Conscripting Travis to carry him wasn’t that hard, and now Dennis had a convenient superpowered mule which allowed him to finally have a proper rest while the group moved. Even more than that, he didn’t even always have to bother with getting on the ground and cutting down the goblins if their attack was small enough for the main party to defeat without his help.

  He was throwing commands left and right as he sat on Travis’ back, swinging his katana to point at things like a general on a horse.

  “You!” he pointed at the guy on the edge of the useless group. “Why the fuck do you stand there without a weapon?! If you don’t have a spear I don’t want to see your sorry ass anywhere but in the middle!”

  From the moment that he realized that this was what he always wanted, his approach to the people changed drastically. It was like he was blind before, but now he could see. He was saving these people’s lives, and they depended on him. He was the hero. Their hope. He was living his dream.

  It stopped being hard and depressing and started being fun. He was having fun.

  The people stopped being a burden and became a project. Can he actually save all of them? How many would die before they got to the fort? Will they even get there? He wasn’t afraid of failure in any way. After all, heroes failed to save someone all the time, but they always kept trying so he would put all of the proper effort into this.

  Will he get them all killed in a fruitless attempt to save them all, or will he barely succeed? Any outcome sounded like a great origin story, and he was living it. It was great.

  A lone goblin was running at the group from behind where three people who got their hands on spears stood nervously, waiting for him to come and cut it down before it approached.

  He did come.

  “If you three useless fucks won’t be able to stick a spear in a single goblin I will shove those spears up your asses!”

  He stood nearby, watching as they aligned their spears in the general direction of the approaching goblin and tried to thrust. One missed completely, the other was a glancing blow. The third managed to hit the chest and stop the creature in its tracks, but it was close enough to try and chop away the guy's hand in its dying struggles. Dennis parried that strike easily, gently guiding the goblin’s cleaver with his sword so it would miss.

  He looked at the guy who missed the goblin completely.

  “You are on a shit cleaning duty from now on,” he said. “Go in the middle of the group and give your spear to literally anyone else. I bet a dog could do a better job than you.”

  “Who the fuck do you think–” the dude started complaining before Dennis cut him off with a satisfying smack with the dull side of his blade to the shoulder. It would bruise, but he needed to establish his heroic authority.

  “You’re fucking useless!” Dennis shouted. “So go in the middle! Find the grandma who’s better than you! Or I will fuck you up!”

  He was having so much fun.

  “We don’t even have a shit cleaning duty…” the guy murmured before leaving. No one tried to protect him or to tell Dennis that he was doing anything wrong.

  Because Dennis was their hope.

  He couldn’t stop grinning the whole time.

  “Travis!”

  “... I’m standing right here…” Travis said quietly before sighing. Dennis climbed on his back.

  “Onward!” He pointed his sword in the general direction of their path. The group continued their trek.

  “I think the kid lost it…” someone whispered before other people shushed that person.

  As they moved Dennis was contemplating his heroic persona. It was obvious to him that he won’t be able to exactly act like Superman, or have a no-kill rule like Batman. Actually, he doubted he’d be able to fit DC's definition of a hero, and he didn’t really want to. Should he even try to model himself after some particular hero? He didn’t want to be a copycat. But that presented a challenge of figuring out his own brand of heroics and the rules that followed. What kind of a hero he wanted to be? He knew nothing besides ‘a speedster’, but that was just a foundation. Should he try to respect authorities or work from the shadows? Will he kill the villains or try to put them in jail? Did goblins count as villains? He decided to categorize them as monsters that should totally be killed, mostly because it was convenient.

  Being too edgy of a hero threatened to turn him into an anti-hero, and he didn’t like them. Mostly it was all about the amount of compromises that a hero was allowed to make that made the difference. Doing sort of kind of evil things for the greater good was the bare minimum to not be called a villain and then it went from there. Refusing to sacrifice one person for the lives of many was the middle ground. Refusing to kill irredeemable villains who would totally kill a fuckton people later was the upper tier. It was all about the unbending morals that defied reality and common sense. It was cool.

