Doom System Survivor: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 33
Neither power worked.
I don’t have anything that can take out a creature like this! Hiro thought as he glanced around. He was between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge, which meant he wasn’t very far from Battery Park.
An idea formulated.
He used {Bounce} to send himself in the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge. The monster dove back beneath the waves and tracked him as Hiro continued along the shoreline.
If this works… Hiro cast these thoughts away as he saw a set of pink tendrils fling the shield out of the water. Bianca landed on the shoreline and bounded forward, following Hiro, water flying all around her. He slowed for just a second for her to catch up.
“Your sword,” she said as one of the tentacles handed him the blade. “But it looks like we have other problems. Heh. I guess no one swims in the East River for a reason.”
Hiro hastily sheathed his katana and then motioned to his back, ignoring the fact he was sopping wet, cold, and that he was being pursued by an insanely large monster. “Come on.”
“What about dinosaur Godzilla?” she asked as the monster began to rise from the water again.
“I’ve got a plan for that motherfucker.” With Hachi still tucked under his arm, and only after Bianca was securely on his back, Hiro took off toward Battery Park.
“If you’re trying to outrun the thing, you’re going in the wrong direction!”
“Aware,” he said as he reached the bridge and bounced past it, Hiro now able to use its height to reach some buildings.
He waited for just a moment until he saw the skeletal monster again, which pressed out of the water fully and opened its mouth like it was about to spit a fireball.
Instead, it spewed a volley of bones and water that tore through everything they touched as Hiro leaped out of the way.
“That thing is crazy!”
“How are you seeing this?” Hiro shouted to Bianca.
“What do you mean?” she asked him as he jumped to another building, just as the monster fired another shot of bones. It was like a catapult releasing pillar-sized spears, the bones breaking through glass, brick, bending steel, each bone easily strong enough to one-shot Hiro and then some.
He ignored Bianca as he rushed ahead, the map of Manhattan flashing across his mind’s eye. Hiro knew if he stayed the course, if he could keep the monster tracking him, he would reach Battery Park.
And when I do… He tensed as he prepared to bounce to the next building. There really was no telling if this would work.
“Watch out!” Bianca fired tentacles off his back that wrapped around one of the projectiles and slammed it down. “Hell yeah, even if I’m a stupid fat pink shield, I got skills!”
Hiro kept on, moving at his top pace as he jumped from building to building.
The monster tried for him several times and seemed to be getting increasingly agitated with the way that Hiro kept dodging. The beast was close enough to the shore that it finally decided to leave the water. It rushed onto the pier and charged after Hiro, smashing through anything it came into contact with.
Finally, Hiro saw it—Battery Park was just ahead.
“You still haven’t told me what you are doing!” Bianca said as Hiro landed in the park and peered out at the water, at the Statue of Liberty. “Wait. Wait a fucking minute. Didn’t you say the Statue of Liberty attacked you?”
“Yup.” Hiro landed in Battery Park and started to wave his hands at the statue. As it had last time, the Statue of Liberty came down from her pedestal and prepared her crown. She was just about to toss at Hiro when her chin shifted slightly to the incoming monster.
“That’s your plan!?” Bianca asked as if her jaw had just dropped.
“Please work, please work, please work,” Hiro said as Hachi started to whine and squirm. “Please fucking work…”
Suddenly angered, and now with her eyes tracking the monster, the Statue of Liberty hurtled her crown at the enormous skeletal creature, just as it was fifty feet away from Hiro.
Her crown bashed through its head, killing the monster instantly and causing a huge, salty wave to lash against the shore.
[A Revenant has fallen.]
“That was badass!” Bianca said.
You have new followers!
Hiro placed Hachi down. Soul Essence poured into him as he read the description of a new skill.
{Stan}
Rank: A
Type: Transformation/Utility
Upgrade: N/A
Description: Here are some fun tips to create your very own Stan.
Tip #1: Matching Speech.
The next time you find yourself with German Scientist, Otto Loewi—famous for isolating two still-beating frog hearts in separate vessels filled with a saline solutions, stimulating one of the frog’s vagus nerves to slow down the heartbeat, and then pouring the saline solution over the second frog heart, which slowed down its heartbeat as well—try to speak in the same even pace as the famed researcher.
If he speaks rapidly, match his patterns. If he speaks slowly, do the same.
Tip #2: Matching Posture.
When the Americans stormed Baghdad in 2003 and set up shop in one of Saddam Hussein’s bougiest palaces, they turned a marble-floored conference room the size of a gym to serve as the mess hall. Because many of the servers were Muslim, Johnny Halliburton, the Texan running the kitchen, refused to eat pork out of solidarity for the servers, most of whom were third country nationals from Pakistan and India.
In this way, Halliburton was able to develop rapport with the staff that led to better cooperation.
Tip #3: Using this Skill.
If you don’t have time to build a relationship with an enemy you plan to kill, use this skill to fast forward that very difficult process.
