Chương 17: It’s important to remember what’s important

His body was too tired. Too broken. Moving anything at all felt like a titanic effort, and still hundreds of goblins were very much alive and running towards him. He could hear arrows being launched in his direction, and, well, there was a pressing concern of a cleaver moving towards his neck. He once compared fighting to playing tic tac toe with a leg up. Well, now his options felt more limited. He'd lost his sword, couldn't use his right hand and everything hurt.

He may have broken some bones that he was not yet aware of. So it was more like playing tic tac toe without the leg up. A bit less graceful, a bit more dangerous. He stepped towards the goblin who was attacking him. More like fell on it, really, in an awkward hug. The cleaver missed, the distance too short to hit him. His dagger found itself in the creature's heart, neatly going between the ribs. He turned, like he was drunkenly waltzing with its body, and two arrows hit its back.

Three more goblins were almost on him. Hundreds were following. Or maybe just a bit more than a hundred? He had killed at least half of them already. He sidestepped the strike of the first one, the move resembling a stumble more than a dodge, and cut its throat. A blade of the other one nicked his right shoulder as he thrusted his dagger in its eye. The third one didn't immediately attack, wary of him and waiting for the others. Good.

It would give him a few seconds of a breathing room, and a moment to come up with a plan. Slowly but surely it felt like the game of tic tac toe would turn into one where the enemies had a leg up. It wouldn't matter then how good he was with the game, he wouldn't win if there were no winning moves at all. He was just too slow. Something had to change. He needed the buff. Now more than ever. It refused to activate. He wasn't trying to save anyone, he was fighting for his life.

No amount of verbal sparring or convincing would turn it on while he was trying to save himself. Even if he somehow managed to make a case that he was an ally of himself and needed saving, well, he wouldn't be trying to reach himself. It wouldn't work. Fighting for his life won't work. The goblin finally gathered its courage and tried to attack, and Dennis threw the dagger in its eye so he wouldn't have to bother with dodging.

Its body fell by his legs and it took him just half a second to retrieve the dagger from its skull. He needed to be the hero.

"Lily!" he shouted.

"Hide where there are less of them!" It didn't matter if she heard him. It didn't even matter if she would listen to him, though he hoped that he didn't mess up any plans they'd made for her in secret. What mattered was that it was reasonable to assume that she heard him and would listen, so the most likely place to find her would be the one where there were less goblins. So he would try to kill all the goblins there, to keep her safe.

And maybe use a bit of that buff to keep himself safe while he tried to reach her. The skill was flickering on and off, as if in doubt. He was just too scared of dying. Fuck it. He once decided that he would run away if the chance of him dying would be more than 90%. Like now. It was pure irony that the heroic skill that might let him live didn't work because he wasn't fully committed to heroism. The more he used it the more he understood it, and it was clear that it wasn't just a skill.

It was a pure idea turned into reality, an entity that existed outside of him on a level more real than physical. An idea of rushing to help those who needed it. It was demanding. Just like he created it to define himself, it was demanding him to uphold the stated ideal and found him lacking. Wavering. Not really ready to commit when his life was really on the line. Honestly, he had half a mind to just lay down and die. He was so fucking tired, and everything hurt so much. Dying was scary, but… Everyone died.

It was just a thing that happened, and it never bothered him. To be frank, almost nothing bothered him. He only cared about his comic books and the fantasies that he lived out through them. Love, friendship, and even death were things that he just didn't care about. He didn't know if there was anything wrong with him, though the Soul stat suggested that something might be. He just didn't care. The whole world was monochrome, and only the bright smile on the poster on his wall in the basement had color.

There was an arrow flying at him. It was a nice shot, arching from a good distance and yet he could see that it wouldn't miss his head. Some goblin was quite lucky with that one. Dennis didn't really care that he would die. Death was boring. Lame. Just a thing that existed outside his very narrow scope of interests. Though it was such a lame death for a speedster. Not even a proper origin story. Not even worthy to be a background character. His eyes widened and he jerked his head just an inch away.

The arrow nicked his cheek but flew past him. It stung a bit, but again, he wasn't really bothered by the pain. That was such a cool dodge. He looked at the arrow in the ground and at the horde of goblins that had almost reached him. He touched his bleeding cheek, noticing the huge grin on his face. Why the fuck was he thinking of having such a lame-ass death?! What kind of hero just decided that he was too hurt and tired so it was time to give up?! This right here was prime origin story material!

A little girl would probably die if he failed, she was definitely close to running out of mana! His party would die trying to save her! Some fucking randoms in the fort would die because they were useless and in the dire need of saving! If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. And he was the fucking speedster, and last time he checked, he still had legs! The annoying on and off flickering of the skill stopped.

It shone brightly, gifting him the raw speed of body and mind to outrun a fucking car. Because doing anything but the coolest thing would be so lame. So he would just save everyone or at least die heroically. Still, a small adjustment to his approach was needed.

Running around everywhere was cool as fuck, and killing dozens of goblins before the bodies of the firsts touched the ground was cool as fuck, but it was apparent that he wouldn't be able to kill them all before Lily's invisibility dropped, so from now on this was not a sprint, but a marathon. He walked in the direction where Lily was likely to be. Didn't try to run, didn't try to rush. The goblins were on him like a horde of hungry rats. It didn't matter.

