Death After Death

Simon spent hours slaughtering the green vermin that night. At first, they hunted him in packs of three and four, but after he eliminated several of those, the tables turned. He was hunting them. For a time, that was the rhythm. Ambush a group of goblins, slaughter them until there was only one left, then drain the last member dry and use its ragged screeching to call for more.

That worked for a while, but eventually, they grew wary and defensive. Assembling around their lair, causing larger confrontations. Even the shaman that he owed so much to eventually came out to play, which usually didn’t happen until the second or third night. The thing managed to cast greater fire twice, but Simon took its head off before it could do it in a way that threatened him.

Where does a goblin learn magic? He wondered for at least the tenth time. They seemed to have a language, but Simon couldn’t understand it, which meant he was probably reading too much into it.

His best answer was that demons were planting that evil little seed into the various warrens he’d seen that had it, but he supposed they might have some evil little god. Still, how could they have enough language for spells but not enough language that he could understand their other grunts and cries?

He had no idea, and tonight, he really didn’t care. He just killed them and harvested as much of their energy as possible, and he could feel the results. He didn’t feel much stronger, but the fact that he was able to keep fighting for hours without pausing to catch his breath certainly said something was happening. He even descended into their warren for the first time, though he refreshed his dark vision before he did so.

It was one of the few places he hadn’t been in his little starting zone, but he wasn’t impressed. Simon had hoped for some overlooked secret, but instead, he found cramped tunnels and shit-smeared walls. He spent a while down there. It was hard to say exactly how long or how many goblins he killed in those claustrophobic spaces. There was just enough order and artistry to the ugly graffiti that he wanted to keep going. There was some intelligence in there worth understanding.

Sadly, before he found anything worth pushing on for, he reached the limits of his light amplification magic. Without getting a torch or casting another spell, eventually, the faint starlight from the crevice that was the place’s entrance faded to pure darkness, and he turned back toward the surface.

Still, he hadn’t expected to find the holy grail buried under his feet, and he’d made good progress during the night. “It would have been cool if I’d discovered the spider city, though,” he told himself as he climbed back to the surface.

It was there he found out it was daytime, or at least it would be soon. He was forced to turn his eyes away from what should have been the thin blue line of false dawn because, under the effects of his night vision spell, it was bright enough to make his eyes water.

Simon walked through the forest toward the stream, and then, after looking around to see if there was anything around to ambush him, he started stripping to the waist so he could see if there were any results. What he saw next made him throw the sword away in the stream bed. It was better to let it rust than keep using that cursed thing, he decided instantly.

Simon had lost some weight and gotten some visible muscle, too, but it was a terrible skinny-fat combination that lent more than a hint of goblin to his physique. He didn’t actually think he’d become part goblin, of course. Instead, what had happened was that the spell effects were quite literally siphoning a bit of the strength from each of the creatures he’d killed and giving it to him, but goblins weren’t exactly Mr. Universe.

The things were ugly and disproportional. Not only were their limbs too long, but they skipped every leg day and relied on sinewy upper body strength. Simon tried to imagine how he would look if he had the same proportions as a goblin, and it was a horror show.

“You know what? I’ll just get a new sword at the death knight level after I smash all their skulls with a mace,” he said as he walked away from his failed experiment. The silver lining was that he’d lost enough weight for his armor to fit him better, but it was going to take some time and some serious exercise for the unnatural gains of his pecs and biceps to smooth out into something that resembled natural.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

He ruminated on that until he got back home. Then, after he closed all the shutters to keep out the rising sun, he studied himself in his mirror a second time. The results weren’t quite as bad as he’d feared. His chest definitely didn’t look quite right, but he didn’t look like a horrible mutant either, now that the shock had worn off.

While this wasn’t precisely the reason he was nervous about using the words of flesh shaping and strengthening to enhance his own body for the long term, he was pretty close to it. It felt like he was dabbling with things only just barely within his understanding or control. Simon could only imagine what malproportioned features and strange cancers he’d give himself if he tried to meddle too directly with his crude tools.

