Before doing anything else he took a small step to the left, stepping on the path to the second target and granting himself the buff again. It wouldn’t be right to just forget that there was someone out there actually needing his help, unlike the idiotic girl who apparently just decided that wandering off on her own with no means of finding each other was somehow a good idea. How the hell did she even count as a valid target for doing that? Yeah, he did increase the scope of what it meant to be ‘needing to be saved’, but he was pretty sure that it still required, like, mortal danger of some sort.

  It was such a refreshing change of pace to be able to just… turn his skill on whenever he wanted to. Still limited and with conditions, sure, but compared to how it was before this was freedom. The world lost its urgency as he willed it, Lily’s expression almost frozen, his name still leaving her lips as he had all the time in the world to think things through and assess the situation.

  He was a hero, and someone needed saving, but it wouldn’t be wise to just run there, leaving the girl alone again. Did she need saving because she was some kind of ‘little girl lost in an alien world filled with monsters’, and thus inherently savable? Could the definition be that loose or was there something else to it? Would his skill deem her ‘savable’ again if he ran off? Why did his skill lead him here, if she wasn’t in danger?

  All good questions, none of them that important at this moment.

  Was the other person dying right now? Would ditching the girl and running off be the right decision?

  It was so nice that he had time to think. Just a little step, and the world became as clear as glass, every option analyzed and digested in an instant.

  First, ascertain urgency. The information gathering part of Heroic Senses was shit, but playing twenty questions wasn’t as time-consuming as it could’ve been, not for him. Assume that the skill was currently tuned on the loosest definition of danger, whatever it was. Tune it to some other definition that he wanted, see if he loses the buff. If he does, immediately tune back to get the superspeed and try again until he knows everything he needs to know. A simple guide to omniscience.

  Easy.

  …

  “Dennis?” Lily asked again as she finished wiping her face. “Why are you staring in space like that? And slowly walking towards the wall?”

  He had a headache.

  The first and the most important tidbit of information that he managed to gain was the knowledge that his so-called information gathering skill sucked absolute ass at information gathering, and he absolutely will either boost it more or not use it at all, because this was pure torture. He hated it more than gutting fish.

  Oh, and also his apparent target was stuck somewhere and could die in a minute or in a month or in a year, from a nebulous source that was both violent and not violent, and surrounded by enemies that were killing it right now but not doing anything he would consider particularly malicious. Figuring all that out took a bit more than ‘twenty questions’. A lot more.

  He will never fucking use this skill again. It was absolutely not worth it. Could he get a refund? Just leave the targeting, and give him his skill point back for the threat slider, it sucked so much ass that Dennis couldn’t remember the last time he was scammed like that.

  “Damn it,” he cursed under his breath, waved his hand to the girl in greeting and started rattling on the edge of superspeed. “Hey, Lily, had a nice nap? Why the hell did you leave the house? Wait, no, don’t answer that, we don’t have time. I’ve got this cool new skill that tells me if there’s anyone in trouble who needs my help, and there is in fact someone out there who is currently dying but in a weird way, so I’m gonna quickly check that out and then come back, okay? You won’t believe how fast I am now! But, ehh… That’s not the point right now. Just go back to the house and sit there for a while so I could find you? That was stupid of you to leave by the way, who the hell separates in a situation like that? Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be fine, worst case if anything happens my new super-cool skill will ping me that you’re in trouble and I’ll run here to save you. But don’t count on it? I mean, you can count on it, but I think you getting in trouble because I left you will retroactively make my decision morally wrong so don’t get in trouble? Basically just go sit in the house for a while and don’t die, okay?”

  “Okay?” she answered, slightly dumbfounded, still trying to process his rambling.

  “Great, thanks, see ya!”

  “No, wai–”

  He couldn’t hear what she had to tell him due to already being on another street. If it was important, she’ll tell him later, and if it was not, then good dodge.

  He had a person to save. Finally.

  Proper heroing.

  He pushed himself as much as he could just to feel the wonder of super high speed movement under his own power. Nothing in his life could compare to the feeling, to the sheer freedom he experienced as identical houses blurred past him. He didn’t know where he was going, only the direction, but that was enough for him. What’s to hate about a little mystery? The town they were in was one of the small ones, the kind that could be crossed on foot in an hour or two, and as he passed one street after another he realized that he was on the way out of it. As he pushed himself to the edge of his endurance, trying to sprint–and to be fair, failing–for two whole minutes, he was realizing two things. First, the amount of houses around him was drastically reducing, the surroundings slowly turning from a town to some kind of asphalted plains with a few homes sprinkled here and there. Second, his target still felt as ‘far away’. Despite the fact that he covered almost two miles of distance at this point, it didn’t feel like he got closer at all.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Slowly, the amount of houses nearby got reduced to nothing, and he couldn’t remember the moment when the asphalt road transformed into some sort of plain, compressed dirt. Being sorta-undead meant that he didn’t feel his heart hammering in his chest or actually lose breath, but the exhaustion of this short run nonetheless forced him to slow down to what someone might call a jogging pace, if it counted as jogging when he could’ve walked with basically the same speed. Power walking while waving his arms? Without the typical markers of stamina depletion he could feel his exhaustion directly in his Constitution. It was grumbling at him that he was spent. Quietly, but it was there. His buff ensured that even in this state he was still impressively fast, probably comparable to some cars or maybe a very quick bicycle, but he started to wonder if there even was a point in trying to push more. He was definitely out of town, and he wasn’t any closer than when he started.

