tell me, how do I learn magic? Do I need to find items or practice harnessing my chi or what?” Simon asked.

‘I do not know.’ the mirror responded silently.

That response was almost enough to make Simon choke on the bread he was wolfing down. “Aren’t you the help program? How can you not know something as important as how the magic system works?”

‘Magic works by speaking words of power to direct energies beyond human comprehension. You know no words of power at this time.’ it wrote smoothly in its glowing blue font over several seconds.

“I know that. But what I’m asking is where do I find them? Do mini-bosses drop them? Should I be looking for secret side passages?” Simon looked down to grab the bread to take another bite and was saddened to discover that he’d eaten all of it. It was a coarse wheat bread that normally he wouldn’t have given a second glance at, but when he was actually hungry, he found it to be kind of delicious. Simon made a mental note to keep an eye out for secret passages. Any dungeon that had traps was bound to have secret passages too, and a magic sword or a shortcut past a couple levels was something worth finding.

‘I do not know,’ the mirror repeated, making him sigh in annoyance. This might have been one of the worst designed games he ever played, and when he beat it, he was going to offer that goddess a few free lessons in game design whether she wanted them or not.

“Of course you don’t,” he muttered. “You don’t know anything. You’re the worst tutorial I’ve ever seen honestly. This pit is basically still in beta as far as I’m concerned.”

The mirror obviously had no idea what to make of his words, so it stayed dark, letting Simon stew in his frustration. He knew all the things he’d fix if he was given a chance, but now wasn’t the time for that. He had to beat the thing first, and if there wasn’t any more food to eat or wine to drink, he could hardly just sit here all day. That would get boring and hungry awful fast, so he decided he should get ready for round three with the pit. No - no matter how much he hated the idea it was time to go back down and knock out another five or ten floors in this stupid dungeon.

Simon looked through what he had available to him again, even though it hadn’t changed, before deciding to don the boots and leather armor once more. Looking through the weapons he still had quite an assortment. In addition to the longsword he preferred, there was a short sword, an axe, a few knives, a long bow and a crossbow, and a flanged mace, which were all scattered around the room in different locations.

Simon liked the look of the axe, but thought it might be meant for throwing, and didn’t want to do that just yet. He considered strapping on the crossbow since it seemed pretty much like a gun, and he had no idea how to use a longbow. It was too bulky though, so he decided to leave it here for now. Maybe if he saw an important reason for it on one of the floors, he would bring it, but right now he wanted to focus on leveling up his longsword. It was pretty much what he’d taken last time, but this time he brought two spare torches with him instead of just the one, so he wouldn’t have to worry like last time. Now he was ready to deal with the rats, the traps, and whatever else lurked past them.