Day 8, 6:20 PM
“Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels.
In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.”
― Erich Maria Remarque
What? My head spins, and I can’t seem to catch my breath. I must have misheard her.
“What?” Blunt says through my mouth while I’m trying to think and convince myself I’m dreaming again, but three guards are already glaring at me, drawing their swords.
“I’m not a spy!” I scream. “It’s me, Aang! Aang the porter! Your slave. I risked my life to keep you safe!”
“Boy, if you’re a slave, I’m a camel,” a guard with salt and pepper beard growls. He’s the only one with his sword sheathed, protecting Princess.
What?
“He must have never seen a slave, but at least him acting like a savior and getting wounded means this will be easy,” another guard guffaws, and I don’t understand what’s going on.
I gasp for air, and I’m suddenly aware of all the fatigue and throbbing wounds plaguing me. I’m injured, unarmed, outnumbered, and I can’t even escape.
A hundred plans swarm my head, calling for attention, but I have none to spare. I gulp.
“I’m a slave! Aang the porter, Little Missy said so,” I’m grasping at straws as the three guards fan out while the grizzled one draws his sword, just in case.
“Little Missy!” I scream, and she finally opens her mouth.
“Who taught you to address a noble like that? No slave would ever dare say something like that to my face.”
Huh?
“Abe,” Blunt takes its chance while I’m too stunned to speak.
“And no slave has a body like that. You’re a professional warrior, if I’ve ever seen one,” the guffawing guard adds his opinion, and I understand one thing.
I fucked up. I let her disarm me, lead me here, and after everything I’ve done for her, she betrayed me.
Bile churns in my stomach. The feeling, which I hoped I’ve left behind after I’ve died, stirs in my chest, and I hate the bitch. I want to shred her to pieces. I saved you. I risked my life to save you time and time again, and this is how you repay me?
I roar and dash towards her. I may not have weapons, but I can tear a defenseless woman’s throat with my teeth. I can smash her head with my fists.
She’s not defenseless, though. The three guards panic and abandon their careful encirclement, running towards me in a slightly arced formation. I duck under the guffawer’s sword, but my movement is too slow. His blade slices off a chunk of my flesh, and the blue screen appears.
Before I dismiss it, before I black out, another sword strikes my right side and hits my heart, Another follows from the left, and I spew blood. Dazed, I look at the red-stained grass.
I’m in pain. I’m cold. I’m afraid. It hurts. It hurts so much. All those things I didn’t get to experience when the truck hit me, I feel them now. Dying sucks.
I don’t want to die.
Swords scrape against my ribs as the guards draw them loose from my body, and my vision blurs. Then I explode and take those three fuckers with me. I can only hope the blast engulfed Princess as well.
***
[Redo activated
Cooldown - 13d 23h 59m 59s]
I gasp, clawing my hand at the empty air where a sword stuck out of me a second ago. I stare at the blue screen and touch my chest as I calm down. It’s whole and free of holes.
I dismiss the screen and find myself in the gloomy forest again. The air reeks of decomposing vegetation mixed with feces and iron. A familiar scent. A very familiar sight.
“F1,” I whisper. My mouth is dry and my throat clenched, but BSD appears again. I check it, and it seems identical to the one I saw when I first reincarnated. I breathe for several long moments and calm down.
Should I be more disturbed about this? Is there anything really strange anymore? Is there anything scary? Then I realize I’ve waited in a fifteen-billion-people long line in hell.
I find solace in that thought and check the other screen.
“Alt F1?”
[Anarchist Level 2
Abilities - Rage, Redo, Blunt, Heavy Handed, Godly ✦✦✦✦, Vengeful ✦
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
To level up, start a small-scale riot or a medium public disturbance.]
“Why is Redo red?” I mutter. Surprisingly, BSD answers.
[Redo cooldown - 13d 23h 58m 53s]
“Why is Vengeful red?”
[Vengeful cooldown - 3h 58m 53s]
I finally have an idea how to get information.
“F1.”
I look at the strange glyphs and find a red one. “Why is…” What do you call this damn thing? How do you read it? Will I get an answer in the same language?
“… the horseshoe, horseshoe, a-with-headlights red?”
The screen remains unchanged.
I dismiss the bloody thing and stand up. My body’s pain and discomfort hardly register. It was worse when wolves bit me half dead, it was much worse when bandits riddled me full of holes, and I don’t want to think about sharp steel playing fiddle with my ribs.
My current state is great. I’m slightly battered, slightly abused, but otherwise full of life, and the world’s my oyster.
“There’s a live one over there,” the first bandit I killed several days ago shouts, and I see him and his friends just fine this time.
I guess I got used to processing gloomy images? I can think of it as looking at life through a new lens.
So… How do I handle this? I wonder, before cooking a plan. I should repeat what has happened, to avoid unknown variables. So, for now, stand here, frozen like a fawn before the headlights for two seconds before the bandit with the club reaches me.
Compared to guardsmen who killed me like a minute ago, the bandit is plain silly. I duck under his crude attack and smash his windpipe again. He falls down and thrashes, but unlike before, I don’t spare him a glance. He’s just a still-moving corpse.
Why did it even feel weird the first time? Was it the novelty of the situation?
“What’s wrong, Daren?” another bandit shouts, and Daren impotently rattles on the ground. I consider killing him to end his misery, but I’m afraid me suddenly ducking back down could change something.
