Chương 9: Why am I protecting all these people again?

Their party consisted of eleven people, and pretty much all of them were useful. Even the children were whining that they also wanted the levels as pretty much everyone got to level two. The leader guy, whose name was apparently John, argued that it was impossible for them to shoot a bow since it required way too much draw strength, and shooting a gun would bring even more attention to their heads. It turned out that the little girl didn't allocate her stats until that point. She now had a bow.

The boy whined a bit that his grandma forced him to allocate everything to Mind for some ungodly reason, before promptly pulling out a silencer for his pistol and asking if that would work. It did work. It was a fucking shame that no one thought about that before except the ten year old. No one in good conscience could forbid the kids from trying to level up, not when those levels might be just the thing that allowed them to survive.

The boy promised to switch to the bow the moment he got the second level, to save on bullets and to not scare the goblins into organising too much. Honestly, they needed extra hands. Protecting the small crowd of followers that tagged along with them on the way was getting harder and harder. While their party consisted of eleven people, almost all leveled up and armed, the crowd behind them grew to almost a few dozen. And they were useless. And noisy.

Sure, most of those people could fight, theoretically, but they didn't have any extra bows and people rightfully refused to fight in melee. They were a dead weight, at least for now. Dennis was contemplating switching to villainy, but couldn't remember any cool villainous speedsters to model himself after. They were either stupid, or silly, or Shadow the Hedgehog. He would not use that as a role model.

The goblin attacks became more frequent and fighting them got progressively harder, because of course goblins tried to target the defenseless crowd instead of an armed and deadly party. Dennis had to do a lot of running around people to deal with all of that, and it was breaking down their fighting strategy. The party was successful because they were small and could deliver concentrated fire, and had impenetrable defence in Dennis.

He could protect them easily since they were close to each other, and he didn't even need to protect them much because not much could even reach them. The crowd was the opposite. They spread out all the time, they were fucking vulnerable, and the most effective way to protect them would be to spread the party around it, but that would remove the thing that made the party effective in the first place. So the party stayed together, a bit separately from the crowd.

They shot down everything they could, but it was mostly Dennis's work to rush everywhere and deal with the pesky things that sneaked up on the crowd from the other side. Like a game of whack a mole, or a shitty tower defence, they were slowly getting overwhelmed, one attack at a time. He was fucking exhausted. He was exhausted even before they started this whole trip, and they had a full fucking day of hiking ahead of them, and instead of pacing himself Dennis was running around all the time.

He was double exhausted. No, triple. He hated those people. They were tiring him out by their sheer existence before the big fight even happened. And he was sure that there would be a big fight, because no way the goblins wouldn't want to gather and make a good assault on such a nice target that they were becoming. So there would be a big assault. That is, if they even survive until then and not get overwhelmed with constant small attacks before that. Trying to be a good guy was fucking up all of his plans.

He was supposed to safely grind levels and gradually become faster and faster until he would become a superhero and be able to save everyone in an afternoon. This whole group survival business was not only hurting his grind, it actively increased his chances of dying before he would become properly overpowered. He just needed a few people to cook for him and keep watch at night while he slept. Why the fuck was he busting his ass for these people?

He almost slipped on blood twice as he barely dodged the attack of the last goblin before stabbing it in the guts with such a slow thrust that the thing almost avoided it. He sat on the ground trying to catch his breath while it died. His vision was blurry with sweat as he desperately drank from a bottle of water that someone passed to him. On average, such attacks were happening every fifteen minutes or so. If they wanted to cover any distance at all then he wasn't allowed to just sit and rest.

He needed to get up and continue moving. At least he was important enough that everyone was waiting for him. If he needed to catch his breath, he would do it, and everyone would have to stay and wait for him. He wiped the sweat from his face, wondering again why he was doing all of this. It just won't work. There were too many attacks, too many goblins, too much running, they were too slow, the people were too defenceless, and there were too many of them to reliably protect them from all sides.

He just won't be able to continue at this pace. Something will give. He already almost failed to dodge an attack just because his body was getting unresponsive. He was getting sloppy. They had about four or five hours of walking remaining to reach their destination, according to Jenny. Why was he doing this? That was the same question that he was asking himself over and over as he pushed himself past the point where any reasonable person would stop and admit defeat. Was this what he wanted?

He would die if this continued, for real. They needed to ditch all these people, become a small and strong target again. It was absurd that he was expected to save everyone just because he turned out to be some sort of goblin slaying prodigy. The goblin slayer. His mind was bombarded with the thought of stopping it. He could just… not try to save those who were a bit too far? Walk from goblin to goblin leisurely without the desperate dashes that he needed to do to kill all of them before they reached the people.

Killing goblins was easy. Really, one or two swipes of his sword and that was it. Dodging attacks were easy, he could do just the minimal movement necessary and that would work. Even blocking attacks wasn't that hard despite his strength, he just needed to angle his blade right. It was all the running around that was killing him, making his legs burn and his movements sloppy. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

At this rate there would be a point where his legs would fail him during a fight, or his arm would cramp, and that would be gg. He was squishy and one missed hit would be enough. And yet he was pushing himself to save them all, and he felt like he would continue doing so, and he didn't understand where that was coming from. The moment some goblin gets to the people and cripples someone they would get the same fucking problem all over again, because apparently he wouldn't leave the cripples?

