Doom System Survivor: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 39
“Five. Stars.”
Hiro started to say five stars and stopped himself. He looked at the others, who had also received the same question. Valeria, her eyes filled with angry tears, shrugged.
For his part, Samuel went ahead and gave the Doom System the answer that it wanted. “I rate my own performance five stars.”
“Five stars,” Hiro said before something could happen. It was a small way to show solidarity with Samuel.
Valeria was the third to speak. “Five stars.”
For a moment, Hiro’s phone seemed as if it had frozen on the question. Bianca leaned in closer as new text appeared.
How would I rate my excitement? Hiro thought. What kind of dumbass question is that?
But then he remembered a corporate training session at the fulfillment center. One of the surveys he took had a similar question about an upcoming Black Friday sale and his excitement for another hectic “holiday” season.
“Five stars,” Hiro said, the others doing the same.
His phone flashed, the cracked screen going black. It turned back on after a beat.
“Hiro?” Bianca asked meekly.
Hiro knew his options well enough.
There was his mask, {Kiss or Slap}, {Edging}, the shield, {Demon Hachiko}, his {Buster Kunai}, and {Inseminating Finger Gun}. There had been {Sacra Limina} until the Doom System took it from him, and he also had {Lupine Shift}, which came with a side effect of rage that made him sleep longer than he liked.
Fuck turning into a werewolf…
“{Bianca’s Fuzzy Pink Shield} and {Demon Hachiko},” Hiro told his phone.
Bianca nearly exploded with joy, her whole form shaking. “Really? Thank you, Big Brother Hiro!”
His Companion acknowledged the request: <{Bianca’s Fuzzy Pink Shield} and {Demon Hachiko}. Your requests have been noted.>
Hiro was just glancing at the others, prepared to address the burial of Juan’s body, when the Doom System’s voice spoke to all of them.
[Buy more, sell more, lie more. This will be the motto for the Second Interim, where challenges beyond your imagination wait. Find a gate. The timer starts now. Good luck, Survivor.]
Doom System Survivor Will Continue In Book Two!
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FROM THE AUTHOR
I began plotting and building the mechanics for Doom System: Survivor in 2023, wrote monthly over the course of 2024, and is now published as of 2025, which happens to be my ten year anniversary of writing the LitRPG and GameLit genre starting with The Feedback Loop in 2015.
Looking back, I can now see that I initially conceptualized the text after numerous trips to New York City from Connecticut, where I lived up until moving to Portugal last spring. Although I’ve never lived in New York City itself, I have spent a considerable amount of time there. During one of my walks around Manhattan, I became captivated by a fallout shelter sign stemming from the Cold War era. That was an initial spark, as was the TV series Alice in Borderland, which introduced these long interims to a challenge-based post-apocalyptic situation.
There other influences that went on to inspire the text, from a hallucinating system that pays homage to Dungeon Crawler Carl to Squid Game-like challenges and even mysterious gates appearing randomly like the webserial My S-Class Hunters.
As for the hallucinations themselves, my history degree and years of reading and annotating history books were invaluable. I mined my extensive collection of highlighted notes, merging historical details with modern headlines from sources like USA Today. This process resulted in details that feel fantastical but are rooted in reality, such as “TikTok trauma dumping” and a legendary odachi crafted by Norimitsu Osafune.
Japan has always been an interest of mine, especially after living in Tokyo for nearly a year. I’ve used it as a setting before in Proxima Legends and created enemies and allies out of yokai in my series Reborn Assassin, Pilgrim, War Priest, The World According to Dragons, and Arcane Cultivator.
With Doom System: Survivor, I’ve explored different facets of the western-lensed Japanese experience and have used a number of sources to do so, most notably Gamblers, Fraudsters, Dreams & Spies: The Outsiders Who Shaped Modern Japan by Robert Whiting and Samurai Death Cult by Antony Cummins, both of which I’d recommend after reading my extensive catalog.
But before you do that, please take a moment to review Doom System: Survivor and pre-order the second book, which promises to turn things up in ways that I can’t wait for you to experience.
Finally, I would like to thank my publisher, Aethon Books, for putting their full trust into what I’ve done here; my loyal patrons; my amazing wife; and my longtime beta readers Kay, Sarah, and Scott. Also, thank you, reader, for reading and reviewing my books, and for following my career.
Here’s to the next ten years of fantasy books!
Yours in sanity,
Harmon Cooper
www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com
Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
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Harmon Cooper, Doom System Survivor: A LitRPG Apocalypse