“Kill the slave,” the bandit follows the script and shouts after not getting an answer.
Yes, I’m a slave. If I want to pose as one, I should act like one. How do you act like a slave? Do I even want to act like a slave?
“Wait, stop,” Abe calls, and the rustle stops.
“You are just a slave, a mere porter,” Abe says. “There’s no reason to risk your life here. Tell us where your little missy is, and we can let you escape. If your luck is good, this time next year you might be a free man.”
There’s that little missy again. Fuck you, Abe!
I don’t let my emotions get the better of me, and I say the same stupid thing I did before, or something similar enough. Not because of Blunt, if Blunt had his way, I’d just tell them to fuck off.
“Kill him. We’ll join the rest in a bit,” Abe says, and the other two move to obey.
How did I miss ‘the rest’ the first time? The fact that enemy reinforcements exist is the sort of crucial information you should keep track of.
I kill the bandits out of sight before capturing Abe.
I tie the old man with his shoelaces and interrogate him, but my heart’s not into it. Instead of focusing on his stammered answers, I spend my time searching for food, spare clothes, a canteen, and a couple sacks free of blood.
I stuff a sock in Abe’s mouth, reenacting my first reincarnation and hoping that was what infuriated him enough to follow me with the first bandits who came along. I’d rather have that repeat than letting him organize a large manhunt.
All right. I’ve got food, water, and clean spare clothes to change into after the wolves make a mess of me. Now, I should just move with the sun at my back, and I’ll run into Princess. No! Noble Lady. Then I’m getting some payback for all my trouble. Backstabbing bitch, I’ll…
I trudge forth, passing the bush dotted with poisonous berries. I tear a bunch of them and throw them far away where nobody should look for them.
There! Hopefully they’ll think I ate them. Thanks to my previous experience, I avoid poisoning myself and instead munch on stale roast I found while ransacking the already ransacked campsite.
I stroll through the forest, taking my time, eating and drinking enough to fill my growling guts when a thought hits me.
Aang is skin and bone. He’s so malnourished he’d drop dead if you fed him a chicken nugget, and look at what I’m eating. I guess, it’s thanks to Godly? Otherwise, I would have died to rock bread and jerky. And those guards were right. I’ve built up quite a bit of muscle in just a short week, considering this is what I started from.
I pause by the stream and check Aang’s stats. I wash up and check them again, and sure enough, there are changes. The last line has grown shorter, and I think some other glyphs changed, but I can’t tell for certain.
I leave the mystery for another day, happy I’ve reduced the number of red squiggles denoting me. With a smile and clean face, I refill my canteen and continue on my merry way, feeling like an experienced adventurer.
My behavior is bizarre. I should be shocked because I’ve died and woke up in my body again. Am I unperturbed because I’ve waited in hell for two eternities, or was I so angry with the way I died that I can’t think of anything else?
I can’t put my finger on it, but a lot of stars must have aligned to make me the man I am today, and every decision I’ve made must have made sense at the time. I certainly haven’t started my life a cold-blooded murderer, yet here I am clubbing almost every day.
“There he is!” I turn, and the first inconsistency with my original run is already upon me.
Instead of crouching in the bushes, poisoned by random purple berries, I’m walking around. Standing. Thanks to that, Abe and his three minions spotted me from some ten yards away. I yelp and bolt for it, my cowardly action emboldening them.
Despite losing the element of surprise, I smack the life out of them just the same. Two minutes later, I’m cupping my face with my hands, sitting on Abe’s stomach, staring into his wrinkled face.
“Abe,” I say. “You guys seem different from other bandits milling around. They are armed with swords, but you have sticks. Would you care to elaborate?”
The man is shocked by my nonchalance, or the fact that he’s still alive, or maybe it’s the vocabulary? Whatever the cause, he stares at me like I’m some kind of monster.
“Will you talk, or should I start breaking fingers?” I grin and his mouth moves.
“We’re just camp followers. We clean, gather supplies, and run errands for the gang in exchange for protection…” Abe spills the beans, tripping over himself to speak faster, but I wave him to shush. His information is irrelevant.
“Abe, what does this say?” I draw a glyph on the ground and let him shift so he can see it. The man pales.
He shakes his head and hands, as if warding me off. “I can’t read. Don’t kill me!”
Makes sense. Also, I’m way too overconfident right now. If he had had some concealed blade in his sleeve, he could have slit my throat. And what? I’d be back where we started, and I’ve wasted a couple hours of our time. But what happens if I die while Redo is on cooldown? The BSD says it takes two weeks before I can use it? Who cares? At worst, I go back to hell to wait in line.
But that train of thought inspired my next logical question.
“Abe, do you sometimes see blue squares with white, orange, or red letters? It just flickers right before your eyes?”
The man stares at me blankly, like I’m crazy, and that’s all the answer I needed. I bash his head with a commandeered club and stand. I toss the club spinning into the air and catch it with a smile before I get to work.
It takes several minutes to scavenge the bandits’ clothes and stale food and place them in my shiny new cloth bags, but there’s too much clothes, so I make a bundle and carry the pants and tunics separately. I smile and take a deep breath, heading further down my path, keeping the sun at my back at all times.
It’s time to meet Princess again. No, I should call her Noble Lady. Don’t mess up. First impressions are important.