He didn't understand himself. They would all die because of this idiocy. Leaving people without an overpowered grandpa and more bullets than they knew what to do with wasn't an option for some fucking reason. Every time he considered it, and he did that frequently, he decided that he wouldn't. Why? Why was he doing this? He wanted to pursue his dream and become a speedster. Right? He needed to survive for that. You can't become a superhero if you die during your origin story.

He doubted that he would get resurrected like they did that in comics all the time. He didn't even have a fucking soul according to the system, there would be nothing to resurrect. His build was already going to be fucked up because of him trying to push it in an awkward direction, so he at least had to use his head and grind safely and properly. Instead he was slowly killing himself for some randoms, one exhausting step at a time. But he also wanted to be a hero.

Because heroes were cool, and speedsters were the coolest of them. So a speedster hero was the apex of coolness. The ultimate awesomeness. Villains were just stupid. He always rooted for heroes. He couldn't say 'It was me, Barry' with a straight face. He wanted to be a hero. Being a speedster was the best thing a hero could be. The coolest hero. But he didn't care about these people one bit. He wasn't trying to save them because he wanted to help or felt some sort of obligation.

The thought of getting them killed was actually tantalizing, a promise of some rest and a rational choice packed together in one nice package. A smart choice. Any apocalypse survival enthusiast would make that choice. It was a thing that needed to be done in order to survive. He could do it easily. There would be no snapping of morals or hard decisions, he just didn't care about those people. But he cared about being a hero.

And not some stupid version of a 'hero' like a firefighter or a soldier that sacrificed himself to save his comrades. The real hero. The comic book hero. The one who saved the day, effortlessly beating any odds and defying logic. They were so cool. And with the ability to level up and become superhuman he could be like them. And the real hero didn't do the 'smart' thing. If you show Superman the trolley problem, he would stop the trolley with his bare hands.

There was no such thing as a trolley problem for a real hero. They would save everyone, they would defy everything.

'Smart' choices were for the pussies who became cannibals in a zombie movie. Dennis didn't care about the people. It didn't matter to him what was morally good, or right, or smart. He didn't think he would lose any sleep over them. He looked over the crowd as he stood up. People were looking at him. Some with concern, some with worry. He represented their chance at safety. It was clear at that point that he was single handedly carrying it all. Without him they will surely die.

He already lost count how many lives he saved today. People were looking at him and seeing hope. Like he was a real hero. The comic book hero. Their lives didn't matter for him, but the fact that he saved them did. It was never about them, wasn't it? Dennis wasn't pushing through agonizing exhaustion and risking his life to save them. He did it to be the hero. To be what he always dreamt of being. And of course the hero saved everyone. That was the definition.

Heroes didn't do what was smart, or even what was right. They did the coolest shit. There was no moral compass in his mind, but 'be a hero' compass? That thing was fine-tuned. He always knew what a hero would do in any situation. The cool thing, obviously. And now the cool thing was to save everyone. Wasn't he supposed to get superspeed before becoming the hero? He was too slow. But… Being too slow is like the main problem of all the speedsters everywhere. And he was already fast as fuck.

There was no point in waiting. He would never be fast enough to start because a speedster was always not fast enough. That was their core trait, getting faster because they needed even more ridiculous speed to save the day. Maybe he already was the speedster. He was reasonably sure that he was faster than any human without the system. That was superspeed, wasn't it? He was looking at it wrong. There wasn't any 'becoming' a hero or a speedster.

There was no speed limit that he needed to cross before he could proclaim himself to be one. He didn't need to grind more before he started doing heroics, and these people weren't wasting his time and keeping him from becoming what he wanted. There was no 'wanting' or 'trying' to become it. He had super speed and he acted like a hero. He was the hero. The speedster. A bit samurai-ish, but he would ditch the katana when he wouldn't need it anymore. Place it on the wall where it belonged. Dennis smiled.

These people weren't keeping him back or risking his life. He wasn't wasting his time instead of grinding. They were the literal purpose of his. They were perfect. Hopeless, weak, and looking for salvation. Just like the villains were dependent on heroes to beat them up, the heroes were dependent on people that needed to be saved. To have a proper superhero you needed a proper superthreat. This wasn't an apocalypse, or some stupid event that needed to be survived through grit or determination or smart choices.

It was an all you can eat buffet for a real hero. Everyone needed to be saved and monsters were crawling from every corner. There was no hope, only the grim realization that civilization already collapsed and it was probable that the human race as a whole wouldn't be here for long. His smile stretched into a manic grin. He was going to save the shit out of all of them. They were going to be so fucking saved they would rebuild the news industry and write about him in a newspaper.

"Okay, dipshits!" he yelled.

"Who has the highest fucking Constitution score here? Or free points?" The crowd murmured before some people raised their hands.

"Mine's 16."

"17."

"19." said the man who clearly did a lot of sports even before the system came and he dumped all his points in Constitution.

"What's your name?" Dennis asked.

"Travis."

"You and I, Travis, are going to become best friends," he said with a smile.

"Name's Dennis. Carry me."