He decided to decide later.

  As per usual, when he was in a tight spot and wasn’t sure what the correct course of action was, the answer was to stall. It was a great tactic, and half the time whatever problem he was worried about solved itself without his help after just a bit of waiting.

  Not that he was going to do nothing at all, just that he decided not to commit to any course of action before he explored a few options that might help with choosing. Namely, talking to the girl who he will or will not abandon since she might have some opinion on the topic. He might even listen to her for a change.

  So he was going back, for now. A quick conversation before he started his journey, with or without Lily, was necessary. Not because he was that interested in what she had to say, but because leaving without telling her anything just felt wrong. It might be because of his heroic senses warning him from doing a villainous action, or he might be developing some kind of conscience, he didn’t know. But imagining her just sitting alone on that couch, waiting for him like Hatico while her whole existence was slowly eroded into nothingness…

  The world skipped a beat.

  Error.

  Revaluation process terminated.

  “Oh shut the fuck up,” he muttered, barely stumbling from the new annoyance that was quickly becoming an old one.

  The way back was taking a long fucking time. He was walking for almost two hours and yet he was still barely reaching the edge of the town. He was honestly impressed with himself, because what was at most fifteen minutes of buffed running turned into a long, boring way back that would take hours of walking. Hours where he had nothing to do but to think, and the lack of choices and general hopelessness of their situation steered his thoughts into weird directions. Like worrying about pointless things.

  Someone was dying right now. And he was walking in the opposite direction, wasting hours–

  Erro–

  “Well fuck you too!”

  And worrying about pointless things triggered this stupid-fucking-dumb error like nothing else, and aside from being generally annoying because it was spammy, the thing felt weird. Every time it was like his insides were trying to rearrange themselves before failing and snapping back and he did not like the experience.

  It wasn’t like him, worrying about what-ifs and… and stuff. It wasn’t like him to worry about stuff. He just didn’t do that. Dennis was a simple, focused person who always knew exactly what he wanted and never had doubts. He didn’t lose any sleep when he decided to skip university, he was never bothered by the fact that he lived in his mom’s basement, he never regretted… anything at all. He didn’t regret anything, ever, it was just not a thing that he did. Lost friendships and ruined relationships? Those things didn’t happen to him, because he never cared.

  But this place, while generously donating him exp–thank you very much–was eating at him just fucking right to steer his thoughts in a weird direction. It was just the vibe. The vibe was right. He was at his core an optimistic person, but objectively the future seemed a bit too bleak even for him, and there was something in the air that turned him into a worrywart. The atmosphere and just the general ambience of this place seemed like the best possible background for some kind of depressing alt rock clip, and he was not immune to the mood.

  Not that he was depressed or anything, but he may have gotten a touch melancholic through the hours.

  Erro–

  And being a touch melancholic was apparently enough to spam this thing like nothing else. Couldn’t it get a hint? Whatever the system was trying to do, it wasn’t working. It was frequent and annoying enough that he started to get used to the thing.

  The most maddening was the fact that he had a pretty good guess for what it was. Dennis wasn’t stupid, he could connect the dots, and they lined up. The thing liked to trigger when he thought about, well, stuff, and it said that it failed the ‘Revaluation process’. He knew that stats could be increased through use, he did that already with his Constitution, and there already existed another kind of error with the system, the one he triggered by trying to put a point into his Soul. That time it was a ‘Refinement process’. He didn’t have to be a genius to realize what was happening.

  The big fat zero in his Soul was trying to grow into one, and the system was throwing a fit because it couldn’t turn nothing into a thing, or something along those lines. Or maybe stats could have fractions and he had, like, 99% of a point of a soul and there was some kind of hard limit. Or… Okay, he didn’t know the actual nature of the error, why it didn’t work, but he was pretty sure about his guess for why it happened in the first place.

  Was he doing any soul-growing activities lately? He couldn’t remember anything specific that he could point a finger at. It could be that he talked to more people than usual, or saved some lives, or even enjoyed his meditative goblin-slaying walks. He didn’t know what the Soul even did, aside from the fact that thinking melancholic thoughts counted as a trigger for advancement. But why then no one reported any spontaneous Soul growth in the fort if melancholy was all it took? There was a lot of melancholy to go around there, with people constantly whining about their dead children who were at school when the apocalypse happened and whatnot.

  Though to be fair the average amount of Soul was 10, so maybe the people in the fort needed to do more than just cry about their dead wives to raise it. Maybe do some soul-searching or something, or have a spiritual journey. He, on the other hand, had nothing, so maybe just sneezing too loudly or scratching his butt weirdly was enough to make the stat grow a little bit.

  Actually, he should just ask Lily about what the Soul did. If he could hear his Dexterity, she definitely heard her Soul. The girl had 30 fucking points there, for god’s sake.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He noted the feeling of being sharpened by the emptiness abating a little as he passed one of the houses that started to crop up at the edge of town. He was seeing more and more of them on the way, and the more things surrounded him the less oppressive the feeling became, like there was some sort of limit to how much this weird aura could eat at a time. Proximity to other objects mattered, even as unimportant as a random facsimile of a house. Was this the reason why the Arms hung around the landmarks? The emptiness aura would be the weakest there, maybe even close to nonexistent, so if they wanted to not dissolve into nothingness they kind of had to.

  A new savable target appeared in his mind, almost straight ahead of him, somewhere in the town.

  Goddamnit, Lily. Couldn’t she just sit in one place for a few hours? How did she even manage to find trouble in a place devoid of it except for the few very exact and known places that were easily avoidable? Or was this again the case where she just spontaneously became a ‘savable person’ for no apparent reason, like the last time? He still had no idea what the deal was with that one.

