I’d insisted on getting well clear of the barony before even beginning to think about fulfilling my end of the bargain. I’d tell Val what I knew about the Player only once I was sure she wasn’t about to abandon me to be recaptured—the gods knew I needed all the help I could get.

Val had thought about this for only a moment before she’d announced that she knew “just the place”—a place which, as it turned out, was an inn with “really bloody good beer”. It had taken me some time to get even this tidbit of information out of her, and I couldn’t help but think this was some form of revenge for me holding back information of my own.

When finally we’d reached the inn—a quaint, freshly painted building which seemed to appear from between the trees in little more than a blink of an eye—Val had hurried us inside, under a creaking, swinging sign that announced this establishment as The Hound & Hound. She swiftly traversed over the typical inn ground floor to the bar, ordering two ales from the barkeep.

‘I don’t have any money, Val,’ I said.

‘Oh, did you want one?’ came the response.

I, of course, wanted one, but I wasn’t about to indebt myself to this strange woman any more than I had to.

‘I’m gonna hit the big girls’ room,’ Val announced for all the—admittedly sparsely populated—inn to hear, slamming her coppers down atop the bar. ‘You’ll grab us a table, yeah?’

I pressed my lips into a polite smile and nodded, returning my attention to the barkeep as she poured the second of the dark, murky ales. ‘So why The Hound and Hound?’ I ventured. ‘Why not The Two Hounds?’

The woman looked at me as though I was lacking in the brains department—though my low level might have gone some way toward implying such. ‘Because there’s one hound, right?’

‘Yes, I’m with you so far.’

‘And then, right, there’s another one.’ She plonked the second pint glass down on the counter to punctuate this point.

I thought about arguing, but quickly caught myself; this conversation, I reckoned, was going nowhere. Flashing another polite smile, this time to the woman who thought me dim, I collected the two ales and placed them on a table in the corner—away from prying eyes and open ears.

Val soon returned from her trip to the toilet, and she flicked wet hands over me as she took her seat at the table.

‘Thanks for that,’ I said, but the woman ignored it.

‘So,’ Val said. ‘About time you held up your end of the bargain, isn’t it?’

I glanced around at the inn’s other patrons. The small groups seemed all to be deep in conversations of their own; that they might eavesdrop on ours was unlikely, but not impossible.

‘Oh,’ Val said, waving a hand dismissively, ‘they ain’t listening. Why d’you think I brought you here?’

‘I thought it was for the beer.’

‘That too.’ Val stared at me while she gulped down a good quarter of the first pint. ‘Well? Go on. What happened?’

I sighed; this was it, then. Time to tell the truth. What was the worst that could happen? That this woman would laugh at me? That she would think I was lying. No, I realised—the worst that could happen was that she’d pity me. ‘I was in Plainside. On a… work assignment.’

‘Oh? What sort of work?’

‘It’s not relevant to the story.’

‘Something illegal, sure, got it.’ She took another swig of beer, which I found myself eyeing jealously.

She sighed an exasperated, exaggerated sigh, then pushed the other pint towards me.

‘I can’t—’ I started.

‘It’s on me.’

I raised it in toast—one that was returned impatiently.

‘Plainside?’ Val prompted.

‘Yes. I was at a dinner party. With the Collector, if you’ve heard of her?’

The sorcerer nodded.

‘And I went downstairs to see her collection.’

‘For a… private viewing, I imagine?’ Val didn’t seem able to suppress a smile.

‘Something like that. I picked up one of the Collector’s items—an eight-sided shape. Formed of silver. Had a—’

Val leant forward, across the table. ‘How’d you get past her traps?’

‘I— the traps? That’s what you’re interested in?’

‘At this point, yes.’

I furrowed my brow. ‘Well, I’d had a word with the man who’d created them.’

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

‘Small man? Speckly skin? Wears a stupid hat?’

‘I… yes. How can you know that?’

Val pressed her lips together. Hard. ‘Steve…’ she grumbled.

I shook my head, very happy to be in ignorance about all that, and continued the story. ‘So I had it in my pocket, this device. For… safekeeping. And then, up above, I heard a rumbling. An almighty rumbling. Like the world was ending, you know? So I rushed upstairs and I found myself… outside. But the entrance to the basement hadn’t been outside a moment earlier—it was more that half the Collector’s manor had been incinerated. And I saw them, then—’

‘Them?’ Val asked. ‘You didn’t tell me they were working together. You said Player. One of them.’

