Someone was here. In the park. At some point.

  Gareth, apparently.

  Not the most alien name, as far as he knew.

  Some dude named Gareth drew a dick on the dusty statue-corpse of the Arm. Honestly, Dennis respected the artistry. It clearly took an effort to make such a detailed carving with what Dennis assumed was a finger. Maybe even some dedicated practice beforehand. Whoever this Gareth was, he was clearly proficient in his dicks.

  They were not alone.

  Kinda made sense, in hindsight. Truly unique things were rare. What happened once could probably happen again, and if Dennis and Lily managed to accidentally yoink themselves into another dimension, what was there to stop someone else from finding some cracks and doing the same? It didn’t even take much effort. Just curse in a church for a bit and you’re pretty much done. Anyone could do that, if they had the balls.

  Did the fact that the dude existed change anything? He didn’t register on Dennis’ skill, and that thing had range, so he was probably dead or completely fine. Pretty much anyone was either dead or fine if the skill didn’t find them, come to think of it. With the way how stupid someone had to be to get killed by an Arm–yes, he was looking at Lily–chances were that that Gareth dude was merrily doing more urban art somewhere in the town without a care in the world. Should Dennis even care about that? He already had two savable people to save. Wasting time to find someone in the giant maze of ghost-town didn’t really feel that productive, and for what? To chat? Since when did he want to chat with random people?

  But thinking about it a bit more, Dennis actually did want to have a little chat with the guy. Not out of loneliness or some social obligation between the fellow stranded-in-another-world, but because he was quite starved for information. The guy was most likely stranded here for much longer than Dennis, so he could know something important, like, for example, the Arms became active and hunted everyone in town every ten days, or something like that. Or he could know something about leaving this place that Dennis didn’t, or he knew of a way to heal Lily somehow. Maybe he had a relevant skill, like an alchemist, or a necromancer. While usually Dennis would care jack shit about some random dude who lived in a second best thing to the pure void itself, right now he basically had no choice. He needed to find a way to heal Lily and to leave this place, and he had no idea how, so he needed more knowledge, and other people sometimes knew things.

  He wondered if there existed an equivalent of google, but as a skill. That would’ve been more convenient than talking. And finding the guy who didn’t even have the decency to need saving.

  Looking for him around the whole town would be a nightmare. But at least Dennis was sure that the guy was still in town. The void between cities was quite unfriendly for someone who didn’t have both superspeed and a magical compass. Pretty easy to get lost in.

  And Dennis was kind of on a time limit here, even if it was vaguely stretched. The dying person was taking their sweet time dying in the most profoundly mystical and prolonged way, but it wouldn’t take forever for them to finally kick the bucket. Probably. People usually died when they were dying, at least at some point.

  So, Dennis was both starved for time because he should come to the rescue of his target as fast as possible, and he had to somehow find a single dude in a whole ass town in case the guy was useful. Sure, the town was probably smaller than the original, but being twice or even thrice smaller was still a fucking town.

  Lots of things to do, little time.

  Dennis went to the nearest house to take a nap.

  Like, what else could he do? He was lagging. The battle with the Arm pumped quite a lot of metaphorical adrenaline in his metaphorical veins–did he have veins?–and then boosted Mind from his buff masked the exhaustion further, but he clearly and undeniably still needed sleep. For quite a while, even. Pulling out an all nighter would be nothing new for him, but he had to think in the long run. Literally. What would happen if he left the town already tired and sleepy and the next town didn’t appear in two hours? What if it took six hours in the void, or even twelve until the next ‘safe zone’? What would happen then, if he, while sleep-deprieved, closed his eyes for a second while doing his few minutes of rest there?

  Nothing good. Okay, he probably wouldn't die, it’s not like the nothingness was evil or anything, but there was a limit to how long he could spend there before… something happened, and with the way it itched when the thing grinded away his whole existence, Dennis really didn’t want to find out the consequences of an unintended nap in the place between places. Spending time in the void was beneficial now while he had some ‘rested exp’ to spare, but it clearly won’t stop doing whatever it was doing after giving him a level or two and reaching the cap.

  So, sleep. He needed that, urgency or not. This whole quest was shaping up to be a marathon, not a sprint. The dying person would have to wait with the whole dying business, and Gareth would have to draw a few more dicks on the walls or something before Dennis found him.

  Speaking of Gareth…

  “Gareth!” Dennis shouted as he walked to the house. “Gaaareth! The dick-guy! I’m at the park! Get your ass here!”

  Chances of the guy being nearby and hearing him? Who the fuck knew. Worth a try.

  “Gareeeeth! C’mere! Are you a necromancer?! I’ve got a girl for you to resurrect if you are! The body is very fresh! Gaareeth!”

  Dennis honestly didn’t know how far the sound could spread. In a way, it was a gamble, and not only in a good way. He had a suspicion that air itself didn’t actually exist in this place, at least he couldn’t feel the wind while running, and trying to blow some air produced no results whatsoever. But he and Lily could clearly hear each other, so the sound transferred somehow. It was the same magical mumbo jumbo that allowed him to feel a gentle breeze while running but not the resistance, it didn’t make sense, and it worked because it was just supposed to work that way. Like, of course if you speak then people would hear you. That was just what happened when you spoke to people. As far as Dennis understood it–at least that was his theory–it was the intent that mattered. Or the meaning, maybe? All of the skills, and the stats, and the auras, and basically every magical phenomena that he encountered worked in the realms of intent and meaning. Instead of answering the question ‘Is it possible?’ everything worked under the rules of ‘What should happen, you think?’.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  If Lily heard him not because of the sound spreading through the air, but because he intended to be heard, then how far could he be heard if his intent was to scream his lungs out so much that everything in the town could hear it? He wanted to be heard. The meaning of his shouting was to be heard from as far as possible, and this place and magic in general had a raging boner for anything that held meaning.

