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After that, he stopped for a moment. Not because he was protected by the stone, but because he felt like an idiot. “Mother fucker,” he cursed, realizing that once again Helades had set him up. On the far side of the portal or whatever it was that he’d walked through, he’d only seen the ridge that had led to the wyvern’s nest, so of course that was where he’d gone. In exactly the opposite direction were the rest of the ruins that this arch had belonged to, which was obviously where the next portal would be.

Simon quickly scanned the horizon, taking in the ruined castle and looking for anything that might indicate the next portal, but nothing stood out. Just like the last level, it was ruins, but instead of the sprawling vine choked city this was some kind of fortification that had long ago fallen, and there was nothing to hide threats from him. He knew exactly what the threat in this level was. It was flying around his head, trying to crush his spine with that wrecking ball of a tail that it had.

So, with the Wyvern slowly circling back towards him, Simon started running again. This time for the main gate. Halfway there, he was gasping for breath and too tired to even blame the altitude. He just wasn’t cut out to do stuff like this. His endurance bar was way too short to be running laps like this. As winded as he was, he didn’t beat the giant reptile there, and it landed in his path, snapping and hissing as it blocked his way.

“Hey - I’m sorry, okay!” he shouted. “I promise. I'll leave your stupid nest alone!” He moved to pull out his sword as he slowly backed away, but the thing lashed out with a sudden bite as it extended its neck enough that Simon practically fell over in his desperation not to get his head bitten off.

He barely managed to avoid letting out a shrill scream, and was able to scramble to his feet on all fours as the wyvern started chasing him on foot. He started running again. This time he ran along the wall to the left of the gate, looking for another way in. Unfortunately, it would seem the lizard was still plenty fast on land, and he realized he was quickly losing ground.

“G̴̝̈́͒͠ḛ̷͕̮̕͘r̵̛̫̮̔͠ͅv̴̿̀͠ͅu̷̝͚̜̎u̴͚͈̎ḻ̸̣̈́ ̸̦̟̜̈́̍M̷̪̹̪̓̓͒e̴̪̎i̴͓̗̔̔͆ͅr̸̹͓͚͐̅è̵̛͇̱̾n̴̩̜̍!” Simon shouted, pointing his hand back towards the monster bent on ripping him to pieces. The result was poorly focused and more smoke than fire, as a few scattered streamers of fire and a storm of sparks filled the air behind him.

It wasn’t his best work, but it did stop the creature in its tracks for a few seconds as it roared at the unexpected danger. Simon was quick to take advantage of the moment and climbed the lowest point he could find on the wall. There, it was mostly collapsed and only about four feet high, so he was able to scramble up and over the top before the wyvern could devour him.

Simon took one look at the wide and mostly empty courtyard and decided there was no way he was getting across that alive. Not without a rest first. The closest place he could find a moment to sit was probably in the lone remaining watch tower that hadn’t already collapsed on this part of the wall, though. So, with his chest heaving, he scrambled another ten feet up the broken wall section while the wyvern took to the sky as he pulled out his sword and started running to the tower.

This time he made it first, but all that allowed him to do was discover that the other half of the thing was missing. It would be at best a momentary distraction for the angry mother that was trying to make him lunch.

Simon was about to start running again when he noticed that it did have one old, weathered oak door that was closed on the remains of the far wall. Logically, that door went nowhere, but there was nothing logical about the pit, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt now that the goddess that tormented him loved to hide these things in obscure places.

So, even though the wyvern was bearing down on him, he took a few precious seconds to open it, and on the other side wasn’t the empty air of the battlement and the courtyard. It was a nighttime cityscape that looked straight out of some text-book on ancient Rome or Greece. It wasn’t even ruins. It was a real live city with people and everything.

The only problem was that he immediately noticed two things: the first was that pretty much everyone was running from something behind the portal that he couldn’t see, and the second was that there were a few scattered fires in the part of the city that he could.

It was an awful choice. Stand here and definitely die, or jump into the next level without a clear idea of what was going on and probably die right away from some new horrible thing.

In the end, Simon did the only thing he could do, and jumped through the doorway moments before the wyvern was able to end him. No one noticed his sudden appearance, but then he didn’t expect them to. They were all running for their lives towards the harbor with whatever they could carry. It was every man for himself.

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As soon as Simon stepped out of the alley he was standing in and turned around, he saw why, and his heart sank. There was an erupting volcano behind him. It wasn’t particularly close, but it was turning night into day with the amount of lava it was spewing into the sky, and magma was slowly flooding the street, moving towards him at a fast walk.

Simon coughed. The air wasn’t particularly smoky, but it was foul, and he was probably breathing in all sorts of toxic gas just standing here. It was almost as bad as his dad’s smoking. Even so, he breathed deeply and stood there, completely winded, as he tried to understand the situation.

