“So that is the situation,” Richard continued explaining to the group. “The fort is situated near the river, so you will also have a source of water and maybe fish if you manage to catch any.”

  “So let me get this straight,” the granny said. “You propose everyone fast and healthy to take my grandson among others and try to reach that fort today while leaving everyone old or crippled behind? To just die?”

  “Maybe, yes.”

  There was a wave of murmurs among the crowd.

  “What about the police station?” the woman who tagged along with them recently asked. “I liked the plan with the police station.”

  “I’ve already explained. If this shop was overrun like this it means that the police station was most likely overrun as well. The fact that they don’t answer our phone calls supports that.”

  “But what if they weren’t?”

  “What if they were?”

  Another wave of arguments, complaints and plain simple swearing overtook the crowd.

  “We will not just sit idle and wait to die,” Richard said. “We are armed. You have seen what I can do with a pistol. You will also be able to do that, and I will be with you. It is possible that our worries are unfounded and we will be fine.”

  “We’re perfectly fine where we are,” the whining guy said. “The dickheads who got killed here before just weren’t ready. I say we barricade the windows properly and collect the food from nearby houses and nothing would threaten us. We’re literally sitting on a pile of ammo, and this hiking trip plan is built on a blind hope and guesses. It’s stupid. I will stay.”

  “I will also stay.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “I’ll stay, and my child will also stay with me.”

  “We will go.”

  Dennis was sitting nearby and trying to wash his face and clothes with wet wipes to a limited success while the conversation happened. There was no running water in the gun store. His guess was that a stray bullet broke the pipe. Bullet holes were everywhere, after all.

  There was a lot of arguing as the group split, especially between friends and family. Someone didn’t want to leave their close ones who got hurt, someone felt betrayed that their friend wanted to leave, and someone it felt like just wanted to argue for the sake of arguing. Yet a clear divide was appearing as people approached Dennis one by one. He saw Jenny crying while she was hugging Richard before they separated and she went to the group that was leaving.

  Wait, why were the people coming to him if they decided that they would leave? He was a bit confused.

  In the end the group separated perfectly in half. He counted, and there were eleven people who decided to leave, including him.

  Ness, obviously.

  Jenny, for some fucking reason. She didn’t really look like she wanted to leave.

  Two dudes from the ‘fighter’ group who looked like they were brothers.

  Two kids, probably about ten years old. One of them was apparently the grandson of the grandma. Heh. Why did their parents send them but didn’t go themselves? Or were they dead? Dying? The grandma was alive, and yet she sent the kid to go with them. Dennis wondered what she was thinking.

  The teenage boy. It seemed that he had no family or friends in the group.

  The married couple who joined their group recently. Were they just adventurous and preferring to do stuff instead of sitting in one place?

  And the leader guy whose name Dennis should probably ask later. He seemed important, with all those leadership skills.

  Both groups were armed with guns and they packed several bags of bullets and distributed them between everyone. Even the kids had guns, and Dennis hoped that someone at least taught them to aim in the direction of goblins and not in their faces. They also scavenged more bows from all the bodies around. Considering the amount of bodies around, everyone got a bow along with a gun and some melee weapon.

  People were quite armed and looked pretty badass. The only one without a bow or a gun was Dennis who refused to touch them religiously, fearing that he would get a skill that was about archery or shooting guns if he did. Honestly he had half a mind to ditch Muramasa sometimes, afraid of being offered some stupid sword skill instead of ‘be fast as fuck’ skill. The only things that stopped him were his love for the katana, and he kind of needed it to kill the goblins.

  “It looks like everyone’s ready,” the leader guy leaded. “I suggest we drop the shields and all of us use our bows in a fight, with… What’s your name, kid?”

  “Dennis. If you call me kid one more time I will stick Muramasa up your ass.”

  “With Dennis cutting down anything that approached too close,” he continued like nothing happened. “Those shields proved to be mostly useless, and that way we would have a bit less weight to carry. We have a long road ahead. Do we have a map?”

  “I do,” Jenny said quietly, showing her phone. “GPS works for now, and I have a power bank. It should be enough.”

  “Great,” he said. “Then I think we should start going if we want to reach there before it gets dark.”

  Dennis thought that the leader leadered a bit too much. Was he overcompensating or what?

  The group didn’t protest as they left, leaving the gun shop behind them. Jenny waved to her grandfather one last time before they turned a corner.

  Now the only thing that was standing between Dennis and blessed rest for his overexerted muscles was a multi-hour hike in a town infested by murderous goblins who he would have to fight on the way.

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  Did he ditch all his bags and forced the other members of the group to carry them because he needed ‘mobility’? Yes. Yes he did.

  The path ahead didn’t feel shorter because of that, but he was ready to persevere and push through exhaustion. That way were the gains.

  / - /

  He was so fucking tired of persevering and pushing through exhaustion.

  At least the current group moved at a pace faster than a snail’s. He’d say they were even moving at a normal pace, like normal people who weren’t grannies or walking with their asses in front. Even the kids were absolutely fine and comfortable walking like that without complaining, though Dennis hoped that they would complain soon, just so he wouldn’t be the first. His pride didn’t allow him to complain before the children did.

  The group moved swiftly from house to house while trying to not be in the middle of the road this time, learning from the mistakes of the previous ambushes. Mostly they were concerned with archers and attacks by big groups, so they’ve tried to always be near some sort of cover or the entrance to someone’s house in case they needed it.

  They didn’t need it.

  Not to say that they weren’t accosted on their way, goblins were basically everywhere after all, but it was always small skirmishes with at most four goblins at a time. They dealt with those easily, the combined barrage of almost a dozen bows turned any assault into a target practice, and it was rare that Dennis had a chance to fight those unfortunate ones who managed to survive and approach the group. The fact that they needed to collect the arrows after such fights was a welcome reprieve for Dennis as he used it to rest his legs as much as he could.

