Chương 82: There’s no mental health in Ba Sing Se

The task was simple. Be fast. Be a hero. Live his dream. That was basically it. Not that hard in theory, when he thought about it. The environment was perfect. The System provided him a genuine way to be a true speedster, and the world was in so much shit that he could just point a finger in a random direction and find some heroing opportunities. From a cursory glance, he had everything he needed. He was halfway there with the speedstery part.

Despite the ridiculous power of his buff, he didn't consider himself to be a true speedster quite yet, mainly because of the restrictions. Can't be called a speedster if you can't play a match of ping-pong with yourself. But he was getting there, slowly but surely easing the restrictions, widening the scope of his power. It was just a question of levels. Being a hero and living his dream was a different beast. He was starting to think that he had no idea what a hero even was.

He knew how it looked from the outside, but that was it. Worse than that, his understanding of 'a hero' was based on fiction. Greatest fiction in the world–despite how shitty it sometimes could be–but still fiction. Stories, made mostly for entertainment, with all that entailed, like redeemable villains, convenient obstacles, plot-armor, and purposeful avoidance of uncomfortable questions. Like why didn't Flash eliminate all crime in an afternoon. Or built a utopia.

Dennis was still keenly aware that he could target the remainder of 'lost level one people' all over the world and go back to saving them. Or define some other target. He could be a continental, or maybe even a planetary presence, saving people all over the world 24/7. A thing that he, notably, wasn't doing. Didn't want, and didn't know if he should. It was hard to move towards a goal, if you didn't know what it was. Impossible, actually. The assumption that Soul would give him answers was laughably wrong.

It gave him nothing but a headache. Still worth it, for making him closer to his ideal. Probably. Maybe. A heroic headache. Maybe he just didn't have enough of it? Was it all muddy because he essentially had a disabled baby's level of a Soul? Or was there something wrong with it? There was definitely something wrong with it. So Plan A – figure out what the hell was wrong with his Soul, and fix that. It would be incredibly convenient if all of his problems could be fixed by a few presses of a magical +1 Soul button.

Which hadn't worked last time he tried. So… Talk to El'el, maybe she knows soul surgery or something. Maybe, maybe the world would begin to make sense again when he had, like, ten points in the stat. Maybe even five. If it worked, it would be the simplest solution. Would be dumb of him not to try. What if it didn't work? What if his problems had nothing to do with the stat? He had something like a soul, small value or not, so it was likely that more of a Soul would just give him more of what he already had.

Headache, mostly. And also all of the questions, and none of the answers. Plan B, then, was to figure out the answers? Not that much of a plan, but better than nothing. He could try raiding a comic book store, to double-check how the heroes were supposed to act and why. Maybe a library for self-help books? But he didn't need self-help, that was dumb as hell, he needed to figure out how to do the right thing the right way. Eh, fuck it. He'd check a library for some hero-adjacent reading. What else?

Self-reflection on its own did more or less nothing, he knew that because he was doing it all the damn time and nothing was fixed, so what would he do if fixing his soul and rereading everything hero-related didn't help? Watch hero-related movies? Anime? Or– Hmm. He could ask other people. For their opinions and… stuff. That was a thing that he could do. What the heck would other people know about heroes that he didn't though? He was an expert on the topic.

Kinda funny how much he struggled with it, considering how much he knew. Let's call it 'Plan C, I'm out of options' then. Since, unlike him, people usually tended to have a soul without being a nervous wreck, maybe they knew something he didn't. Maybe there was a trick? It was plausible. His brooding–or, well, his ruminations–took some time. He was half-aware when someone took the empty plate, and placed a cup of hot tea in front of him. He drank it almost on autopilot, and another cup appeared.

People were moving around him, talking, doing something, but it didn't touch his little table of solitude. It was like the world around him was pitch black and muffled, with vague silhouettes sometimes moving through the fog. Ask El'el about souls. Double-check his understanding of heroism by finding a comic book store. Find a library to see about less-fictional accounts of heroism. Ask someone–ugh–for advice on how they'd deal with his problems.

Dodge dangerous thoughts in the meantime until he was prepared to face them? What to do about the endless grind? That was a dangerous thought, but one of the most pressing ones, since he was rested. He couldn't not be a hero, but going back to it filled him with unexplainable dread. Should he avoid it until he figured out what was the problem? And what about–"– okay? He… for two hours…" The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement." –better than before. Drinks… when I give it. Just…

time."

"–soul exhaustion. My speculation is that…" At some point, he was interrupted by a ping from Heroic Senses. He almost panicked that it was the grind again, but there was only one target, and it took him a moment to remember that his skill could sometimes find people in trouble on its own. It hadn't happened in the Echo, but he did make a few heroic detours from time to time while saving confused people. Someone was probably actively dying in the city.

Well, willful ignorance about what he could be doing was cool and all, but he wasn't so far gone as to not save a random NPC from falling from a building or something. Sword in hand, he was on another side of the city in just a moment, glancing around to gauge the situation. A group of… adventurers, for lack of a better word?