What he sacrificed in speed he gained in precision and small, calculated yet explosive movements. The first goblin that reached him died in 0. 2 seconds. The second didn't last much longer. The third shared the same fate, as did the fourth, and the fifth… Level up. Free points +6 All in Mind. Dexterity: 27 (20) Mind: 27 (20) He was walking. Just strolling to his destination. The skill was humming, never wavering even once as he approached the spot where Lily could be.

He might have started this fight like a proper speedster, but he had to admit that he continued it like the Sword Saint. Everything that approached his range died. Arrows were either deflected or dodged with movements so minimal that it looked like pure luck. It didn't matter that he could move only his left hand or that he lost his sword. It didn't matter that he didn't– couldn't really run and walked at almost a leisurely pace.

One goblin or a hundred, it didn't matter because even while he couldn't run he was still fast enough to not be run down by pure bodies, and everything else was no threat. He was still fast as fuck. He'd thought that he was fast before but he'd underestimated the sheer gulf that existed between his Mind and Dexterity. The simple fact that 90% of his focus and his bullshit talent were working tirelessly to even allow him to wield that speed. And now? Now he could actually think about the battle.

Properly take it all in. The goblins stood no chance. He knew how exactly every single one of them would die. One hundred and fourteen goblins, and he knew their fate in so much detail that it might as well be future vision. He would take a little step to the left and do a diagonal swipe with his dagger. Then he would turn 24 degrees, letting the arrow flow by. He would gently touch that arrow, altering its course slightly. It would hit another goblin in the eye. He knew his every movement half a minute ahead.

He planned them half a minute ahead. There were variations, unknown variables, but they were accounted for. Was this the boosted Mind or his bullshit talent? Or both? It was probably both. The rate at which he killed the goblins rose back to a nice 3-4 per second. There was no real point in running after them, as they all were generously running to him. It didn't matter to them that he was death incarnate, he was alone and he proved that he could be hurt and that he could bleed.

One hit would be enough to end him, and so they were blinded by greed or whatever emotion they felt that made them want to kill people. Again he was amazed by how stupidly physics-bending Dexterity was, and yet how simple at the same time. It didn't do anything but make him faster. Any action that he did was the same, yet faster. He was walking leisurely, his broken body not really being able to even jog. And yet his stroll was more or less as fast as a goblin's run. Maybe just a bit slower.

How the fuck did he not notice it before? The Mind. He just couldn't catch up to his body before, limited in ways he didn't even realize. Instead of using his speed, he was working around it. Dealing with it. And now it was a tool instead of a burden that required all of his focus to deal with. All movements were faster if he wanted, and yet the same for him. His slow, almost lazy swipe of a man who should belong in a hospital? It was as fast as a regular swipe for a goblin.

From the outside it must've looked like he was in a fierce battle, slashing and dodging at very much respectable speeds. No time-dilation effect, he noted. A second felt like a second, he could just do more during it. A bit of a bummer, but then again, it was probably a blessing for the future where he would get really fast. Going crazy from boredom in a few seconds was not exactly how he would've liked to lose it. He noticed their party entering the field and Lily appearing near them.

The buff dropped, seeing that the girl was safe. Oh shi– He switched focus to trying to save the people in the fort instantly. It didn't work. Fuck, he'd aggroed pretty much all the goblins. They weren't threatening the fort in any but the most abstract sense, and the stupid skill told him to suck it with all of his rules-lawyering and claims of abstract danger. The party wasn't of much help on that front either, as no goblins were attacking them yet. All of the creatures were focused on him.

All 54 of them, his Mind whispered helpfully. He lost the pure sharpness of it with the buff, but it was still inhumanly good. Could he still deal with them without the buff? Well… 20 Dexterity was nothing to scoff at. It was the limit of what was humanly possible, if his suspicions were correct. He was pretty confident that the combination of it and his Mind would've been enough if not to guarantee his win, then to give him very good odds. If only his body was in any condition to use that Dexterity.

He could barely walk. Ugh. There wasn't even anyone to run and save. Heroic last stand? Heroic last stand. It's not like he had a choice at this point. It was either die while trying to run away, or die fighting. At least he would look cool. Maybe say a cheesy line at the end that the party wouldn't hear but would see him whisper. That sounded properly fun. His dagger moved as if on autopilot, killing a nearby goblin. The other one managed to slice Dennis' torso slightly when he failed to dodge fast enough.

A scratch, even if it bled concerningly. The goblin died for that success, of course. Another one managed to run into Dennis, tackling him onto the ground. The dagger found itself in its neck basically at the moment when they touched, but it didn't help much. It took him a few precious seconds to move the body off of him and try to stand up, but he was already seeing another attack coming, so he fell back on the ground to dodge it and cut the goblin's ankle.

A second strike ended its life as it was falling to the ground. Two more were coming at him, and for the first time since he started this whole fighting thing he didn't see any good options. There was just no possible move that he could make to come out unharmed, if not dead. So he traded blows. The spear of the left goblin mostly missed, barely touching him as he guided his body along its length and thrusted the dagger in the creature's neck.

Gritting his teeth through pain he raised his right arm and the second goblin's sword bit into its flesh, getting stuck when it touched the bone. That was unpleasant. He could hear himself screaming as he killed the thing. The world around him was wavering as he was losing too much blood, too quickly. With a trembling hand he raised his dagger at the next goblin. Two goblins? No, he was seeing things, it was just one. He gave himself equal odds of surviving this attack. An arrow struck its neck.

That was a very good shot. He could hear gunfire. Nice of them to finally remember that they had guns… The bodies below him were soft and warm and quite comfortable as he fell on them, losing consciousness. He forgot to say a cheezy line.