There was something different about this level up. Unlike the previous ones, he felt it. Like a bubble that popped and in doing so transformed into a bigger bubble. Like walking on ice when it cracked and you fell down into the lake, a flat surface turning into something that had depth, something in which you can drown when before you didn’t even realize that that was an option. Like ink on paper becoming a word, or a string of numbers becoming a sequence. Something changed in him, but it was nothing that he could point at. Different people described how they perceived levels differently. Some saw them as weight in the world, some as realness, and some as meaningfulness. It was like a protagonist vibe, a feeling of how important someone was, though there was no reference for what. It was a measure of objective importance, as if importance could exist without relation to anything.

  Nothing changed, but now Dennis was more Dennis than he was a minute before.

  Leveling up was a breakthrough. A moment when critical mass was reached, and all that he was transformed into the exact same thing.

  Maybe there wasn’t anything different about this level up. What was different was Dennis himself, and the circumstances around him. This was the first time when he leveled not in a fight. He was calm, and in an observant mood, and his new supernatural senses were way better than before. The world around him was silent not just in the way that there was no sound, but on almost all levels, and perceiving even the smallest flicker was so easy when he was surrounded only by darkness. He could see himself just not noticing the change in the heat of battle. It was subtle, if you didn’t look.

  It was weird, to be more Dennis than he was.

  Weird metaphysical changes aside, he now had the points to spend.

  Level: 5

  Mana: 0 / 0

  Strength: 6

  Dexterity: 20

  Constitution: 8

  Mind: 20

  Soul: 0

  Skills: Heroic Dash 7

  Free points: 6

  For the first time, he wasn’t sure what was the best course of action. When he just started on this path, he knew that his build would be, well… not good. That was fine, because any and all tradeoffs were fine and acceptable for the true chance of becoming the thing that he loved the most. The only thing that he loved, honestly. He didn’t regret picking Heroic Dash either. It wasn’t The Speedforce, but it was the best option he had, and it was great when he could actually use the skill.

  But his build was still shit. Objective garbage, carried by luck and ridiculous fighting prowess that he pulled out his ass. His stat sheet might as well just say ‘good at fighting’ because that thing still felt like the only thing that truly mattered. Yeah, he was fast, but he might as well assign his stats randomly because the thing that truly carried him wasn’t even on his stat sheet. It was a bit annoying, but more importantly, it had to change.

  He sacrificed effectiveness for being fast, but shitty build wasn’t an excuse for being dumb. It was the opposite, really. The point of min-maxing wasn’t to just hope that it will somehow work out, it was to make it work. Right now he was relying on his fighting talent, and he will continue relying on it because he wasn’t a dumbass who ignored cheats because of pride or whatever, but it wouldn’t carry him forever. Dennis brushed with death way too many times to believe himself invincible.

  His talent was carrying him in these early levels, but he must make his build work before it was too late. Fighting with the Arm was a wake up call, of sorts. Good fighting instincts won’t help him against overwhelming power, and to level up he must be able to defeat opponents like that. He needed overwhelming power of his own, not just a good idea of when to dodge or where to hit. There was no respec button, and he needed his build to start working, the sooner the better.

  Of course, he won’t do something as silly as putting points in Strength. He was already firmly locked in increasing his speed, doing anything else at this point would be incredibly idiotic because of the nature of stat growth, and he was fine with putting everything in speed, more than fine, that was the whole idea, but how exactly will that work out? What was the smartest way to make it work?

  The core components of a fight were offence and defence. Kill your opponent and not die, and you’ve won. Thankfully, being fast as fuck worked for both. He could abuse his speed to generate force, and he could dodge everything as long as he was quick enough. The only question was how to get quick enough, because despite the simplicity of the build he had more than one way of doing it.

  First was to dump everything in his skill. Annoyingly conditional, but maybe the conditions could be loosened. Would give him the most speed possible for every point, but only when the skill was active.

  Second was to split the points between Mind and Dexterity. Less speed, but way more reliable. His skill would also scale in power from that since stat increases were exponential. Meaning, by having higher base stats he will get more from buffing them.

  Third would be a split between both stats and the skill. Increase his base power a bit, and make the buff stronger a bit. Less risk of fucking something up, a safe choice, but he won’t get much out of it. A coward’s option, though not necessarily a bad one.

  Fourth was a wildcard, and it was increasing Soul. No one but Dennis had passive skills. Lily believed that her skill worked even when she didn’t spend mana on it, it was just really weak. If Dennis remembered correctly, all skills but his had a variable manacost. From that he theorised that it was actually possible for him to add mana to his skill, and mana made skills way stronger. Gary’s skill gave him +5 to Strength, and he didn’t level it up. In the best case scenario it could be that adding mana to his skill would multiply the power of the buff. Give him +24 Dex/Mind instead of +7 for a few moments or something. This was all based on theories and assumptions, but if he was right then he could get ridiculously powerful. After all, a few moments was just enough for a speedster to wipe out all opposition. The whole idea was a bit far-fetched, but it was plausible, and the potential reward could be enormous, so he had to consider it.

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  Also getting himself a Soul sounded like a good thing to do. He could only do so many jokes about not having any.

  He needed to do this the smart way. Firstly, to sacrifice a point for science or not? Eh, you need to do science if you want to have nukes. Dennis wanted his nukes.

  He put a metaphorical fingertip on a metaphorical button, and fed his Soul one free poi–

  It was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. What was he doing here? Why did he leave Lily alone? That Arm on the other roof could see him from here, why the fuck did he risk it? It could attack. What if there are others? He needed to go back. They needed to check out the church again, it was the only–

  Error.