Stan will allow you to command an enemy and force them to fight for you. If you’re smart enough, they can explore an area and report back. They can even suck you off if you’re that kind of Survivor. The enemy must have a lower-ranked MIND than you, which in Survivor terms means the Stan skill is best used on weak enemies.
Try to Stan a stronger enemy, and you will regret it…
“So I can puppeteer someone now.” Hiro looked back out to the water to see the Statue of Liberty removing her crown once again. He glanced to Hachi and whistled for him to follow. “We’d better get going!”
56
LONE WOLVES DIE QUICK
Hiro landed on a building that would have been entirely in the shade of a Lower Manhattan skyscraper had it not been for the eerie reddish-gray sky. He glanced back to Battery Park and saw the Statue of Liberty in the distance, her torch held high, a menacing look on her face.
“I’ll have to tell the others,” he said, a statement meant to internalize, yet one that Bianca heard.
Hiro felt the shield shift slightly on his back as she spoke. “So, what the fuck was that?”
“Which part?”
Bianca laughed. “I suppose we should start from the beginning.”
“When did you become sentient?”
“I just remember hitting the water and then realizing that I was now my shield, which totally sucks because shields are short and round, and this one has tentacles. Ugh. Don’t like that part. But I can see everything, sort of like VR, and at least I’m with you.”
“For the Interim, yes.”
“When you put it like that, it makes me feel like shit.”
He felt the shield droop to some degree. “I didn’t mean it like that, Bianca. You saved me back there. Thank you.”
“And you’re the one who is supposed to be a hero. Ha! Sorry, you left me wide open for that one. But anyway. We fell through a portal or something and appeared in the East River. Gross. And then there was the monster from Central Park, and, in your infinite wisdom, got the Statue of Liberty to kill its ass.”
“That’s what I need to tell the others,” Hiro said. “If we are ever faced with a kaiju-sized monster, we lure it to the Statue of Liberty.”
“Unless someone else kills it.”
“The Statue?”
“No, the monster. Yes, the Statue,” she said. “Come on, Big Brother Hiro, keep up. Can you check how many Survivors are left? I don’t have stats anymore, just a bar.”
“A bar?”
“Yeah, like a super long health bar that slowly decreases when I use my tentacles but increases rapidly when I don’t. It’s pretty awesome. Aside from the fact I’m a shield. That part is not awesome. Where’s your puppy?”
“Hachi?” Hiro approached the edge of the rooftop and looked down to the street, some twenty stories below. Hachi looked up at him.
“So the weird demon-looking dog just follows you around?”
“Correct.”
“And he’s a Roulette… Pet?”
“Roulette Accessory, but yes.”
“Just don’t let him piss on me or gnaw any of my tentacles.”
“He’s not exactly friendly. I’m honestly surprised he let me pick him up and carry him under my arm.”
“Maybe he likes you.”
“Doubt it,” Hiro told the shield. “All of this, including the fact that you’re back—”
“Back on your back!”
“—has been orchestrated in some way by the Doom System, which is trying to entertain us because it is sure humans thrive on competition and it’s all we really want. At the same time, it is actively working against us.”
“It definitely sucks, but you still haven’t told me how many Survivors are left.”
Hiro accessed his status.
Hiro Johnson
Level Eight
Current Title: Wolf Ronin of Wall Street
Followers: 2,981
Interim Performance Grade: B-
City Survivors: 433,175
World Survivors: 310,587,912
Stolen Valor: 4
Hunter Death Count: 72/89
Beast Death Count: 596/791
Soul Essence (SE): 7 [633 SE to next level.]
“Can you see any of this?”
“No,” Bianca told him. “I can’t see anything, really. It’s sort of like infrared or something, or spiritual lines, or I don’t know. I sort of just sense everything. But I can watch your back, so aside from my tentacles and protective capabilities, there is that. No more ops coming from behind!”
“Ops? Right, opponents.”
“Stats, please? How many times do I have to ask?”
Hiro read out his stats to her.
“Dang, people be dying.”
“That’s your takeaway?”
“When a rando-ass alien system comes to your world and gives every simp a superpower, then it kills those people and forces you to compete, then it gives you a magical hammer—I miss Hammy—and a pink shield, then it convinces you, or maybe you convince you, that it’s a good idea to fight some BDSM bunnies with razor ears who murder you, then it reincarnates you into the body of the shield with tentacles, yes, at this point, that’s my takeaway.”
“Sorry,” Hiro told her as he turned in the direction of the Financial District.
“For what?”
“I should have thought that through better, our fight with the Bunny Triplets. It weighs on me. All of this does.”
“That’s not the first time my charisma and ability to convince people have come back around and nipped me in the butt. Or is it bud? Either way, you get the point. No apology necessary; all of this is twisted. Where to now?”
“We should see about the others, and if not, get to the fallout shelter. I need sleep.” Hiro thought of Love, the merchant who had the drink that would allow him to get a full night’s rest in one hour. It’s probably better to actually rest. And I still don’t know what the Spectators will be capable of.
“What about more Hunters?” Bianca asked after he had been quiet for a moment. “There are what, less than twenty left? And I think that answers our question.”
