Chương 77: Those notes would go on Ebay

There was a particular feeling one could experience when playing an especially grindy game that didn't bother with trivialities such as quest variety, and always had a quest marker to the next objective. You killed ten wild rabbits, followed the compass to the quest-giver, pressed accept, and immediately moved to the next objective: killing ten wild boars.

The human mind was quick to pick up what mattered and what didn't, and once that happened, the only thing you saw was the quest marker to the next location, the only thing you remembered was the spell rotation needed to kill the mobs as fast as possible. Locations changed, mobs that you killed changed, NPCs that gave you the quests changed, but it all happened in the background. It was like a flow state, where the only thing that mattered was the compass that told you where to go.

Those who were lucky were also aware of the steadily filling exp bar, and got a dopamine hit when they heard the ding of a level-up. Those like Dennis, who didn't care about the progression as much as about seeing if he could make yet another 'speedster' build work, felt nothing. It was just a thing you had to do. Mindless. Repetitive. Exhausting. Maybe, if he was a real hero, the one with 'right' intentions, he would find it fulfilling. Doing the right thing was a reward in itself, or at least that was the idea.

Every saved life was the same as that 'ding' of a level up, an achievement to be pursued, the thing to be proud of after it was done. Maybe it was a problem of scale? One dead person was a tragedy, but a hundred – just a number. One saved person was a triumph, but if you saved thousands every minute, it was just a counter. But no. Scale wasn't the problem, at least for him. Dennis felt the same saving one person as he felt saving everyone. His goal wasn't to save people, he didn't feel better when he saved more.

His goal was to be a hero. It was a state. As long as he was doing 'heroic' things, he was happy. More so if he did them in a speedstery manner. It didn't matter at all how many people he saved, or failed to save. He cared jack shit about the people. What mattered were his actions. Honestly, he would've preferred if all of those level one people just died simultaneously, in a way that he couldn't stop. Not a heroic thought, that. Well, it would be just as fine if they all got simultaneously saved.

He'd be somewhat annoyed that it wasn't him who saved them, but at this point he would take it. Then he would be able to stop. Find a place to sleep, have a warm bath, maybe eat something. Goddamn being a hero was sometimes exhausting. He'd still do it. Of course. But it was so–fucking–exhausting. Dennis didn't know where he was. He saw people, yelled at them so they'd know where to go for safety, and ran to the next group. Faces changed, locations changed, and sometimes he said different words.

On occasion, he got to kill something dangerous. Usually some variety of a monstrous animal that decided that humans made for a nice snack. The only constant thing was that pull of a direction. It didn't stop. It never stopped. Dennis could cross cities in seconds. Traveling to other towns was the same as crossing a road. Whatever bullshit speed he had, it was that. Bullshit. He was ready to bet that he could run around the whole fucking planet in a day. Maybe, in a few hours. It wasn't enough.

It wasn't even close to being enough. Every time he told someone where to go, he removed a few thousand people from the pool of 'confused level-ones who didn't know what to do'. He did that, approximately, every five to ten seconds. Not even saving them, just… increasing their chances of survival. Doing as much good as he could to as many people as he could. Sure, he could stick to a few groups or maybe patrol a single city and guarantee that everyone there survived, but that wasn't optimal.

Increasing the chances of survival for tens of millions of people was more efficient than guaranteed survival for tens of thousands. So of course he went with the more efficient option, even if it wasn't as satisfying. He had once read a theory that the most heroic thing Superman could do was pull a lever that generated free electricity for everyone. The most efficient lives saved per effort spent. In a way, he felt like that.

He was a superhero, he had genuine superspeed, and he was using it to be a glorified emergency announcement, 'here's the nearest shelter'. It was fine. It was what a hero would do, even if not that flashy. The work just didn't end. That pool of 'confused people' that he so laboriously worked to reduce, it felt like it was a lake, and all he had to empty it was a spoon. Even as time passed, he doubted that he reduced it by even one percent. Sure, it was a lot, but there were always more people to save.

He didn't know where he was, he didn't know how much time passed, he didn't know for how long he could keep it up. The only things that existed were the exhaustion and the direction to the next target. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Running in the real world was so much harder than in the conceptual one. Sometimes he was too cold, and sometimes too hot. He was sweating, and dust and dirt stuck to his body and it itched.

It was hard to breathe, and his heart hammered in his ears. He was thirsty, and so, so hungry. His shoes just fell apart at some point, and he was running barefoot. On one hand, the increased Constitution seemed to be enough not to damage his feet too much unless he ran on glass or something, but on the other, it wasn't nice, and his feet were bleeding, even if it wasn't that much. Some things were better not stepped on. 17 Con wasn't enough to keep this up indefinitely.

