She was supposed to say yes. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Give a speech that inspired her and rekindled her hope for a better future? Actually, yes, that sounded exactly like the thing for this situation.

  “Fear not,” he said with proper gravitas. “For I am here.”

  “I know.”

  Well, he was out of ideas.

  “Also, that was a stupid reference,” she said.

  “You watch anime?”

  “Mhm.” She nodded. “My brother used to show me some, before… you know.”

  Her voice got quieter as she talked before tapering off back into silence. He probably shouldn’t mention her brother, that guy’s likely dead.

  “Your brother’s dead?”

  “Yes.”

  Yep, totally shouldn’t mention him.

  “Parents?”

  “Also dead.”

  “A cat?”

  “A dog. Dead.”

  “Good to know.”

  That was a lot of relatives that he shouldn’t mention. Good thing that he wasn’t going to. Was she even crying about them, or was this because of, like, more recent things? Maybe her parents were assholes, who knew. He probably shouldn’t ask. He tried to come up with a better inspiring speech, but nothing was coming up to him at the moment. The vibes were off.

  “You don’t need to bother,” she said quietly. “Just… give me half an hour. I’ll wait until it restores and use up the regeneration.”

  “That doesn’t sound healthy.”

  “Fuck healthy. You said you didn’t care?”

  “You bother me a bit.”

  Lily chuckled quietly. There wasn’t much joy in the sound, more like a single humorous moment that was washed away by the sobs that followed.

  “I don’t–” she tried to talk through it. “I don’t even know if it’s a bad thing that we’re stranded here. You’re grasping at straws, I don’t really believe that there’s any way to go back to our world at all and the only thing I think is nice. I won’t have to go back! The only thing waiting for me there is my unavoidable discovery and the fallout from that. Everything else– Everyone else is dead.”

  “Oh, I forgot about that one.”

  “Well I didn’t. Everything is so deep in shit that me being here feels like a good option. And I hate it. This… this place. And… and everything. It feels like nothing good can happen anymore, you know? Like right now things are bad, bad bad, and I don’t see a way for them to get better. Only worse. Always worse. Sometimes I don’t even know why I bother.”

  “Didn’t I list, like, five possible ways for us to maybe get back?” he wondered. “There’s a ton of stuff we can do here, it’s a bit early to cry about hopelessness, yanno?”

  “Go back to what?”

  “Huh?”

  “To what?! Even if we do get back, which is a big fucking if, because I think that you will just get killed by one of those monsters, or we’ll actually get hungry and there’s no fucking food, or there’s no portal back at all. What then? Come back to the fort and get discovered? They’ll kick me out, at best–”

  “No they won’t–”

  “At best! Or they’re all dead already because, surprise! Giant fucking monsters exist and we know they exist! They’ll live only until something big and strong enough bothers to wipe them out. And even if, fucking if, everything is fine, we go back, I don’t get kicked out and we’re not wiped out by another unbeatable calamity, so what?! Everyone I care about is already dead. Everyone who cares about me is dead. There’s no bright future. We’ll get wiped out by winter or something anyway.”

  “Winters are not that cold here.”

  A heavy sigh was his only answer.

  “You’re a bit more pessimistic than I imagined,” he said, sitting on the sofa. “I mean, I get the whole magically-induced happiness trick, but you seemed pretty cheerful even before you got that thing.”

  He couldn’t discern the quiet mumble that he got in response.

  “What?”

  “I said, how do you think I got the skill?”

  How? The current theory was that the skill selection was made up from things that people were already doing, or were pretty good at. He got Heroic Dash because that was what he was doing all the damn time, the overpowered grandpa, Richard, had a luck based skill and Jenny said he was superstitious as hell, so if Lily had an acting skill…

  “Oh, that makes sense.”

  “Mhm.”

  “And you got a sick skill out of it.”

  “I did.”

  “I don’t really get why you bothered though? No one in the group knew you anyway, so what’s the point in pretending? That just sounds unnecessarily exhausting to me, honestly.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  She shrugged.

