Death After Death (Roguelike Isekai)

Simon tried and failed to remember the last time he’d been in the swamp. So, he pulled up the mirror and checked, giving out a low whistle. “More than 30 deaths ago,” he said quietly as he checked his crude maps in the rippling water and noted the scant details. He had the direction he needed to go, but little in the way of information about where the ambushes would happen. He’d fix that, just in case he ever came through here again.

“It’s not like that’s going to happen now that I’m done meddling with the past,” he muttered to no one in particular as he moved toward the closest sandbar. He might not have the ambushes marked, but he had a pretty good idea of the quickest and therefore driest way through the muck.

As he went, Simon forced himself to move slowly and calmly, pushing away any lingering anxiety and trying to get a deeper view of the world around him. Plants didn’t really have auras, but the animals that lived in them did, and this place, being what it was, created a fog of life that he steadily tried to focus on in search of the lizardmen that would be trying to stab him soon enough.

After a few minutes of work, he finally spotted the first one, lingering just below the water like an alligator, and then two more in the underbrush. None of them was visible to the naked eye, and even knowing where they were, he could barely spot the ripples in the water.

His first instinct was to blast them from a distance, but of course, that wasn’t his game anymore. This time, instead of trying to strike first, he merely avoided them and kept going. Something he hadn’t known the first few times he went through this place was that the Lizardmen were loath to give away their hiding places. That was something he’d learned in one of the many books he’d read at the Broken Tower.

They were a rare enemy to encounter, but they preferred pack hunting and clever ambushes to orcish charges, and this time Simon used that to his advantage and outpaced them, transforming the scenario from an ambush into a mine field. As long as he stayed far enough away from the hunters that they weren’t sure of their throw, they lurked, and he moved.

It was a good strategy, and one of the many he had tucked away from his time reading. It wouldn’t work for a normal warrior, of course. They wouldn’t see the predators lying in wait, but even the simple gray auras of the lizardmen stood out in stark contrast to the smaller snakes, birds, and mammals that made up the background noise of the place.

Will this be enough to clear the level, though? he wondered as he moved. Last time he’d killed a dozen or so of the slow-moving brutes, and then he’d smashed up their nests and eggs. Would avoiding as many as possible, then blitzing through their nesting grounds before they caught up, have the same effect?

Simon didn’t really know, and honestly, it didn't really matter. This wasn’t the level he was concerned about. It was the basilisk that lay ahead, and anything he did to avoid wearing himself out before that fight was a shortcut worth taking.

Still, he had to break into a run as the lizardmen’s nesting grounds came into view. That was apparently their line. Most of them broke cover as soon as he stepped onto that final sandbar and roared as they charged him. They were too late, though. They were much too late. While brutal warriors, they weren’t exactly fast.

Simon smashed eggs and scattered nests as he went. There were two lizard men in the camp, but they defensively protected their own nests instead of moving to protect everyone’s. That kind of antisocial behavior is going to cost you, Simon thought as he kept moving.

One spear narrowly missed him, and he was breathing heavily by the time he reached the portal to the next level. A small mob of lizardmen was getting awfully close to him, too. They were less than fifty feet away now, and snarling loudly, but none of those things mattered.

What mattered was where the basilisk might be, and stopping to figure out where that might be was a real problem. “Maybe I didn’t think this through,” he grunted as he looked both ways before moving out into the desert. He didn’t see the ugly monster anywhere. That didn’t mean he wasn’t about to turn a corner and get himself killed, though, so he did the next best thing and retreated.

Normally, Simon moved quickly and quietly toward the temple where the statues were thickest. The basilisk was almost always over there, somewhere. It seemed to prefer the tight confines of the ruins to the open wastes beyond. That was fair, since Simon normally hated to go somewhere where there was little cover to be found, given that his opponent could turn him to stone with a glance, but today it was the right move.

Simon ran away from the ruins and up the nearest slope as he tried to calm his racing heart and focus on seeing the true nature of the world. That was impossible, more or less, until he stopped. What he did notice, though, was the sound of his pursuers following him. That surprised him, even though it shouldn’t have. He’d brought people through portals on purpose, but just like the werewolf, there was no reason they couldn’t come through by accident if they were close enough behind him.

Still, the noise concerned him, and he gave real thought to flattening himself against the sand and playing dead. Only the knowledge that he would turn into a statue just as easily in that position spurred him to the top of the dune. It was there that he took a breather and looked around for any of the threats that might be coming toward him.

None of the lizardmen were following him. That was a good sign. They’d slowed right down where the whole world has shifted from swamp to desert. The basilisk, too, was nowhere to be found.

“Is the bastard dead?” he wondered. It would be ironic if he’d finally come to kill the thing again, and some twist of fate had seen it slain by someone else’s hand. Still, as his labored breathing quieted, things started to resolve themselves.

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Before him lay the bones of the ancient city of Ozioptin. It was Ionian, or at least it had been, even if it now technically lay in the no-man's land of the southwestern corner of Brin. Helades had said she’d had ties here, and Elthena had told him the city fell to a curse. He had yet to find information to substantiate either claim, but he was sure he would one day.