Six people in a mismatch of tactical gear and normal clothing, armed with a profoundly baffling variety of weapons–a rifle, bows, daggers, one spear, and a guy with a two-handed sword –were being clearly overwhelmed by a pack of monster-wolves. Ten of them total, almost all of the wolves were the size of a fucking horse, and had red glowing eyes. Cool.

He killed them all in one breath, just a touch from Muramasa enough to send shockwaves that rippled through the monsters' bodies until they exploded in a shower of meat and bones. He almost shuddered, feeling another target appearing in his mind before he even lost the buff. Ah, it's just Lily. How the fuck does she keep triggering the skill? He was back in the kitchen in just a few seconds, Muramasa sheathed by his side and the cup of tea in his hands, back to his heroic planning session. The buff dropped.

It was cool that he now had free will or something, it was not cool that the thought of saving more made him want to pretend that no one was dying and he wasn't actually needed. Of course, sure, he'd still save whoever his skill pointed him at if they were in mortal danger, he wasn't a pussy who'd stop heroing because it was… uncomfortable, or something, but the fact that part of him didn't want it indicated a larger problem. Now, to tackle it–"Did he just…"

"–blood on the sleeve. Just after…"

"We should…"

"–too much tea?" As it usually happened, there were no definite conclusions from his planning session, aside from the initial plans. He was vaguely aware that his thoughts were going in circles, one idea tugging on another, and then another, until he was just lost in his head like it was a dark forest.

The trees were familiar, like he saw them already, but the angle was different, and the shades were different, so he wasn't sure if they were the same thoughts he already had but with a different wording, or if he was making progress, and what was the progress really? Where was he going? Just wandering in the woods, hoping to find a road again, but there were no roads but the paths trodden by his own steps, and those led him in circles, and–"Dennis…"

In a way, it was no different from when he spiraled in fear or self-hatred or other nasty stuff like that. Gentler, since he knew where not to go, but fundamentally the same. He doubted that it was even related to having a Soul, he knew he was prone to being stuck in his own head for a long time, though it was usually gushing about speedsters, or, daydreaming maybe. The only difference since he gained a soul was the scope of those wanderings.

Like there was a walled-off section in a forest, called 'speedster stuff', and the walls now crumbled, leaving him alone and lost to wander in unfamiliar places. It was weird, to realize that he was wandering. To see and examine the process, as part of the same process. It just didn't happen before, since he hadn't cared jack shit about it. Thinking about the maze of his own mind instead of daydreaming about speedstery excellence, it just didn't happen. He never bothered looking outside the fence.

And now–"Dennis," Lily said, holding a backpack over her shoulder.

"We're ready to go. Are you… with us? It's about time, I think." He blinked.

"What?" he heard himself asking as he looked around. He could see Mary and El'el through the door, sitting on the couch with bags by their sides.

"About time for what?"

"For you to be unstuck, I guess," she shrugged.

"We're going to New LA."

"I'm not stuck," he denied on instinct.

"Just thinking. People do that. Smart people do that. You wouldn't understand." His mind caught up on what she said just a moment later.

"Did they actually call it 'New LA'? Like, that's the name? Just how unoriginal can people be to do that? You're building a new city on the ruins of the old one, and calling it a 'new city'? Do they not have shame? I need to talk to the mayor. Do they have a mayor? How do you guys know the name of the place? Why are we going there? I thought you just wanted to chill in this random apartment, with all the magic circles and stuff. Do we need to dust off the magic circles now that we're moving?

It feels wrong to just leave them there." The girl chuckled, radiating amusement.

"Yeah, you're unstuck," she said, turning around.

"Mary! Dennis is alive again!"

"Finally!"

"Her skill lets her talk to her friends from there," Lily said to him more quietly.

"It's really pretty. The skill, I mean. And we weren't going to live here, that would be dumb. We were just waiting for you to come back. Are you ready to go?"

"O-kay?" Dennis stood up, a bit confused, but… he didn't really care where his base of operations was, and if they wanted to relocate to civilization, that did sound wise.

"Wait, you didn't go there in the first place because you were waiting for me? Since I ran off? For a whole day? That's dumb. My skill targets you wherever you are, there was no reason to stay. Whose idea was that?" Lily looked away, feeling guilty.

"I– I didn't know how it would work," she said.

"I wasn't sure if it would work at all. What if we moved and you couldn't find us?"

"Let me get this straight. You didn't know if I would come back, you didn't know if my skill would target you, and instead of going with everyone to safety, you all collectively decided to… sit on your asses here and hope for me to return? And no one thought that it was a bad idea?" Lily was getting red in ears.

"Lay off her, mister!" Mary stood up, waving her staff, the rightful protector of little girl plans.

"It worked out, and it was a good idea!"

"How was it a good plan?" The logic wasn't logicing in his mind.

"Lily said so!" Ah, right. Then it was… Hmm.