I begged for her patience by raising my hands with downward facing palms. ‘Only one of them was a Player. The second was an orc, and the third… a tiefling? I think? And it turned out they were after the same thing I’d been employed to… rehome. But I couldn’t have that—a Styk guarantee is a good guarantee—so I faced them down, using all the combat skills I had before that I no longer possess, and I very nearly had them’ — to look at Val’s face, she wasn’t convinced by this lie, but she let it pass — ‘but, ultimately, they won. And the Player? He killed me.’

The pair of us took a large sip of beer each. It was good beer; Val hadn’t been lying about that.

‘Yet here you stand.’

‘I do.’

‘Wanna explain how?’ Val asked.

I pulled the exhausted artifact from my pocket, having collected my coat from the storage room in the barony’s dungeons, and I passed it to Val. ‘Ever seen anything like it?’

‘A… Sisyphus Artifact? Can’t say that I have.’ Val threw the device back to me haphazardly, with no thoughts for what it might be worth to the right customer.

‘Well, it saved me. Brought me back to life.’

‘But there was a catch,’ Val continued, filling in the rest. ‘Back to level zero?’

‘Exactly. Except… I got a status condition from it. The Legacy of Sisyphus, it’s called.’

‘And?’ Val prompted me. ‘What’s it do?’

‘+400% XP gain for the next… 998 and a bit days.’

Val raised her eyebrows. ‘Not bad.’

‘Well, I still lost my life’s work.’

‘Sure, but that’s a pretty decent way to get it back, isn’t it? And, you know, you’re alive, aren’t you?’

* * *

Val was gracious enough to buy me a room at the Hound for the night, though I couldn’t help but think maybe she’d bought me the cheapest room, considering that the heavy rain was dripping on me through the ceiling. I couldn’t imagine she would be suffering such an unpleasantry.

But it wasn’t just for this reason that I spent hours staring at the roof, unable to speak. Val wasn’t wrong; if you had to start over, a boon to xp gain was a good way to go about it. And I had my old client list, still. I could still work, but I’d need to do so remotely for the time being, so that they couldn’t identify me. I could start with the small jobs, get the basic Stealth skill levelled up again, and I could grow. It wouldn’t be so bad; I knew what I was doing now—with age came wisdom, and all that—and I could make better ability choices this time around, once I started getting them at level 5 for each skill.

With that reassuring thought, I finally drifted off to sleep.

…And then was awoken moments later by an intensely cool bucket of water being tossed over my head. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead!’

I gasped as I sat bolt upright, finding Val standing over me in front of the small window, through which the warm light of the morning sun was pouring. Not moments later, then, but hours.

‘And what in the hells was that?’

‘A cooling spell,’ Val answered. ‘Cool, right? If you’ll forgive the pun.’

‘No, not what was that. What was that for?’ I demanded.

Val shrugged. ‘Well, we’ve got work to do, haven’t we?’

‘I have work to do, sure. I don’t know what it has to do with you, though.’

‘I figured we’d be travelling together.’

‘Travelling—’

‘To Plainside,’ Val finished.

If the bucket of magically cooled water wasn’t enough to wake me up, that certainly was. ‘To Plainside? What? I don’t want to go back there. Why would we want to go back there!’ I couldn’t help but notice that my voice had become rather squeaky.

‘The way I see it,’ Val said, ‘our first step is to find out why the Player wanted that artifact.’

‘I don’t care why he wanted it!’

‘What, you’re not the least bit curious?’

I blinked. ‘No! All I want is to get back to my life, start building up skills again, and—’

‘Well, I care,’ Val said, crossing her arms with irritation.

‘Why! Why on the gods’ green lands could you possibly care?’

For the second time in a handful of hours, a woman looked at me like I was stupid. ‘Because we’re gonna kill him,’ she said.

"Styk"

Level 3 Peasant

Base Stats:

Vitality — 2

Intelligence — 5

Dexterity — 4

Strength — 1

Wisdom — 8

Charisma — 0

Skills:

Identification — Level 4

Knifework — Level 1

Stealth — Level 1

Abilities:

Slice (Knifework) — Slice the enemy for physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].

Basic Stealth Attack (Stealth) — Passive. 10% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.

Basic Identification (Identification) — Discover basic attributes for a particular object or person. Ability scales with [WIS] + [INT].

Active Effects:

Legacy of Sisyphus:

XP gain increased by +400%