Chương 56: Speedstery speedster speeding

In the end, it wasn't that hard. Convincing the skill which at its core was 'running fast to save people' that having more endurance would, indeed, allow him to run more and therefore save more people was surprisingly easy. It didn't even cost that much, even though it was a new 'branch' for the skill, the alignment with its core purpose helped a lot with the costs. Heroic Dash 19 -> Heroic Dash 25 The conceptual distribution of a skill was modified. Skill description updated. Heroic Dash 25. Passive. Unique.

Just save everyone. Maybe apply a bit of triage. Effect: +25 Mind, +25 Dexterity while trying to save an ally. Effect: +2 Constitution, +25 Mind, +25 Dexterity while trying to save an ally. Dennis was a bit disappointed with the amount of Con he got from the upgrade, but it was honestly a much better deal than the small number suggested. Firstly, 2 Con was actually quite a lot for him. It was a difference between the average person and someone who was pretty damn fit.

As a point of reference, Travis, the guy who Dennis picked as his mule because of the unreasonably high Con score, had a physique that would make people feel jealous and his initial Con was just 13. More than that, Dennis didn't remember anyone having more than 14 as their initial stat, anything higher than that had to be in the realms of extremely gifted people, or those who dedicated their life to honing their body or mind.

And lastly, as Heroic Dash pridefully proclaimed, the stat increase would scale with levels. All in all, while the change wouldn't turn Dennis into the inexhaustible machine of heroic speedsteriness quite yet, it was good. Good enough, and that was basically the only thing he needed. Of course, he had to test it. The small talk with Lily was enough for a short rest, and if his understanding of how stats worked was correct, he would actually recover his stamina faster while running.

Dennis picked the girl up and set his mind on the next Arm, a few miles away from where they were. The buff turned on. Holy fucking shit. He didn't dare to immediately sprint, just walking with the buff to acclimate himself to the change. Yes, his Mind allowed him to keep up with his own movements, but it was still… Exponential stats were fucking exponenting. Before the last powerup Dennis was a few times faster than the Arms, and the ridiculous advantage in speed was freeing. Now?

He would be able to dance around himself from a minute ago. Just completely obliterate the guy. It was the same difference of 6 points, but those points were worth so much more. While he was supposed to examine the change in his endurance, Dennis couldn't stop marveling at his new speed. It was almost humbling, how slow he was before, and frightening to think how fast he could get. The change of six points was… what, about 50 percent faster? Was it percentage based?

He wasn't sure, but what he knew for a fact was that if he could outrun a car before, now he was way beyond the point of comparing himself to a car, on a highway or not. It was not just superhuman speed, it was super- anything speed. He could probably dodge bullets semi-reliably now, if not outrun them. It was ridiculous. His new endurance was also quite noticeable, though for a different reason. It wasn't a stark difference because of a huge leap, but the difference of a small-ish thing becoming noticeably better.

Regrettably, Lily didn't feel lighter on his back, she was still, well, not extremely heavy, but a notable burden, but for some reason he just wasn't bothered by the weight so much. Most likely, how heavy something felt was governed by Strength, but how straining it was to apply that Strength was what Constitution did. Dennis didn't run yet, just walked calmly through the streets with Lily on his back, and it felt… not effortless, but fine? He wasn't getting tired from the walk.

There was no hum of Constitution being strained. If he had a stamina bar, it probably wasn't even getting lower. It was weird, feeling fine while carrying considerable weight on his back. Like hiking, maybe. He wondered if hiking would be fun now. Maybe he'd try that out, once this was over. He spotted the Arm near a pretty fountain. A sudden crazy thought appeared in his mind. Could he fight it with Lily on his back?

The most time-consuming part of his Arm-slaying sprint was the repeated 'put the girl down, pick the girl up' routine. How fast he was compared to the Arm now? It might be genuinely possible. If not on the seventh level, then surely on the eighth. Just… casually walk towards the thing and kill it before it even moves. Before the whole Soul-incident, he would've tried that here and now. The worry made him reconsider, at least until he knew where he stood in terms of his new fighting power.

