Doom System Survivor: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 13
Both hands on his katana, he attempted to thrust the blade forward only for the lion-faced man to shift right.
How much longer will he keep his transformation?
Hiro’s thoughts filtered away as the Survivor’s tendrils dug themselves into the sides of his legs, six inches below the knee.
Wracked with pain, Hiro swung his katana in desperation. He had miscalculated, and it would likely cost him his—
Thunk!
A bolt burst out of the center of the Survivor’s forehead. The man staggered but held onto Hiro with his spiked tendrils.
Thunk!
Another bolt, this one blooming out of the man’s throat.
Thunk!
A final bolt, this one piercing his chest.
The man’s eyes twitched, and he fell.
20
FOR THE STREETS
The lion-faced Survivor let out one final gasp as Soul Essence left his body. His tendrils retracted, and he fell in a heap.
Hiro looked down, both legs covered in wounds from the man’s barbed tendrils. “Thanks,” he said aloud, even though he had yet to see Valeria. “That was fucked.”
“What were you thinking?” she asked as she stepped out of the dark, a blue NYC cap holding some of her thick hair back. “You could have run.”
“You were watching?” Hiro asked.
She approached, her crossbow still pointed at the dead Survivor. “More or less.” Valeria turned to Hiro and raised her crossbow. “Hold still.”
“Wait—”
Thunk!
Valeria fired a bolt directly at Hiro. Rather than pierce his chest, the bolt enveloped him in a blanket of warmth, which soon healed the wounds on his legs. About the only thing it didn’t fix were the rips in his jeans.
Hiro even felt better after she was done. “That’s new.”
“An upgrade.”
“Next time, tell me what it will do before you shoot me,” he told her with a deep breath out. “I have gauze that could have handled it as well.”
Valeria crouched. “Heh. Sorry, Hiro. It was a bit more dramatic that way, I guess. Not my intention.”
“His loot is yours.”
“Nah, no loot. To the Doom System, we technically killed him together. Look.” She motioned to the man’s body, his weapons gone. “But we got SE and followers.”
Hiro had been so distracted by the proceedings that he had barely noticed the applause in his head that signaled more followers. He was now up over a thousand again. “You just happened to be lurking around here, huh?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to return,” she said. “Heard a commotion and found you.”
“Yeah,” Hiro said as he scratched the back of his head. “Did I tell you thanks yet?”
“You did.”
“I need to get to a merchant. I need more vape cartridges.”
“I saw that. A Roulette Accessory?” she asked.
“Nope. I got it from killing Mercury near Grand Central. A Sentry.”
“I took out Hercules not far from there.”
“I bet that was a fight.”
Valeria grinned, her eyes obscured by her cap. “It was.”
“That means there’s one more out there, unless another Survivor got it.”
“How do you know that?” Valeria asked.
Hiro counted them out on his fingers. “Hercules, Minerva, and Mercury. They are part of the statue that used to be outside of Grand Central. You killed Hercules; I killed Mercury. They’re Sentries now. So that leaves Minerva; I mean, theoretically.”
“Great. More enemies.”
“Always.”
“And the cat attack? I thought that would do it. What’s that one called?”
“Kore Nani Neko.”
Valeria made a face. “Like the TikTok vid? I was wondering where I’d heard that before.”
“I got it from a merchant.”
“Ah.”
“But the throwing knife that turns into a Buster Sword. That’s a Roulettte Accessory. And I have a mask in my backpack that’s Roulette as well.” Hiro stopped short of telling her about the Chronokuma teddy bear.
“Nice. I haven’t gotten any Roulette gear, sadly.” Valeria holstered her crossbow on her back.
“But that’s new.”
“Back holster? Hell, yeah. I grabbed it from a sporting goods store in the Bronx. Nobody needed that shit there, apparently.” She offered Hiro her hand, and he took it.
“Thanks.”
“I’m guessing you’ve been going around too,” she said as the two turned away from the dead Survivor. Hiro spotted his vape pen and his Buster Kunai.
“Hold up.” After he retrieved the two items, he returned to Valeria. “Going around? For sure. There’s been some of that. A lot of that.”
“And your level?”
“Three. Yours?”
“Same.”
“Have you made enemies?” he asked.
“Fuck yeah, I have. Weird that a person’s first instinct would be to hunt other Survivors, but that’s how it has played out. I guess. And then there are the actual Hunters. There’s one closer to Battery Park. That fucker nearly got me.”
“I have something similar,” Hiro said. “A pair of nasty ones in Bryant Park. They’re teenage Hunters. I’ve been calling them the Bunny Twins because they wear dominatrix-looking rabbit masks.”
“For real?”
“Bunny masks with ears that morph into swords. I probably should have mentioned that.”
“God.”
“It’s fucked.”
“What about your Hunter?” Hiro asked.
“A giant woman. Maybe not a giant like some The Lord of the Rings shit, but twice my height. Two heads. Four arms. Looks like a Hindu goddess named Kali, which is appropriate considering she’s the Goddess of Death.”
“You know about Hindu gods?”
“Nah, not really. My degree is in Computer Science. I told you. But there’s this Linux distro named after her. So I looked it up one time.”
