Simon would have stared all night if he hadn’t noticed someone else giving him a strange look. It was then, only reluctantly, that he walked across the crowded bar and ordered himself a beer so that he could have something to do for a while longer. 

Freya wasn’t the heartbroken, timid barmaid he was so used to seeing in this room. She was practically the opposite. She was wearing light leather armor and had a quiver of arrows on her back. It was clear she was a warrior of some kind now, and so were her friends. Eight of them sat there, occupying the central trestle table that he usually used to block the window. 

In fact, now that he was looking around he noticed that he recognized many of the people here. Brenna, Gotrik, and more than a few zombies he’d killed more than once were in the room, though this time, they were all alive and breathing. The adventurers he’d fought so recently at the front gate were even here, and they were part of Freya’s party. 

Simon was still trying to come to grips with that strange arrangement when Breena brought his drink over. She practically shoved her tits in his face as she did so. 

“Anything else?” she asked with a wicked smile, “or are you going to go join those friends of yours?”

“Oh, I don’t know them,” Simon said quickly.

“No?” she smiled. “Another mercenary group coming into town just as these are leaving. That’ll be good for business.”

Simon thought about asking her what she meant by that, but instead, he let her walk away. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his contempt off of his face when it came to dealing with her. Instead, he did what he always did. He bought a few drinks for the men at the bar, played some dice, and let them talk. 

It turned out there hadn’t been any attacks on Schwarzenbruck in recent memory. Times had never been better. King Wilden the second, whom Simon had once met as a Prince, had been in power for years now, and though people didn’t think he was the man his father had been, the Duke had not tried to seize power on the man’s death. No one had heard anything about zombies or necromancers either. It was practically a golden age. 

It dawned on Simon only slowly that this was his doing. He’d changed the past and, in doing so, had changed all future levels. Only that didn’t make sense either. If completing past level rest all future levels, then he should have gone to the slime next. 

Did the slime level stay completed because nothing I did affected it or because it’s no longer necessary to complete this level? He wondered to himself as he let himself lose another silver. 

There were so many unknowns here that he wouldn’t have known where to start untangling the knot even if he wasn’t distracted, and he was hopelessly distracted by the idea that Freya was just across the bar, and he didn’t know what to do about that. One thing he did know was where they were going. There was some sort of trade dispute to the north, and they’d been hired to escort a caravan and make sure the way was clear before any more valuable cargo was lost. 

People said it was gnolls, but Simon wouldn’t know. He’d never fought a gnoll before. He would have found a way to get himself invited along just to spend some time with her if he hadn’t watched just how touchy-feely she was with one of the other men in her little outfit. That was enough to make him decide he needed to be moving on right there. 

Simon reminded himself that this wasn’t his Freya and that she could do anything she wanted with whoever he wanted, but seeing her laugh at another man’s jokes was enough to turn that dull ache that had haunted him for so long into a sharp pain as his old wounds ruptured their scar tissue and came back to haunt him. 

Simon chugged the last of his beer before he slammed his wooden tankard down and rose. When he did, his eyes met Freya’s just long enough to see a flicker of interest cross her face, but it was gone again as one of her companions spoke to her. So, reminding himself that she wasn’t his Freya, and even if she was going to be fine, he strode past her and opened the door. As expected, it didn’t lead out into the cool night air. Instead, it led into the fetid sewer, but he slammed it shut behind him before anyone could figure out where that awful smell was coming from.

Maybe he’d join up with her to learn about what it was she was up to and how she’d ended up as a sell sword rather than a barmaid on some other trip. For now, he had a date with Helades. Maybe after he finally got his questions answered, he could lay this issue to rest, but until then, everything else was a distraction. 

Simon incinerated the Carrion crawler when it came at him this time. It dropped sizzling into the sewage before it ever got the chance to hurt him. He considered digging through the bodies but decided that was a distraction, too. 

“If I’m not permanently solving these levels, then what’s the point?” he asked himself as he climbed the ladder and started toward the pyramid.  

It was maddening! How many lives had he spent clearing zombies, goblins, and carnivorous plants, only to find out now that he was going to have to do it all over again?  It was almost enough to make him want to ask Helades about that instead, but he refused to give in to his curiosity. There was only one question that had an answer worth knowing today, and that answer was still almost twenty levels away. 

