Chương 72: Wow, nothing’s exploding yet

If people tended to avoid him before Lily made a scene, now they were outright allergic to his presence. It was like he had a human-repellent aura. It was downright silly at some points. As he walked towards the lonely elf, the level one people almost raced with each other to move farther away from him as if there were an invisible line that they weren't allowed to cross. They weren't running away outright, but being close? That was apparently not an option.

It was a question, however, of whether they weren't running away because they didn't want to, or because they thought he'd start chasing after them or something. Maybe he would need to take a shower soon. Were showers even still a thing? Running water was more than likely a thing of the past, unless there was a very responsible running water maintenance man who survived the apocalypse and didn't notice the reduction in his paycheck.

From what he knew about maintenance worker salaries, the pay cut might have been small enough to go unnoticed. Who knew? Come to think of it, it wasn't just a shower that he had to worry about. It took him a few moments to recognize the feeling, but Dennis was quite hungry. That was new. He'd need to find a bag of Cheetos later. Shower, Cheetos… His post-apocalyptic life was quickly being filled with new quests.

The elf lady stood bravely in one spot, unlike the others, which was a point in her favor as far as he was concerned.

"Yo," he waved at her casually as they approached. For some reason, Lily was following him like a duckling.

"G-greetings," the elf stuttered a bit but seemed to compose herself quickly enough. Did he have a fear aura or something? He took a deep breath, preparing for the worst.

"I'm ready." She tilted her head in confusion.

"Ready?"

"Please tell me everything you know about everything," he said with determination in his voice.

"Starting from… the Big Bang or your analogue, I guess. I want the history, the cosmology, how and why of the apocalypse, the theory behind magic and skills, the fuck is the High Authority and that mirror world we just escaped… everything. I'm ready." He hesitated for a moment.

"If possible, explain it in twenty words or less," he added.

"That would be very much appreciated." Time stretched. The elf was looking at him blankly. He waited. A gust of wind made him shiver a bit from the cold. He still wasn't used to that. Almost a minute passed in silence.

"You don't know how to summarize it in twenty words, do you?" Lily was the one who broke the silence.

"I don't, no. This is an unexpected challenge," the elf replied weakly.

"Am I to be killed if I fail? I do not know under which principles this creature operates."

"That was rude," he muttered.

"Did you have a built-in shower in your magical prison thing?"

"N-no?"

"Well then, there's no reason to be rude while you yourself are standing on such shaky ground. I'm not calling you smelly-butt, am I?" He couldn't actually smell anything from the elf, but maybe it was just the wind. The elf lady turned toward Lily.

"Help," she whispered with pleading eyes. Lily closed her eyes and groaned.

"You both suck at this so much," she grumbled, and pointed a finger at him.

"Dennis."

"Yes?"

"She called you a creature because with magical senses you feel less like a human and more like a sentient murder weapon. Dunno why, but that's my guess. Elf lady."

"Y-yes?"

"He is not going to kill you," she said sternly.

"Probably. And the twenty-word thing is a figure of speech that you don't need to follow. Probably."

"W-what is the degree of probability on that–""Scratch that," Lily cut her off.

"Dennis, were you going to kill the nice elf lady who put everyone back on Earth?"

"Nah, I'm not racist."

"There we go," Lily nodded to herself. Dennis and the elf lady exchanged glances. A rare spark of understanding appeared between them. There was no need for words. They turned towards Lily.

"I require your assistance–""I need your understandability superpowers here, Lily. Do your people thing." The girl nodded in resignation.

"Yeah, that's clear enough to me." She looked around.

"First things first, how about we stop standing in the middle of the street? I'm starving. Let's go steal some food so we can have a civil conversation over cookies."

"It's not stealing if the owners are dead," Dennis corrected her.

"You think they still have cookies in grocery stores after all this time?"

"Depends on how many people survived, I guess. If there had been no one to take them, they should be there." The elf lady was still reluctant to say anything for fear of Dennis killing her or something, but she followed along with them. Leaving people behind without his protection felt like a bad idea, but Dennis was quite confident in his ability to save them from pretty much everything even from the other side of the city as long as Heroic Senses warned him. So a bit of exploring for snacks was fine.

