Chương 76: Becoming a celebrity

Sometimes Dennis really doubted if Mind was as good of a stat as it sounded. Theoretically, he was supposed to be smarter. Right? Even the base of twenty put him on the level of the most exceptional people who ever lived on Earth, or something like that. So why was he sometimes so dumb? Probably because being dumb faster wasn't that strong an advantage, when he thought about it.

He had killed the High Authority, supposedly stopped the apocalypse, found a way back to the real world for himself and every floating person in that god-forsaken mirror world. Sure, a good half of those achievements were due to El'el, but he doubted she would have done all of that without his involvement, so… He'd take partial credit. Whatever. The point of it all was, he won. The world was saved, and all he had left to worry about was being a speedster and living his dream.

Like, the technical details – where to live, what to eat, who to save, what to do with his Soul and stuff like that. Side-quests to do after beating the main storyline in a game. How the fuck had he not thought about what it would mean to put a billion or so level-one people back into a post-apocalyptic, monster-infested world? Because while El'el had said that she had stopped new monsters from spawning, it had done jack shit for those already existing on Earth. And there had to be a whole lot of monsters on Earth.

And not much in terms of civilization. Or food. The whole post-apocalyptic package, really. And they had dumped millions of people here. Just… no explanation, no nothing, just 'here, you're saved, no thanks needed, now go figure yourselves out in a monster-infested hellscape with no food or water, and no idea what is happening'. He saw them spawning. He saw thousands of helpless and confused people, and his reaction was basically, what… Eh, they'd figure it out? No one was dying, so it wasn't his problem?

Someone, somewhere, was dying from a monster attack. Maybe somewhere in India, or in some other place far enough that Heroic Senses just couldn't reach. There was no way his skill would've been that silent if it could cover the whole world. People were dying all the damn time, if one looked at it globally. Usually, it wasn't his problem. He didn't consider himself responsible for everyone's safety, not until he got faster than light or something. But… He was the one who put those people there.

Which was, theoretically, the right thing to do. And then he didn't bother giving them a single spare thought. Soul: 0 (1) Good fucking news: his Soul was still at zero. It almost didn't feel like that, with how disturbed Dennis was. He could only imagine the amount of whining he would've had to endure from himself if that wasn't the case. Maybe it wasn't the case. The System was quite dismissive of fractions. Dennis didn't feel like he 'didn't care'.

In fact, the sudden thought about what it meant for all of those people to come back was almost overwhelming. Less 'haha, oops', and more 'oh shit what do I do', which wasn't exactly zero Soul behavior. Either the stat was recovering even faster than he thought, or it bothered him that much because the problem was very superhero-related. What the fuck was he supposed to do?!

"Hello? Anyone home?" Naithan was saying something.

"What was it about 'a hundred thousand' people? You kind of lost me here, not gonna lie."

"Yeah, I just–" Dennis wasn't sure what to say. Sorry, it looks like I've killed a significant percentage of the world's population by accident. Does it even count as an accident if the whole thing was… him not really caring that much about the consequences? Obviously, floating people were supposed to be put back on Earth. Duh. Of course.

"I just… I was guessing the number, it's probably less. Say, how many people can this 'city' of yours feed? I mean, theoretically, if there's a sudden influx of at least tens of thousands of hungry and confused level-one people, is that a problem?" Naithan's expression slowly morphed from confused to worried.

"You're shitting me."

"Just think of it as a hypothetical."

"You're telling me you have found the lost ones."

"Lost ones?" Naithan began pacing back and forth.

"Everyone knows that the number of dead bodies from day zero does not align with the number of people who survived," he almost rambled, talking quickly.

"Even if we assume that they were eaten, there aren't enough monsters who eat people and leave nothing behind to do that, and it doesn't explain instances when someone obviously locked themselves in a room and just… disappeared. We call them the 'lost ones'. Ten to twenty percent of the pre-event population are just… missing." He stopped in place and looked Dennis in the eyes.

"You're saying you know where they are," he said slowly.

"You're saying they're back." Dennis gave him a small nod.

"All of them," he said quietly.

"For them, it's like the apocalypse started yesterday. They spawned today, like, you know… Like monsters do. It was a whole thing." This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Tense silence stretched for a few moments.

"Fuck," Naithan summarized, looking a bit lost.

"We need to– I need to go back and tell the higher-ups. Housing wouldn't be that much of a problem, but feeding them… Maybe if we ration, the Farmers would be able to pull it off… We need to organize the search parties and bring them in before nightfall, or it'll be a slaughter. How do we find them?" Dennis wasn't sure if Naithan was asking him or just thinking out loud.

"The spawn points," Dennis said.

"As far as I understand, they're static, right? So you guys probably have them marked on the maps."

"Yeah."

"Well, a good bunch of them are spewing out humans now. So you'll just need to check those."

"Good." Naithan nodded.

"I mean, nothing about this is good, but at least it means that people are grouped. This already puts us in a better position than what we had during day zero. We have high-level adventurers, we know what's dangerous and where… This is salvageable. We just need to grab as many as we can before nightfall. That's what, four hours? Shit, we need to go." The man started walking quickly, but stopped when he noticed that Dennis didn't move.