“Distro?”
“Operating system. What about that Survivor you mentioned?”
“I call her the Lady in the Yellow Raincoat. Older lady. She landed on a rooftop and opened her umbrella, releasing daggers that caused me to jump straight into the Zone of Influence of a Sentry.”
“Bitch,” Valeria said.
“She thinks she’s the main character.”
“They all do.”
“But she’ll be hard to find. Somewhere in the East Village, last I saw her. What about you?”
Valeria bit her lip. “I got one that threatened our sanctuary.”
“Our?”
“My girlfriend. Rena.”
“That’s your plus one?”
“For the gate opening? Yes. Sorry if I didn’t mention that. I didn’t know if I could trust you yet.”
“And you think you can trust me now?”
“After everything I’ve been through since we last saw each other? Trusting you is the least of my concerns,” she said.
“Rena doesn’t go out with you?” Hiro glanced around. “She’s not about to come out of the shadows or anything, is she?”
“God, no. She’s not built for shit like this. Not everyone is, you know, like us.”
“For the streets?”
A crooked smile formed on Valeria’s face. “Sure, for the streets. If that’s what you call the insane shit we are getting into, then sure.”
“I don’t really know what else to call it.”
“Nor do I. But Rena is adapting. She’s been out with me a few times. She has a dagger she can barely use and fire hands.”
“Fire hands?”
“A Roulette Skill. I should actually call them something like heat hands. The system called it Fire Ants, which sounds dumb until you see her use the power. But they’re really strong. The only problem is she has to get in close to use them. All of these powers are wild, and just trusting them?”
“I know the feeling,” Hiro said as he remembered what it had been like to {Bounce} from the top of the parking garage to another roof. “You and Rena. Did you meet before or after the Doom System appeared?”
“Before.”
“Wow.”
“We’ve been surviving together for nearly a year now. We make it work.”
“That’s commendable.”
“It’s also smart. Two heads are better than one, at least until you realize you have two mouths to feed. What about you?”
“Me?”
“Did you ever shack up with someone after the Doom System appeared?”
“Yeah, I did,” Hiro said, remembering Monica. “But that didn’t work out.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“It is what it is,” Hiro said, a phrase that he hated yet one that applied. “I found two people for our gate, which might prove troublesome considering they’re brothers. Juan and Marcello.”
“We can’t possibly be the only people using the gate in the Financial District. There will be others to team up with. If we get proactive now, we can tell some more people to meet there.” Valeria pulled out her phone to check the countdown timer. “One day and roughly twenty-one hours. Joy. Then the gates open, and who knows what happens.”
“Plenty of time to get stronger. So, what do you think?”
“What do I think?” she asked as she put her phone away.
“We team up. Wait, we team up, right? Take down our enemies? That’s what my gut is telling me, anyway.”
Valeria smiled. “I was waiting for you to suggest that.”
“It’s smart, right?”
“Definitely. We can focus on the Hunters first. They’ll be easiest to find.”
“Agreed.”
“Which leads me to our final question: are we going after Kali’s lookalike in Battery Park, or are we going after your Bunny Twins? Your choice, Hiro.”
21
DISORDERLY CLASS
Valeria stood at the entrance of Hiro’s fallout shelter, hands on her hips as she took a look around. “Not as bad as I expected, and it doesn’t smell too bad in here. Not great, but not too bad. I should have found a fallout shelter. I’ve seen those signs all over the city.”
“They exist. And it smells all right–enough because of the air fresheners.” Hiro gestured to a couple of pine tree air fresheners in the corner, two of which were still halfway in their plastic packaging. “Humans stink,” Hiro said, a statement that could be interpreted multiple ways. He approached the collection of maps on the wall and shined a wind-up lantern onto them. “Where did you say your Hunter was? Battery Park, right?”
“Yup. Lower Manhattan. I don’t know why it’s called that. Bowery, Battery. Lots of similar-sounding words here in New York.”
“You’re from where again?” he asked.
“Chicago.”
“The Windy City.”
“It can be that, yes.”
“I’ve only been to the airport there,” Hiro told Valeria as he found Battery Park, which was located along the harbor with water views of Brooklyn, New Jersey, and the Statue of Liberty. Hiro traced his finger along the map until he came to the nearest subway line, a passage from which happened to connect to his fallout shelter. “Have you spent much time underground?”
“Too much time underground,” she said. “It was making Rena sick, the lack of sun. But I’m cool with taking the subway line and just popping up to get the Kali Hunter. It’ll be much safer than heading across Lower Manhattan. I can’t fly like you, either.”
“I can’t fly. I can bounce.”
“Maybe the Doom System will give me that power next Interim. I’d love to bounce my ass right out of here,” Valeria said with a chuckle. “Only thing is, I have no idea where I’d go.”
“Every place is equally fucked.”
“Or more fucked than us. I’ve been wondering what it’s like for some folks just out in the middle of nowhere. No telling. The city is hard. Hard as hell. But you get used to it.”
“Preppers might have a chance.”