What he could see now was a complete deadzone, aurically. The half-buried streets were neat and well laid out, but almost nothing dwelt here. The largest concentration of auras was a group of lizardmen that he’d accidentally led here. They were still milling around the immediate area of the portal, and most likely looking for the way back.

“Can’t help you there,” he sighed as he looked past them and finally found his quarry, slowly heading toward the noise that the lizardmen were making.

For any other situation, he would have moved to his left to get a clear view of what was going to happen. For the basilisk, though, he wasn’t about to catch a stray. Instead of moving to the left, he slid down the back side of the dune and then jogged a few hundred yards to the right so that he’d be behind the basilisk when it found its next meal.

Does a giant lizard eating lizardmen count as cannibalism? he asked himself as he waited to catch his breath a second time. This time, he didn’t even pop his head above the edge of the dune until the basilisk had moved beyond his vantage and turned toward the source of the noise.

Then, he peeked back up and watched the clumsy monster advance. Well, watch was a bit of a stretch. He watched its aura move behind two layers of walls while the lizardmen loitered and hissed, completely unaware of the doom that was moving toward him.

“I could probably hit it from here,” he told himself as he laid his sword down, fished around in his sack blind, and pulled out his wand of distant lightning. It was untested, but unlikely to blow up in his hand when he launched a spell. If it did, well, he knew the gesture for Vrazig, which was a fine back-up plan.

If it had been humans the creature was about to petrify, Simon would have fired already, but murderous lizardmen? Well, in case they even had souls, he’d make sure to smash their heads before he left. He wouldn’t leave them to suffer for an eternity, but he also wouldn’t interrupt what was about to happen, because it was probably the only time he was ever going to get to really see it.

He’d seen dragon magic and demonic magic without sight. He’d seen glimpses of Helades’ and the Oracle’s powers, too, but this, well, it was going to be special, especially since he wasn’t in any danger.

Seconds later, he saw the first blast. Three of the seven lizardmen's auras vanished in an instant, but that instant was a form of magical fireworks he’d never forget.

The moment the basilisk used its glare, the normally diffuse glow of their auras compressed. They diminished to prismatic, radiant outlines, almost like an eclipse, and then vanished completely beneath the stone.

Their souls are trying to resist the magic being used on them, he realized. That gave him some hope, and a new fear. While the magic wasn’t affecting their souls, it was clearly touching them.

Did I make my counterspell too broad? he wondered as the remaining lizardmen reacted to the danger. Three fled, one charged. Will I keel over the second I face a mage with a trick or two?

That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, he realized as he watched the next lizardman get transformed into stone in mid-jump and shatter as he landed. The basilisk nibbled pieces of the broken statue as it moved past it in search of its remaining quarry.

What followed was a game of cat and mouse that lasted nearly an hour, but Simon watched it intently, except for the brief period where the basilisk turned in his direction. Then he hid and waited.

In that time, he saw several interesting things. The first was the way the lizardmen’s own auras reacted, of course. That was the brightest and most obvious change, but there were others, too. There was the way that buildings and even the sand seemed to go monochrome for a few seconds and lose their color, like whatever the basilisk was doing was draining everything that the world had to offer to power its spells.

Maybe it really is the cause of the desert, he mused. Elthena had said as much, but he hadn’t been sure until now. On some level, he’d just assumed that a drought had happened around the same time this monster had emerged, and the two catastrophes had been conflated into one.

He could definitely see this power devastating an ecosystem, though. If there had been any plants in its sight, they probably wouldn’t have turned to stone, but shriveling up and dying was the most likely option. It would make a handy power for eliminating the blossoms and the tendrils of the hell seed if he ever found those ziggurats again. Still, that would require Simon to understand how the gaze worked, and he still didn’t have a clue.

Would he be able to replicate the effects with a word of earth, powered by a word of draining? Celdura Hyakk Vosden Zyvon? Shape flesh to stone, powered by draining the world? It seemed possible, but still felt like it was missing something.

Simon had transformed one metal into another. He'd attached dead limbs and even turned stone to flesh with limited success, but this felt more powerful and primeval. This would be like using magic with a thought, instead of wiggling his fingers, carving a wand, or speaking a word of power.

The lizard was a stupid beast. It wasn’t using magic consciously. It was some inborn power, and the way its aura focused when it used its gaze offered Simon no real clues. Those only came when it devoured the leg of one of the unfortunate lizardmen.

Then, Simon was able to watch in real time as the stone transformed back into flesh and was consumed by the beast. Its aura spasmed then, too, and Simon spent several hours watching intently, trying to learn what he could from the aberration.

Finally, when he decided he could learn no more, Simon raised his wand and struck the beast with a slender lightning bolt from the clear blue sky. It let out a high-pitched squeal of pain before casting about in every direction, looking for the source of its torments.

Simon waited that out behind cover, then struck it again. It took three lightning bolts for the monster to stop moving, and another few minutes for it to die, and for its aura to dissipate completely. It was only when that was done that Simon picked up his sword, sheathed it, and started walking down the dunes toward the scene of the crime.

He’d been in a hurry to get to this point, but now he was in no hurry at all. He never planned on coming back here, so before he left, he was going to smash every single statue he could find. It was the least he could do for the poor bastards who’d been here for decades or centuries.

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