  Refinement process terminated.

  Free points: 6

  God damn it.

  He didn’t need to breathe, but he felt like he almost drowned. He didn’t feel his heartbeat, but he felt like he almost had a heartstroke. If he wasn’t sitting already he would’ve fell on his butt. He laid back on the roof, trying to calm down his nonexistent heart. Despite the concept of temperature seemingly not existing in this world, he felt cold, like something dear and important was taken from him, though he never had it in the first place.

  That was deeply unpleasant. Kinda reminded him of the time when Lily mind-controlled him into being empathetic. But while that one felt just alien and didn’t belong, like putting on glasses with the wrong prescription, trying to raise his Soul stat felt like someone tried to push an eye into his eye socket but couldn’t squeeze it in. He was not a fan of the feeling.

  And, like, what the fuck?

  At least he got his stat point back. Apparently, his jokes about not having a soul were maybe a bit more grounded in reality than he considered. He never bothered thinking about it much, but all stats were quite vital to have. You’ll be a rock without Dexterity and a vegetable without Mind, but since he felt fine he didn’t consider that having a zero in Soul meant anything more than just not having mana.

  Having a system throw errors at you was way less fun when the game you were playing was life, and the character was you. It was, to put it mildly, fucking scary. The stat sheet represented him, and something was broken, he had a broken character. But it wasn’t the character.

  Something was broken in him.

  He chuckled. More news at eleven.

  Did he trade his soul away when he was a kid or what? Was that why he couldn’t increase the stat, he had nothing to increase? He didn’t remember meeting any demons or signing any contracts, though to be fair he didn’t remember much from his childhood. How old was he, before his dad left? Seven, hell maybe even six? Times before that were more like vague impressions than memories.

  Honestly, he could see himself trading his soul away to become the best swordsman in the world or something. It did sound like something the kid-him would do and then forget about it.

  He was a bit bummed that he couldn’t get his hands on some mana to test if he could have the ‘ultimate’ Heroic Dash, but oh well. More points for useful stats then.

  One option eliminated because of the weird system-fuckery, three left. Two, really, because if he was honest with himself he would never pick the safe option. It was there because it was the smart one, but he was playing devil’s advocate just by considering it. Broken overpowered builds weren’t made by picking safe and sensible options. If he wanted safe and sensible, he would’ve been a Sword Saint with balanced stats, not whatever he was right now.

  To increase the stats, or to dump everything in the skill? While he was more or less convinced that he’ll be able to loosen the skill restrictions a bit if he leveled it up, chances were it wouldn’t be anything groundbreaking. A bit more breathing room for picking the routes, or a looser definition for what it meant to be in danger, things like that were his guess. Of course, what he wanted was to magically modify his skill in just working all the time and making him coffee while it was at it, but that was wishful thinking. He was pretty sure that no matter what rules he would be able to loosen–and it was still not actually a fact that he would be able to do that–he would still be tied to the activation requirement, namely having people in danger. What about him? Would he be able to modify the skill to turn it on if he was in danger? He had a strong feeling that no, he wouldn’t be. Saving yourself wasn’t heroic.

  The higher his level, the stronger opponents he would need to beat in order to progress. At some point, if he continued to rely on his skill, the disparity between his buffed and unbuffed state would become too great and he’ll die the moment he’ll lose the buff. Unreliable power was great when you had it, but he would lie if he said that he wasn’t annoyed at how unreliable this power was. Active only when there were people nearby who were in great danger, well surprise, it didn’t happen that often. And at some point he won’t be able to grind solo at all, it just didn’t work like that. And not many people–Lily excluded–were ready to play bait and risk their lives for him to become useful.

  His skill was great. He loved it. But the drawbacks were a big fucking pain in the ass, and he doubted that he could just get rid of them.

  He still had a chance to fallback on just increasing his base stats. Just dump points in Dex and Mind, like he did before. The skill wouldn’t go anywhere, it would still be useful, it would always be useful, but Dennis would finally have more reliable power. Every next stat point was worth more than the last one, raising his highest stats couldn’t be a bad idea. Logically, it was a smart choice.

  Will it make him overpowered?

  The only way a min-max build could work was when the ‘max’ part was so over the top overwhelmingly powerful that it removed his weakness. To be so fast that he couldn’t possibly be hit, so fast that he could end any fight before he could even think about endurance, to throw pebbles so fast that the kinetic energy created explosions upon impact and vaporized everything. His build would never work if he was just ‘pretty fast’. He needed overwhelming speed, because it was the only thing he had. A hammer for all nails. The moment he wouldn’t be fast enough he would die. He was a one trick pony, and if his one trick wasn’t good enough then everything would fall apart.

  Heroic Dash gave two stats for the price of one, and Dennis knew the way an exponential curve looked like. He didn’t know the exact level needed, but he knew what would happen when he would reach that sweet point on the curve. Those who reached that point were gods. Was that what a Sovereign was? Someone who reached that point? Maybe that was the case, he didn’t know yet. Maybe he’ll find out.

  It was risky, but honestly ‘risky’ was pretty much the only thing that he did with his points. High-risk high-reward and all that, and safety was a killer of all min-max builds. It was a coin toss, but he had to toss it. To do anything else was to die slowly, to be stuck at some level where he won’t be able to defeat his enemies. Refuge in audacity was the only way it could work. To outrun explosions, to outrun lightning, to outrun curses, to outrun death itself, he needed the speed.

  Heroic Dash 7 -> Heroic Dash 13

  Oh…

  So, that’s how it worked.

  He could work with that.