  “I’m used to it,” she said. “Less trouble that way.”

  Yeah, he wasn’t going to unpack that one. Lily already dumped more teenage drama on him than he wanted to know or bother with. He understood that the mood was appropriate for sharing problems and stuff, but for god's sake, she was supposed to say ‘Yeah, I’m ok’. Instead, she went off-script, and now every question he asked was like poking a stick at a can of worms and watching stuff crawl out. He was sure that if he poked more he would see even more of it, but it wasn’t like he was some sort of connoisseur of repressed trauma, so in his infinite wisdom he just closed the lid back.

  “Ok,” he said. “Cool.”

  “Cool,” she parroted.

  The conversation died, murdered by his masterful tactic. Mission successful.

  / - /

  At some point Lily managed to fall asleep, proving that it was indeed possible even in their weird state of not quite being alive. They forgot to discuss sleeping in shifts, of course, and he was a bit wary of just dozing off not that far away from an unbeatable monster in an alien world, so he spent time just wandering around and trying to clear his head. He could’ve woken her up, but then he would have to deal with either a depressed kid, or an overly joyful kid, and he had no desire to do either. Despite all the nonchalance that he tried to project, he was in fact tired from both constantly dealing with her and all of the crazy shit that happened today. His almost nonexistent social battery had a charge of somewhere in the negatives.

  He was, as they call it, a lone wolf. He needed some time alone to rest and to actually process everything that happened. Solving problems as they appeared and going with the flow worked great, but he was exhausted, if not physically then definitely mentally. He needed a breather, and to gather himself a bit. A quiet walk, as he figured out recently, was great for centering his mind. And the ambiance in this world was even better.

  An absolute silence, where he couldn’t even hear his footsteps. Nor his breathing, nor his heartbeat. As long as he didn’t try to make noise, the world had no sound. No howling of wind, no chirping of insects, nothing. It relaxed him.

  Leaving Lily alone could be dangerous, but they didn’t have any indication that there were any monsters here besides those Arms, and those tended to sit in one spot unless provoked. And anyway, he was targeting her with his skill, so he’d know if there would be any trouble. He had some time to think.

  To be fair, there was a good chance that he had a lot of time to think. They didn’t manage to inspect the statue or the canteen thoroughly, but from what they saw and understood there was nothing there that even hinted about the way home. The Arms were doing a good impression of being like bosses from some game, but nothing actually indicated that they would turn into a portal after being defeated or anything like that. Dennis was not so delusional as to think that tropes from games translated so directly to whatever was happening with the world. Most likely, defeating them would give him some exp and that would be it. Maybe some stronger dude would come investigate their death, maybe not. In any way, while he didn’t know what would happen after he defeated one, he was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any ‘congratulations’ screens or convenient portals home opening from the act.

  Basically, despite his bravado, they were actually stuck here. He didn’t know of a way home.

  He climbed on the roof of one of the houses and sat there, overlooking this new world that may or may not be the one where he will spend the rest of his life.

  A way out had to exist, after all they got here somehow, but finding it? Maybe they’ll do it tomorrow, or maybe he’ll live here until he dies from old age. Will he even age?

  The view was great though.

  He could see the small black dot of the Arm near the statue, sitting on a roof not unlike him. How long was it here? Was it thinking about anything? From the fight before, Dennis didn’t have a great impression about the intelligence of its kind, so maybe it was like a robot, not bothered about the passage of time at all. Must be nice.

  Above it, people floated, replacing the stars in the sky. It was weird how fast he got used to the sight, he didn’t even notice when it happened. At some point his mind stopped registering them as people, and instead treated them as a part of the background, just a thing that existed to be ignored. Old and young, all undeniably local, just stolen from his world and placed here by some uncaring force. Was it random, or was there an intelligence behind this? Did someone do this? Why? Who? The system? That thing smelled like an AI that was too stupid to make any decisions. Could it be an accident? The cracks that teleported him and Lily here felt like they were throwing away the trash. This place, whatever it was, was a garbage dump. All those people, a big fucking percent of humanity if this happened all over the world, they were thrown in the trash. Here.