"You coming?"

"What happens during the night?" Dennis asked.

"Monsters."

"Are there other safe places besides the city? If people are too far away? Other cities? How connected are they? Is there a government to organize a country-wide response? World-wide? I would prefer world-wide. Please tell me that humanity somehow united under one government while I wasn't here. Preferably competent and totalitarian."

"It's mostly city-states everywhere. Two smaller settlements to the south, and a bunch of villages that lucked out with good skill combos and defensible locations… Come on, we don't have time." Dennis was finishing coming up with a plan.

"You go," Dennis said, and started stretching.

"Notify the dictators, all of that. I'll… do my thing. As much as I can." Naithan gave him one last look before running off. Dennis didn't really like his plan, mostly because he couldn't see a way to save 'everyone'. Crises on such a global scale were beyond him, even with his bullshit speed. The best he could do was… his best. Sorry, India people. And Europe people. Actually, probably everyone from another continent people, and maybe a bunch on the other side of this one.

He just wasn't fast enough to save everyone everywhere yet. But he was pretty fast enough to save a lot of people in a lot of places. Naithan ran off to help organize a response from the nearby city, the name of which he forgot to ask, but it was probably something dumb like New LA. But how would that help anyone farther than a few dozen or so miles around it? People were stranded everywhere, and all of them were lost. Dennis couldn't do everything, but he could do a lot.

+7 Constitution, +79 Mind, +79 Dexterity while trying to save people. Pericognition to find those who need saving, and those who can help. There was a mismatch between what Heroic Dash could do, and what Heroic Senses detected on their own. One of his big upgrades was the ability to target groups, along with the capacity to perform complex actions to save them. His detection skill didn't seem to pick up on that, or at least the automatic part of it didn't.

He wasn't bombarded with awareness of things like 'hey, there's a group called humanity, under threat of dying from global warming'. Maybe it was too much for the subskill. It would tell him on its own if someone was being attacked by a shadow cat, but that was it. But Dennis could target groups and save them from complex threats. And, once he specified the parameters of what he was trying to do, Heroic Senses was willing to help out.

Floating people–who were now level one people–were lost and under threat of starving or being slaughtered by monsters. Small pockets of civilization were their salvation. Cities, towns, villages, all those communities who survived and found a way to live in this world, they had food, and shelter, and weapons, and levels to protect the newbs. He knew who he wanted to save, how he wanted to do that, and was very much willing to try. The world slowed down to a halt.

He already targeted all of the floating people once, during his fight with High Authority. The awareness of hundreds of millions of people was familiar. He wouldn't be able to point them out on a map, or even pick someone specific out of them, but knowing a general direction to his target was something he was almost always capable of. Some part of his mind noted that the entirety of the 'floating people' group was slightly smaller than he remembered. At that scale, it meant millions already dead.

He shook his head, and started running. Less than a second later, he was near the closest human spawn point. Ironically, it meant that he was back on the beach. A quick glance showed him that the people had stopped spawning. When did that happen? It didn't matter now. He found one of the nerd wizards nearly instantly.

"That way," he said, pointing in the direction his skill had shown him and spooking the man in the process.

"You all need to go that way, reach the city or whatever before night, otherwise monsters will eat y'all. Got it?" The guy collected himself surprisingly quickly.

"Yes," he answered.

"What is–""No time, talk later, don't die!" Dennis ran off to the next target. Near a small lake in the park, people wandered aimlessly. Some were just sitting in place and crying, others arguing or trying to form groups. They were way less organized than the ones on the beach. Basically just a lost and confused crowd. His skill was still pointing in the same direction as a place to save them.

"Yo!" he shouted as he stopped in the middle of the biggest gathering. Someone started screaming and running away. Ah, right, the fear thing. Well, it was good for getting attention.

"You all need to pick your shit up and go in that direction! There's a city or something! If you don't, you'll die! Bye!" The group stopped registering as a target for his skill as their designation changed from 'lost people' to 'people who kinda knew where to go'. He ran to the next ones, reaching them faster than someone would take a step. When this shit calmed down, he really needed to run a few laps with a timer to measure his speed.

"If you enjoy living, go north! That way! What do you mean that's not north?!" And then the next ones.

"Seriously, you're fighting over a can of beans? No, don't run away! At least run away in that direction!" And the next ones.

"Damn, you really managed to kill that porcupine thing on your own? Anyways–" It was, as one might call it, a target rich environment. No matter how many crowds he enlightened with the knowledge of safety, they didn't end.

"Put that gun down, or I'll shove it up your ass." He was spending more time talking than moving from group to group, but it was still freakishly fast. Five to ten seconds per spawn point, he covered every one of them in the city in minutes. At some point he started directing people to other places, apparently too far away from New LA or what was it called. He didn't even know where, just that his skill determined that 'safety' for that particular group of people was in that particular direction.

Sometimes Heroic Senses pinged him that someone was actively dying, being attacked by monsters or, in one instance, drowning. Those detours took less than a blink to solve. He wasn't sure if he was even in the same timezone anymore. He didn't know where he was, simply moving from one disaster to another. No matter how many people he saved, they just didn't end. He didn't stop.