Hopelessness was Simon’s first reaction. He didn’t have any levels. This wasn’t even really a game - it was just a cosmic joke, and he’d made a terrible mistake. He felt sadness begin to bloom inside him, and the world blurred for a moment as his eyes teared up. Simon hated to feel sad though, and he hated people who wallowed in self pity like this, so he reached for the only thing he had to hold back those tears: anger. 

Alongside the deep sadness that had been building inside him since his conversation with Helades was a deep undercurrent of rage. Rage that she could treat people like this, especially him! Simon had suffered through countless lives that were a terrible fit for him because she had decided that she knew best, but she was completely wrong, and this only proved it. Now the only thing that there was left to do was to take his revenge. Simon picked up the sword and looked at the mirror. Now that he knew where she was he could go back in there and give her a piece of his mind, maybe turn the tables on her and show her what it felt like to die over and over again even, since he was sure he couldn’t actually kill a god. 

He quickly decided against this plan. Simon was a man of action, and when he saw a problem, he fixed it. That was as true in video games as it was true in his own life. When he decided the only way out of the awful life he had was to kill himself, he hadn’t cried about it. He’d acted. If Helades had seen that as the cry for help it was then… no, Simon shook his head. He was so angry he was getting off topic. Confronting the goddess after her threats of a painful end if he were to waste her time - that was just asking for trouble. 

The only real revenge he could show her now was to make progress and find out just how broken this pit really was. If four million people had tried and failed to beat it then there had to be a pretty game breaking bug further down inside the thing.  He would find it, then he’d come back to her and use it to prove that she’d signed the contract under false pretenses with him. He wasn’t a lawyer, but he was pretty sure that loopholes were how heroes got out of pretty much all their deals with the devil. Since Simon was so much smarter than the average gamer, he knew that he’d have no trouble doing just that. 

Simon looked around the room with a new sense of clarity now that he’d decided what he needed to do. Rather than just grabbing a couple weapons and heading back down into the pit, he proceeded to lay out everything methodically on the bed. All of the armor. All of the weapons. All of the gear. Everything. 

The first thing that was obvious was that there was no way he could take everything with him. He had to take the leather armor of course, and the chain hauberk would be a must for dealing with the skeletons, even if it might make sneaking on the goblin floor difficult. This time he decided to bring three torches instead of two, and the flint even if it seemed defective. After that all he needed to do was decide on weapons. This Simon decided to bring the crossbow down, along with the sword and its scabbard, and the flanged mace. He seemed to remember something about clerics using bludgeoning weapons in dungeons and dragons because the undead were weak against them, so maybe that would help him along the way. In the end he shoved everything he didn’t need right now in an old rucksack, lit a torch, and then grabbed the spear and headed down the stairs. 

For the first few minutes he felt incredibly clumsy and overburdened by everything he was bringing with him, but it was better than the alternative of being unprepared. Simon breezed through the first two levels in minutes, taking risks he normally wouldn’t have, and trusting his instincts in a bid to keep up with his anger. The very last thing he wanted to do right now was calm down before he faced off against the Skeleton. He was counting on that anger to fuel him, and overcome its soulless stare. 

It wasn’t much of a strategy, honestly, but it was working. It was equally important for the goblin’s floor too though, because he was trying to move fast but be as stealthy as he’d been on some of his best runs. Simon hurried to the part of the cave where he usually encountered the patrol, then he lit a second torch and tossed them both in separate directions. Once that was done he waited in ambush and killed the goblin as it approached to investigate. The only thing he did differently than his previous runs was that he reloaded the crossbow in the dark before he continued on. 

This time when he reached the bonfire, he chose to try something different with the dumb bastards. He launched a quarrel at the biggest greenskin sitting by the fire, and then he charged the rest yelling. The result was exactly as he expected, and they ran without a fight. Simon had no doubt that given a few minutes they’d regroup, but he didn’t really care about that. In a few minutes he’d be gone and they wouldn’t be his problem anymore. 

Simon only paused on his rampage when he finally reached the chilly hallway at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the crypt. There he took a quick break, set down all the equipment he didn’t expect to need, and took out his mace. “Remember,” he reminded himself now that his anger was starting to fade, “You don’t need to kill him the first time. You just need to endure his gaze attack.” 

