Day 4: Game Over

So, today I died.

Twice.

The good news is that I think I'm immortal. Or at least I cannot be killed in the traditional way of doing it. What people experience as death, I experience as game over. The thing is that after each game over I can restart a new game.

I start from the beginning and all my experience reset to zero, that's true, but the important part is that I keep living.

How did I die? Well, the escape plan worked. We manage to surprise the witch and wound her. Not kill her, that would alert the other witches.

I convinced the others to just bind her and leave her there. Someone wasn't that ok with that, but when I explained that some witches could feel the death of their kind, they calmed down.

Now, I lied a bit.

I know that some witches can feel the magical spiral inside other magic users, the thing that actually made their magic work. However, explaining this to ignorant slaves that couldn't even read was a battle already lost. So I just invented some lie about how I knew a witch that could feel the deaths of witches in the area.

After having bound the witch and giving her a good beating to take revenge of the hell that she made us live trough, we started our voyage toward freedom.

However, it turns out that there is truly a witch that can sense other witches states. Not their death, but every other state. When we beat up our slave-guard we alert the outpost.

They sent a group of enforcers to control the situation and before long they were already searching for us in the forest.

We didn't manage to get far away that the two enforcers found us. We decided to separate in numerous little groups to have more chance to survive. It was a good idea, but my group was unlucky: we were the first one found.

The other two people with me, the large bearded man that I met the day before and a short pale looking man, were immediately killed by one of the two enforcers.

This witch, a stunning woman with long crimson hair, was sitting on the shoulder of a giant black golem and laughed while ordering it to crush them to death. We're talking of a five-meter tall creature, made of some sort of black rock and having the aspect of a featureless human body. It walked to my two companions and used a single hand to squash them like flies.

A very undignified death if you ask me.

No, that wasn't how I died. I died with way less dignity: I was killed by the other enforcer, a dark-skinned slim beauty with short white hair and a dragon tattoo on her face. She had some kind of summoning magic, creating a vortex near hear and extracting from it a weapon.

A sword to be more exact. And a very nice one at that. The blade was some sort of very durable dark glass, and the hilt was decored with the image of a coiling dragon.

The dark-skinned witch ran towards me with an excited expression, and started toying with me. She cut me dozens of times, even if I tried my best to defend myself.

In the end, I was on the ground, completely numb to the pain. I just wanted to die. The damnable which finally gave me the coup the grace, embedding her sword into my torso.

<Game Over> said a stupid interface of the system. Like I didn't get that.

Darkness followed. Yet in that darkness, there was also another thing: another message of the system.

<New Game?>

I unconsciously said yes. Obviously. Who wouldn't do that? I immediately woke up again, with a strange jungle sounding in my head.

I found myself near my own body! And next to a flabbergasted witch. I was more surprised than her, but I reacted on instinct and grabbed the blade still in my last body's stomach. With a very inexperienced move, I attacked the stunned woman.

She didn't even try to protect herself. Probably she thought that I was some kind of hallucination. Too bad for her.

<+3000 Exp>

<Level Up! 1>

<Level Up! 2>

<...>

A long list of level up alerts started to pile up before me, hiding the other wich from my sight.

<Level: 20>

<Experience: 150/200>

Then I also saw that the witch disappear. Yes, she literally disappeared like a trash minion in a video game. Where her body was precedent, appeared a strange blood stain and a couple of white coins.

Yes loot! I got loot from killing a person. It almost feels wrong to write it down. She was an evil person, but still.

However good things don't last forever: the other witch ordered the massive golem to attack me. I ran away while spending the massive amount of points that I just received from my level up to power up my self.

In the end, I was able to smash them all in strength. I used my absurd herculean strength to throw my sword towards the other which, impaling her to a tree. Unfortunately, to do so I had to stop for a second and the giant golem crushed me to the ground before deactivating.

<Game Over>

<New Game>

Yes!

You got it. I appeared next to my smashed body, vomiting at the sight of it. Then, after I calmed myself I went to check out my loot.

Even the other which disappeared. She also left behind a book, but instead of leaving behind money she left also behind a ring.

<+10% Fire Damage Ring>

Cool, but pretty useless. I'm not a dragon. I picked up the ring, the white coins, and the two books.

<Golemancy: Dark Guard>

<Teleportation: Summoning Vortex>

The books can make you learn skills I would suppose. However, they have both high requirement: intelligence 30. Now I'm back to level 0, thanks to my game over. I will need some time to farm up the two levels necessary.

I didn't know what to do with the two books, I definitely couldn't roam the forest with my hands full. Yet, they seemed incredibly valuable and I didn't want to get rid of them.

The system helped me, thankfully.

<Open Inventory?>

I discovered that I had an inventory, even if it has only four cases. It's like an interface, but when I touch it I can extract thing from the cases. Or put things in, obviously.

From that moment on, I just ran toward the east. When I felt too tired, I climbed a tree and went to sleep. I hope that there aren't any of those creepy tree-climbing snakes here.