Death After Death
Chapter 251: Other People’s Suffering

Simon retreated before he was spotted and spent the rest of that afternoon scouting around the outskirts of the bandit’s chosen ambush site. He never found their actual camp, so he assumed that it was in the woods on the far side of the road, which made sense in a cruel, animalistic way.

Don’t shit where you eat, he thought to himself as he studied the men from a distance.

You’d want to sleep somewhere far enough away from the bodies to keep the smell down, after all. The dozen or so men behind this awful little surprise that any traveler might run into were wicked, but they weren’t stupid. They wore mismatched and ill-fitting armor that seemed to come from a mixture of soldiers, caravan guards, and woodsmen.

They weren’t professionals, but the fact that they’d lived when so many others had died showed they were dangerous. Dangerous while they’re awake, he reminded himself. None of them are going to sleep in that armor.

Mostly, though, he didn’t get close enough to see them. He stayed just far enough away to learn about them while he waited for the sun to set. That meant that he mostly learned about them by what they said to each other as much as the evidence of the terrible things they’d done.

Simon might not feel enlightened or anything on a regular basis, but in moments like this, as he watched and waited for the sun to set, he certainly felt muddied by the dark, murderous urges that shot through him when the men he watched joked about murdering kids.

“Ain’t no money in killing kids,” one of the bandits that seemed to be in charge. “We want more merchants, not more families.”

“Money? I’d kill 'em for free!” another one shouted, making everyone laugh. After that, the group went on to discuss exactly what had happened to some of the women unlucky enough to have been taken alive by this group, and Simon almost uttered a word of lightning to kill all of them on the spot. It was only his desire to avoid magic that stayed his hand.

If you’re not going to be using the portals to hop between levels, then you’ve got to make this life last a long time, he reminded himself. The owlbear on level 11 was only about 15 years in his future, and the costume party was something closer to 35 years. While he could definitely make it to the former, he would be hard-pressed to be in fighting condition by the time he made it to the latter unless he was disciplined, and someone definitely had to help those kids because what was the point of saving their lives if he was just going to let the nobility of the region destroy them later.

All of those were later thoughts, of course, but as he listened to vile men discuss black deeds while they waited for new victims, Simon had to distract himself somehow. It was that or start his killing spree right now.

So, he spent most of the evening dwelling on the good he hoped to do and the levels he hoped to do it in. He might not know exactly what he hoped to do with this life, but he had several goals he wanted to accomplish while he was doing it, and one of them was making sure that the kids he rescued from that night road had decent lives.

Moments like this were just unexpected little bonuses. Despite everything he’d done and every life he’d done it in, he’d never killed these pricks before, but he’d mark the spot on his map and make sure he did in every life he ever lived from now on if he had to.

Simon didn’t act until just before moonrise, and when he did the last thing he checked was his current experience total in a nearby stream so he could compare the number when all this was over. It read -244,993, which sounded about right to him. Progress in the right direction, but still a long way to go.

When there were only two people on watch he finally struck. Watching was the one thing they weren’t doing as they sat together on the low branch of a live oak, chatting and drinking while they waited for their turn to go to bed. Neither of them heard Simon coming.

One minute, the two of them were talking about whether they needed more bacon or booze more when someone made a trip back to town to buy more supplies, and the next, Simon took off both of their heads with a single stroke of his rune blade. Their headless bodies toppled to the ground with much less sound than their chattering had made, and when Simon stood there in the aftermath waiting for someone to wake or sound the alarm, he was greeted only with the sound of the wind rushing through the branches above him.

He smiled then and moved toward the camp proper, where everyone was asleep, and proceeded to methodically murder the men, one at a time. Do I feel bad about this? He wondered as impaled the throat of a man he found sleeping alone with his vampiric dagger and letting the rush of that life force flow into his body. Should I?

The answer to both questions, he decided, was not really. Sparing people who would just cause suffering later wasn’t a kindness to anyone, and it certainly wasn’t justice. The only thing he even felt a little bad about was draining so much life, even from awful people, as he went from bedroll to bedroll as he slit the throats of these monsters. It was enough to give him vampire flashbacks.

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This is exactly what I would have done when I was that monster, he thought morosely. That realization wasn’t enough to stop him, of course, but it was enough to take any self-righteous joy he felt about the whole thing out of it as he continued to slink from tent to tent and bedroll to bedroll.

With each death, Simon felt another surge of life force flow through him. He told himself that he should put his dagger away and switch to the sword. He told himself he’d had enough and drained at least a year from this group, but that was a lot easier to say than to do. Instead, he continued to kill them as quietly as possible with that cursed knife until one of the men thrashed wildly enough that he woke someone who was sleeping nearby up. Simon reacted fast and buried his sword in that guy’s chest, pinning him to the ground. That was enough to keep him out of the fight but not enough to keep him from waking everyone else up and ending Simon's silent rampage.

