Chương 58: Pretty popular, but with the wrong crowd

"Okay," Stuart said as the de-facto leader of the group.

"Thoughts?"

"We should stay the fuck away from that guy," Jack immediately replied.

"He gives me chills."

"He gives everyone chills," Stacy said quietly.

"That's not a reason to be mean," Mary said.

"I think he's nice."" What in the world made you think that he's nice?" Jack replied in astonishment.

"Was it the amount of blood on his clothes? The creepy eyes? The scars? The death aura? Or, I dunno… the fucking corpse that he just carries around?!"

"The scars were pretty cool," Hannah said quietly.

"Makes him look badass. Like some kind of veteran."

"A veteran in indiscriminate murder maybe!" Stuart watched the battle as the conversation went on. It was taking some time, and didn't look like it was going to end soon. He wondered if the guy even tried to talk to the monster before starting the chopping. The sight was unlike anything he had ever seen. The creature raised one of its legs to poke at something on the ground. It missed. It got a little bit shorter. It swiped with the other, cleaving a building in two. It got a little bit shorter.

The murdery guy was clearly chopping up its legs, a bit at a time, slowly going upwards as the monster got shorter and shorter. It couldn't do anything about it. Already more than a few minutes passed, and it didn't look like they were anywhere near done.

"Why do you think he drags the corpse around?" Stacy asked.

"What's the point? Sentimentality?"

"Trophy?" Jack guessed.

"He implied that he could somehow talk to it," Evan said.

"I'm inclined to believe him. There's something weird going on with that body."

"How so?" Stuart asked, his eyes never leaving the battle. It wasn't a sight that one could see every day.

"I'm… I'm not sure," Evan replied.

"Just a gut feeling, I guess. Clearly this girl is dead, but…"

"Maybe she was his sister or something," Mary instantly started sniffing, believing in her own story.

"Oh, poor boy. He just can't let her go…"" Why is she dead?" Evan pushed through.

"Look at her. What do you see?" Stuart averted his gaze from the battle for a moment, examining the corpse.

"She's about twelve?" Hannah half-asked.

"Maybe more? Covered in blood. Dead. Quite stronger than we are."

"But doesn't that mean that she's alive?" Evan said stubbornly, like he was fighting something.

"She exists. Dead people don't. So why is she dead?"

"I mean, it's obvious–""How?"

"The wounds…" Mary trailed off.

"She has no wounds. Looks pretty healthy to me, actually. Aside from being dead. Is it because she's not breathing?"

"But we don't actually need to breathe in this world," Hannah said quietly.

"Huh, that is weird…"

"More importantly," Evan said. There was an intensity to his gaze, an awareness that he was talking nonsense and yet believed it." How do you know that she's not breathing? You didn't check."

"I mean, isn't it obvious?" Mary seemed worried.

"It's because she's dead. Of course she's not breathing."

"It's circular logic," Evan shook his head, as if trying to keep the thought from escaping him.

"She's dead because she's not breathing, and yet she's not breathing because she's dead. She has no visible wounds, yet I'm sure that she's mortally wounded. More than that, every word that I say right now feels like I'm playing Devil's Advocate, trying to prove something patently false. And yet I don't see the fault in my logic."

"Which means…" Hannah didn't seem convinced, but Stuart was curious. Evan sometimes said the weirdest things, but he had to admit that this time the puzzle really did sound fascinating. Evan sighed.

"I'm not sure what it means," he said.

"I can't– I can't draw a conclusion. There's something wrong with the body. It's weirding me out."

"We should just ask the murder guy," Jack said, glancing at the battle.

"It seems he's finishing up. Not much of the legs left on the eyeball-monster." / - / The giant eye-tripod was big, scary, and absolutely helpless. Like, the worst it could do was glare at Dennis ominously. He wasn't impressed. He did try talking to the thing in case it would kindly answer his questions and maybe open up another portal, but the lack of a mouth seemed to be a dealbreaker for its talking capabilities. The fight was cool though.

Dodging the spidery legs was as simple as just walking away, but the aftermath of its swipes was destructive. He kind of wondered how it didn't lose balance, having just three narrow points of support, but the moment it sliced at him with two appendages at the same time sort of answered that question. It just didn't know that it needed balance. A giant eyeball standing upright on one pole-like leg forgot that it was supposed to fall. Just didn't get the memo. Chopping up the legs didn't make it waver either.

Climbing them in order to get to the juicy parts was… an option, but one that would limit his movements too much, and he was a bit afraid of the creature just throwing him off. Countering fall damage was not something he wanted to try. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Since he couldn't just climb it to deal meaningful damage because the thing was tall as fuck, only one option was left. He was making it a bit shorter. Evening out the height difference, so to say.

It was a long and arduous process, and yet Dennis had no problem with it at all. Constitution: 13 (10) The Con buff scaled with Heroic Dash levels, and by this point it was nothing to scoff at. Dennis was like a lumberjack, chopping up legs one piece at a time, and he was… absolutely fine. He didn't even need to use his top speed for the fight, more often than not it was just him walking from one elongated appendage to the other to do a casual swipe. He was just that fast.

