Chương 102: Saving the maiden, heroically

Heroic Senses was a weird skill. For one, it wasn't actually a skill, but a budded subskill, whatever that meant. Not an entity on its own, but a part of Heroic Dash, distinct enough to get its own name. He couldn't level it up, and he couldn't really hear it the same way he could hear his main skill. At most, it was like an echo, a shadow of Heroic Dash frozen in a frame. In a way, it made sense that he couldn't talk to it. Talking to it was like trying to talk to his main skill's hand.

The thing could wiggle and appear sentient, but it was just a reflection. It wasn't a Concept, if he applied Ellie's magic fundamentals as a way to explain what he was experiencing. Heroic Senses. Passive. Part of Heroic Dash. An arrow can't fly without direction, and a hero can't exist without people to save. Effect: Pericognition to find those who need saving. Maybe that was the reason why he couldn't get a meaningful conversation out of Kriya.

Not because it was low level, but because he was trying to speak to a reflection of something greater and interpreting the wiggles as something they weren't. What was strange was that he could level up Kriya with points if he wanted, unlike Heroic Senses. He never tried doing that, but pretty much everyone he knew had skills that were a part of this or that thing, and they were able to put points in them without any trouble.

Also, those 'partial' skills weren't that hard to level up on their own without using any points, and that was also just something that didn't happen with Heroic Senses or Heroic Dash. More questions for El'el. Or Ellie? Which did she prefer? Since when did he have so many questions? Ugh, he had no idea why the hell he was worrying about something as silly as that. He'd just stick to calling her El'el in his head.

One might think he was wasting time musing about skills when there was an emergency critical enough to trigger Heroic Senses. Someone was in mortal danger – that was what the automatic ping usually meant. But he really wasn't. He was fast as fuck. Mary was still frozen in the middle of her speech, a worried expression on her face as she looked with unfocused eyes at something he couldn't see. Lily was stuck eating syrup with a spoon.

The pancake floated sadly on the side of her plate, a lonely boat in the ocean of sweet, used only as a flavorful topping for the main dish which was basically sugar in liquid form. This was a girl who mind-controlled her allies to steal a bag of M&M's all for herself because she didn't want to share. The source of the ping was close. Of course, everything was close by his standards, but this one was, like, actually close.

It felt like it was just a step away, which probably meant that whatever was happening, it was happening in a mile radius if not even closer. Dennis finished his breakfast, a mild diversion too inconsequential for his skill to worry about. The taste of the pancakes was a bit weird, not exactly what he remembered them to be. Too bland, if he tried to use the right word. His mom usually made them from premixed stuff that she bought in a store – that was probably the difference.

He doubted that the ones he was eating were made with the full power of soulless industrialized cooking. If anything, Heroic Dash was amused. As much as it was a 'hero' skill, focused on saving people, it was also equally a 'speedster' skill. Eating in superspeed while pretending that you weren't in a rush was the thing. It was an essential part of what differentiated superspeed from just being fast. Doing that, some-fucking-how, was firmly inside the Concept's scope. His skill was weird, come to think of it.

To embody the Concept of 'saving people quickly' was a bit out there… A bit niche. Kind of explained the 'unique' tag. Were all Concepts unique? They had to be, right? Another question for El'el that he never bothered to ask. Good thing he was on his way to meet her. Or it could be another random stuck-in-a-dungeon party, like when it happened with Mary, but he doubted that was the case.

Finishing his food, he picked up Muramasa and moved, bending physics and common sense by not exploding everything around him with an awkward shockwave. Was he even making any sounds aside from 'normal' ones? At the speed he was moving he wasn't even supposed to be able to open or close doors without smashing them off the hinges, and yet he simply didn't have any problems like that.

Honestly, while Dexterity wasn't Speedforce, refusing to give him lightning powers or super regeneration or stuff like that, sometimes it was remarkably close. It was the idea of movement, and so he moved however the fuck he wanted. Couldn't fly though. That was weird, come to think of it. He was out of the mansion in a moment, blurring between the busy streets of NLA. If people noticed him when he passed them, they didn't react. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site.

Support the author by reading it there. Probably. He wasn't going to stay and wait for fucking seconds to check if that guy he passed acknowledged him or not. He didn't have to move that far. In barely a breath, he was entering another mansion a few streets away. Barely a fifteen-minute walk without the superspeed. People loved their mansions.

Reduced property prices after at least a good half of the world population died meant quite an increase in quality of life for the surviving population, at least in terms of real estate. And medicine, since healing skills were a thing and could probably cure cancer and stuff. And food, since fucking everyone and their mom was aiming for those tasty farming skills. And health in general, getting a second level was almost guaranteed by the virtue of just not being a complete waste of space for some time.

Two levels meant twelve free points to distribute however one wanted. With the average of ten, anyone could put them all in Constitution and simply be superhumanly healthy. As strong as strongest athletes, as quick-witted as the rarest geniuses – everyone got that basically for free. If someone was born sickly or grew up malnourished – no worries! A few points in Con fixed all of that better than a years-long therapy ever could. That didn't even account for skills, and skills were a game changer.

