The first thing Dennis did was to take a single step in the direction of the nearest target, getting himself the benefit of the whole thirty three points of boosted Mind. He didn’t need to run towards the target, didn’t even begin to climb down from the roof, but as long as he was on the way, the speed of his approach didn’t matter. Not that he wasn’t going to rush and save whoever that was, but just being casually able to slip into superspeed to give himself a few moments to think about the correct course of action was freeing like nothing else. He was getting the impression that that particular loophole will become one of his favorites, turning from something moderately useless into something downright essential. As long as his Heroic Senses picked up on someone in trouble, he would always be just one step away from his buff.

  And what a buff that was.

  Every point gave more than the last one. How many times did he gush over that? Every point gave more than the last one. In a fight with himself from an hour ago, Dennis would win ten times out of ten. In a fight against the Arm… well, that would depend on how durable that monster was. He’d be able to dance in circles around it, so the question was if he had enough damage. Maybe? He wasn’t sure if he’d win, but he was sure that he wouldn't lose. The clarity of mind that he experienced by taking that single step was like nothing else he ever felt. It was like his thoughts finished faster then he started to think them. He didn’t think through things, it felt like conclusions were shoved into his mind before he even considered asking the question. He truly, genuinely worried that he would need another Mind stat to keep up with the one he had, he was almost overwhelmed with the speed thoughts appeared and disappeared in his head. The fact that this was the speed of thought needed to keep up with his potential speed of motion was hard to believe. It felt like overkill. Like playing minesweeper on a high-end pc. He didn’t even finish a single step, after all.

  Though he wasn’t trying to make it as fast as possible, was he?

  There was a point why he wasn’t trying to rush to help as fast as possible, and it was to try and do things the smart way. After all, no amount of processing speed would help him if he won’t use it. A fast thinking idiot was still an idiot, and being dumb in superspeed was, truly, not the way. Out of all things, what Dennis now had the most was abundance of time. That was the whole point of superspeed. There was no reason to rush because he was that fast, so he will use that abundance of time to do other, productive things, and then he’ll look back and see that only a fraction of a second passed.

  It was so damn fucking cool.

  Okay, but, seriously, did he actually have the time or was he just high on superspeed and overconfident? He wasn’t The Flash yet. Yet.

  He had two targets. One was vaguely really far away, the other felt like just a few streets over. He wasn’t sure how fast he actually was, but guessed that getting to the closest target would take, what, ten seconds? Five? One? Yeah okay he really had no idea how fast he was, but it was close, and honestly almost no time passed so unless there was the Arm lunging at someone right now just out of his field of view, he’d be able to get there fast enough to do the saving from basically everything else. Even falling from the roof took a few seconds, it should be enough for him to get there and fix everything.

  Why was he debating why he shouldn’t rush and save whoever was in trouble there while he knew jack shit about what was actually happening? That was stupid. Good thing he was doing it in superspeed. It was just, well, it was cool to have time and casually not do the thing that needs to be done immediately because you can flex how fast you are and do it at the last moment. He was having a moment here. It wasn’t a wise moment. There was no wisdom stat. Unless it was tied to Soul? Then he was royally fucked.

  Why was he still not running?

  Ah, yes, doing the smart thing because he had, like, all the processing power. Thinking things through before rushing in was, like, Speedster 101. He will not slip on ice or run into a trap because he didn’t bother with scouting or making a plan beforehand. He knew that stupid trope, it was the first thing speedsters learned in their training montages, use your brains along with that superspeed. He remembered all those training montages, he didn’t need them because he already knew all of those common mistakes, so here he was, thinking things through and being smart about it.

  What, like, exactly was he supposed to think through here? He doubted that there would be a tripwire connected to an arbalest on his way there. And honestly, maybe taking lessons from CW Flash wasn’t that good of an idea in the first place. He should make a plan? Yeah, well, he’ll go there and do his thing. That was the plan. What else…

  Ah, right. Scouting.

  He couldn’t exactly scout in a traditional way, the skill just didn’t work like that, but he did have some newly unlocked oracle powers now, didn’t he? The only thing he felt from the target was a vague sense of direction, and it was fine, he wouldn’t complain about that, it was already so much better than what he was working with before, but he clearly remembered arguing for some kind of threat slider. Where was that thing? Was he scammed?

  How was that supposed to work? He used the fight with the Arm as a point of reference when he was arguing for it, and then it was almost subconscious, like an on/off switch that turned his power on only for the right type of danger, so maybe it was something like that?

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Okay, I wanna only feel the targets who’ll probably die in the next few seconds or so. Like, who is in the immediate threat–

  Both targets disappeared from his mind, the buff dropping as he stumbled, finishing that first step that he was going to make… just now? How much time even passed since he got the buff?

  Fuck, bring them back! Bring them back!

  Again, his awareness expanded as he almost automatically slipped back into the path towards the closest savable person.

  Okay. That worked. Clunky as hell, but he could work around it. Good news, it seemed that no one was going to die in the next few seconds, so probably no Arms lunging or falling from heights there, he had some time to play around with the targeting a bit more. Was anyone going to die in the next ten seconds or so? He felt it as the skill started to lose targets again, almost snapping before–

  Wait, no, don’t change the fucking danger-sense station!

