Pretending to be asleep was a cool, classical move. Since Dennis knew that, he also knew that it never worked, and he refused to give whoever had the balls to press a blade against his neck a chance to ominously say ‘I know you’re awake’. They just didn’t deserve the aura.

  He opened his eyes without moving a muscle.

  Strength: 6 -> 7

  Constitution: 8 -> 9

  Nice, but not exactly the right moment for it, System.

  Was that… was that a katana?

  “Why… Why do you have a corpse here?” asked the exhausted, raspy voice. Dennis felt the blade trembling on his neck.

  Did that fucker kidnap Muramasa?!

  “Did you–” the voice continued.

  Dennis didn’t listen to the yapping. A smallest movement, just a fraction of an inch in the direction of the far-away target and the world slowed down to a halt.

  It didn’t, actually. For one, the effect of his buff wasn’t that strong. For another, the increase to the speed of thought didn’t fuck with his sense of time. He just liked to pretend that the world slowed down. It was functionally the same.

  He stood up almost leisurely, gently moving the blade out of the way with the palm of his hand, careful to not get cut. He doubted the guy could even perceive the movement. It was faster than a blink. Much faster.

  A tiny step, and Dennis’ dagger entered the guy’s neck, piercing the brain. The dude didn’t even finish spelling that prolonged ‘you’ before he died.

  The buff dropped. The dude dropped. Dennis stood alone in a room with two corpses.

  Despite having what was possibly the sharpest mind that was humanely possible even without his buff, the seconds stretched one after another and he still couldn’t process what just happened. His mind was just blank, and no amount of speed of thought helped when there were no thoughts to speed up. So he just stood there in place, frozen.

  “What the fuck?” he voiced the first fully formed thought he had.

  He looked at the bloodied dagger in his hand. At the dead guy on the floor. It was probably Gareth.

  “What,” he said slower, as if empathising the words more would make the world answer to him. “The fuck?”

  It was just… pure instinct. He had a blade to his neck. It was a fight. It was as if only now Dennis properly woke up.

  Gareth was dead. Was that him? Probably. It made no sense for there to be yet another stranded survivor. Well, he wasn’t doing much surviving right now. The guy didn’t look like much, to be honest. On the older side, maybe in his forties, and dressed like a hobo, with Dennis’ katana still in his hand.

  Absentmindedly, he cleaned his dagger and sheathed the sword.

  This… complicated things.

  “Fucking hell…” Dennis whispered. “Why the heck would you even do that?! In what world does it feel like a good idea to just casually threaten a sleeping person?! I even drew the dicks for you, dude. The dicks!”

  Gareth did not answer, being dead. A small puddle of blood formed beneath him, but the bleeding quickly stopped. Things just didn’t bleed much in this world.

  “Fuck…” Dennis sat back on the couch, kicking up a small dust cloud.

  Dennis didn’t mind killing the guy too much. Okay, no, that wasn’t true, the problem was that he wasn’t sure if he should mind. Threatening someone was villain-ish, but it could also be just a casual anti-hero behaviour or even a misunderstanding. The dude was asking something about Lily’s body, after all. And Dennis really, really didn’t like that he wasn’t sure if the kill was justified or not. He shouldn’t have done it. Killing first and asking questions later was firmly against everything he wanted to be. It was just… a wrong move.

  And therein lay the problem.

  He killed the guy by accident. It was just… an instinct. Like slapping a mosquito. Sure, he was a bit angry about his sword and the wake up in general but those things happened in the background. Just idle thoughts that he had sometimes during a fight. And the moment he felt a blade touch his neck, he was in his fighting mode.

  His fighting instincts were just too good. He was suffering from his own excellence.

  “I should start putting up a sign or something,” he mused. “Do not disturb while asleep. Mind the stabbing range.”

