I felt so naked in my basic shirt, basic pants, and basic shoes. I checked my inventory and everything was gone once again. At least I had planned for this as a worst-case scenario and should be able to recover my gear fairly quickly.

"Why did you change your clothes?" Asked a woman's voice from a hiding place in the trees. I turned and ran to her.

"Jen, I'm so glad you're alive," I said pulling her into a big bear hug.

"I'm fine. It seemed like you took that guy out without too much fuss," she said extracting herself from the hug. My eyes had welled with tears at the sight of her being alive and well.

"Are you okay?" She asked confused at how emotional I had gotten.

"Sorry, the smell of that thing is making my eyes water." I wiped my eyes and tried to cover but it didn't seem like she bought it. I changed the subject when Pips jumped up.

"Pips was a real hero back there." I gave him a scratch between his cute little ears.

"Are you sure you want him that close to your face?" Jen asked.

"I'm with her," said Mae flying out of the nearby trees.

I knew he wouldn't harm me but I figured it was more just the fact that he took up one of my shoulders that had previously been Mae's domain. She didn't seem to like him much in general.

I looted the ogre for the second time and was lucky enough to find a weapon since I didn't currently have one in my possession. I looked at its information and was surprised at its description and rarity, then worried that I wouldn't be able to swing it effectively.

Ogre Club (Ultra-Rare)

This club looks like a standard-issue ogre club. What sets it apart is the fact that it was made from the fallen branch of a magic-imbued tree.

Doubles the Brawn attribute when wielded by a magic-user. 1 MP per minute is consumed.

Destroys magical defenses on impact. 10 MP when triggered.

I equipped the club and was glad that for whatever reason, the ogre hadn't used it on me. He seemed to be more interested in killing me with his bare hands. As I held it up inspecting it, I couldn't help but marvel at the beauty of the piece of wood. The grain was amazingly tight. I guessed that this was what made it denser than its previous owner.

The handle end was thicker than the business end of a baseball bat, but I could still grip it reasonably well. The club was comically long like a weapon in a cartoon, approximately one Theodore in length. It was light enough for me to swing it without ever losing control, but heavy enough to do some real damage.

Swinging it around must have made me look ridiculous, but I was excited to try it out.

"What are you doing?" Jen asked. She had stepped back to a safe distance when I equipped the massive weapon.

"Sorry," I said as I popped it back into my inventory until something needed a good clobbering. "We should head out." She nodded in agreement.

I thought back to the last time when we stopped for the night and Jen got kidnapped by the reddish-orange humanoid enemies. I never asked Mae what they were, so I decided to call them blood goblins since it sounded neat.

"Jen, I'd like to stop for the night, but I received some inside info that there are some blood goblins along this road that attack sleeping travelers. If we can make it to a campsite that is just outside of Bettyford I think it would be safer." I continued walking as I spoke as I was trying to encourage good travel time. I really wanted my stuff back. We would be cutting it close, but after inspecting my map it appeared that we could make it before nightfall if we hustled.

"I will follow your lead. Gwen may need a rest though." My compromise that included us not stopping for long was to take some of the load off of Gwen's cart to make it easier for her. I also sent some healing magic the horse's way, although I couldn't tell if it helped or not.

As nightfall approached we came to the secret clearing where I had asked Barry to murder me. A sight that almost brought a tear to my eye sat there in a heaping pile before me. Jen gazed at it wide-eyed thinking we had found a treasure trove.

"It is hard to explain, but I knew all this stuff would be here because I left it here. It all came out of my inventory." I ran over to the pile and began absent-mindedly plunging its contents into the depths of my dimensional space as quickly as possible.

Jen looked on confused and speechless. I finished my task and walked over to her.

"What?" I asked. As I waited for a response I re-equipped my old gear including the dragon's ring that gave me the huge boosts to my attributes. I once again felt the power surge through me and I felt slightly better about my current circumstances.

Jen still hadn't answered so I spoke again to break the silence.

"Ready to head to Bettyford?" I asked. She seemed to snap back to reality.

"Yes, please. I am so excited to see my parents," Jen said. When she mentioned her parents a sweet smile graced her face. It didn't have the same effect that it used to though. I'd have to think about what was different because I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"I don't know how to explain this either, but your parents aren't in Bettyford. They are in Wolfhill and we will need to go rescue them soon," I said trying to be gentle.

"What? Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Jen asked incredulously.

