Chương 71: Things have a scent now! And they smell like drama

And they smell like drama Apparently, the correct response to a bunch of semi-godlike beings some-fucking-how stumbling into your world and probably starting a fight was to get the fuck out and pray that the spillover didn't reach you. At least according to the elf-lady's ramblings, as she urged everyone to rush towards the nearest teleportation zone, to be spawned back on Earth. Honestly, Dennis didn't get where all that urgency was coming from.

Watching a high-level PvP match between some random tryhards sounded like fun times, especially since he had gotten pretty fast recently, it didn't feel like his chances of dying were that high. Apparently, everyone disagreed.

With floating people being funneled through the portals to the other side quite quickly and the party of nerds in complete agreement with the 'get the fuck out' plan, he didn't actually have anyone left to protect from anything, thus losing his buff, thus having to reluctantly leave with everyone without watching the spectacle. A shame, that. But, hey, at least he saved the world or something. Presumably.

He was a bit confused about the details at the very end, but a random elf-lady that appeared out of nowhere was putting people back on Earth, Lily somehow got herself resurrected without his help, there were now portals to the normal world everywhere, and he did kill a guy who was probably causing the apocalypse in the first place… Probably. At first glance, it did seem like things worked out. Somehow. Dennis was starting to feel like he didn't know a lot of things about a lot of things.

It was annoying and it felt… wrong, that he didn't fully understand what was happening. If he had to pinpoint the feeling, the source of it was probably the fact that he wasn't the one who solved everything. Not directly, at least. He was just trying his best, and it somehow worked, but it wasn't him who found the necromancer for Lily, or found the elf-lady, and killing the High Authority had been more of an accident than a deliberate effort. In short, the victory didn't really feel clean, or completely his.

It was a question of… responsibility, maybe? Acclaim? He wanted to be the one who saved everyone, and this didn't really feel like that, so… He pushed the thought aside, annoyed at the sudden introspective tangent. Was his Soul recovering already? He assumed that it would recover once he stopped straining it, but that was a bit too quick. Then again, he didn't have that much to recover in the first place… Soul: 0 (1) Nope, still wild and free and unconstrained by the chains of human nature.

He kind of liked it that way, to be honest. The worries of the Soul-Dennis felt so silly in retrospect. It was like he was inventing problems simply to have something to suffer about, which was plainly dumb and–"–Dennis? Are you ignoring me on purpose?" Shit, Lily had noticed that he had tuned out her yapping. He honestly forgot how talkative the girl was when she wasn't dead, and the change wasn't what he would call a 'positive' one.

He tried, he really heroically tried to listen at first, but it was all 'sob story' this, 'I remember it all' that, 'are you okay' here and 'it'll be alright' there… He believed her, of course, it felt impossible not to trust her, but it was all so, so boring. Like an unskippable cutscene that he had to sit through.

"Nah," he shrugged.

"It's more like an instinct. You should summarize all that stuff in twenty words or less."

"I–" Despite her new routine of not showing any emotions on her face–was she now an undead or something? –for some reason it was clearly obvious that his words shook her.

"I… see." They sat on the beach, looking at the ocean, not that far away from the point they spawned from. The breeze was new. It smelled of saltwater.

"Kind of a shame that I never got to see the ocean in that world," he said quietly.

"All that preparation to run across it, and it just didn't happen."

"It's still," she said, drawing lines in the sand.

"Like a giant puddle, but it doesn't reflect anything. Just a flat sheet of wet nothing. You didn't miss much."

"Bet I could run on it." On the road behind them, some of the floating people were starting to wake up, while new ones kept spawning from thin air and falling down on the ones below. It was a funny sight, even though it reminded him of the goblin spawn point from the days when it all started. The process was essentially the same, only now it was a human spawn point. There was less blood, and more confusion. Which was the reason why he didn't waste any time moving away from all of that.

The people had questions, and answering them was a chore that he was all too happy to dodge. Someone less important could do all that boring work. Someone was. The group of kinda-wizard nerds was trying to organize it all, and answering the same questions again and again. They did quite decently, in his opinion, even though forming fighting groups and picking lookouts to spot monsters was unnecessary. He was here. As long as they were in the same city as him, they were safe.

And what could a bunch of level one noobs do anyway? Were monsters even still around? The elf lady was the only one not doing anything. She stood awkwardly between the beach and the spawn point, as if wary of approaching either side. She looked a bit lost. People were giving her weird looks, but no one had the courage to come closer, it seemed. Dennis assumed that she would be hanging out with the wizards, but it looked like they were too busy being swarmed with 'level one confused humans' to pay her any attention.

So, after urging everyone to run to the other side and tagging along, she was now just standing there. Awkwardly. While throwing glances at him, and then averting her gaze as if she thought he wouldn't notice. The whole thing was the opposite of sleek. He definitely had more Dex than her. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Did anything–""What's up with the elf lady?" he asked, interrupting whatever question Lily was so nervous to ask. Damn, he was getting good at reading people.

"I– She's the mysterious distant person," the girl answered, telling him nothing new, slightly conflicted but grateful for a chance to stall for a bit more time before raising the topic that was heavy on her mind. Shit, he was rocking this whole 'understand other people' shtick. When did he get so good at that? Must be all the conversation practice he had with her corpse.

