Dennis stood outside the fort while the drawbridge was closing behind him. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the sweet air of freedom. Here there were no maybe-dictators and no governments to tell him what to do. That is, if the American government collapsed. He didn’t actually know, there was no internet or news to check. He just assumed that it did.

  The sweet air of freedom was regrettably tinted with the smell of rotten meat. After all, he did kill a few hundred goblins here, and while enough time passed for people to mostly clean that up, missing a few spilled guts here and there was understandable. It was a damn shame that goblins didn’t disappear into magical dust after dying, though on the other hand it was good for their food situation in case they couldn't figure out fishing. Eh. He didn’t care either way.

  He hurried along to the buildings to pass the smelly parts as quickly as possible and started his leisurely stroll of grinding. He didn’t have any destination in mind, only the goal of getting some exp, so there was no hurry since something would try to attack him anyways. In a way, it was like going for a walk. Not something he would usually do, but the weather was pleasant, and after the buzzing of the fort the silence of the empty streets was an enjoyable contrast.

  In theory, to maximize his leveling speed he should’ve gone to a goblin camp or a spawn point, but weirdly enough those things just didn’t exist nearby, or the raiding parties just didn’t find them. In fact, in a week since they reached the fort the amount of stray monsters steadily decreased to the point that it was possible to not encounter a single one even after ten minutes of walking the streets. Fuck knows where they went, but it was a good thing for the survivors, if not for him. Jenny theorised that the goblins were like locusts in that way, drowning the town in blood and murdering everything they saw, and moving on, leaving only stragglers. The fact that there was an actual swarm of them in the beginning–the one that he somehow missed–kind of supported that theory.

  Dennis tilted his head to dodge an arrow that flew past him, and threw a dagger into the throat of the goblin that tried to shoot him from the second story of the nearby building. The gurgling sound of the dying creature was the only follow up to the ambush. An ambush of one. It was pathetic, especially in comparison to the earlier days. He went into that building to retrieve his dagger.

  At least it explained why there were almost no casualties in the raiding parties. Being outside was really dangerous, probably even deadly for someone unarmed or unprepared, but it was manageable for a prepared group. For him, it was a walk in the park.

  Shit for grinding though.

  There were a few points of interest that Nancy outlined for him, but they were that, points of interest, not grinding spots. He knew where the hospital was, where the local supermarkets were, and all the places where the main party was fighting more than five goblins at a time, and all the places where they saw some weird shit. Like that one time when they spotted a really giant bird flying a few miles away, or the giant wolves, or the giant… Well, there was a suspiciously large amount of giant things here and there, though they were hard to find and easy to avoid.

  Not that he intended to avoid them.

  But he was a bit wary of seeking them out on purpose. For one, the fact that the party saw a giant wolf somewhere once didn’t mean that it would be there now, and he didn’t want to waste time checking out the place only to find nothing. The second, and probably truer reason was that while he was comfortable fighting goblins, he had no idea how he would measure against a giant fucking wolf. Like, you can’t parry a giant wolf. And without the speed buff from his skill he wasn’t sure that he would even have enough damage to kill the thing. Was he even fast enough to outrun it in case things got fucked? Probably, yeah. But he didn’t know. Not that he was scared of some wolf. He’d win, of course. Probably. Maybe.

  He just didn’t feel like seeking it out on purpose. It was a hassle, yes? The thing probably ran away already. Looking for it was a waste of time. That was it.

  He’d prefer to stick with goblins. Those were a known, reliable source of power. The only problem with them was the fact that a single goblin felt like a drop in the bucket in terms of exp. Possible to fill, but would take time, and they were harder to find in large quantities nowadays.

  Absent-mindedly, Dennis killed two more. They looked a bit starved, and it was a bit weird that they didn’t eat people. What did the goblins eat anyways? Did they just starve for a week? Will they all just die before he managed to grind even one more level?

  With the way things were going, he guesstimated that he’d need maybe ten more days to get to the fifth level, which in his opinion was an absurdly slow pace. He was, after all, killing everything he encountered, without sharing any exp. In terms of game design this whole system thing was completely broken, and not in a good way. What kind of game had their monsters just leave or die of fucking starvation? While he could see himself getting to the next level, the one after that would be practically impossible. Who the fuck softcapped their players at level five? What was he playing, fucking DnD? It felt like he was missing something, some core mechanic that made leveling faster than at a snail’s pace possible. It was either that, or the fucking game-like system wasn’t a game and wasn’t designed with leveling in mind, which was just stupid. It even gave quests!

  Protect the earth.

  Current participation: 0%

  Why the fuck was it still at zero percent?!

  He stabbed another goblin.

  Then he kicked its dying body out of frustration. The thing grunted, but didn’t move. It would take it some time to bleed out.

  Ugh. Fuck it. He would leave it to Jenny to figure out all this weird system-mechanics bullshit. All he needed to do was to grind and save people. Not that there were many people to save. Most were, after all, dead or missing. Which was another weird thing. While they found a lot of dead bodies, the amount just didn’t make sense according to people who bothered to count. It wasn’t enough to claim that everyone died, there should’ve been a lot more survivors based solely on math, but… there weren’t? Where the hell did those mathematically proven survivors fuck off to was anyone’s guess. Anyway, he was getting sidetracked.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The only known spot where he could reliably find a lot of goblins was the old church. While there were a few other spots on the map where the main party fought relatively large groups of the things, they, well, won those fights. So there were no more goblin groups there anymore. It was just pointless history. Mostly useless if one wanted to find some monsters to kill.