Simon took his third break at the top of the pyramid when he confirmed that the Wyvern level was still gone, and he was looking at a volcanic eruption. This time, he skipped his chance to duel with a fire elemental, though, and went straight for the exit, where he found that the forest had returned. 

“What in the fuck is going on?” he muttered to himself as he strung his bow, knocked his sword, and stepped through into the darkness. 

Simon hadn’t seen this place since he’d saved those kids. Fortunately, this time, he knew where he was and walked toward the road with an arrow at the ready. He heard the owlbear screech in the darkness more than once, but it wasn’t quite as close as it was last time. 

None of those noises were enough to stop him from moving cautiously forward, though. This time it didn’t find him. This time, he found it, and as it darted up on the road to feast on the carcass of a horse, he released his arrow, using a word of force to give it the energy to punch through the back of the creature's skull. Even that wasn’t enough to drop it, though, and it shrieked in an agonizingly high-pitched note and charged Simon. 

It never reached him, though. It fell over dead halfway there near the overturned wagon he knew he’d find the children in. Still, just to make sure, he picked up the sword of one of the dead men and buried it in the massive carcass to make sure it wasn’t just playing dead. 

“Alright, you can come out,” he said, looking around to make sure nothing else was looking to eat them. “The coast is clear.”

No one moved, and for a moment, Simon feared that the boy and girl might be dead already. Flipping over the flap of the overturned wagon, he found that was not the case, but even as he coaxed the two of them out, they were still extremely skittish. That wasn’t any different than before. What was, was the girl that was with the young lad. 

Eddik was still the same young man he’d been before that was thrilled by Simon’s bravery once his hands stopped shaking, but the woman that was with him was a couple of years older than she’d been last time, and her hair was light instead of dark. Chagrined, Simon realized he couldn’t remember what her name was last time, but this time, it was Kaylee, and she definitely wasn’t the same servant girl. 

That one had been sweet and clingy, but Kaylee was very suspicious and kept looking at him like he was about to do something horrible to her. He couldn’t blame her for that, though. If he was rescued in the middle of a massacre, he’d be pretty on edge himself. 

He ignored it and focused on all the other small changes he was noticing. For starters, they were much deeper in the woods than they’d been in last time. Previously, Simon had rescued them just before they’d been about to exit the forest and reach the river, but now the road seemed to wind endlessly through the trees. It was just another little detail that didn’t quite add up. 

Why should one person change and not the other? Why should the location of the attack change? And if the location of the attack changed, then does that mean the location of the portal changed?

It had to have, he told himself. That was the biggest difference of all. So far, he’d assumed that the portals had been fixed, but if they weren’t, then that said something about exactly where Helades chose to place them.  

As dawn approached, they still weren’t out of the woods, and Simon wasn’t completely surprised when another owlbear attacked them. At that moment, he regretted not bringing the pike with him. That had been a superb weapon for dealing with an eight-foot-tall monster. 

Since he didn’t have it, though, and since it was already drizzling, he called down a bolt of lighting to fry it in place as subtly as he could. Not that there was anything subtle about lightning, of course, but he could do his best to make sure that the pair of children he was escorting didn’t think he had anything to do with it. 

“Well, we certainly lucked out there,” Simon said as he lowered the sword he had been pretending like he was about to fight the thing with. “We should get out of here before we’re struck down next.”

The boy responded by nodding mutely, but the girl continued to glare at him. That was when he realized that she could probably see the aura that the other two women had seen around him for the first time. It would fit with the facts, but he wasn’t sure exactly how he was supposed to bring that up without further incriminating himself, especially considering her stony silence. 

Still, Simon kept up a cheery conversation with the boy, at least, as he told Simon all about his father and the festival he was supposed to attend. 

When the sun rose, part of him wanted to sleep, but they were too close to the edge of the woods now, and in another hour or two, they’d be at the miller’s place, so he pushed on. Camping in the open would be dangerous, but doing it with a girl who might be convinced that he was in league with the devil might be asking for another death, and he was in a hurry.