  Sure, the whole theory was a bit far-fetched, or maybe he was missing something, like maybe he had to pour some exp or god forbid mana for it to work that way, but in the worst case scenario it just won’t work. And, honestly, the half-crazy theory was still better than relying on common sense or physics. It was already proven that physics did jack shit in this place, so any dumb idea could happen to be the actual thing that worked, so he was testing the theory. He was, in a way, a scientist of the new age, pushing the boundaries of magical studies. He was something of a scientist himself, now.

  “Do you need a test subject for your questionable potions? I’ve got one for you! And it's completely ethical! Like a cadaver donated for medical research, but also vaguely alive! The best of both worlds! Gareeth!”

  He was doing science.

  The problem?

  If it worked the way he wanted it to work, in other words if he could be heard somehow across the whole town, the Arms would also hear him. He had little doubt that there were a few of them here and there, and if the things had ears and bothered to move their asses to investigate the commotion, well… He was literally going to take a nap, and his lookout was a bit out of commission, couldn’t exactly do shifts when Lily appropriated all of the sleeping time for herself. And it’s not like he could find a safer place to sleep where they won’t be able to find him, that would defeat the whole point of the shouting in the first place, he wanted to be found. By Gareth, to point out, not by the monsters.

  What if Gareth was a monster? Or some kind of half-crazy maniac who had no moral compass and would kill people for slightest provocation?

  Eh, he’ll just kill him.

  The Arms were a problem, but they were stupid as bricks and attacked based on line of sight as far as Dennis knew, so just hiding in some house should be enough to be safe from them. That is, if they even bothered to come, and he had quite a strong suspicion that they wouldn’t, so aside from the monumental risks in case things didn’t work out, the plan was fine. In case he got ambushed in his sleep he could… well, die, probably, but chances of that happening were slim.

  The Arms were dumb, but would Gareth be smarter and figure out that he should check the nearby houses?

  Never assume competence when someone could be dumb.

  Lily was a great testament to that. If someone can fuck up, they’ll find a way.

  With as large letters as he could, Dennis carved out his message on the wall of the house.

  ‘Dennis is here.’

  That should work? The message was clearly visible from the park, so if anyone came to investigate they’d probably see it, unless they were blind. Gareth wasn’t blind, he was an artist, there was no way he’d miss it.

  But assuming competence in other people would be a great mistake that Dennis wasn’t keen on making, so he also carved a huge arrow pointing at the door. Then a second one, to be safe. Then a few dicks, to inspire kinship and a sense of belonging.

  That should work. Surely Gareth could read. Right? Ugh, he’ll figure it out. There were arrows and the dicks for the illiterate.

  Dennis went inside the house, finally anticipating some rest. The layout was the same as everywhere else, and the couch was comfy enough to lay down on, unless he applied too much pressure on it. Then the faux leather would turn into dust, which was annoying, but the dust disappeared into nothingness on its own, so in the end it was fine. He'd slept on worse.

  He placed Lily’s body in the far corner of the room, but the moment he turned around and took a few steps away from her his targeting skill started whining at him, and there was an insistence to its whining that was hard to ignore. He, of course, ignored it, placing his katana nearby and trying to cozy up on the couch, finally relaxing as he watched the ceiling.

  Counting sheep was a classic, but it didn’t really work for him. Instead, he settled into his usual routine of daydreaming about getting superpowers and outrunning The Flash himself. Lately those fantasies became so much sweeter since there was a hint of them becoming a genuine possibility and not just an idle fantasy. Instead of dreaming of getting the Speedforce he was imagining all the cool shit that his own skill could become, or how he would save the world, or what his own heroic costume would look like and…

  It wasn’t working.

  Those half-dreams and half-fantasies weren’t exactly controlled as he dozed off, and as his own mind relaxed the scenes of him saving some random NPC’s were somehow replaced with scenes of him rushing into a burning building and finding Lily’s corpse there. He saved her, of course, and as he waved her off with a cheeky smile and rushed to his next target, she was there again, in the same state. And the rib was always poking out. No matter how many times he saved her, she was there, four yards to his left. Always four yards to his left.

  He woke up to the beat of his own heart.

  “Dammit,” he dismissed the error.

  He wasn’t rested, at all. Doubted he even fell asleep, honestly. His fucking Soul stat was still trying to crush that damn wall where it could become ‘one’ instead of ‘zero’, and somehow it formed a coalition with the targeting skill so now they bothered him together about… He wasn’t really sure what they wanted. It wasn’t like he had any means of saving the girl right now. Can’t they just wait for the damn necromancer? He was getting sick of the damn things living in his head rent-free. More so because they didn’t feel like some kind of outside influence, like Lily’s skill, they felt like… him. Like it was him who was worried about the damn stuff. It was all so stupid.

  He sighed.

  “Fiine,” he grumbled as he got up from the couch. “Don’t you fucking dare bother me after this.”

  He gently moved the girl away from the corner and closer to him. Not on the fucking couch, he wasn’t going to sleep with a freaking corpse, but… just closer. Sitting on the floor with her back leaning on the couch, just so he could see her easily and, he didn’t know… protect her from a sudden attack? Those skills were dumb, he didn’t need to see the body to protect her if anything happened, but… Okay, it worked. The targeting stopped whining at him, satisfied that he reached his ‘target’, and the error spam quieted down. The feeling of the world being wrong subsided and he finally sighed in relief.

  “Good night, I guess,” he told her. “Try to use that Constitution to get better, yes? Because that’s the only real plan I have right now.”

  Finally, he fell asleep.

  He woke up to the feeling of a blade on his neck.