Two hours passed, and no ambushes. It was a record.

  It was almost evening, and a big chunk of the path was already covered. Jenny said that it would be less than half an hour before they finally reached the fort. They were much faster since they figured out the routine to dealing with the goblins and the creatures stopped presenting much threat.

  The brothers finished their leveling almost at the same time.

  Gary, the dude who didn’t fucking know that a spear had a pointy end, invested everything in the strength again, getting himself a fuck-total of 29 Strength. And the skill he got?

  Flex The Muscles. It gave him +5 Strength for a few seconds on activation.

  He didn’t need to use the pointy end of the spear. He just waved it like a stick, with one hand, and it turned the goblins into a pulp on contact. Honestly, it looked a bit intimidating.

  Larry got Rebound. If he blocked a hit, he could redirect its force. In essence it meant that every time he blocked something the enemy got an invisible and nasty punch in the face. Not exactly gamechanging, but it would allow him to focus on becoming tankier while still having damage.

  Also, the brothers got a bit better with working together. Their standard tactic was for Gary to destroy anything that approached, and for Larry to block and kill anything that passes through, protecting Gary. At the very end Dennis almost didn’t need to help them anymore. It was a nice combo.

  John didn’t manage to grind much before they reached the fort.

  Everyone was pretty tired at that point, so Dennis was glad to finally see a blessed place of rest and hopefully their future home. Or, heroic base. It was totally going to be his heroic base.

  The fort itself looked like it was everything they hoped for. Dennis had never visited it before, not being that interested in history or, well, going out of his house, so the sight was new for him, even if this was basically the tourist attraction of the region.

  There was nothing but an open space for a good hundred yards around it, and the fort itself was surrounded by a moat, though it wasn’t filled with water. In essence, the fort was just a big square of walls about 50 yards wide and ten yards tall, with weird arrow-shaped walls at the corners. The only entrance to the fort was protected by not just one, but two drawbridges. The first one led to something like a mini-fort, and the other one connected the mini-fort to the main one.

  Unless flying monsters were a thing, the fort was indeed very protectable.

  It was so protectable, in fact, that it was surrounded by what looked like hundreds of goblins who couldn’t get inside. Dennis saw some people on the walls, peeking out but ultimately doing nothing.

  “Well,” Ness said with a blank face. “That was a good try. Let’s go back, yes? Very quietly?”

  “There’s people stuck inside,” John said, frowning. “It’s a blessing that these creatures didn’t figure out how to make ladders.”

  “The moment at least one of these fucks sniffs in the direction of our group we’re dead,” Ness whispered, gesturing at the dozens of people who stood some distance away from them. “This is not the safety we were seeking. We need to get the fuck out from here.”

  “It’s still not a swarm,” Jenny said. “More like a gathering place for every local goblin? I bet my grandpa could kill all of them before they reached us, with some preparation. And we do have guns.”

  “I bet I’ll get level four if I kill all of them,” Dennis said, trying to count the small horde that surrounded the fort. Definitely a hundred, no, two hundreds. Three? They were all green and blurred like fucking zebras, making counting difficult.

  “And how, pray tell, are you going to accomplish this?” Ness asked. “Do the people in the fort count as ‘savable’ for your skill to trigger?”

  “They actually do,” he nodded. “But it will work only as long as I try to reach them, so I can’t exactly make a pitstop around the fort to kill everything, or I’ll lose the buff. Also, even with the buff, throwing myself at all of the goblins would be pretty risky. They’re total pushovers though so maybe that’s an option.”

  “I think guns are the answer,” the husband-guy said. Huh, he wasn’t much of a talker, since Dennis couldn’t honestly even remember his name after the whole day of traveling together. “Find a good position and shoot down everything together.”

  “With what firepower?” Ness asked. “Of at most a dozen people armed with pistols? We didn’t take any heavy weapons. They’ll overrun us with bodies.”

  “We should leave,” Nancy said, agreeing with Ness. “Find a place to hide for the night, preferably away from here. Every second we stay here we risk being discovered, and it’s a death sentence.”

  “Nah,” Dennis said casually, making a few heads turn at him. “We’re gonna save everyone.”

  “How, exactly?” Ness asked skeptically.

  “Dunno,” he shrugged. “Give me a second.”

  Leaving wasn’t really an option in his mind. Those people in the fort activated his skill, he could feel it, and that meant that they were in a dire need of saving. He was the hero, so he would save everyone. The question was how.

  Theoretically, he could kill every goblin alone under the effect of his buff. He’d give it maybe twenty percent confidence? But the problem was that the buff wouldn’t work like that. He was given more speed to reach the people, not to kill the goblins. The moment he starts slaughtering the goblins the buff would drop, and Dennis would absolutely die without it. He could still die with it, but that was besides the point. Goblins were pushovers, so he’ll manage.

  Trying to gun down the horde was not really an option, they didn’t have enough firepower. Finding a vantage point? Or a good defensible position? He looked around, but it was mostly one or two-story houses and shops for tourists, with big windows and trademarked American walls that wouldn’t really hold under assault.

  They could maybe try to distract the goblins and then sneak into the fort? That is if the people inside would open the gates, and the goblins would take the bait, and they would manage to sneak in a few dozen people under their noses… As far as plans went, that one was shit.

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  Guns were out, what about the skills? Gary was a beast in the right situation, capable of mowing down the goblins like grass, but he wasn’t mobile and one hit would kill the guy. Ness could snipe down the creatures not much worse than Richard did, but still worse, and both the mana and the arrows were a limited resource, clearly not enough for the tide of green murderiness. Lily…

  Hmm.