  Ugh. It was going to be a pain in the ass, wasn’t it? He almost lost the buff again. Was it that hard to make a nice UI with a minimap and all threats properly tagged and sorted by order of importance? Instead he got what seemed to be the most basic version of ‘adjustable targeting’ in existence, capable of finding things that fit only one definition of danger at a time and messing with his chosen target to boot. Were Heroic Senses, like, tuned on the vaguest definition of danger right now? What was the vaguest definition of danger for the skill? And why was this the way to get information out of the skill? Instead of just knowing things he was supposed to play twenty questions to figure out if the target was stuck bored in a basement or bleeding out?

  What an ass skill. Still cool though. But… Ass.

  He would fix that in the later patch. Just one more level, right? For now twenty questions should be enough, there wasn’t an abundance of targets anyway, he’ll manage. What was the range on the thing? How far away was ‘far away’? Could he use distance as a filter, or was it only types of danger?

  Fuck, okay, he should actually focus and save someone’s ass. The combination of high Mind and him getting excited at having a new skill to poke were a deadly combination for his attention span. It was always so easy to lose himself in theorycrafting. It was just that usually he wasn’t doing that to the detriment of someone potentially dying or something. He should take this a bit more seriously.

  But what did he care about some rando dying nearby when he had a cool ass power to figure out instead? A bit curious that there even was someone nearby in this world, but honestly, that guy picked a wrong time to need saving, after all Dennis was having a moment–

  Heroic senses were tingling. Not the skill, but his intuition. What he was doing right now was not heroic. Abort. And save that dumbass, finally.

  Oh look he took a second step. Not that he was walking deliberately slowly, just at normal speed, but compared to what his Mind was capable of, normal speed was slow.

  Okay, let’s change that. Even when he saves the first target from whatever was happening to it, he would still have the second one to play with the targeting settings. Unless it dies or something. Which was actually a concern, come to think of it. Kind of a prerequisite for being a ‘target’ in the first place.

  The third step was the opposite of slow, and broke the roof under his foot. Even then, losing his balance or tripping felt downright impossible in this state, he paid the hole in the roof almost no mind as he descended to the ground in a blur, showing middle finger to gravity and inertia and everything else that dared to suggest that he couldn’t move that fast or that he should face consequences for running down along the wall. Instead of becoming a splat on the ground, he just… stepped on it, and continued his run. Didn’t even hurt his knees. He had the authority to move at that speed and not hurt himself from it, and therefore he could. It was no less straining than running into the wall and then pushing himself off of it. Just, instead of the wall it was the ground.

  Funnily enough, if he just fell down due to gravity he would’ve broken a leg or something, even if the movement would’ve been overall slower. But since he didn’t fall, he ran down, he was protected from his own speed. By running down faster than a fall would’ve taken he enjoyed the protection that Dexterity gave him from the consequences of his own actions.

  Stats were weird like that.

  He remembered to check the time on his watch before he took the next step. Knowing the time and the distance travelled would allow him to know his new speed. Only… he didn’t know the distance he would travel. ‘Nearby’ was not a unit of measurement, and his map knowledge was outdated. But… he could fix that, no? It was so simple.

  He knew his own height, and by dividing that he could precisely imagine what an ‘inch’ was. Not just vaguely estimate, but know. By translating angles, by adjusting for his own frame of reference, he took a step and knew exactly the distance of that step. He remembered it. Then he took another, and remembered that. Then a third.

  Buildings blurred past him faster than a human mind could properly comprehend, turns were taken faster than a human would turn their head, and he just… memorized the distance of every step he took and then combined them. Another glance on his watch told him that five seconds passed, and the math was never that easy.

  219 yards per five seconds, in other words… About 90-ish miles per hour? He was fucking fast.

  Not The Flash, but… he may start bragging, when the appropriate moment presents itself. He could outrun the speed limit on highways. And it wasn’t just ‘run in a straight line’ speed, no, it was controlled. He could stop pretty quickly, take sharp turns, maneuver around while doing parkour… Not that he knew how, but he could. Sure, he was sprinting and won’t be able to keep that up without some substantial endurance boosts, but, well, highest speed was the only one that mattered. It was all about feats, on the forums.

  Suffice to say, reaching the target took just a few more seconds. He blurred past the house where they stayed and a few streets beyond it, before he saw it as he took a final turn, ready to unleash violence on whatever thing that was threatening whoever his skill found.

  “Lily?”

  The girl walked alone in the middle of the deserted street. There were no monsters around, nothing threatening at all, just more of the same mundane emptiness that permeated this world. She turned around when she heard her name, noticing him, and the moment she saw him the skill stopped considering her a valid target, his buff dropping.

  “Dennis?”

  Whatever he was supposed to save her from, she was, apparently, ‘saved’. If Dennis understood it correctly, the threat in this context was pure unfiltered idiocy.

  Well at least he had a second target, even if the first one was a dud.

  Surely there's no such thing as being stuck in Dennis' head too much while not much happens.