  Welp, lesson learned, he guessed. Next time he’d put up a sign. Or write a note? He wasn’t expecting that accidental stabbing could become a problem but now that he knew about it it would be manageable. In a way, Gareth died so that Dennis would be able to avoid any dubiously moral accidental murders in the future, so it was a noble death, and totally not in vain. Sort of. Kind of. Now the question was, should he assume that the dude was a villain, like, retroactively, or should he use this moment as a cool background story, like when a hero punched someone to death when young and in a fit of rage and then act all repentant-ish about it? Obviously, for the second option, the death had to be sympathetic and justified, but it kind of was if you looked at it from the right angle so… Hmm…

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  He’d decide on his way to the next town. Without Gareth there was nothing else holding him here. It was a damn shame that his source of information stabbed itself, but that was just how things happened sometimes.

  He examined the guy more carefully, checking the pockets in case he was actually an alchemist and had some healing potions or something, or maybe a healing amulet. The only things he found were a wedding ring, a wallet, and some change. And upon closer inspection, yeah, the dude was clearly a hobo. Somewhere around the second level? And in dire need of a barber.

  Wait.

  Dennis groaned.

  “Dude, how the fuck am I supposed to drag two bodies around?” he whined. The corpse didn’t answer. “Do people just not die when killed here? But the Arm died! Lily even leveled up from that thing! I stabbed your brain!”

  Dennis was desperately scared of stepping away from the body now. If Heroic Senses would tell him that he had a new target to save in the form of a dead hobo, he would lose his mind. It would turn the whole situation around its head, it would strip him of a nice and edgy backstory and double or even triple his workload, and Lily already weighed enough that he would suggest she lose some after he resurrected her. It would be a karmic injustice of the highest order. What did he do to deserve that? Nothing. He’d have to find a fucking cart to drag them all. It was a horror.

  “Please stay dead,” he begged and took a small step back. Nothing happened. But he was close enough that even Lily didn’t start triggering the skill yet, so…

  Should he stab the guy a few times more, just to be sure?

  No. No… That would be cheating, and true heroes didn’t just look the other way when saving someone wasn’t convenient. Fuck.

  “Please please please stay dead,” he pleaded, taking another step. Still nothing.

  Maybe just a little stab? He didn’t decide yet if mutilating corpses was heroic or not, but surely it was fine if it was a corpse of a villain? Ugh.

  He took another step. The skill registered Lily as a valid target, but only her. The hobo was not savable.

  “Oh thank god–”

  The corpse twitched.

  The high-pitched squeal in the room was almost deafening, but actually it didn’t happen at all. The fact that the body was outside the stabbing range saved it from further mutilation.

  “What the actual fuc–”

  The corpse twitched again. Its eyes opened wide and the jaw almost unhinged as if in a silent scream. The body arched back like from a seizure as the puddle of blood flew back inside the wound. The hole that he made with his dagger closed as if it was never there.

  Then everything stopped as the body relaxed and fell down on the floor with a quiet thud. Dennis didn’t dare to move or breathe, torn between running the fuck away and stabbing the dude again.

  Then the coughing started.

  “What in the actual flying fuck is happening here?!” Dennis had a feeling that he was kinda repeating himself, but the situation felt deserving of such recognition.

  The hobo sat up, still in a fit of coughing. Dennis could see small splatters of blood covering the floor with every cough.

  He waited patiently for the guy to be done with it, meanwhile trying to think up some sort of explanation. Option one, the kinda-undeadness here made people outright immortal. Didn’t mesh with the fact that Lily still looked more dead than alive. Option two, damage operated more on the ‘health points’ logic than ‘stab in the brain’ logic. If they didn’t have a heartbeat or a need to breathe, then the brain wasn’t that important either in the grand scheme of things. It was doubly so for Gareth, the dude didn’t use it much, threatening Dennis like that. Not bad for a theory, but it didn’t explain the regeneration. Option three, it was a skill, but that wouldn’t make sense since Gareth felt so weak. Honestly, Dennis was being generous when gauging him as a second level. Too weak for a skill selection. Option four, the dude wasn’t human in the first place so the rules didn’t apply to him. A demon, perhaps? Oh shit, he was a ghost. This whole mirror-world business was peak ghost material. Of course empty streets filled with silence and echoes of reality would be haunted by ghosts. Meeting one sooner or later was inevitable. And of course ghosts were immune to slashing damage. Or piercing? It was piercing alright, in this case.