  The church had, in a way, the opposite problem. There were more than a few dozens of goblins hanging out there for some ungodly reason, and almost all of them were at least second level, going by the feel. They were too dangerous to attack for the raiding party and, sadly, also too dangerous for him unless he had his skill active. Which he probably wouldn’t have. Dennis was confident, but after so many fights he was much better at knowing his limits, and tackling up to fifty leveled goblins without the skill was probably beyond him.

  The church theoretically could be a place where survivors were hiding, but it was a leading theory simply because they had no idea what other reason could attract so many monsters to one place. They didn’t actually have any evidence that there were people inside. So trying to rely on the skill was a tossup. Was he salty because of the fact that he wasted six stat points and a skill selection on something that was absolutely useless outside of a very specific situation?

  Nooo.

  A little bit.

  A simple swing, and another goblin died, giving him a small mote of exp. It was almost meditative.

  Simply put, the church was too tough of a nut for him right now, and giant monsters were both an unknown danger and hard to find, so the only thing he was left with was just wandering around. It was a bit of a downer, but not too bad. The weather was pleasant, and he was used to the grind. This was nothing compared to some of the Korean MMO’s he played. A week for a level was probably fine. He could grind for a week easily. And after that, well, he will revisit the church idea. Or maybe something else will happen.

  Somehow, an apocalypse was a surprisingly chill affair, ignoring the bumpy start. Nothing much was happening. It was like they were entering the post-apocalypse era.

  He continued his walk.

  / - /

  A hero, typically, was someone who saved the day by beating an opponent that was unbeatable for everyone else. An evil mastermind, or a crazy terrorist, or at least a dude with the freeze ray. Heroes were larger than life, and it was rare for them to find a single spare moment where fate didn’t throw another challenge at them. Typically in the form of a new villain to beat down. To think about it, pretty much all that the heroes did was beating up this or that villain, and maybe saving someone from a car crash or a burning building as a downtime between the beating sessions.

  The point was, Dennis had a very concrete idea of what a proper hero was supposed to do at all times. In order of priority it was A: beating up the bad guys and B: saving random bystanders who were falling down from the roof or something. Or was it in reverse? Eh, it didn’t matter, they succeeded at both so there was little point in prioritizing. In the downtime it was usually either dealing with romance problems or secret identity problems. Or both. Depending on the genre they could also do detective work.

  While killing random monsters during his walks kind of counted as beating up villains, the question of what he was supposed to do during downtime was unanswered. He had no girlfriend to mess up a relationship with, and no secret identity to barely maintain. Before, he could’ve said that he was recovering from his injuries, which was a heroic enough activity for him to not grumble too much about, but now that he was mostly healthy the ugly question was there again. He just didn’t know what the heroes did off-screen, when there was no romantic subplot to mess with or parents to argue with.

  “Dennis, please stop sulking,” Jenny said, chopping another fish’s head off. “It’s not that bad.”

  But it sure as hell wasn’t this.

  “I’m not sulking,” he said, trying to scoop the guts out. It was disgusting. “You’re sulking.”

  He smelled like fish.

  “You smell like fish,” Travis said with a smirk while he was passing them and carrying a huge crate.

  “I’m not– Everything smells like fucking fish!” He had half a mind to throw fish guts at Travis before he remembered the rules for violence. “Nancy, hit him!”

  Nancy sighed as she put her book down and got up from the grass. Travis knew what was coming, so he waited patiently as she approached him and gently bonked his head. She looked at Dennis expectantly but she sure as hell had to know at this point that he wasn’t budging on this. She sighed again.

  “Bonk,” she said in the most monotone voice possible. This was far from the first time when he asked her to deliver justice for him, and the sweetest part, she had to. It was the law.

  It wasn’t exactly how he imagined his sublimate smacking to work out, but he had to admit that it was growing on him. Because it was the law. He had no idea how Michael managed to force everyone to go along with it, but Dennis was impressed with such a brazen display of dictatorship. While this version of smacking lacked the punch, so to say, that was compensated by the implied superiority of Dennis over everyone else because there was a fucking law that allowed him to bonk people and they were forced to submit to it. It was unlimited, unregulated power. The whole reason why dictatorships were bad. He loved it.

  “It never gets old,” Jenny muttered with a soft smile.

  “Oh, trust me, it does very quickly,” Nancy grumbled while going back to her book. She was probably still salty about that one time when she had to bonk some dude about twenty times over the course of a conversation to help Dennis win an argument. He did.

  If only they didn’t trick him into gutting fish under the pretense of helping Jenny with figuring out obscure system mechanics. They didn’t even start talking about those! Just how the fuck did that happen?!

  ‘You’re not busy right now, are you? Jenny wanted to measure some numbers for people with high stats, we should go help her.’

  ‘You did agree to listen to your handler, yes? You have the highest Dex in the fort, don’t you want to show off how cool that is?’

  ‘Oh, they managed to catch so much! We need to help them with the preparations. Anyway, we’re still waiting for Gary, so we should do something useful until he’s here.’

  ‘What do you mean why? His Strength is almost 30. We should wait for everyone with high stats before we start. It’s just more efficient that way.’

  ‘Oh, he’s raiding right now, they’re looking for salt.’

  ‘No, I can’t bonk myself. Stop whining and listen. First, you cut off the head…’

  He had a nagging feeling that he was somehow outplayed, but where?