There were still nearly half a dozen men left the first time Simon’s blade was finally parried, but they were confused and tired and fell quickly enough. Not only did these men have no idea what was happening, but they had no interest in fighting against a common foe, and in the near darkness, which was lit only by starlight and embers of a half-dead fire, they barely even had a chance.

Still, as his pulse began to pick up and clashing metal became more common than screams, he saw something else, too, or at least, he thought he did. There were several moments in that fight when he would have sworn it was the aura of these men and their dark deeds he saw, not the shadows of the night. It was impossible to say, of course, but that insight helped him pick out the leader, and Simon made sure to kill him last.

Though outnumbered, Simon continued to kill the monsters he was fighting methodically. Some begged for mercy, and others demanded to know who he was. He ignored them both and answered only with steel. During all of that, the only thing he regretted was that he’d skipped the first bandits in an effort to avoid this outcome. There was no telling if they were men down on their luck or monsters like this, and he silently vowed to himself that he wouldn’t let that happen again.

It was only when the leader of the now dead crew stood alone that Simon asked, “How many people do you suppose your little group has killed?” in a calm, quiet voice.

“As if you care!” the bandit leader yelled, charging him again and letting loose a quick barrage of strokes.

Simon did care, but he let the man tire himself out, and then, when he had the chance, he took the other man’s hand at the wrist, disarming him completely. While he was bleeding on the ground and cursing Simon through gritted teeth, Simon asked again. “How much money do you think you made off all those deaths?”

“You can go to hell!” the bandit leader shot back. Simon nodded. He could go to hell, but he probably wouldn’t, not today, at least. Instead, he punched the prick hard enough in the face to stun him and then used the fire to cauterize the wound while the bandit screamed in pain.

“Would you like to answer now?” Simon asked, “Or shall we take off the left one next?”

“W-why do you care?” the man demanded, clutching the now burned stump of his right hand as he cowered at Simon’s feet. “You’re just going to kill me anyway.”

“I am,” Simon admitted. “But if you tell me what I want to know, I won’t have to torture you first.” He wasn’t sure if he was bluffing or not. He certainly had it in him to torture people now, but still, he found the idea distasteful, and he’d probably already done enough damage to his karma tonight.

The bandit leader didn’t know any of that, though. Instead, he sat there silently for a moment before he said, “25… 30, maybe. Only a few of them were kids, though. As far as money, I don’t know, not really, but you could take our stash,” he said, pointing with his blackened stump. “That’s about half the total take. We spent the rest already.”

Fearing a trap, Simon approached the strongbox by the tree and toed it open. It wasn’t a trap, but it was a distraction, and as soon as Simon turned his back, the bandit leader was on his feet and running.

Unfortunately for him, Simon had expected that and whispered the words of lesser force even as he knelt beside the box to see what they’d gotten for all this bloodshed, completely ignoring the screams of pain as the bandit leader’s knee gave out as he applied a sudden sharp force to the side of the joint.

A lesser word wasn’t quite enough to break bones, but it was enough to rip every tendon in the joint as the man collapsed with the thing bent at entirely the wrong angle. As Simon hefted the large bag of silver, he decided it was quite a haul, but compared to all the lives that had been lost, it was nothing.

“I did tell you it would hurt more,” Simon told the man as he grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back to the camp.

There, he found a rope, tied a noose, and threw it over the branch. He didn’t even ask the man for any last words. He just looped the thing over his head, heaved him up, and tied him off. It was an awful way to go, but someone who’d lived such an awful life hardly deserved a nice, clean death.

Once all of that ugliness was done, Simon continued north toward Schwarzenbruck. With his rampage at an end, he whistled tunelessly, heartened to have made the world just a little bit better. You might be able to find enlightenment at the top of Mount Elian, but you could only make the world a better place down here with everyone else.

He left the ring leader there hanging from the tree, and if someone ever found this place, he hoped they took the right message from that one little detail. He left the rest of the bodies where they lay and took only the large pouch of silver that had been the majority of their stash. He’d find some way to put that money to use in a way that would do some good.

It wouldn’t be enough to make up for all of this. Nothing would, but Simon was in a very imperfect world, and all he could do was better. Almost as an afterthought he checked his experience and saw that it was almost unchanged. It was down 400 points, which didn’t tell him much. Did I get credit for killing them, but penalized for killing them? He wondered. It didn’t really matter. They’d deserved it, and even if murder was a sin, it was not like he could go to hell right now anyway.