When someone didn't spend their time fighting for their life – they didn't get fighting skills. They got utility. Magical cooking. Sewing by hand faster and better than a sewing machine ever could. Perfectly predicting the weather because they really loved guessing it by the feeling in their bones. He was theorizing, but there was little doubt in Dennis' mind that he was right. Some-fucking-how, the general quality of life got better after the end of the world. Not counting the internet, of course.

Seriously, wasn't life supposed to get worse since monsters appeared? Didn't look like that behind the city walls. Where civilization survived, it flourished. The mansion was quite smaller than Sydney's. More like a very big house. It had only one pool that Dennis could see. Whoever it belonged to, that person was lower in the imaginary 'rankings' of important people than Sydney was. He wondered how much the ability to beat the shit out of everyone affected one's place in rankings. Probably quite a lot.

Being useful for the community was nice and all, but personal power gave the ability to say 'the biggest mansion is mine now' without repercussions, which was a great perk. There were guards at the doors. Some low-level thugs. After a moment of deliberation, Dennis knocked them out. Like, they looked like thugs? Had guns and stuff. And someone–most likely El'el–was in mortal danger inside. This shit smelled like a classic rescue mission where player had to infiltrate the enemy base.

Knocking out the guards felt like the right choice considering the circumstances. And he was very good at knocking out people, as he had found out. Right now. Just a little chop to the back of the head, ninja-style, like in the movies, perfectly precise and measured, and the dudes were slowly falling to the ground with their eyes rolling. As the good guy, he was doing the mission non-lethally, of course. And Sydney specifically asked him not to kill anyone. Evil thugs were probably included in that category.

Not that he would've killed them if she didn't ask. Of course. But she asked, so that was also a thing to keep in mind. He grabbed the handle, trying to open the door while the bodies were falling to the ground in slow motion nearby. The door was locked. Um. Dammit. Muramasa came to the rescue. Lately it acted more like a slab of steel that he waved at things that he didn't like instead of a sword, but that was enough. The door exploded, flying off the hinges and inside the building.

He sheathed his sword and went inside, following the slowly floating door and the shrapnel from… stuff. The entrance hall had an official kind of look to it. Like instead of entering some villain's evil mansion, he entered an embassy. There was a woman sitting behind a desk, looking like a secretary, writing something. Two more thug-looking men with pistols holstered on their thighs were sitting on a couch, talking with each other and drinking what appeared to be coffee.

A doorbell was flying towards the woman's head at supersonic speeds. They didn't look up. Didn't even start to register what was happening yet. This was a bit awkward. He grabbed the door and used it to catch all the small stuff in the air. It felt weird, he was feeling the inertia as he moved it, there was some kind of… resistance when he grabbed the flying door. Not a physical one, but a strain on his Dexterity.

He was simultaneously canceling the effects of his own speed on the world, treating the door as if it was moving in slow-motion and was totally grabbable, canceling the effect of the door itself as he carefully maneuvered it in the air above the speed of sound without making shockwaves, and God knows what else… It was almost too much. It felt like he was pulling a muscle that he didn't know he had. He did redirect the blast away from people in the end, but decided not to explode any doors for some time afterwards.

The strain he felt from his latest maneuver was way too close to snapping. He didn't want to find out what would happen if it snapped. Would he get ground into paste by the wind resistance if he overwhelmed his physics-bending Dexterity muscles? Not a good thing to find out experimentally. He did knock out the secretary and the dudes on the couch. There was no point in leaving any hostiles unaccounted.

After all, after he would save El'el, he'd still need to go back to the mansion with her the slow way, so skipping the fights was counterproductive. And honestly, knocking people out was fun. He didn't know that his fighting talent applied to that. Dennis wondered about the life of the person whose Soul part was responsible for karate-chops. And how exactly did it apply to sword-fighting?

Though, sword-fighting was fighting, so maybe it wasn't weird that he was supernaturally talented at measuring the precise force and angle to inflict minor and totally risk-free head-trauma. He went further inside.

"Stealth attack," he whispered, knocking out the one the second floor with another precise karate-chop.

"Stealth attack."

"Stealth kick."

"Sneaky stealth attack." Damn, there was a lot of people in the building. Not to worry, he knocked them all out in fraction of a second. Finally, on the third and final floor, inside an intricately decorated office, he found his target. El'el was having a shouting match with an overly fat dude who had been sitting in a very expensive office chair. Both of them looked quite angry.

There were also two more thugs near the door, looking worried at the scene, and a scrawny dude with a pen and a notebook in the corner of the room. The fat guy wasn't sitting in the chair anymore – the chair was in the process of flying at El'el. Thrown by the fat guy with surprising force. Also, like two cars passing each other on the road, there was a fireball flying into the guy's face. Dennis had a suspicion that that one was launched by El'el. Both of them were savable.

From the stillness of the scene he couldn't quite figure out who threw the first shot. Heroically, he knocked everyone out. And then the office exploded.