“You mean some of those fuckers in the Midwest? Maybe. But their weapons didn’t work either after the Doom System did away with all things projectile. Then it dealt with vehicles, combustion engines. Then the military stuff.”
Hiro recalled all the checkpoints around the city that weren’t the same after weapons no longer worked. “Ever feel like this is just a prolonged nightmare that we’ll one day wake up from?”
“Nah, I know it’s real.” A disgusted look traced across Valeria’s face. “And I’ve come to accept that. I guess that’s my inspiration. I mean, maybe. It’s sort of like the movies, this desire to fight back. I always thought that shit was trite, that it was just for entertainment, but no, there really are crazy-ass people like us.”
“For the streets.”
“You said it.”
“Sometimes, I don’t know if I’m fighting back or simply going along with it. Speaking of movies, I fought Kung Fu Panda, or his equivalent, like an hour ago. I thought I should mention that. It was… weird.”
Valeria looked at him skeptically. “For real?”
“For real.”
“Wild.”
Hiro didn’t say anything for a moment. He just stared at Valeria, the two letting the silence fade away. “Anyway, eat if you’re hungry, I’ve got a few things—Survivor Tenders with peanut butter is good. Drink if you’d like, and let’s go.”
“Into the subway system? Gonna need me a bit of this.” She produced a small plastic bottle of whiskey. “Did I say Rena hated being underground? I meant me. Her too, but especially me. It’s creepy down there.”
“It can be for sure. I got used to the dark, though.”
Valeria took a pull from the bottle and handed it to Hiro, who brought the bottle to his lips and drank just a little.
“Whew. Thanks,” he said as he wiped his mouth and handed the bottle back to her. “Let’s deal with these Hunters.”
“Lead the way.”
They set off, Hiro easily finding the right line that would lead them to Lower Manhattan. Later, when they were nearing the subway exit for The Battery, they came across a former homeless encampment on one of the platforms.
Valeria trained her weapon on one of the tents. “Careful. Could be a mimic.”
“I fought a trash can mimic.”
“Before or after Kung Fu Panda?”
“Directly after.”
She shook her head. “These fucking mimics. I fought one that had taken shelter in a discarded golf bag. The damn thing got away. Scared the shit out of me too.”
“How did it get away?”
“It grew legs and took off. I was already fighting this other thing—rat thing, maybe you know what I’m referring to—and the mimic just sprung an attack on me.”
Hiro eyed the holster she now had for her crossbow. “In the clothing goods store.”
“Yeah, sort of. Actually, it was at Macy’s in Midtown. I figured no one would have stolen a holster for a crossbow, and I was right. Everything else was gone.”
“Aside from the golf bag mimic.”
“Aside from that, yeah. People don’t have time to golf with the Doom System breathing down our necks. Did you kill yours?”
“I did. Pharmaceuticals really do work wonders.”
“You drugged it?”
“Like a Sackler, I merely provided the medicine. The mimic ate it, thus drugging itself.”
“Dark, but not inaccurate,” she said as they moved on. “Speaking of which, I don’t know where the system gets its ideas, but the challenges it has given us so far tell me that it’s…” Her voice lowered.
“It’s what?” Hiro asked as they started up a set of subway stairs, both with their weapons at the ready.
“This is going to sound off, but it reminds me of both a spastic teenager and an AI.”
“AI as in Artificial Intelligence?”
“Is there another kind of AI? It’s sort of like a merger of the two, which makes me think that—and just hear me out—the Doom System is an AI having hallucinations. Something alien about it, for sure, but that’s what it is. Anyway, it’s a theory,” she said, as if she’d had the argument before with her significant other before.
“Huh.”
“Think about it. The things that it throws at us, and how it tries to fix humanity’s problems with blanket solutions, like taking away all the guns or bringing religious figures back. That sort of shit. And now, it mocks us in a pseudo-historical way with these increasingly batshit descriptions. Clearly some sort of hallucination, like it’s cobbling together info. I don’t know.” She waited for Hiro to protest. “Well?”
“I don’t know what the Doom System is, to be honest.”
“You haven’t thought about what it is or why it’s doing this?”
“Not as much as I should,” he told her, reminded of his father’s words. Ask the right questions. He decided not to delve too deep into that with her. “I have just sort of accepted it and decided to survive.” Hiro brought his mask down over his face. “Ready?”
She snorted. “That mask looks demented.”
“When it works, it works like a charm. If we’re lucky, your Hunter will just laugh at us. If we’re not lucky…”
“Just let me know if you plan to become a werewolf. I’ll get out of the area and provide support. And if I didn’t already tell you—I don’t think I did—my Roulette Skill is called Wrecking Ball. I can use it once per day, and I’d gladly use it against this fucker. But you need to be cleared out if I do. The power allows me to drop a huge wrecking ball from the sky. Like high up.”
“Really?”
“It’ll crush the Hunter, but it will also crush you if you are anywhere within ten feet of her. Seriously, it’s that big. If you come across a crater in Midtown, that was me. Or, that was this Roulette Skill. If I use it, get out of the way. It’ll splatter you.”
“Got it.”
“I know you’re thinking we should just kick things off with my Roulette Skill, but we shouldn’t.”