  Where the hell was that guy dying? In Europe? Could his skill reach that far? Yeah, well, it could reach that far because it admittedly did, but…

  Dennis finally stopped, standing in place and trying to fill his lungs with nonexistent oxygen.

  It was so quiet.

  And empty.

  He finally allowed himself to focus on the world around him instead of just the run, and it was… it was nothing.

  There was almost nothing in front of him. A greyish even ground stretched into the horizon, without a single hill or a tree. The paper-white sky was clear, devoid of the usual sight of floating people. Just a single line–the horizon–was the only thing that suggested that anything existed at all. Like someone took a piece of paper and divided it in two, coloring the lower half in a slightly darker tone. If the town behind him was like a replica, a facsimile, then this was not a replica of anything. Just blank canvas, but worse, because ‘canvas’ suggested a possibility, and the space in front of him didn’t suggest anything at all. It didn’t exist, save for the fact that it existed.

  The passive leveling was even stronger here.

  It was almost aggressive. He compared the feeling to being refined, like a statue that was slowly sculpted into having more definition. Well, the sculptor was angry now. Smacking him, trying to tear out pieces, erasing unnecessary details to make the whole of ‘Dennis’ clearer. The void in which he stood disliked ‘existence’ on a fundamental level, eager to erase everything he could provide. It was helpful now, like sharpening a blade was helpful even if it did technically destroy a part of it. But what was going to happen to the blade if you continued sharpening it when it was already razor-sharp? You would just slowly grind the metal, until there was nothing left.

  This place was dangerous.

  “Damn it,” he whispered quietly, the sound feeling as loud as drums by virtue of being the only sound for miles around.

  They were on a time limit.

  He turned around, seeing the small town in its entirety, from one side to the other. It was so small. Just a bunch of houses surrounded by nothing, like a small raft in the sea. It was eerie. It felt like it didn’t belong. Like it was slowly eaten by this nonexistence, grinded away house by house and sign by sign, held back only by the church, the fort, and the statue of some dude, the only three places that had any meaning.

  How much time did they have? The leveling wasn’t fast. He was on a precipice of the next level since they got here, just a few kills away from it really, and yet it took him almost half a day to reach it. But that didn’t answer the question, did it? He leveled up slowly, but how much, he didn’t know what to call it, passive exp did he have before this place started to eat into something that shouldn’t be eaten? How much did Lily have? A year, or a day?

  He had no idea. The knowledge that the process was happening at all was something that he found out at the limits of his new senses. Feeling out how many spare parts of his soul–well, not soul–he had left was beyond him.

  He glanced back at the horizon. The fact that the horizon existed at all was somehow reassuring. It meant that the alien world they were in was still at least spherical. His target was still there, beyond the horizon, still dying but in a weird way that he wasn’t able to pin down, still far away, but at least if the world was still a sphere then he would be able to reach his target at some point.

  He glanced back at the town. Should he try? This was shaping up to become a marathon, not a sprint. A journey into emptiness incarnate that could take hours or days even with the help of his buff. Should he just leave Lily and go for it? The girl at least wasn’t pinging on his skill anymore, so she was fine, and he had someone to save. But he won’t be able to come back if he decides to continue. An hour of jogging at superspeed would translate into half a day of walking back without it, through this aggressive emptiness no less. It would be nearly suicidal to do that. The rate at which this place between places was eating at him was no joke. Good gains though.

  He could come back to town and try other leads before committing, but Lily wasn’t wrong when she said that he was grasping at straws. What options did they even have there? Try to inspect the weird places more? They already had a basic idea of what they were and what they did, and nothing in them suggested the possibility of escape. The Arms weren’t talkative, and the floating people were quite out of reach and most likely useless. They had options, yes, but pretty much all of them were more like busywork to fill the time and not sit on their asses than something that could genuinely help them. Saving that mystery person was not only the heroic option, but also the one that had the biggest chance of helping them out with leaving this weird alien-world thing, because it was a person. His skill won’t work on rocks or monsters. It was someone talkable. Maybe a native?

  And that someone was dying. Like, right now. It was an important thing to remember, in his opinion. Especially when considering doing probably useless busywork instead of, well, helping that person. Not much heroism in that decision.

  Not much heroism in the decision to leave the girl either. He told her that he’ll come back, and sure, he didn’t specify when, but using technicalities to wiggle out of a promise was the same as lying, and lying to little girls that you’ll come back for them only to leave them abandoned in the alien world tickled at his heroic senses violently. Not a morally good thing to do, that. He could take her with him, in theory? He wasn’t fit, per se, but he could carry the girl like a backpack. And she was more or less backpack sized, being a little girl and all that.

  Not much heroism in that decision either. The town was safe. Sure, it was creepy as hell, but aside from the few stationary monsters there was genuinely nothing dangerous there, and the emptiness was way less violent. She could sit in there for a long time and be fine. The journey, on the other hand, was not safe at all. After all, at any moment his dying target could actually die and leave him stranded on the empty plains of violent nothingness. If he took the girl and that happened, they’d just die together. Poetic, but taking someone from a relatively safe place only to kill them with a slow but inescapable erosion of their whole existence was again, not fucking heroic. Not to mention that Lily had a lower level than he did, and he had a hunch that the amount of passive exp they had was tied to that. She would erode faster than he would, so taking her out of town would be doubly troublesome. Even if his target survived long enough, the long journey on its own could kill the girl. Not a good thing to do, that.

  No good options, really.

  He took a deep breath and made a decision.

  good stuff coming.