After studying himself with a critical eye, he decided to adjust things only a little bit. He could reevaluate after that. “Aufvarum Hyakk Celdura,” he said, using the words of lesser flesh shaping to even out the worst of it as he tried to force the excess fat from his body. He was a little more aggressive than the last time he’d tried this but unwilling to lose any internal organs due to what was essentially magical liposuction, he settled for merely being slightly overweight.

“I guess the lesson here is that if I'm going to dip into a wellspring of anything, I should make sure the water is clean,” he mused as he disrobed and prepared for bed. His plan probably would have worked fine if he’d been fighting and killing other men, but slaughtering his way through strangers to become ever more muscular seemed like a remarkably poor use of magic, and he shook his head at the idea.

No, harvesting strength rather than life force doesn't seem as addictive, but it’s no less wrong, he decided as he laid down for bed. There was only one problem; he wasn’t tired at all. He still felt alert despite everything he’d done, but becoming a night owl in a fantasy world was inadvisable. It was just one more reason for people to think he was a weirdo when he arrived at civilization in a few levels.

Simon had a hard time going to sleep. In fact, after laying there for hours, he was almost desperate enough to see if the weakness aspect of Gelthic could be used to induce sleep, but he decided against it. Instead, he simply waited, and eventually, his rampage hit him like a ton of bricks. As soon as whatever energy had been keeping him awake finally faded, he was out like a light, and he stayed that way for half a day.

In the morning, he looked himself over, noting that he looked a little thinner and had fewer features he would call goblinish about his upper body. It was almost enough to make him go back for his sword, but he decided to leave it. Instead, he had his apple for breakfast to keep the hunger at bay and started packing for his trip.

“It’s not like I have far to go,” he told himself as he belted on his leather armor and set out his mace, shield, and a few other things. “Down into the crypt, kill a few skeletons, scrounge a little silver, then walk through some ruins and dodge a wyvern. After that, I can get something hot at the inn in Esmiran, then after I save the lovebirds, I can go see a man about a dragon.”

Simon realized that if he wanted to build up his endurance before he tried to jog up the mountain, he should probably spend some more time in one of those levels, but he’d have to see what felt right. Staying in the wyvern level might tempt him to wait around for decades to see his son again.

Simon blasted through the skeletons with almost no effort this trip. Thanks to the boost his goblin harvest gave him, he was only a little winded, too. He actually spent more time studying the swords that were available than he did fighting the undead or harvesting the precious metal he needed with a few minor words of metal.

Half that time, he spent deciding which sword he was going to use for a while before settling on a nicely weighted hand and a half broadsword with a bronze hilt and only a little rust on the blade. He chose it both because it fit his fighting style and because he was pretty sure he could clean it up without magic, unlike most of the rest. It just needed a little polish and a lot of sharpening.

The rest of his time was spent studying the death knight’s sword. The frost blade, as he’d long since thought of it, was made with entirely different patterns than the blades that the unspoken forged, and even though he had the schematics drawn up in his notes, he still took some time to look at the whole thing again.

It seemed drastically inefficient compared to the other designs he’d had so much experience with recently. Not only was it powered by the wielder, but the magic that was required to protect the person holding it was in the gauntlet. “Why wouldn’t you just put the protective circuit in the cross guard to keep the handle at a safe temperature?”

Sadly, the answer was almost certainly that whoever had made it hadn’t thought of it. That was one of the consequences of magic being so forbidden in this part of the world. Everyone had to reinvent the wheel, and most of them didn't choose the optimal method.

Simon left it where it lay, picked up the key instead, and moved to the exit. However, when he opened the gate, he was surprised to see a level other than what he’d expected. He’d thought he was going to the Wyvern level, but instead, the sleepy little village that would soon be host to a dozen white cloaks lay before him.

Simon blinked in surprise, trying to digest the implications of that one little change, but that didn’t stop him from stepping through and shutting the door behind him. The last thing he needed was for someone to notice that the bakery’s door was leading to a dank tomb. That would not be good for him.