In other words, just for this fight he would not carry the girl, to get used to the speed. After that… he couldn't keep a small smile off his face. As per usual, he placed her in a safe spot, withdrew his weapons, and approached the Arm faster than it could blink. Which it couldn't. It was kinda weird that the things didn't have eyelids. Or maybe they did, but just didn't use them? What use were eyelids for a statue? He was quite close enough to inspect the weird anatomy in detail.

Pretty much peering in its face from just a few feet away. Had to wait for the creature to make the first move to get the neck into the cutting range, after all. The punch that it threw at him was so fucking slow. Dennis watched in fascination at the fist flying straight towards his head, not bothering to move yet. He had plenty of time to dodge. Not just to dodge, he could pick his nose and maybe recite a small poem in the time it took the fist to reach him. The fight was a joke. This wasn't a fight.

This was just… an exp collecting procedure. Almost boring in how easy it was. He decapitated the monster in three strikes, before it could even try to go for a second punch. Couldn't do that before either. The power behind his slashes was increased as well, the blades flowing faster and penetrating further than ever before. He was picking up the girl before the Arm's body even hit the ground. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"You know, I think we don't need to do the whole 'put down, pick up' routine anymore," he muttered.

"Are you up for some semi-risky Arm slaying? I bet that I can kill them with you on my back, and if the speed won't be enough then the fighting talent thing would pick up the slack."

'Thank gods,' the girl replied.

'You know it's not exactly comfortable to lay on the ground all the time? You could've at least put me on a chair, or inside one of the houses.'

"Hah, no. That takes too much time."

'No respect for the dead, I see. I'll remember that.'

"Ass."

'You're an ass.' Dennis maintained a comfortable jogging pace as he ran towards the next monster. It was, in fact, comfortable. He wasn't getting tired. Maybe just a little bit? Was this how fit people just felt all the time? It just wasn't fair. It felt amazing. No one told him how amazing it felt to be… well, relatively fit.

Dodging with Lily on his back was tricky only in a way that he had to be more mindful of shards that flew everywhere when an Arm hit this or that piece of environment after inevitably missing him, and he couldn't use both daggers at the same time, needing one hand to keep the body steady on his back. It turned the fight that should've lasted about two seconds into one that lasted maybe ten. Overall, it was a great increase in efficiency.

From that point on, all that Dennis did was run towards the next Arm on his list and kill it. Not once had he left the speed state. The longer it went on, the more noticeable the extra Constitution became. Where he would've slowed down before, now he didn't. Where he couldn't push himself, now he could. Where he would've been fucking exhausted, now he was simply pleasantly sore. Including the travel time, killing an Arm took about a minute on average. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

Apparently, maintaining a reasonable jogging pace that got interrupted by a few intense sprints for half an hour was something that people with 12 Con just could do. It was crazy stuff. Half an hour later thirty four Arms were dead, and Dennis was just kinda winded but not really tired. A familiar System message appeared. Level up. Free points +6"Shit's crazy," Dennis muttered as he sat in a very old, very 'you can't sit on this' chair inside of a museum.

Lily rested on a similar one nearby, her complaints about the ground not being that comfortable being noted.

'Mhm.' Heroic Dash 25 -> Heroic Dash 31"Are you feeling any better?" he asked.

"Any sudden urge to come alive?"

'How would the exp heal me?' she replied sarcastically.

'No, I'm just level six now, but still very much dead. Spare a healing?"" Healing." The world became magic for a moment.

'Thanks. We'll see how that works.'

"You do look better," he noted.

"Nothing's poking out, almost no bruises or scratches anywhere. I was kinda expecting you to be alive at this point, to be honest."

'Maybe there's internal damage?' she wondered.

'Something fundamentally in opposition to being alive? Like a torn heart? Honestly, I also thought that I'd wake up by this point. What if I'm just a healthy corpse? And you're just… preserving it or something, but there's no soul inside and it's just an empty husk?'

"Topic change," Dennis loudly announced as he gracefully dodged another despair-spiral.

"Overwhelming power and how to get it. Thoughts?" Lily tried to shift in her chair before remembering that she was dead and incapable of movement. He helped her out by adjusting her position slightly so she wasn't looking at the ceiling.

'You may be fast enough to reach the far-away target now,' she said.

'And I may have enough exp to survive the trip without evaporating or something on the way.'