  The problem with having unbending morals that defied reality was the fact that it didn’t work much in reality. Hardcore pacifists existed, but in times of war they mostly got killed. Being a hardcore pacifist when looking in the barrel of a gun was kind of badass, but not really helpful. In the same vein, having too rigid of a moral framework and refusing to kill one person who threatened many would most likely just kill a lot of people. It worked in comics because those heroes were overpowered and protected by the plot, but to Dennis’s immense disappointment he doubted he could pull that off yet.

  He needed to find a way to be a proper hero without killing himself to save a stray kitten. To bridge the gap between the absolute badassness of comic book heroes and that pesky thing that was called common sense, because whatever that dude said, Dennis hasn't lost it yet.

  Okay, let’s tackle it one problem at a time.

  Problem one. Killing himself to save stray kittens. That one was the most annoying one, because he was supposed to miraculously survive anything when doing proper heroic acts. Like tank a nuke and crawl out of the grave some time later. That shit won’t work, and it was the coolest shit.

  He sighed.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Fine. He will not risk his life if the chances of his survival were zero. No sacrificing himself.

  If the chances of survival were more than zero? Let’s say… ten percent? That would be fair game.

  Did that mean he would play Russian roulette to save stray kittens? That didn’t sound like a good survival strategy. Up it to fifty? Nah, being afraid of dying was lame. The opposite of cool. Fuck it, he’ll save the kittens.

  Problem two. Doing useless things instead of important ones. A proper hero helps everyone, and saves everyone. Kind of hard to do until he became so fast he might as well be omnipresent. It was also a problem of doing things for the ‘greater good’. Dennis knew that the moment someone said ‘greater good’ they outed themselves as a villain. So, on one hand, he needed to prioritize saving ten people over a kitten, and on the other he needed to save the kitten.

  Yeah, that one is easy to solve. Just save everyone. Maybe apply a bit of triage? It was the mindset that counted. He didn’t really care who would die as long as he was doing it properly. Triage would work just fine.

  Problem three. The moral framework besides ‘when people are dying you should probably save them’. Should he care about feeding the hungry? Helping lost kids find their moms? Fuck with religion, or respect it? Fuck with peoples choices or respect them? If someone in their group decided that they would be better off leaving and Dennis disagreed, should he stop them?

  He had no idea, because he didn’t fucking care.

  He should maybe respect people's choices? Otherwise he would go the authoritarian route and that sounded villainous. Injustice-ish. And respecting people's will would honestly be so much easier. Stopping every idiot from killing themselves sounded like a hassle.

  While it answered the question about what he was supposed to do with people’s free will, it didn’t answer anything else about his supposed moral framework. It was almost like the thing was big and complex enough that people could write literal books about the ways someone should act in different situations.

  Eh. He would just do what feels cool and heroic in the moment. No way he was doing all that nerd shit of figuring out all the minor details.

  Problem four. The PR and Image. Did he want a secret identity? A heroic costume? How was he supposed to act? He may have presented himself in a certain light already. It would be weird if he suddenly started to act like Superman and forced everyone to call him ‘The Blink’.

  No, ‘The Lightning’.

  ‘The Sonic’? What the fuck.

  ‘The Lightyear’.

  ‘Quickstep’?

  Let’s not do the superhero name for now. ‘Dennis’ was fine. It would be amusing when he gets strong enough to become a galactic level threat and have aliens call him ‘Dennis’ in fearful whispers. Were aliens a thing? Did the goblins count as aliens?

  And forcing himself to act a certain way would be such a huge bother. Heroes came in all flavors, after all, and he really didn’t care if people considered him rude or whatever as long as they understood that he was saving their lives. Actually, that also didn’t matter. Saving lives in secret was cool. The only thing he cared about was being the hero. People could do or think whatever. And he kind of enjoyed smacking them around.

  “Hey, Dennis,” Travis interrupted his thoughts. “Do you have any idea why we weren’t attacked for almost half an hour?”