Now that Lily said it, he craved cookies. With tea. Warm tea, with sugar, in a cup that was warm to the touch. His stomach growled. That was new. If any of the level one people or anyone from the nerd group wanted them to stay, they didn't say so. Probably because of the weird fear aura? Well, aside from the staff girl. She watched them leave while giving the elf puppy eyes, before quickly exchanging a few words with one of her nerd friends.

After a short argument that he couldn't hear, she ran off toward them despite what looked like quite a few protests. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. She joined them halfway to the nearest grocery store.

"He– Hey," she said, catching her breath.

"I'm Mary. You guys are not leaving, are you?"

"We are in search of an item called 'cookies'," the elf replied.

"It shall facilitate our conversation and reduce the probability of my death."

"I told you, Dennis is not going to kill–""How the hell do you not know what cookies are?" Dennis asked in amazement.

"Is your magical translation thing broken? Another race or not, surely you guys figured out how to bake stuff."

"I do understand that it is a type of pastry," she said, looking away.

"And I do understand what the closest analogue for it is among the foods I know, but… you can never be sure with other species' food. Is your wheat the same? How do you process it? What are the cultural intricacies of baking here? While the concept of a 'cookie' is known across many worlds, what we are looking for right now could be completely different from what I know." Mary listened to the elf with rapt attention, every word seemingly filling her with pure bliss. It was almost creepy how focused she was.

"I'm Lily," Lily said, and looked at Dennis.

"What?"

"You are supposed to introduce yourself when meeting new people," she said patiently.

"I'm Dennis?" he half-asked.

"I thought everyone knew that."

"I didn't."

"I did not." Lily nodded, and pointedly looked at the elf. The elf looked back, oblivious.

"Do you have a question?" she asked, after ten or so seconds of staring.

"You are supposed to introduce yourself when meeting new people," Lily repeated with the patience of a saint.

"Oh." There was genuine surprise on the elf's face.

"Apologies. My name is El'el." Mary looked back and forth between them, realizing something herself.

"Oh, I see what you're doing," she said with a small smile.

"Both of them are absolutely hopeless," Lily agreed, her tone completely flat.

"I hope you're not going to add to my apparent new duties. Why are you here?"

"Ah, well…" Mary flushed, throwing a glance at El'el. Dennis started to suspect something.

"Votes are divided on what to do with you guys, though the consensus is to stay away and hope… well, that Dennis leaves. Of course I vetoed the hell out of that, that's just mean. Though someone vetoed my veto, but I do have the staff so I vetoed their vetoing my veto…"

"How does the staff help?" Dennis asked, getting a bit lost.

"I can threaten to hit people with it." Huh.

"I approve," he nodded wisely. El'el listened as if she wanted to take notes. Lily's eyebrow twitched.

"Anyways, I, ehm…" Mary continued.

"I just wanted to…" She glanced at El'el again, blushing even more.

"To make sure that… you don't feel unwelcome? P-please don't leave. Oh! And we needed to talk with El'el here, and with you guys, to compare notes and figure out our next steps… and stuff…" The more she talked, the more Dennis could smell bullshit, though the specifics eluded him.

"Right," Lily said blankly. There was an undercurrent of exasperation in her voice.

"Don't you have confused people to help and manage?" Dennis was getting a feeling that Lily started to consider the new girl an addition to her workload.

"They don't need me for that," Mary waved her off.

"And it's not like we have to, you know? It's just a nice thing to do, but those guys aren't our responsibility. Confused or not, they're not babies and can figure themselves out. There are…" She gulped.

"More… important things to do. Like… figuring out how the world works now… and stuff…"

"And stuff," Lily parroted tonelessly.

"I see. Glad you have your priorities straight." Mary squirmed. The first grocery store they checked out was completely empty. The shelves were barren except for a layer of dust. A few forgotten vegetables lay rotten on the floor. Someone looted the place, and quite a while ago.