It was a shame that his watch broke at some point. He would've given a lot to actually measure his speed. Anyway. Fighting the giant eyeball was less of a fight and more of a manual work. Having an axe would've made it faster. The monster destroyed yet another building behind him, seemingly enraged. Lots of property damage, there. All of it useless. Was that the essence of all speedster fights? Just complete domination with no counter? Probably, yeah. If he got countered, he'd be dead.

Since he wasn't, he basically won the fight. Two of the limbs were now too short to be used for attacking. He worked on the third. Raise your arm. Chop. Wait a little bit for the upper part of the leg to fall down and touch the ground. Chop. It was meditative. His only real worry was the fact that he left Lily with those shady guys. Wasn't a good thing to do, that. Or was it? Lately, he had no fucking idea what was and wasn't the right thing to do. His heroic compass just didn't work the same.

Every decision was tainted by uncertainty, but he was slowly learning to live with it. The current strategy was to act in accordance with a set of core rules that were surely heroic if he didn't think too hard about them. Rule number one, don't kill people unless they prove their villainness. Rule number two, give them a chance to explain themselves if they show villainous behaviour. It was a work in progress. He derived those from his encounter with Gareth. Killing Gareth was one of his true regrets.

The more he thought about it, the more ashamed of himself he was. Yes, that kill was justified because the man was threatening Dennis' life, but it was also a misunderstanding that could've been solved in so many ways than just straight out murder. What would Dennis do if the guy didn't have the resurrection skill? Basically, he was applying Gareth's advice to not do the things that he would regret, and extrapolating it into some rules for himself, because without them he just… couldn't trust his judgement.

Those rules were the only reason why he didn't kill the girl when she pointed her staff at him, or ignored the pointy guy who pointed his pointy metaphysical thing at Dennis threateningly. And they worked. Apparently, the random group of overpowered cultists weren't cultists at all but just some stranded nerds who were into roleplay or cosplay or some other nerdy shit that he didn't care about. Though there was a chance that they were bullshitting him.

He kept half of his attention on Heroic Senses just in case they tried to sacrifice Lily to the dark gods or something. The Eye fell on the ground with its… eye. The squishy sound made him quite uncomfortable. He shivered, and proceeded to stab the thing. In the eye. The broken sword didn't have much penetrative power. The dagger was even worse. Feeling his weapons enter the soft gelatinous substance made him feel dirty. The creature just laid there, glaring at him ominously as he continued repeatedly stabbing it.

Should work at some point. He wondered if more Eyes would come after he killed this one. Or something stronger? It would be great if that High Authority itself came. It was a good plan for saving the world. Just annoy the fuck out of the bad guy until they came personally, and then it would be the question of beating the shit out of them until the world was saved. They totally broke the villainy two-strike rule, with all the goblins and Arms and shit.

Dennis didn't mind whoever was the boss of those things coming after him. It was a change, and change was good. He might get some answers, or find a way to save the floating people, or even just get more exp. Running around like crazy killing every Arm his skill pointed him at was great, but them coming at him would save him even more time, and every second was precious.

The far-away target was still dying, and it was a balancing act between saving the travel time by getting faster and wasting the time by grinding instead of traveling. Sure, them surviving for more than a month was a great indicator that they wouldn't die any time soon, but… It would crush him if one day that target just disappeared from his radar. It was a constant fear. Exp coming at him was fucking welcome.

Half a minute of stabbing the eye didn't make it die, just filled it with hundreds of relatively tiny holes that leaked stuff. Gross. Not wishing to waste even more time, he gathered his resolve. Digging a tunnel straight into the center of it was the second-worst experience of his life. Worse than an empathy blast, but better than growing a Soul. Thankfully, he didn't need to breathe. There, in the warm and wet depths, it happened. His body froze, and he couldn't move. Oh, so it was a level nine thing. Level up.

Free points +6 Skill selection available. Warning: The available pool of skills contains a Sovereign-tier skill. Warning: Insufficient authority for the latest administrator command. Outgoing communication ban lifted. Notice: Communication channel to The Soul Devouring Sovereign established. Pending message sent. Select a skill: Mimicry resistance. Active. Part of The Omnipresent Mimic. Logic, hope, or madness. No matter the reason, you perceive the truth. Effect: Reveal the lies.

You cannot be deceived, even by yourself. Sword Saint. Passive/Active. Sovereign. The apex of The Sword Saint. A sword is a simple tool. There is nothing profound about it. This is your fate. Accept it. Effect: The ability to cut anything. Doubles the effective power of all stats while wielding a sword. There can only be one Sovereign. Taking this skill will strip the current Sword Saint wielder from it, for they are not worthy. Echo Heresy. Passive/Active. Part of The Worldless Dreamer.

Make 'em, slay 'em, to tell you a secret, there's no difference. Only creating something from nothing. Effect: Localized Echo authority. Ability to usurp the Echo authority of others. Supportive Wizardry. Passive. Part of The Archwizard. Healing. Healing. Haste for fun. Another Healing? Yep, let's do that. A thousand times. Effect: Intuitive understanding for supportive wizardry as defined by Mer'el, The Third Archwizard. Assisted glyph resonance. Kriya Shakti. Passive/Active. Part of One Who Defied Heavens.

Defying fate thrice frees you from samsara. Effect: Major resistance to scrying and precognition. Minor fate manipulation. Minor Soul enforcement. Well, that didn't sound encouraging.