With those final words he charged into the room and started to attack the skeletons that had not yet started to stir with all the fury he could muster. He quickly figured out why Cleric’s use maces - they turned the brittle skull’s of his opponents to nothing but bone shards and powder without any of the difficulty of having to aim with his sword. Fully half of the bastards died for good before they could rise a second time to try to kill him, and Simon managed to kill several more before he could feel the cold gaze of his nemesis on him. 

It was an achievement that he could be proud of, but he forced himself not to look. As far as Simon was concerned all that the appearance of the knight had done was start the clock, and killing every skeleton but the boss was a timed event. So, he kept his head down and focused on smashing these skeletons one at a time until his right arm ached and he was panting so hard that he could see his fogged breath. This was definitely harder than they made it look in the movies, but the fewer skeletons there were facing off against him, the easier it got. By the time he was down to three opponents, it wasn’t much more difficult than whack-a-mole down at the fair. Let the first one swing, parry the second one, and then crush the skull of the one that was getting ready to swing. 

Simon was almost surprised to discover that when he killed the last one there wasn’t one after that. Well, none except for the knight. He’d spent the last few minutes of the fight moving his little mob around the room trying to stay away from the big bastard without ever meeting his gaze, and he’d actually been successful. So successful, that now that it was time to actually face the monster, he could barely bring himself to. Simon struggled to think of something else he might do instead. Maybe he could try that gate again, or retreat into the hallway and take a break. Maybe he could… Simon stopped the desperate spiral of his thoughts and dropped his mace. Instead he put both hands on the grip of his longsword and looked slowly up at the terrible enemy walking towards him and forced himself to meet its unholy gaze. 

He felt the fear washing over him, but he tried to ignore it and move past it. His father always told him that courage wasn’t about not being afraid, but about being afraid and doing what needed to be done anyway. Simon had never understood what he meant by that corny line, but face to face with evil, he had a much better idea. He could feel the panic in his heart, looking for any excuse to run screaming. He could feel the stiffness in his limbs just waiting to become full blown paralysis again, but he struggled not to give in. At the final moment, when his skeletal executioner raised his sword to cleave Simon’s skull in two, he managed to finally unfreeze and deflect the blade with an overhead block. 

The knight was faster than the other skeletons he faced, but still slow, and Simon saw an opening to stroke back, but couldn’t quite make himself take it. Instead he stepped back, giving ground and readying himself for another parry. He did this over and over again, using the precious time to catch his breath. Each strike he blocked felt like the end of the world, but every time he managed to divert the terrible blow left him that much more confident that this was something he could actually do. He could kill this bastard. 

For the first time Simon followed up his parry with a tentative swing that was short of the target, but it still made the skeleton step back slightly. After that the fight changed completely. Instead of simply trying to smite him in a single blow, it became much more like a knightly duel. Swords flashed and blows were met with such force that sparks struck, and each time Simon worried that his sword would shatter like it had last time, but it held. Eventually he figured out that mystery, when an errant blow rebounded off the platemail and his sword got painfully cold. 

That was great. It wasn’t just a deadly skeleton with only a very tiny weak spot that was its face and neck, but he had to make a clean kill or his sword would quickly freeze so hard that it became brittle. Normally that was something that Simon would complain about, but right now he was too focused on killing this bastard to let it bother him. He was finally starting to understand the ebb and flow of the fight for the first time, and that was when he decided to go for it. He followed a party with a feint, and then a second blow to knock the knight’s sword away, and only once all that happened did he try to strike the skeleton down. Unfortunately his opponent turned its head and Simon’s strike was deflected by the gorget. 

That was fine, Simon thought. He’d just try again. Unfortunately he’d never get the chance, as he was run through seconds later by a thrust from the knight that came faster than expected. The blow was almost through Simon’s heart at least, he thought as his consciousness faded. He still felt the painful tug of something against his soul in a way he’d never felt with any of his other deaths, but was unsurprised when he woke up once more in his own bed. 

The difference between this time and all the other times though was that this time Simon woke up with a smile on his face. He might have died, but that fight was definitely a success, and after a quick bite to eat he was going to go back down and fight the bastard again. He’d do it as many times as it took until he was past this floor and on to the next one. He was going to show that uppity goddess how stupid she was to try to screw someone like him over if it was the last thing he did.