"I know a lot of things about where we are going and the only explanation I can offer is magic," I said struggling to find the words that could convey that this world resets every time I die and I remember everything.

"Magic helps you to know the future?" Jen was not following and I didn't blame her.

"Not exactly. I'll just explain as best I can but please don't think I'm crazy or anything. I've already lived through the next few days and through some magic or something that I don't understand, I reset to right after the ogre was killed. I died in the spot where all of my stuff was," I said knowing full well how crazy it sounded.

"You died?" She asked. I didn't even think that was the most incredible thing I had said.

"Yes. It was the only way to fix things," I said regretting my choice of words as they came out of my mouth.

"Fix what?" She said knowing from my thousand-yard-stare when I said the words that it was something serious.

"Something happened that I couldn't live with and I knew that I had to make it right," I said choosing my words better this time. She had a realization that thankfully changed the focus of the conversation enough for me to not have to tell her she died.

"Wait a minute. How did you die? It seemed like you picked the location."

"I had Barry kill me," I said as if that would clear things up. It didn't

"Who is this Barry person? She asked. I explained Barry, the state of Bettyford, and the mayoral ring situation as we walked toward the town.

As we talked about the ring I realized that I had been so caught up in Jen being back alive that I hadn't even thought of the ring having been bound to me. I mean technically I did die and I knew I only had the three basic clothing items equipped when I came back. I quickly opened my inventory and thought about seeing only the jewelry it contained.

The mayoral ring was there. Sitting in my inventory and currently bound to no one. I also noticed that the Northblood seal ring was back. I thought about why I might have that ring back and checked my theory. All of the items I had traded away in Wolfhill were back. It made sense that the new owners wouldn't still have those items after the reset. Although I also didn't have all of the gear that Smith had made me and instead had all of the original, unaltered gear. I guess that would have made it too easy to cheat the system.

I thought for a moment and recalled that I was able to have doubles of some of my original items in the first run-through. I chalked it up to the powers that be doing whatever they wanted to do and did as I had done so many times in my brief time in this land. I just went with it. Questioning the minutia didn't help anything and it didn't really ever seem to be unfair to me. I mean, it is hard to complain when someone brings you back from death multiple times.

As we approached Bettyford I once again asked Pips to wait outside of the city and we made a beeline to Lulu. We once again introduced ourselves and followed her out into the hunter's shack that she called home temporarily. Before I went back into town to deal with Larry, Gary, and Jerry, I asked Lulu if she knew of a good non-lethal way of putting someone down for the count.

Lulu looked at me like I had just said the most non-sensical statement ever uttered. "Why wouldn't you want to use a lethal method to take horrible people out of this world? Wouldn't they just continue doing evil after they woke up?"

"At least one of them didn't even want to be a bad guy, he was just dealt a bad hand and trying to survive. What if more of them were in the same boat?" I said in response. Her thoughts and feelings were completely valid, but I felt that if I had even a small chance to not murder those three men I had to try.

She shrugged a little and changed her tune. "You could try to modify one of your weapons to make it less lethal." I hadn't really tried to modify any weapons besides just the special arrow idea.

I looked through the weapons I was holding in my dimensional space and all of them seemed to have pointy ends that weren't conducive to non-lethal attacks. It is hard to make stabbing someone kill them less. Then I saw it. Sitting there like a beacon of righteousness. The comically large club that I had just gotten. I pulled it out and carefully set it on the table. I stared at it for a while wondering how to make this massive club non-lethal.

"Maybe you should sleep on it? A fresh brain in the morning might help," said Lulu.

"I could kiss you, Lulu," I said to the surprised old woman who had no idea what she had said to merit that kind of threat. I pulled out one of my magical mattresses and set it on the table with the bat. "I need to wrap that around that." I pointed at the mattress and then the club in turn.

"I think I could help," Lulu said turning to grab a small decorative box with carrying handles. She opened it and I saw all sorts of sewing thingamabobs and a fair amount of sewing thingamajigs. "You two get some sleep. I haven't been a seamstress all my life for nothing."

We did what she said as she was now singularly focused on the task at hand. I pulled out mattresses for Jen, myself, and the Lulu who barely acknowledged it.

Mae let me sleep, but another sweet old lady was my alarm clock for the day. Lulu was beaming. She pulled me up and pointed toward the table. I walked over and looked at the thing of beauty that sat before me.

"That will knock some sense into those goons if there is any left and I am pretty sure it won't kill them as well," Lulu said with pride as we stood gazing at her masterpiece.