  He slowly unsheathed his katana again with his left hand, while taking out the dagger with the right. It’s been a while since he dual wielded. The mobility of his right wrist just didn’t allow that yet, and the strength of his grip was kinda fucked, but even in that state it should be enough for what he planned. And did he imagine it, or was his grip firmer than it used to be?

  Gareth’s ghost was about done with the coughing. Its eyes rose and the thing froze like a deer in the headlights, seeing Dennis preparing his special ghost-fighting stance.

  He widened his legs and straightened his spine. He rolled his shoulders. Slowly, almost ritualistically, he raised the katana vertically in front of himself in a way that would split the ghost in two by the trick of perspective. The creature didn’t dare to breathe, enraptured by his performance. Dennis moved his right hand in a wide arc, slowly placing the dagger horizontally behind the sword, creating something like a crosshair that aimed at the demon. Or a ghost? Demon-ghost.

  He made a cross.

  “Begone, foul demon,” he intoned.

  The creature gasped. It was working.

  It wasn’t working enough. The ghost was still there.

  “Begone!” he shouted. He just needed to put more faith in the act.

  “Wha–”

  “Begone!”

  “I’m–”

  “Begone!” he shouted for the third time, really working his lungs.

  Three times were when it was supposed to work, right? It was the magic number. Or the holy number? He wasn’t particularly religious, but he was pretty sure that the number three was, like, the thing. It was a damn shame that the church stat was eaten or something, the thing would’ve surely been useful right now.

  Awkward silence stretched in the room. The creature gulped under Dennis’ righteous glare. Dennis glared harder.

  Time passed. No one moved.

  It broke eye contact first. Dennis was winning.

  “I’m sorry, can I–”

  “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

  Dennis knew, in fact, only one prayer. It was probably the wrong pick for an exorcism, but he was running out of options here. The ghost was highly resistant to spiritual damage, so Dennis had to use everything that he had, wrong option or not. And anyway, it seemed to be working at least a little bit since Gareth shut up and was listening with rapt attention. Dennis was trying to infuse the meaning of the prayer with exorcistic vibes, hopeful that the way the magic worked in this world would help him out. It was still an untested theory, but again, he was just throwing shit at the wall at this point, trying to see what would stick.

  “...Amen.” Dennis finished.

  “Amen,” Gareth replied. There was a small relieved smile on his face.

  “Dude, you’re not supposed to say that.”

  Starry-Eyed Hero

  by QuiteTheSlacker

  Ten year old Astra has always dreamed of reaching the stars.

  As a humble farm boy living in the countryside, Astra's been surrounded by forests and flowing rivers his entire life. It's a routine full of family fun, community, and good ol' hard work... but sometimes, he'd lay on the grass at night and gaze out toward those bright stars above.

  He'd reach out with his hands, and he felt a yearning to see them: to form a bond crossed in starlight, regardless of the vast space between. Thus was a wish sent to the cosmos. One day, he too would shine just as bright.

  That opportunity would soon come in the form of a galaxy-wide competition for the chance to enter the most prestigious school in the milky way, Excelsior Academy, where noble children from the kingdoms of the Twelve Constellations are raised to become leaders, trailblazers, and most importantly warriors against meteoric monsters from beyond the universe. The encroaching slither of the Constellars.

  Astra doesn't have a special bloodline, belong to a royal house, nor is he the chosen one. But against all these kids with powerful backgrounds and fated destinies, Astra has only one wish.

  To shine bright as a starry-eyed hero.