  With enough time Lily would kill them all. She was a fucking stealth archer, or an assassin. With a good hiding place to regain her mana the girl had the best chances of killing hundreds of goblins out of all of them bar Dennis. That would take her a long time though, and it would be totally like kicking a hornets nest.

  The useless group… Melee people were useless here. All they could do was hide or provide more bodies to be saved.

  Which wasn’t that useless, to think about it. If they could spread everyone around the fort then Dennis would have his buff constantly on, because all of those people would be in the process of being swarmed by the goblins. He would be able to run pretty much anywhere at full speed, with a low cost of killing everyone who would be placed as a saving target.

  Not heroic enough, but the plan had potential. If he could find a way to force his buff to work around all of the fort then killing all the goblins would be possible, if risky. He just needed a target that would be constantly in danger, everywhere, and yet safe.

  He had an idea.

  “Lily,” he said. “For how long can you stay invisible? Precisely?”

  “Umm,” the girl was curling her fingers, clearly doing math in her head. “It’s… one hundred and twelve? Almost two minutes.”

  “I want to test something,” he said. “Run as fast as you can to the goblins while invisible, and then come back. Can you do it?”

  “Of course!” she said, disappearing.

  “No!” Nancy struggled to not shout. “What the hell do you think you’re–”

  He hit her with the blunt side of his sword hard enough to leave a bruise. Her husband started protesting so he also got a smack. The blade flew in a graceful motion, not dissimilar to how Dennis chopped up the goblins. Hitting people was easy. If he knew how good he was with fighting before in his life, he would’ve probably been a bully. Or a bully protector? The one who bullied the bullies.

  “Shut up,” he said. “I need to concentrate.”

  He was staring at the horde of goblins intently.

  Lily was a little girl. The little girl. Very little, very defenceless, very girl. She was somewhere among hundreds of goblins. Or she would be any second now. Unsafe. Maybe she would drop her invisibility by accident. Maybe the goblins loved using bear traps everywhere. There was no way a little girl that was surrounded by hundreds of monsters didn’t need saving. She didn’t have a way to defend herself. She was in danger.

  And most importantly, he didn’t know where exactly she was. But he knew for a fact that she was somewhere there.

  There was an invisible girl in a lot of danger somewhere in the area. He should rush there. He should find her. He should check every corner around the whole fort and save her.

  He pushed at his skill, and he felt it almost grudging back at him.

  It was not amused. It did not like what he was trying to pull off.

  But the wording of the skill was vague, like all the system shit was vague, and Dennis felt that he could haggle. Make a case. Convince it.

  It did not like it at all.

  But the girl was unsafe. Dennis knew where she was, in general.

  But she would come back, as instructed. It’s not like she was trapped there somewhere.

  But what if she was? What if she, as kids did, fucked up, miscalculated her mana and would drop her invisibility right in the middle of those goblins? What if she stumbled and couldn’t get up?

  It was unlikely. An invisible girl who practiced her skill for more than a few hours would surely know how to sneak safely.

  But she couldn’t account for anything, right? There were risks. She was unsafe.

  But will he really try to save her? No, he just wanted to kill the goblins while abusing the loophole. He can’t have the buff without trying to save people.

  But she is in danger! Are you a fucking heroic skill or a lawyer?!

  But will he really try to save her?

  Of course he will. By killing all the goblins.

  That’s not enough.

  Okay, he will also look out for her. Try to find her, and to protect when he would.

  Dennis had no idea how the skills worked, but he felt that they were way more than just some words on a stat sheet. More than even magic. This internal debate was exactly what it was – an internal debate, but it felt like it was backed up by the force that held reality together. It was a clashing of ideas, but the ideas were real and had weight. No, they had weight. The same weight that every living person and goblin now had, the same weight that fueled his levels.

  And Dennis felt that his weight lessened as he pushed against the skill. He literally lost a chunk of the accumulated exp.

  And he won the argument.

  The conceptual distribution of a skill was modified.

  Skill description updated.

  Heroic Dash 7.

  Passive. Unique.

  Just save everyone. Maybe apply a bit of triage.

  Effect: +7 Mind, +7 Dexterity while reaching an ally to save them.

  Effect: +7 Mind, +7 Dexterity while trying to reach an ally to save them.

  Dennis smiled.

  It was only right.

  A hero didn’t need to see who he needed to save in order to rush and help.

  He looked at the goblins. At every nook and cranny where Lily could be. Yes, within reason, there was no point at looking for places like the other side of the fort, but…

  He felt it. The skill activated, infusing him with the pure speed needed to check every single one of them.

  If Lily doesn’t return soon, the skill would stay active. It would stay active until he found her, or until he would be reasonably sure that she wasn’t there.

  He felt something poke at his back.

  He turned his head slowly, looking at the smiling nightmare that could assassinate everyone in their group, including him.

  Such a bullshit skill.

  “So,” Lily said. “Did it help?”

  Nancy released a relieved sigh at seeing the girl, still clutching her hurt shoulder.

  “It totally did,” Dennis said. “I have a plan. We can abuse the shit out of the system. Also, Jenny?”

  “Yes?”

  “Skills can be modified if you think at them hard enough, and it costs exp to do it. You should probably write that down in your notes.”

  “You modified your skill?” John asked.

  Dennis nodded.

  “So, here’s what I’m thinking…”