"Through the ocean?" he asked doubtfully.

"Yeah, no way. It's not worth the risk. One or two more levels will win us time, in the long run. Whatever we waste now we'll make up by being faster on the way there, and it's safer that way. Also, I kinda worry about running on water. It's one thing to see it in comics and stuff, but… for real? Is that a thing that I'll be able to pull off? Or we'll need another upgrade for the skill to do that? I can do the 'run on water' upgrade."

'Don't do that until you actually know that you can't without it.'

"Yeah, makes sense. How many Arms are there in the city now?"

'Just three that we know of. Not enough to level up again.'

"So we're stuck until we find more. Which…" Lily tried to nod. He moved her head up and down.

'We probably can do that,' she said, her expression grateful for Dennis' mindfulness. He was kinda proud of it. It felt like a heroic thing to do that he wouldn't consider doing before.' Heroic Senses already exist and the targeting branch of your skill is quite developed. Would it be that hard to make it find more Arms?' Dennis considered the possible approaches, trying to feel out how much space any change would take on that new blank sheet of metaphysical paper that he now had.

"Anything that's selfish or just not particularly heroic is prohibitively expensive," he said.

"Just… not an option. A simple straightforward addition like 'let me find monsters so I get stronger by killing them' is straight out impossible."

'Then just don't make it straightforward?" Lily couldn't see the problem.

'You already did it once, the solution is obvious.'

"Hmm?"

'How did the targeting work before you developed Heroic Senses? When you knew where to run to and were correct in your knowledge, the buff turned on. Reminds you of anything?'

"That's exactly what I'm doing with the Arms–"'That's exactly what you're doing with the Arms,' Lily nodded with Dennis' help.

"You know where they are, and you can run towards them with the buff because you need to fight them to help me. So…'

"So that's basically the wording right there!" Dennis exclaimed in realization.

"Don't expand the skill to find monsters to kill, expand it to find… let me think… things that are needed to help out with the saving?"

'In general, it's an expansion to help you find what you need to help your target,' the girl agreed.

'Maybe it could even help out with finding the necromancer or… whatever I need to be alive again, you know.' Dennis stood up from the chair, pacing back and forth across the room.

"That would totally work," he muttered.

"Find Arms for the exp, find necromancer for healing… could be even something like 'find a safe spot' to bring someone away from a disaster zone. It would turn the skill from 'run towards savable people' into genuine 'use superspeed to help people'. You're fucking smart, Lily!"

'I am,' the girl agreed smugly.

"I mean, I am fucking smart, because you're probably a figment of my imagination. We're smart? Or…"

'Me,' she said sternly.

'I am smart. You're dumb.'

"That doesn't make any sense!"

'That's because you're dumb.'

"Oh, fuck off." Heroic Senses was a subskill. Dennis couldn't level it up, and couldn't feel it, despite it existing on his stat sheet. While he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, it was certainly convenient that to upgrade it he had to put points in Heroic Dash instead. All for that speed. The conceptual distribution of a skill was modified. Skill description updated. Heroic Senses. Passive. Part of Heroic Dash. An arrow can't fly without direction, and a hero can't exist without people to save.

Effect: Pericognition to find those who need saving. Effect: Pericognition to find those who need saving, and those who can help. There was no noticeable change when the skill was updated. That was, until he tried to target Lily to turn his buff on. There was a lot of monsters who could 'help'. / - /"I keep telling you, the person you're looking for just doesn't exist!" The Wandering Oracle threw her arms, sick of the argument that simply couldn't be won.

"And I keep telling you, they do!" The cup in the Sword Saint's hand cracked.

"Did you check the forbidden worlds? Or maybe they're in one of those protected from divination?"" Yes! Yes, I did! And they're not protected from divination, because your marasmatic ass apparently felt them, which means I could've found them if they existed!"

"Maybe one of the new worlds?"

"I checked every world on the whole damned branch!"

"So what about–""You wouldn't have felt them if they were on a different branch! Don't teach me how to divine, you– You fossil! If that theoretical person exists, they're not in any world at all!" The woman froze the moment words left her mouth. The look of realization on the Sword Saint's face followed her soon after.

"They're in the Echo," they said simultaneously.