  “The goblins are probably organising and preparing a big ambush,” Dennis said absentmindedly.

  “How big are we talking here?”

  “Big enough to wipe us out, duh.”

  They walked in silence for about ten seconds before Travis replied.

  “Then why aren’t we doing anything about it?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Any results?”

  “You should hide somewhere when it starts. I’d hate to see you dying.”

  Dennis didn’t want to admit that he was too engrossed in his thoughts to notice the signs of the approaching ambush earlier.

  Well, better late than never.

  “Yo, people!” he shouted. “I have an announcement! I think that we’re going to be attacked by a fuckton of goblins soon! If you’ve unclenched your asses because no one attacked us for half an hour, clench them back! Do not try to hold the line or be in a big formation when it happens! We tried that before, and it didn’t work at all! Make small groups with useless people in the middle! Spread out as groups and look for cover if you see arrows! Be mobile! I’ll be helping those who are overwhelmed! If you are overwhelmed by just one or two goblins I will personally fuck you up!”

  The worried mutterings spread out among the group but soon enough they started forming small parties of about five people each. There was some confusion and a few arguments but in the end five parties were formed. Thankfully they’ve had enough goblin attacks before to equip pretty much everyone with at least some sort of weapon.

  “Travis,” he said quietly. “Move to the cool group.”

  “Are you serious? I’m not a horse.”

  “Giddyup!”

  “Why am I doing this again?”

  “Because me getting tired directly correlates to the amount of people that will die.”

  “Fuck,” he murmured before speeding up to the main party.

  Dennis was getting addicted to this method of transportation. It was superior to walking.

  “You guys got a plan?” he asked John as they approached him.

  “They’re debating if we should use the guns,” Ness answered instead.

  “This feels to me like a gun situation.”

  “Guns could be heard for miles,” John said. “Especially since it’s so quiet. We don’t know how goblins communicate, but there’s a good chance that we would get in even more trouble if we use them. I say we stick to bows as much as possible. But we’ll need your help. Can’t exactly shoot anything in melee.”

  “You wanna be an archer squad?”

  “We will be two archer squads,” he said. “Here’s what I’m thinking. We split into two groups to be more mobile, and spread out to the sides. Since we want to use the bows we’ll need at least someone between us and the goblins. We will focus on enemy archers to suppress them so you could deal with those who are close with less threat of being shot. Only one person in each group would be holding a spear instead of a bow, to hold off the goblins if they’re too close. We’ll need you to save us if we’re overwhelmed.”

  “You and everyone else, man.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “In case you’re not able to come or god forbid dead, we will switch to guns as a last resort. But those would alert everything around us for miles about our location.”

  The plan sounded fine to him. He wasn’t a tactical mastermind or anything like that, but it sounded like it could work. They discussed a few more things like how and where they would run for cover, and moved between the various parties to make sure that everyone was on the same page for the battle plan.

  Dennis raised the idea of him going after archers and literally everyone told him that every second that he would be away from others would be a travesty. Oh well.

  After preparing for the ambush they moved slower, carefully observing every window and every corner. Would’ve been nice to have a scout or some sneaky rogue to do that for them but, well, they didn’t have anyone like that, and no one volunteered. So careful staring at every shadow it was.

  Everything was silent. No one was talking louder than barely a whisper in hopes of hearing the possible ambush and winning just a second of warning.

  Even Dennis got down on the ground, treading carefully. He needed to be able to instantly dodge anything incoming the moment he saw or heard it. He remembered how the overpowered grandpa was shot just at the start of the previous ambush. He didn’t know how smart the goblins were, but they were clearly smart enough to target the biggest threat.

  And Dennis was the biggest threat.

  Such a nice thing to think about yourself. He enjoyed the feeling.

  He didn’t hear the whistle of an arrow this time. He heard a roar in the air that he couldn’t identify.

  Still, the moment he heard it his body moved and he jumped away with frankly ridiculous speed, just in case whatever it was was coming for him.

  The ground where he stood a moment before exploded in fire.