  The whole setup meant that he wasn’t getting much exp since there weren't many goblins who even reached him, but that in turn allowed people from the group to finally start properly grinding. It didn’t take more than an hour of their hike for the levels to start coming.

  “Oh shit!” one of the brothers exclaimed as they finished their last skirmish. “I leveled up!”

  “Bro,” the other replied in a deadpan voice. “Congratulations. Maybe you’ll finally become smarter than our dog was.”

  “I’m going full Strength.”

  “Why the fuck are you going full Strength?!”

  “I wanna be strong, bro. The chicks love that.”

  “You need Charisma for that.”

  “It is a true shame that we don’t have the Charisma stat.”

  Their discussion spread out to the whole group as people debated the merits of different stats, possible builds and general mechanics of this new game-like system that they all had now. The most knowledgeable person on the subject turned out to be Jenny, who was no doubt quoting her grandpa half the time she shared something about it.

  “You shouldn’t invest everything in one stat,” she said. “They seem to be codependent and you won’t be able to properly use one without the others. Let’s say you put six points in strength. No, imagine a hundred points. You can bend steel like paper and lift mountains. You know what’s going to happen if you try? You’ll break your fingers. Or get crushed by the mountain. You’ll need the Constitution to match your strength.”

  “How do you know?” the teenager asked.

  “Extrapolation, mostly,” Jenny admitted. “No one actually saw anyone invest in only strength and break their fingers. But that extrapolation was made by my grandpa, who is level four and invested a lot in Mind. It literally makes you smarter, by the way, but only in some ways.”

  “If no one saw it then you don’t know,” the guy who leveled up said.

  “We have circumstantial evidence,” she said. “Which is Dennis. We’re pretty sure he invested everything into Dexterity, and he’s moving slower than he could all the time. Am I right?”

  “I’m not–” Dennis started to protest. “Okay, I am. It’s a bit annoying, and it’s not like I can’t move at full speed, but it’s hard to keep track of myself if I need to do something complicated, and I may or may not stumble sometimes if I’m not careful. It’s still fine for simple stuff, like a straight swing or a dash if I don’t care too much about the distance.”

  “Dammit,” the leveled up brother said. “There goes my hope of killing everything with one hit.”

  “Not really,” Dennis said. “I don’t know if the old man noticed that, but stats do some fucky things with physics. I’m pretty sure I’m ignoring some inertia from my movement when I push myself, so maybe Strength would let you ignore that law where things push at you when you push at them. That could maybe mean that you’ll be able to bend steel without the Constitution for it, but we won’t know unless we test. So you should totally invest everything in Strength. For Science.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Jenny admitted after some thought. “The levels become harder to get as you level up, so you can try investing only in one stat early and then balancing it later. If you’re ready to break your fingers for science, that is.”

  The guy was totally ready to break his fingers for science, a fact that he announced at the same time as he started boasting that he had 23 Strength now. Then he immediately started complaining that they didn’t have a bench press in their pockets to test how strong he actually was.

  Dennis was a bit salty that the guy had a higher stat value than him at the same level. Some people got all the luck, even if they wasted it on Strength.

  “I still think that a balanced stat distribution would be better in the long run,” Jenny said as they continued walking. “Everything is useful. Without Strength you won’t deal damage, without Dexterity you’ll be too slow, without Constitution you’ll die in one hit. Without Mind the Dexterity is useless, and without Soul you can’t use the skills. Going all in in one stat may work short term, but at higher levels balance will be king.”

  “Nah,” Dennis disagreed strongly. “If you don’t get hit you don’t need Constitution, and if you abuse any other way of dealing damage except bashing things you don’t need Strength. Skills might be weaker than stats so you can totally go without having a soul, and Mind… Well, maybe a few points in Mind might not hurt. By generalizing you’ll just suck at everything equally.”

  “Just don’t get hit?” Jenny asked skeptically.

  “Yes,” he nodded, with gravitas. “Git gud.”

  No one could refute him.

  The scenery didn’t change much as they continued their trek. It was a bit depressing, but no matter where they went and what path they took, everywhere the road was deserted and filled with dead people. Sometimes they could also see dead goblins, a sign that they weren’t the only ones who figured out that some weapons and a bit of tactics were enough to fight off the stragglers after the main swarm left, but still. There were a lot of dead people everywhere. Dennis wondered if they would get a plague or something. Wasn’t that what happened when streets were filled with dead bodies? He would very much like to be as far away from populated places as possible in a few days when they would start decomposing.

  Sometimes they met new people, and some of those people joined their group. Not everyone, thankfully, a lot of people saw their group and decided that they would be safer by staying where they were or by trying to reach the gun shop, the directions to which their group helpfully provided. Still, a lot of survivors joined them like stray ducklings, and Dennis had no idea what to do about that as their group grew. It was trouble, since the more people they got the tastier a target they became, and it felt like they would have literally all the same problems they had before, with cripples and old people and stuff.

  They scared away the cripples and grandmas by telling them that they would have to walk all day and the party wouldn’t wait for them because they needed to reach the fort before the night. They used more polite words for that and Dennis was keeping his mouth shut during those conversations but that was mostly the gist of it.

  Still, the group grew as more and more people saw them as some sort of salvation. There was a clear separation between their party and others, mostly in how useless others were. Almost all of them were without weapons and defenceless, just following the party and needing protection.

  That was trouble.

  Dennis didn’t know how to tell those people to fuck off without turning villain. Even if he really wanted to, being a hero meant that between practicality and doing good he needed to pick ‘good’ every time.

  At least most members of their party leveled up as they defended everyone from the alarmingly-increasing amount of goblins.

  They would probably need those levels soon.