Simon peered around his tree looking for anyone else that might be trying to murder. Over the sounds of screaming and burning it was hard to make much out, but after half a minute he decided the coast was clear. That decision almost cost him a death as an arrow embedded iree trunk inches from his eye.

  Though he couldn’t see who it was that tried to shoot him, he ran in the dire that the arrow came from which was the best thing. He groped for his shield, trying to get it up in case there was another arrow, but tinuing to charge heedlessly, he body checked his would be assassin in the underbrush, sending them both sprawling.

  The bandit was on his feet before Simon, and pulled a dagger from a boot, but he held back, and Simon really uood why after he rose to his feet, t over him. His attacker was little more than a malnourished child. The feral little thing practically s him as it sshed the air with the dagger to keep him babsp;

  “Why don’t you just run for your life you little bastard,” Simon growled, pretending to swing his sword hard enough to make his oppo flind jump back. “The st thing I want is to add killing kids to my list of achievements.” The bandit listeo him suspiciously, like a trick was being pyed on him, and then, after a couple of cautious steps backwards he turned and ran off into the forest, leaving Simon to walk back to the road without so much as the o look over his shoulder.

  Why should he after all. He’d won, big time. However hard some of the monsters Hedes had him face, underfed try bandits were no match for a high end, top 1% adventurer like him. “Well Luken,” Simon asked, nudging the prone man with his boot. Rather than sh out at him as Simon had expected, the bandit instead ged fearfully and shrank from his toubsp;

  “I’m sorry, master mage sir, I didn’t realize… we didn’t realize that you could—” the man babbled before Simon interrupted him.

  “That I could kick your ass up and dowreet?” Simon Gloated, still holding his sword in a threatening way that didn’t quite promise the other mah.

  The bandit’s eyes had a hard time leaving it though, and he swallowed hard before he mao say, “quite right my lord, quite right. If you could see it in your heart to—”

  “Go o out of here,” Simon said waving the man away dismissively as he sheathed his sword. “If I ever see you again I’ll gut you.”

  “Yes my lord, sir, thank you sir!” Luken said scampering backwards and only rising once he was a safe distance away. He took off running the same way Simon nning on going, which was awkward because he might actually see him again, but that roblem he could deal with ter if he had to.

  With the immediate danger gone, Simon walked over to the sm corpses and after a moment of thought he put each of the ohat was still moving out of their misery with a sihrust of his sword. He didn’t enjoy killing people that weren’t trying to kill part of him of course, but after everything he’d been through he khat he would much rather hit the reset button than tio lie there suffering. Ohat was done he briefly sidered searg their corpses for anything useful, but that was too disgusting, so he left them to rot and started walking down the road in search of civilization.

  A day and a night ter he finally found the small vilge he was searg for. Except for the smell, and how dirty the people were it retty much exactly what he’d been expeg. He thought about asking the first person he could find where there was an inn, but feeling shy, he just kept walking until he saw a sign in the shape of a mug of beer above the door of a rge building. Obviously there wasn’t a lot of writing happening in this pce, so it could hardly be that plicated, he told himself as he walked inside.

  Of course things quickly got plicated when he walked inside and the bar keep asked him “Well, what I get you?” She looked at him like he had shit on his shoes and had tracked it inside her establishment, but once he started to expin the sob story he’d rehearsed on the way here, she quickly relented.

  The bandits had attacked him as soon as they thought he was rich after all, so since he hadn’t brought any s that weren’t gold, when he prese to her he made a big deal about how it was his only left. “I kept it in my boot you see - just in case, but the bandits to the east robbed me blind and took damn near everything else I had.”

  The look she gave him wasly sympathetic, but when he was finally done, she said “Well, you stay here for a night or two until you tinue on to Liepzen or Hurag or wherever yoing, but this ain't no charity operation. It’s still going to cost, you uand?”

  He smiled at that, and quickly listed all the things he wanted: a room for three nights to recover from his harrowing ordeal, meals for the days he was here, and a drink to soften the harsh blow that left had dealt him. She nodded, and then looking at his uttered, “damn fn money,” before biting it to make sure it was real. In the end she gave him a handful of coppers and silvers and had the cute bar maid direct him to his room after telling him what time they started serving dinner.