“Which question?”
“When we talk about City Survivors, which cities are we talking about? There are still over three hundred million Survivors across the world. That would mean, to my knowledge, that the city is probably considered this area, especially with the number of Hunters. If it were all the cities in the world, there’d be more Survivors and Hunters.”
“Good point. You’re asking the right questions.”
She stifled a laugh. Since the shield was now on Hiro’s back, he could actually feel it vibrate when Bianca did this. “Do what?”
“It’s nothing,” Hiro told her, but in those words it felt like everything. His father, mother, and grandfather. There really was no telling how things had panned out for them. At the same time it made him want to retreat, it made him want to get to the bottom of all this, if that was even possible.
Rather than say anything else, Hiro moved to another building. He peeked over the side to see that Hachi was tracking him. As he continued on, Hiro kept an eye on his surroundings, ready to engage whatever came his way.
“Big Brother Hiro?” Bianca asked as they neared the Financial District.
He grunted a response.
“I think the Doom System is a fucking idiot.”
“Careful,” Hiro told her as he crept along a building that had several rooftop spaces once demarcated by a wooden fence that was now collapsed. “The Doom System can respond, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was pissed about your death.”
“As you should be!”
“I was pissed that the System just left your body there. I said something to my phone, and the Doom System actually responded.” Hiro thought of the strange reply and how it had sent a chill down his spine. “It then sent a Revenant after me and stripped me of one of my Roulette Skills.”
“Pussy.”
“Do what?” Hiro asked.
“I have nothing left to lose, and that statement was for the System itself. What a whiny little bitch, mad that you had a little feedback.”
Hiro glanced around. In the distance, he saw another giant raven-like creature. There was a sudden flash and an explosion, but this had to be two miles away.
Hiro all but expected a bolt of lightning to strike him, but it never did as Bianca continued. “And the reason I was saying it was stupid was because they got this all wrong; it got us all wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“It thinks humans want competition, that we want to survive; sure, we want that, but what it doesn’t understand is that the way humans do that is by banding together. Lone wolves die quick. And I know that it rewards us for going out on our own—that’s just because it thinks this is what we want, and it figures that lone wolfing is the best way to reward us. So that’s what I’m saying.”
Hiro considered her words for a moment. Bianca could be rash, there was no doubt about that, but what she was saying had a hint of truth to it. The Doom System hadn’t really accounted for human’s natural inclination to form a community.
Or had it? Hiro thought as he watched one of the horned tiger creatures move through an alley below. Hachi was nearby, prepared to pounce. The Doom System did ask us to meet with others in the beginning, to join around a gate. Is that what we should actually do? Should we… stay away from the gate?
It was a risk. The timer had been ticking for two days now, all leading up to some big event, something that Hiro had little time to think about with all the activity going on.
What if it’s a trap? What if it’s the same situation that we unknowingly discovered earlier? He remembered the revelation involving how many people needed to meet at the gate and the reward the Doom System had given Rena, Valeria, and him.
Ask the right questions.
Three years on a stone.
In closing his eyes, Hiro could imagine one of the gates exploding and killing everyone that gathered around it. He could also imagine opening and doing a number of things, from creating an even kookier world to forcing them into a challenge.
He drew his katana and jumped down to street level as Hachi exploded toward the horned tiger. With one swift strike, Hiro killed the monster, who had been distracted by the barking demon dog.
“Good boy,” he told Hachi, who seemed to offer him a short nod.
“Look at you two, Hunters supreme,” Bianca said.
Should I tell her what I’m thinking? If and when I meet Valeria and the others again, I’m certainly going to tell them. It could ruin the Doom System’s surprise, it could force it to change course, or it could give the Doom System ideas.
“Let’s go,” he said instead as he turned in the direction of Valeria’s hideout.
“You’re the legs of the operation, bro.”
After a few easy bounces, Hiro reached the apartment. He knocked to the tune of We Will Rock You twice. “Guys, it’s me,” he whispered.
“Pretty sure no one is home,” Bianca said.
Hiro checked the time.
01:00:32:45
01:00:32:44
01:00:32:43
He put the phone away. “Thirty minutes until the Spectators arrive. I need to try to find them.”
“How far away do you think you have to go?”
“We can get there in time,” he told Bianca, remembering the {Beacon} he had set in the general vicinity, “but it’s a matter of what we might get into along the way and if they’re still alive.”
“Do you think your friends were killed?”
“I hope not.”
“Do you think they’ll be able to hear me?”
“I… I don’t know,” he told her. Hiro hadn’t really thought about this. With everything he continued to go through, this could all just be a fever dream. “But we’re about to find out.”
He turned in the direction of the East River and bounded to a building, intent on finding the others.
57
PEANUT BUTTER SURVIVOR TENDERS
Hiro neared the {Beacon} that he had once set near the building that Juan and his siblings had stayed in. He moved to the highest roof he could find, his eyes scanning the area for conflict. Once again, it was eerily quiet, like the city itself was preparing for the Spectators to join the fray.
