Simon spent the rest of the night hacking the little green monsters to pieces. He was in no hurry, even from the beginning, before the grim work exhausted him. Why should he be in a hurry? With the collapse of the other two tunnels he'd found, he was reasonably sure that the only way out was through him, and he had no plans to let any of these monsters escape.

"You've done enough killing for the rest of your very short lifetimes," he growled as he kicked one that charged him, sending it rebounding off the tunnel where it bounced off the ceiling before it splattered on the floor.

In passage after passage and room after room, he faced the green vermin, and though their tactics alternated from time to time, his determination to slaughter them never did. He met them with dagger and shield, keeping his sword on his hip as a backup since he lacked the room to wield it in most places.

In here, he often found his elbow, knee, or even his boot to be a more valuable weapon than his trusty sword. Even as he did so, though, he allowed himself to feel the whisper of shame. This is how he thought he'd fight the very first day in the Pit when the goblins ripped him to pieces.

He didn't remember much of those days, but he remembered his deaths, or at least the worst ones, and he'd come a long way since then. Even without the magic blade that was healing him as he went, he would have fought this way. The only difference was that he would eventually have to retreat.

Or I could just die, he told himself. Simon rejected that thought as soon as it came to him. He didn't wish to die. He didn't have a death wish. Most of the time, life was preferable and even desirable. In this case, though, it wouldn't get him out of going back to Ionar; it would just reset the clock.

If Simon ever ran into a vampire, a powerful mage, or someone else capable of controlling his mind, he'd consider punching out right at that moment, but even that was not without its own drawbacks now. If he died and his enemies got their hands on his bones and summoned his spirit, he had no idea what would happen. He didn't even know how to test it.

Was he safe from the moment that he woke up in his lumpy bed? Even if they couldn't affect him, could they summon some alternate version of him or simply learn enough about him to screw with his future plans?

That's impossible, right? He tried to reassure himself. If I left a soul behind each time, there would be like 40 of me in hell.

He was pretty sure that wasn't the case. He'd read through the contract he'd signed more than once now, and it was clear his soul was a singular thing. Still, he allowed himself to wonder about it and think about it as he slaughtered goblins.

It became almost meditative somewhere around the fiftieth one he killed. Every fight was its own challenge, but slowly, they all bled together. Sometimes, they attempted to ambush him, and other times, they fled until the monsters thought they outnumbered him enough to oppose him.

They were cowardly enough but always seemed to find another bout of courage as they descended on him in an inhuman tide, but they were never enough to get the better of him. All they made him do was take more frequent rest breaks as the caverns behind him became bloodier and bloodier.

No matter how many he killed or how deeply he pressed into the rank passages of that mountain, there were always more of them. Once, deep in a natural cavern lit only by a dung-fueled fire, he found a shaman who tried to do battle with him with magic, but he knew only the word for fire, not greater fire, and Simon was barely burned as he dodged from stalagmite to stalagmite.

After three blasts, he was so exhausted that he barely struggled as Simon executed him. He lingered in that room, despite the stench, looking at the foul symbols that had been daubed on the walls in blood and shit. They weren't words of power or even the runic versions that were inscribed into circuits, but they were very close to the latter.

He could see the shapes of several almost runes that he knew, as well as the shapes of several runes he didn't know but had found on other objects. It was very strange. They were halfway between meaningless and profound, and he had no idea what to make of them. He would have taken pictures of them if he hadn't left his belongings behind in the town.

"Where are they getting this stuff?" Simon wondered aloud.

He knew for a fact that they didn't have speech. He'd listened to the screeching and gibbering for hours. Their cries and shrieks echoed throughout the tunnels, but they were closer to the cries of animals than anything that might inspire sapience.

They could work with stone tools and make simple bows and arrows, but anything they had that was made of metal was stolen from human hands. So, how did they learn anything about magic? Could the shaman actually read any of this garbage, and if not, why draw it?

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Simon didn't get any answers to those questions.

Ultimately, it was exhaustion that was his true enemy in his fight. That and the darkness. Individually, goblins weren't really a threat to him anymore. They might occasionally score a flesh wound with a spear or a dagger, and no matter how many arrows his shield took, a few managed to find their mark, but the weapon he was fighting them with made those wounds more a nuisance than anything else. He was only ever a goblin or two away from perfect health.

Why didn't I ever think to use healing magic like this before, he wondered, before quickly answering his own question. It's because by the time I could do this, I mostly just killed everything with spells.