Everyone was running downhill, away from the volcano and towards the harbor. They might live longer that way, and they might not. He wasn’t sure. He’d seen more than a few documentaries on Pompeii, and if this volcano erupted like that, then nowhere was safe. Simon didn’t care about being safe, though. A volcano would be a quick, clean death. He wasn’t so afraid of those anymore. What he cared about was understanding why this level was here, and where his deranged goddess would put the next level.

If he had to search the whole city, it could take literally a hundred lives to do that. He needed to narrow that down.

“She definitely wouldn’t put it somewhere I definitely can’t get to, but she probably would put it somewhere I couldn’t get to for long,” he told himself as he looked around the city.

That meant it was probably in the direction that the people were running from, not where they were running to, unless she’d done something extra tricky like putting it in the lighthouse he could see at the far end of the bay, or in one of the ships that were already leaving the harbor. That didn’t seem very likely to him, though.

“She’ll want me to be somewhere dangerous, where the chance of a painful death is at its highest,” he mumbled as he looked at the temples on the far hillside. “Somewhere obvious and flashy. Like a… Palace.”

As he finished speaking, his eyes settled on the palace, which was in the shadow of the volcano and had a commanding view of the town and the sea. That was definitely the sort of place she would pick. He was sure of it.

Simon started in that direction, but for the first few minutes he just walked, because he was exhausted. When the lava started to get close, he jogged again, but just enough to stay in front of it. In the slowly spreading carpet of magma, he occasionally saw flaming human shapes. He wasn’t sure if those were people being burned alive, or fiery elementals, but he didn’t want to find out. In the former case it was awful, and in the latter he had no way to fight them. He doubted that his only spell would do any better than his sword against that sort of enemy.

Fortunately, he never found out which was the case because he arrived at the palace without incident and found the place abandoned. The guards that he’d passed on the way up were running away with whatever valuables they could carry. They didn’t try to stop him. They just looked at him like he was crazy.

The palace was a work of art, and even though that wasn’t really Simon’s thing, he would have gladly spent half a day just admiring and exploring it.

Simon very much doubted he had that sort of time, though, so instead of stopping to admire every statue and frieze, he hustled from room to room, opening every door and trying to figure out which obscure pantry would turn out to be his salvation.

At least that was true until he got to the throne room, then he stopped dead in his tracks. In a large archway at the back of the room was the next portal. It led to a nighttime forest that looked positively primeval.

That’s not what stopped him, though.

What stopped him was the fact that on the throne in front of him lounged Helades, or someone that looked a whole lot like her.

Simon walked forward in stunned disbelief, still holding his sword in his hand. When he entered the room, he heard the volcano outside erupt again. It was loud enough that the noise shook the building even before the tremors reached it, but neither of those things stopped him from approaching the goddess.

When he got close enough, she regarded him and started to clap. “Congratulations, Simon,” she smiled. “Truthfully, I never thought you’d get this far.”

“Are you here to mock me or just watch me burn?” Simon asked acidly. “If you wanted to watch me suffer, you really should have been there for the zombie level. That was the best one yet.”

“I’m an omnipotent being, Simon. I’m always watching you,” she answered before her tone softened a bit. “And Schwarzenbruck is a terrible place. No one that reaches it gets through it without suffering, sadly. It stops more heroes from advancing than almost any other level.”

Simon thought about not just chastising her, but attacking her for saying something so flippant. He hadn’t just suffered. He’d been a zombie for months. He’d watched the only person he cared about in this place die in his arms. It wasn’t suffering. It was heartbreaking.

He didn’t rant about any of that, though, because she wouldn’t care. Instead, he asked coldly, “I’ll ask again. Why are you here now if you're always watching?”

“Just to check in on your progress and congratulate you,” she answered warmly. “As I said, you’ve been doing much better than expected, and so few people reach this far. Out of every twenty warriors that enter The Pit, only one reaches level ten.”

Simon hadn’t had a chance to think about it, but once she said it, he realized he had indeed made it another level down. Hell - he’d all but made it another two levels down, because unless Helades was actually going to get her hands dirty for once, there was no way he wasn’t making it to level eleven.

“Thanks,” he said, filing that information away for later. Only 1/10th of the way through this awful place and he was already in the top 5%. That would have given him gold rank in the ladders of his favorite online game, but he’d always been more of a diamond player, so he wasn’t ready to settle for the top 5%.

“You’re welcome,” she smiled. “Every ten levels or so, I like to check in on the people like you that haven’t yet given up to the awfulness of the pit and see if there are any questions I can answer.”

“Well, you can start by—” Simon had a whole list of questions, so if she was offering, he’d gladly keep asking them until the lava was at the doorstep.

“Just one though.” She interrupted. “One question for every ten. Those are the rules, I’m afraid.”

Simon clenched his fists in annoyance. Of course, she had a rule about that. Of course, she did. He thought about asking why that was, but quickly stopped as he realized that would be his question. Instead, he stood there quietly to think, filtering through the dozens of possible questions that swirled through his head.

Finally, after a lot of thought, he decided what was truly important, and opened his mouth to speak again, while the goddess looked on at him with amusement.