"That's going to be a problem," Mary muttered.

"Yeah, they didn't even leave any toilet paper behind," Dennis agreed.

"Good thing I didn't eat anything this month."

"You put everyone back on Earth, right?" Mary asked the elf.

"Not just the ones in LA."

"I did as was asked of me, yes," El'el nodded.

"I have also stopped what you call 'the monster spawn' processes. I think you should know that, in case this knowledge reduces my chances of being killed." She looked at Dennis hesitantly.

"I told you, no one is going to–" Lily started her speech.

"Good thinking," Dennis said.

"That totally does reduce your killability chances." They were quite low in the first place, but now they were even lower. That made sense in his head. El'el understood him, it seemed.

"I appreciate it," she said with a small nod. Lily groaned.

"I hate you both," she grumbled.

"People don't talk like that." She paused, looking at their faces.

"Fucking hell. No, I don't actually hate you." Since when did Lily curse? She was acting quite differently from what he remembered. Since this was the only grocery store they had in sight, they moved on to checking different apartments in search of food. Most of them had doors already broken and everything edible inside looted. They met groups of level one people a few times who had the same idea, though the moment those guys noticed Dennis, they turned around and powerwalked away without a word.

It was almost funny to him, like there was some unspoken rule that no one was allowed to run in his presence so that he wouldn't chase after them or something. He almost said 'boo' once or twice just to see what would happen, but wisely decided that that would be too mean. It was hard to remember that the apocalypse basically started today for these people.

"I don't smell that bad, do I?" he murmured after they met another group like that, with predictable results. The apartment they were checking was another bust.

"It's like I have a fear aura or something. There's nothing in my System about that."

"You are… somewhat hard to approach or talk to, I'd say," Mary gripped her staff tighter as she talked. Despite being one of the few people who didn't outright nope the fuck out of interacting with him, Dennis could see that she was still more reserved and stifled when talking directly to him.

"They'll come around once they know you better."

"Doesn't seem to be affecting you that much though," he noted.

"She's the type who's nice to thugs even when they're about to rob her," Lily said casually as she checked another door.

"Don't confuse her lack of common sense with some sort of resistance. You totally do have a fear aura now. This one is locked."

"How did you– I'm not!" Mary shouted, pointing her staff at Lily.

"I have lots of sense! It's just wrong to judge people by their looks."

"I believe the reason for what you call the 'fear aura' is that your high ascension level makes your Soul even more pronounced in truesight," El'el said while Lily fiddled with the lock.

"It's… macabre to look at. Common folk avoiding you is just wisdom on their part. I hope I did not offend, I did not mean any."

"I… don't have it though?" he said hesitantly, glancing at Mary. Was his having no Soul a secret? Eh, it wasn't that big of a deal.

"It says zero on my stat sheet. Well, zero out of one, but still…"

"That's… not right." El'el frowned.

"You definitely have… a thing. It's very developed. Definitely not as low as zero or one. I assumed that it's your Soul, but if the System says… I don't understand." They heard a click.

"Done," Lily announced, looking at her hands.

"Did I… have any tools just now? Did you see any?" Dennis could feel that she was distressed.

"Fuck. We're kicking in the next door the old-fashioned way, I don't…" She took a deep breath, calming herself.

"Whatever. They should have something here since it was locked. Come on." They didn't find any cookies, but there was an untouched stash of candies in the pantry, along with tea and even bottled water. El'el boiled it in the pot by summoning a few glyphs around it. After the leaves settled, Dennis took a sip.

"Damn," he muttered.

"It's hot," Mary said quietly. He saw a trail of tears on her cheek.

"I think I burned my tongue." Lily was enraptured by the steam coming off the pot. El'el tasted the candy hesitantly.

"It's sweet," she said. Dennis could see that her mind wasn't really focused on the candies.

"The twenty-word requirement was hyperbole and I won't suffer any repercussions for exceeding it, correct?"

"Well, maybe make it no more than forty words…"

"Dennis," Lily said.

"Shush." He took another sip.