"What was she dying from?"

"Some super-evil magical prison-execution thingy." Okay, that was pretty cool. Not on his bingo list. He stood up, sweeping off the sand from his clothes. The elf lady clearly wanted something from him, and, more importantly, he had a lot of questions of his own. He steeled his resolve, preparing himself for another unskippable cutscene full of exposition. No matter how much he didn't really give a fuck, at least knowing 'how' and 'why' of the apocalypse was essential for his heroic purposes.

Maybe the elf lady even knew something about getting his soul back. Two birds with one stone, the practical heroing – stopping the apocalypse if it was still somehow ongoing, and the theoretical heroing – maybe she had an 'Empathy for Soulless People 101' book in her inventory or something. All in one convenient elf-shaped package. Did he really want his soul back that much? The more he thought about it, the more he actually dreaded that moment.

He didn't destroy the thing out of pure logic and hesitancy to do something unfixable more than anything else. Actually having it was… an experience that he wouldn't necessarily recommend. Maybe there was a way to be a hero without it? He remembered agonizing about how wrong his understanding of it all was, how he was incapable of achieving his dream like it was straight out impossible, but… Well, he didn't really understand what his problem was. The memories were there. He still didn't get it.

Ironically, that made sense. Dennis still wanted to wiggle out of having a soul somehow. Maybe if he memorized a very robust book on ethics and used it as a guideline? But it had to be detailed enough to not leave any room for interpretation. That was a lot of shit to memorize. Though, with his Mind– He'd figure something out. As he started walking towards the elf, she stiffened and turned slightly pale, averting her gaze again. What was that about? Eh, he'd just ask.

He was stopped after barely taking a few steps as Lily lightly tugged the back of his shirt.

"Dennis, I–" she tried to say something before abandoning the idea again.

"Did something happen to you?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, keeping his gaze firmly locked on the elf.

"You're… you're different," she said quietly from behind him.

"Or– I, mean… You're the same as you were before… you know…"

"What?"

"Before getting the Soul point," she whispered so quietly that he almost didn't hear her. He turned around, looking at the girl in shock.

"You knew about that?!"

"I told you I remember everything!" Damn, the bane of skipping cutscenes was biting him in the ass again. Wait, everything?

"So, even that one night when I tried to invent a lightning trail spell…"

"Nope," she said with a blank face.

"Not ringing a bell." Well, he did swear her to secrecy. It was good that she remembered the oaths she'd given while dead.

"Good," he nodded gravely.

"We have an understanding." Lily almost chuckled, before smoothing her expression back to neutral.

"You're deflecting," she said. Deflecting? Him?! That would imply that he gave a fuck.

"Not really," he shrugged.

"The soul thing… Well… I kinda lost it again during the fight. Got a skill that squeezes it for mana. It's not that big of a deal." Lily's hand fell to her side. Despite her face not showing any expression whatsoever, her eyes were getting wet.

"Wait, just– Just like that?" she asked in a monotone voice, though it was slightly shaking.

"After everything? It's just… over?" Where the hell had her acting skills gone? The girl was so bad at hiding her emotions that even a rock would know that she was devastated. For some reason. Damn, he really didn't want to deal with crying children. They were the worst, and everyone always blamed him for any and all crying children nearby.

"Cheer up," he said with a forced smile. Seriously, do cheer up. People would be mad if I made another little girl cry.

"I feel much better without it." He tried to assuage her concerns.

"Honestly, that thing was a pain in the ass. I'll figure some other way to be a proper hero without it. Do you think there's something like a 'morality compass' skill? I think that's a good plan. We can get more than one skill, and skills are usually something that you do a lot, so if I just focus on being very moral, it'll probably work out. So, it's fine." Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. Pure undiluted despair exploded from the girl in a wave. He could almost feel it in his bones.

And not just him, it felt like every grain of sand, every pebble, the world itself somehow bent and gained sentience just to acknowledge that the girl in front of him was very fucking sad. As far as failing to hide your emotions went, this was absurd. He quickly looked around, and, sure enough, fucking everyone stopped whatever they were doing to stare at them. There was no sound, everything was silent, almost as if he got back to the mirror world again. Even the sound of waves and wind got muted. God damn it.

That was exactly what usually happened when he tried to calm down crying children. Now everyone was staring, and the child in question was going to throw an even bigger tantrum. That was how things like that usually went. It was almost nostalgic. Except for the part with distorting reality. That was new.

"Uhm…" His voice was unusually loud in the silence, despite him trying to not draw attention. He was failing miserably.

"It's… probably gonna grow back?" He tried another tactic.

"It says zero out of one, so my guess is it's more like a debuff than a full loss." The despair aura lessened.

"When?" the girl asked without a hint of emotion on her face.

"Dunno… could be hours or days? If it's like Constitution fatigue, then maybe I can just sleep it off." The pressure lessened once more. He could hear the wind again. Lily nodded weakly.

"Okay," she said quietly.

"I'm… I'll tell you when you get it back, then."

"Tell me what?"

"It's not important right now," she said, avoiding his gaze. Well, if she said so, he had no reason to doubt that. Crisis averted, it seemed.