As the door slammed in his face, Lefty again found himself left to his devices. Chained to the floor of the tower as the night rolled by outside his window, he decided to flip through his stats to see if there was anything he might not have noticed. To his surprise, he opened his H.U.D to find a notification blinking in the corner.

[Congratulations, you have reached level 3. You are free to level up your character at your earliest convenience.]

He didn’t believe it. Good things like this didn’t happen to him. At least not here in this game. He tabbed out of ‘notifications’ and searched through ‘settings’ until he found ‘experience point log.’ Clicking on that, he read through the different experience point rewards he had earned since the centipede at the mountain pass.

[Survived an encounter with a level 7 Wyrm. 400 xp.]

What? Didn’t I just turn around and faint? I don’t think I even did anything. I hardly even remember that.

[Successfully escaped a dungeon cell. 700 xp.]

That doesn’t even make any sense. All I did was hang there. I got out because the duck dropped his rotten egg in the hallway.

[Temporarily conned a level 7 Purple Wyrm into believing you are an inter-planar insurance agent. 1,700 xp.]

Okay, I’ll take a little credit for that one …

He decided to start with his skills. There was little here that would directly lead to his escape, though he did add a few points into stealth. There had been enough time for him to reflect on their capture and he had come to the conclusion that the most likely reason they had been detected was his own lack of stealth. From a pure survival standpoint, he had decided he didn’t want that to happen again.

He finished leveling his skills in minutes and then moved down to the [Special Abilities] section. Nice, I can take a minor metamagic ability. What’s that? He didn’t remember those from his last time playing Sable Unlimited. He scrolled down to see what that meant. [Metamagics are special abilities that temporarily buff your current spells.] Well that sounds cool. he scrolled through the options. Of course the most powerful metamagics - such as the ability to maximize, empower, extend, or enhance his spells - wasn’t available to him yet. However, what he did have was the choice between trick, delay, or split.

He read through the descriptors. Delay did not seem useful as it seemed designed for best use in an ambush situation where he could prepare his attacks ahead of time. He wasn’t ambushing anyone here, he was attempting to escape. He immediately liked the trick option as it allowed him to disguise the spell to look like something else. However, as he looked over his spell list, he couldn’t see a way for that to help him. Then he read [Split Spell: when applied, Split Spell allows you to simultaneously cast two instances of the same spell for the cost of one.] Well if that isn’t fucking neato. Split spell it is.

After selecting [Split Spell] he moved on to his actual spell list. Reaching level three as wizard meant he could add a single level one spell and a pair of level twos. One glance through the list of available spells told him exactly which ones he needed. Finally, he checked through his base stats to make sure his hit points and mana points had gone up and then closed his H.U.D.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Okay, now how the hell am I going to get out of here? They had taken all of his gear, he had only a vague idea of where he was, and he was completely and utterly alone. But am I under guard? He looked down at his chain. The room wasn’t that wide. Perhaps he could stretch his chain to reach the door. He stood and, as quietly as he could, picked his chains up and slowly walked to the door as he let the chain out behind him, link by link, holding it taut as he moved so that it didn’t make any sound. When the chain ran out just short of the door, he extended his arms out behind him and found he could stretch just far enough so that his eye could look through the keyhole.

He could see a torch. Rotating his head, he spotted a barrel with an empty plate and a tankard sitting atop it. Rotating further, he spotted a goblin seated in a chair. The goblin’s head was slumped down and his hands were folded across his belly as his chest rose and fell. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The goblin was asleep.

Activating his [Split Spell] he muttered his incantation. “Magnus Magus.”

He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them. Two invisible hands that he had control of had appeared on the opposite side of the door. Slowly, he began to work at the leather chord that held the jailer keys to the goblin’s belt. It was double knotted, but the first one was loose. When the second knot came undone and the keys fell, his mind caught them midair with barely a clink. He paused, waiting to see if the sleeping goblin would stir. He didn’t. So, Lefty guided the keys to the door and rotated them in the air to look them over.

There were eleven different keys. He thought about this. The keyhole was big, which meant it was likely one of the larger keys. He wasn’t sure how much they had used this tower cell, but he decided to try the more rusted keys last. Selecting his first key, he rotated it against the ring and pressed it to the hole. No luck. He tried another. This one’s bit looked too fat to him, but he thought it had the right shape. Nope. Third try. This one was a little rusty but had a bow shaped like a crown. He decided to give it a try.

Click.

Holding the keys in the air, he used the second telekinesis of his [Split Spell] to then open the door. He backed up and held his breath as the door creaked open. Then, he brought the keys to him. Now just how do I get these silly manacles off. He kept an eye on the doorway as he took the ring in his hands and flipped through the keys. He got it on his second guess, a tiny silver key that fit right into his rusty manacles. Odd. The key looks as if it was just made, while the manacles might be as old as this tower. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew better than to question it.

He kept the keys and grasped them tightly to stay silent as he sneaked out the door. A glance at his jailer told him the goblin was still fast asleep. Calista or Grumner would slit his throat, but I’m pretty sure I’d fumble it and wake the little bastard and then where would I be? He decided the safer course would be to just leave. So he hurried to the next doorway, checked quick to make certain the coast was clear, and then scurried down the steps.

Now there are scenes in movies and shows and video games where the hero deftly sneaks across the battlements at night. They usually creep along in expert fashion until they need to conduct some acrobatics in order to fool the guards. Then there is a jump over a wide ledge, or an impossible drop down into a haystack, or some other death defying maneuver in which the hero expertly navigates the perils and dangers that come with sneaking about an ancient castle at night.

This is not one of those scenes.

Instead, picture a skinny young lad in dark blue robes fighting his way over the top of the narrow battlement as he bounces almost drunkenly between the walkway walls. He then reaches a broken part of the wall that he either needs to leap across or climb down. Here, Lefty decides to turn back. However, as he turns around he spots a torch wandering its way up the very same stairway he just left.

There is a moment of panic as he considers his options. After he calms himself, he decides his best bet is to drop down onto the nearest roof. He looks down. The drop is about eight feet. He thinks he can manage this, so he finds a space between the ramparts, climbs up on all fours, swings a leg out, and then fights back another moment of panic before he manages the second leg. Dangling, he hesitates for a moment, somethings not quite right. He tries to look over his shoulder to see what it is, but as he does so the breeze hits him, he loses his hand hold and drops.

A half-second of gravity later, Lefty realized his miscalculation. The roof didn’t extend all the way to the wall. So instead of dropping two feet onto the shingled roof of the kitchen, his head struck the gutter and he fell tumbling onto the unsuspecting cook who had only just emerged from the doorway.