Maybe in the mirror world, where all he had to care about was his 'stamina bar'. But here… physics and biology apparently mattered again, at least to some degree. He was sure that the number of calories he burned wasn't right for the amount of distance he crossed, but he was burning them. And the only thing he had eaten over the prior month was a piece of chocolate. Maybe someone well-rested and in good health could keep this up for long, but Dennis didn't start this whole thing rested. The opposite, really.

He had been killing the Arms for hours, already balancing his 'stamina' at the edge, and then there was the whole fight with the High Authority, and then the shock of being real again… Subjectively, he was awake for more than a day, even if the sun had only started to set. It was the first sunset he had seen in forever, and he was too tired to do anything but just note it. He was so damn tired. He started to optimize. The range of actions he could take to 'save' someone was refreshingly vast.

Times where all he had was 'run towards the target' were a thing of the past. He didn't know the new limitations, mostly because he didn't try to find them yet, but things that were 'reasonably heroic' were almost all allowed. After all, he had yet to make an action that his buff wouldn't allow. As long as his actions would clearly and directly help him save people, he was fine. At least, that was his theory, and the general feeling he got from the skill.

On the way to the next group, he noticed a convenience store, and made a detour. The skill allowed that. The place was looted for most of the 'useful' things, he couldn't find gas canisters or any rope, for example, but he didn't need those. He found an untouched stack of sticky notes and a few markers in the stationery department, and took those. Running and writing at the same time was surprisingly easy.

Maybe not even that surprising, he doubted that there existed a feat of movement or hand-eye coordination that he couldn't casually do.' Safety there. An arrow. Monsters come out at night. Try not to die.'

'Your friendly neighborhood speedster.' Anyone who could sue him for copyright infringement was, thankfully, probably dead. When he reached the next group, he placed about a dozen or so notes on the ground in front of leaderish-looking people, and tied their shoelaces so they'd notice. Of course, someone could be dumb enough to pick up the note and rotate it, thus messing up where the arrow pointed, but that was why he placed more than one. And drew arrows on the ground if it was dirt or something soft.

Doing all of that was still so much faster than talking to people at 'normal' speed. In the time it would take him to utter a sentence in a way it could be heard, he was able to direct three more groups. Another added benefit was sidestepping the 'fear aura' issue. People didn't trust him for some reason, but now he was just too fast to scare them. Maybe they'd feel his presence for a moment, but the feeling would pass too quickly to be noticed by most. Another thing he did was… Well… Stealing food and water.

Never everything, or much. There was a balance of what he was allowed to take, especially from people who genuinely needed it. A sip from a bottle here, a bite of an apple there. He wondered how much of it was allowed just because it was something most of the speedsters did at least once. If the meaning of a 'speedster hero' was pulled from his subconscious or beliefs, what were the chances that casually stealing a french fry became a part of the image?

Was it heroic because he needed it to keep going, or was it heroic because half the 'time in a bottle' scenes had speedsters snacking? His legs hurt. A lot. Having different muscles tire at different rates was apparently something that happened in the real world. At least he was getting some exp for killing the monsters. Even if they were usually pretty weak and he found them sporadically, over the span of hours, the numbers added up to hundreds. The change was noticeable, if not nearly enough for a level.

Maybe a tenth of a level? A tenth of a level in a few hours actually sounded like a fine pace, especially for someone as strong as him, especially since he wasn't even focused on that, it was just a bonus. In some ways, being a speedster was truly broken. He loved being a speedster. Best. Build. Ever. Even if he would like to stop. A little bit. A lot. The work didn't stop. Didn't end. There was always someone to save. The night was hard.

He was lucky enough that most people had phones and could use them as lights, their charges apparently frozen just like everything else while they had been stuck floating in the mirror world. People didn't see his sticky notes anymore, even with the shoelace trick, but he fixed that by sticking an additional note on their foreheads, saying 'look for a note on the ground'. That usually worked. Monsters were a different problem. Not something he could fix by using more sticky notes.

He killed enough of them to notice a pattern. The overwhelming majority of the monsters were, basically, animals with an extra something that made them extra dangerous. They probably were just animals that got their hands–paws? –on the leveling system. And night was the time when predators hunt. Everything still died in one hit. He wasn't– He wasn't cutting them as much as he was splashing them all over the place with the shockwave of his swing or a thrown pebble.

He didn't have many problems with killing the monsters, unless they were intangible or turned into mist. Those he just… left alone. In time it would take them to turn tangible again–if they even did –he could kill dozens of 'normal' ones, saving so many more lives. He tried not to think about those he left. The work didn't end. Good exp though… But it didn't end. No one told him that it wouldn't end.