  He’ll have to save them. Obviously. Somehow.

  No big deal. He’ll figure something out. Or die trying, which sometimes felt more likely.

  He didn’t know what to do about Lily. Sure, it was mighty convenient to have a pokemon to throw at problems to activate his skill, but other than that it was clear that the girl had issues. He still wasn’t sure if he would’ve been better or worse without her. Ignoring the last fight, she arguably saved his life there, and that gave her quite a lot of points. But on the other hand, he saved her life about half a dozen times, so it kinda evened out. But half of those situations were him deliberately using her as bait, so did that even count? He decided that she deserved some points for that, which means her presence was more welcome than unwelcome, if only slightly. But then she had some drama dragged along with her and he had no idea how to deal with that, so minus points? The results were unclear, his opinion of her a complicated mess.

  What was he supposed to do?

  The heroic option, obviously, but the specifics eluded him a bit. A hero that he imagined himself to be would just beat up all the problems until everything worked out, but it didn’t feel applicable here. He didn’t know who to beat up to save the floaters, beating up the Arms would be a challenge but there was no guarantee that it would solve anything, and, well, he couldn’t just beat up Lily’s mental hangups, even when his heroic senses tingled at him that he was supposed to do something about those. But, like, what? Heroic speech didn’t work, and he was self-aware enough to understand how he was the last person to touch her pile of problems. Or anyone’s problems, really. Honestly, the best course of action would be to just throw the girl at Nancy so she would deal with that nonsense. That woman had enough ‘I’m gonna care about everyone in a hypercontrolling way’ vibes to figure something out. But she wasn’t here, so…

  Ugh.

  He’ll put it in the ‘figure it out later’ pile, right next to basically everything else.

  Was it even a good idea to try to get back to their world as fast as possible? Like, sure, it was a basic assumption, almost an instinct. If you’re stranded in another world against your will, you gotta figure out a way back. But… why? The way he was seeing things, his main problems in the real world were the approaching soft-cap of his level, the lack of monsters to kill, and the lack of people to save. Basically, as a hero who killed monsters and saved people, he had no job.

  Well…

  Those things weren’t a problem anymore, were they? He was steadily getting closer to the next level by the virtue of doing nothing, and wasn’t that just amazing? The monsters here seemed way more properly villainous, they even indicated that there was some kind of ‘higher authority’ to beat up later, like a supervillain that controlled the villains, and just looking up provided him with an abundance of people who were in a dire need of saving. More than that, it seemed that he didn’t need to eat anymore, or bother with other trivialities of living. Sure, there was no wifi and the place was a bit dull, but that wasn’t a problem when he could focus on the main thing. In a way, this world was perfect for him.

  Staying here until he milks the idle leveling for all it could give him and figures out how everything works seemed like a good plan. Get stronger, beat up the Arms, investigate the weird places more, find and beat up the ‘higher authority’, save the floaters in the process. Maybe he could make a ladder to get to them? A lasso? Find a portal back, and drag everyone there with a lasso one by one? That’s a lot of dragging, but if he’ll somehow get his hands on proper superspeed it might even work. Who knows what level he’ll be by the end of it, and the growth was exponential. He felt in his gut that it was really, genuinely possible to reach that ‘fuck you’ levels of speed that he dreamed about.

  The plan was slowly solidifying in his mind, and he felt himself smiling slightly as he sat on that roof and daydreamed about that possible future. It was quiet. The view was nice. Lily might whine about his plans later, but maybe she won’t? Maybe she won’t.

  All was good.

  The night was passing, though it looked the same as the day. He didn’t sleep, and he didn’t feel the need to. It was nice. Nothing happened at all as he spent his time just doing nothing and waiting, not unlike the Arm on the other roof. It was meditative. He felt calm. Confident.

  Level up.

  Free points +6