Magic had, in many ways, made Simon lazy. He was reminded of that when he cast another word of light amplification despite his protesting throat. If not for the two major words of earth, he'd be tempted to use lightning to clear the way of these bloodthirsty monsters, but tonight, he was going back to the basics.

It felt good to kill things with his own two hands. It shouldn't, but it did. Using a word of force to slice them in two lacked the impact and the effort. It was like using magic to carve runes into his weapons: effective but not nearly as enjoyable as days and weeks spent in meditative crafting.

As the fighting went on, he hadn't expected goblins to be the thing he ran out of. He'd expected it to be his own strength that failed him. It wasn't that, either, though. It was the light. Eventually, he got deep enough in the warren that even amplified light from the moon and stars or the flickering bonfire wouldn't reach.

By that point, he'd found the far side of both collapsed entrances and felt certain he'd purged most of the lair. He'd left at least a hundred bodies in his wake. Even then, he didn't stop, though. He continued on, trusting his instincts to find and purge the vermin.

One slow step at a time, he descended into a near pitch-black hell, and oftentimes, he simply held his own breath and waited for his next target to give itself away. Somewhere in that final, grasping onslaught, he actually struck his dagger against the wall so hard against the stone that when he missed, it illuminated the room for a brief moment in a shower of sparks.

That's when he decided he had to use light, even if it was just a little bit. Sometimes, all he needed was a spark, and after that, whenever he heard a great number of them groping and flailing in the dark, he would summon candle flames into existence and purge them all.

Even those tiny words of lesser light were enough to tax him, but he did not stop until there was nothing left to kill. Hours later, when he reached the back of the cave, he found a crevice amidst dripping water and stagnant pools that extended down where goblins almost certainly hid, but he was far too large for it.

That was when he finally retreated, following his trail of tiny floating candle flames out the way he'd come. He'd entered with a cold anger, which had long since been quenched, but even though he left with leaden limbs and a sore throat, he also had a lighter heart.

He always felt better when he helped people. He'd done enough damage today to set the goblins back for years, if not forever, but even as he escaped the cave and saw the stars glowing fiercely in the night sky, he knew he could never kill all the goblins or all the magi. He could fight like that every night forever. He could even inflict vampirism on himself again to become strong enough to rip opponents apart with his bare hands, but it still would not be enough.

"There's got to be a better way," he sighed as he staggered back down the hill to town, utterly spent.

It wasn't until he noticed how trashed his shield was and tossed it aside that he saw how ravaged his armor was. It had suffered dozens of stabs, cuts, and bites and looked like it had been fed through a meat grinder.

Even in the dark, he noticed that it was heavily stained with blood, but he didn't notice he was still bleeding until he got back to Ordanvale and started to take his shredded leathers off. The headman woke at the sounds of Simon's fumbling and looked like he'd seen a ghost.

"I… W-when you didn't return after so long, we sent men with torches, but they said that the lairs had collapsed," the man said, holding a lantern as he stared at Simon with horror. Simon knew how this must look and tried to play it off.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Simon promised as he tried and failed to strip off the layers with fingers that wouldn't cooperate. "It's the armor that took the worst of it."

"Just the same, I think we'll fetch the healer to be on the safe side," he said.

Truthfully, he was worried about how the man would react when they peeled off his armor and found no wounds, but he would have aroused plenty of suspicion even trying to shoo the older man away when he looked so terrible. Simon needn't have bothered. He had half a dozen bleeding wounds. Some of them were quite serious and would need switches.

That sight surprised him far more than it surprised the headman. He made Simon sit down and got some water and a rag to clean things up. While he did that, he asked Simon about what he'd been through. Simon strongly downplayed what he'd spent his night doing and said he'd only killed a couple dozen.

"Two dozen? Truly?" the headman asked, shocked by his words. "Being by yourself, it's incredible that you survived. No ear is worth that kind of risk despite the bounty!"

Simon nodded. He hadn't cared about the bounty. Instead, he looked down at his chest and thighs, noting the number of fresh pink scars that dotted his flesh. He might have seven existing wounds, but he had dozens of healed wounds.

He tried to remember how many times he'd been bitten and stabbed, but he didn't think it was quite so many. Unfortunately, before he could find any clarity on the issue, the healer arrived to try to keep him from passing away. Simon had to force himself not to smile at that. He could heal all of this with a word, but if they wanted to save him, he supposed that was only fair. He'd spent the night saving them, after all.

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