  Oh well, at least he could hitchhike a quick trip for the rest of the way back. The constant flood of errors kind of ruined his relaxing and meditative walk, for now. It wasn’t even relaxing now, so he was glad for a change of pace.

  One step, he was walking as usual, and the other he wasn’t there. A small dust cloud that was rapidly dissolving in the air was the only indicator of his passing.

  He dismissed a quick thought about trying to play twenty questions with definitions of danger to figure out what was happening to the girl, because fuck that, but also there was no point as he was going there as fast as he could either way. For now, he just basked in the feeling of true speed, still feeling wonder and excitement as he travelled through the world as fast as a bullet.

  Okay, no, he was definitely not as fast as a bullet, but it felt like he was in the realm of a bullet. Maybe he could catch them now? See them fly? Parry them with a sword like a jedi? He couldn’t stop grinning as he imagined it. This feeling was addicting, truly. He’ll never get bored of it.

  How long would it take him to reach Lily now? A few minutes, or maybe even less? The journey that was going to take at least an hour more cut into minutes, just like that. He was so glad that he didn’t take that stupid Sword Saint skill. No way it would’ve let him create a global targeting subskill, if it was even possible, there was nothing sword-saintly in finding people to hero at. The only reason he could just snap like that into superspeed to actually save someone and not just show off was because he stayed true to the hero path. And it was amazing. And he was enjoying every single second of it.

  He wasn’t even getting that winded from the few minutes of running. Bursts of intense exertion were a familiar territory for him at this point and he was getting better at pacing himself, at keeping consistently high speed all the way and not only at the start. Sure, he was still getting tired, but the low background hum of his Constitution was getting easier to hear, to understand when he had a bit more juice to push and when he should slow down a bit to not burn out. The way things were going, he was pretty sure he was due to hear another ding of the stat increasing on its own.

  He relished the feeling with a smile on his face as he ran.

  He got a bit more worried when he realized that he wasn’t running towards the house where they stayed. In fact, his target was a bit off to the right, not that far away, but…

  He was approaching the town center.

  He stopped smiling as his gut told him to slow down, because he was pretty sure he was running straight towards the statue.

  He didn’t slow down, of course, but fighting the Arm again was not on his menu yet. He wasn’t sure if he would win, and he’d like one more level before he tried, just to be sure.

  What the fuck was Lily doing there?! Or was it someone else?

  He didn’t have much time to worry about running head first into a den of the unbeatable calamity. With his speed, he had just ten seconds or so. With his Mind, it was a lot, but he purposefully tried to focus and not concentrate on what-ifs lest the stupid error killed him by appearing at the unfortunate time.

  He turned a corner and finally saw the town center. Between one step and the next, his eyes took a snapshot of the scene and his mind went into overdrive, because what the fuck.

  The house at which the Arm used to chill was demolished. Straight up exploded into pieces, and the few nearby houses also didn’t look that good. The shockwave–and there had to be one hell of a shockwave–clearly had a direction, tearing up the ground from where the Arm was and reaching as far as the middle of the town square, covering a good few dozen yards. By the look of it, it seemed that One-Punch Man himself got behind the Arm and did one of his serious punches, the ones that could split the sky. Well, maybe not those, but he couldn’t deny that there was some serious firepower in whatever obliterated the monster.

  Because it seemed pretty obliterated to Dennis.

  The Arm was on the other side of the town square, embedded into a wall. Its head was missing, as was the upper part of its torso and its left arm. The monster felt inert to Dennis’ senses, not different from any random pebble. It was clearly, very very dead. Onepunched into oblivion.

  Its right arm was covered in blood though. And the thing didn’t bleed, as far as Dennis knew.

  His target wasn’t there. The skill directed him behind the rubble of the destroyed house, to the other side of where the explosion was directed. He approached warily, almost hesitant to speed up, just allowing his legs to move him there slowly, one step at a time. In a weird dichotomy, he was there just in a few breaths, his buff never turning off and thus making even the slowest walk comparable to a mad sprint. Unless he purposefully focused on moving slowly his movements were supernaturally fast, and he wasn’t focusing on anything right now but the view in front of him. He was still a speedster, even dazed as he was.

  His mind was blank. He didn’t allow any thoughts to appear in fear of being spammed by the fucking error. The situation seemed suitable for that. He could say that he approached Zen. Or he was just numb.

  He stood behind the destroyed building, looking at the body.

  That was Lily alright. Not a random dude. Suspicion confirmed and all that.

  “Idiot,” he muttered, approaching her. “You absolute fucking moron.”

  She was lying face down on the ground, in a puddle of blood. There was a big splat of it on the wall behind her. The whole left side of her torso was one big bloody mess, but at least he couldn’t see any guts around and all her limbs were still attached to the body. He quickly glanced back at the ruins of the building, his mind already at work constructing the most probable sequence of events that happened.

  The Arm used to sit on the roof. Lily figured out some new and busted way to use her busted skill. She had to sneak behind the monster to attack. The attack was too slow, the Arm’s reaction speed too high, and it managed to hit back before being oneshotted. He could almost see the trajectory that her body took before hitting the wall and bouncing to the ground. There were small droplets of blood on the ground along the path of her flight. He didn’t know why he focused on those the most. They were just there.

  His skill was still working.

  He turned her body around as gently as he could, afraid of accidentally causing more damage. You weren’t supposed to move people who potentially had back or head trauma, right? She had all the trauma. But what the fuck was he supposed to do?

  Her eyes were closed. She didn’t respond to her name, or the gentle taps on the cheek.

  But his skill was still working.

  She didn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel her pulse.

  But his skill was still working.

  There was a lot of blood. He could see a rib poking out. A fucking rib.

  She looked pretty dead.

  And it felt like she leveled up.