  He watched the young woman’s ass as he walked up the stairs, but the unavoidable parison to Freya’s kept him from ogling it, and as soon as he reached the small room, she was goh little more than a quick curtsy.

  The room itself was underwhelming, but no matter how dingy or custrophobic it was, it was somewhere new and safe, and in his life those were the only two things that really mattered to him anymore. Maybe once he got used to walking and talking aing, he could worry about finding somewhere o stay. For now, he was just tent to y on his lumpy mattress, stare up at the ceiling, and listen to the noises ing from the on room below. Simon was sure that the y would wear off eventually of course, but that was tomorrow or the day.

  When he finally started to get bored, he examihe s she’d given him. ting the silver s, she thought that the woman might have given him too much ge, but when he ted the copper he realized the problem. She’d given him 11 small copper s and 9 slightly rger silver ones, which was evidehat she couldn’t t, or that base-10 wasly something they valued in their moary system. Simon had pyed games like that before, aed them. It was so much more difficult to do the math in his head if it was twenty coppers to the silver, but a ptinum was only worth five gold ones. He didn’t see why everyone couldn’t just standardize that sort of thing, but games had to have their little quirks, right?

  As Simon put away the s he reminded himself “This isn’t a game - this is some histarbage which holy makes the whole thing worse, but you don’t o worry about that right now.” It made the whole thing even dumber, of course, sihere was no way he was going to be able to figure out the logic behind that one, but he wasn’t about to ask Heledes to help him with history lessons the same way she’d helped him with nguage. He shuddered at the thought, and then. Shaking his head, he got up and hid his real wealth uhe bed, before spreading the rest of his belonging around to distray would be thief. Then he went downstairs to get a bite before it got too te.

  He smelled the st of roasti and savory spices as soon as he left his room. They only intensified, along with the noise as he made he way down to the on room where he was served boiled potatoes, some sort of minced bread dumplings, and a thick cut of pork loin drenched in a brown gravy. pared what Simon had subsited on up until now i, this was a feast, and even if it wasn’t something he would have usually ordered, he ate it with gusto. The proprietave him evil looks from time to time, like he was about to dine and dash at any moment, but everyone else was amiable enough.

  After his sed pint of dark brown Ale Simaled his fellow drinkers with a story about how he had once very bravely run from wyvern after actally stumbling across her , and was met with gales of ughter. During those stories, atempts to guess where Simon was from, he learned much about the world, but other than the fact that the rge city was Liepzen, he fot almost all of it, because he was w on his fourth pint.

  By then he wasn’t good for much besides ughing at bad jokes and losing mo dice as he got to know the locals. It was a new sensation for him since he almost always won at games, of course, but he didn’t mind too much si mostly seemed to e down to lud bluffing. If it were mostly based on skill he had no doubt he would have won. Not that he o. Simon didn’t he money, so there was o out peasants for coppers. After all, Thomen was just a bargeman, and Yars was a woodsman, and the sn that he’d spent earlier was as much as both of them made in a year. bined.

  By the end of the night it was just him and five or six other drunks singing songs. He didn’t know most of their names, and he had no idea what the words ot the songs were, but he did his best. No one seemed to mind since he’d bought the st round of the night, spending the st of his copper pence. He figured he’d probably do pretty much the same thing tomorrow night before he got on the road the following day to go somewhere bigger aer than this little berg. He had the money after all, and he was sure he could find something here.

  That was Simon’s st thought as he went to sleep with a drunken smile on his face. His sleep was restful and uful, and in the m he stretched when the first rays of the sun shot through the shutters and forced him from his slumber. He turned and covered his head with the pillow, trying to sleep a little loo avoid the hangover he was sure he’d have after st night. But curiously, as his brain began to wake up more and more he realized that there was no hangover.

  Simon opened his eyes and sat up, tying to figure out what was wrong, because something was definitely off. It took a sed, but when his gaze finally met his own eyes in the mirror across from him, he finally realized the truth.

  “Mother fucker,” he excimed in disappointed frustration. Sometime st night while he’d been asleep he’d died and had restarted ba the damn .