Doom System Survivor: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 23
Clank! Hiro got a quick strike in.
He moved out of the way as the Hunter came down hard, once again stomping the ground and uprooting the soil.
Break his poise. I need an opening, Hiro thought.
Now out of the mist, he decided to swing in with everything he had, Hiro hacking and then pivoting, hacking and pivoting in a circle around his powerful opponent.
To finally put a stop to him, Gigachad threw his arms out and released a deep bellow, one that shot soundwaves in an arc around him that threw Hiro backward. He hit the ground, lost his katana, and grabbed his Buster Kunai, which he tossed forward, directly into the Gigachad’s chest.
The blade ballooned in size as it pierced the Hunter, triggering a transformation as his health bar hit the halfway point.
Now crouched, Gigachad yanked the Buster Kunai out of his chest and dropped it. He looked up at Hiro just as a single strand of his slicked back hair fell into his face.
His eyes jumped from Hiro to the single strand of hair.
Gigachad started sucking in deep breaths, which pulled what was left of the mist of microplastics toward him. He threw his head back and sucked in more, creating a profound change in his skin as it broke through his armor, bubbling, bulging, spiking with microplastics, and eventually coating him in a flesh suit covered in writhing veins and teeth-like protrusions.
Gigachad pulled one arm back and fired these protrusions at Hiro, who dove to the left to avoid them. The Hunter was on top of him in a matter of moments, just about to crush him when Hiro triggered his own transformation.
Hiro became a wolf and instantly felt the hunger, the rage, the hatred for the Hunter. He drove his claws into the man’s sides and pulled out strips of flesh.
Extending his head forward, lupine Hiro bit down onto the Gigachad’s neck. He dug his teeth in even deeper, the ravenous hunger overwhelming as the Hunter kept struggling to break free.
Everything blurred as he tore into Gigachad, the world moving as if it was happening in some dream state as Hiro continued to cut into the Hunter with his claws. He got on top of the Hunter, grabbed his opponent by his big chin, and ripped his head off.
Hiro tossed Gigachad’s head to the side and crouched.
Come on! he screamed inside his own mind as he tried to get hold of himself. Yet the power of the lupine transformation was nearly impossible to control.
Overcome by savagery, Hiro moved back to his opponent to devour him. No, no, no! He shouted to himself. Not with all those microplastics!
His lupine form shook wildly, the transformation over.
Hiro dropped to his knees, and his body shrank back to its normal size, hands and face covered in Gigachad blood.
You have new followers!
As he caught his breath, Soul Essence poured into him, and the Hunter started to fade, leaving some questionable loot behind.
“Duct tape?” Hiro reached a shaky hand out to one of the rolls of duct tape and examined it. “For real?”
Weapon: Duct Tape of the Tokugawa Shogunate
Rank: D
Description: Once Commodore Matthew Perry set his sights on Japan and began firing his cannons at the city of Uraga in 1853, the best adhesive blacksmiths employed by the Tokugawa Shogunate came up with a clever solution to stop the Americans hellbent on disrupting Japan’s isolation.
As Perry’s men stormed the beaches, ready to offload designer American goods like Levi’s ultra skinny jeans, Old Navy Independence Day T-shirts, and yellow Come and Take It hats originally made in the PRC, the shinobi tasked with defending Uraga wrapped themselves in duct tape and began their counter-offensive.
As the rockets’ red glare, the duct-taped shinobi burst through the air, giving proof through their fight that the tape was still there. Through their armor and their incredible acrobatics, the shinobi repelled Perry’s forces, and Japan remained an isolationist country until they set their gaze on Korea…
Surprisingly durable and flexible, the Duct Tape of the Tokugawa Shogunate is a kind of instant application armor that is truly a sonofabitch to take off.
Able to repel certain sword strikes and shrapnel, this is the kind of stuff that will have you wrapping yourself up like it’s Halloween and you are putting together a last-minute cyborg mummy costume.
Don’t leave home without it!
“Duct tape armor?” Hiro looked down at his arms, which were now exposed due to his wolf transformation. “Fuck it, let’s give it a try.”
37
ARE THERE NECROMANCERS IN NEW YORK CITY?
“Here goes nothing…” Hiro wrapped the duct tape he received from the Gigachad around his wrist. It hardened, yet remained flexible enough for him to move his hand freely. “Weird.” He picked up his Buster Kunai, which was now in its knife form.
Let’s see about this. He dragged the blade across the duct tape. The armor held strong. He put more pressure into it this time, and then he tapped the blade against it, noticing a slight metallic sound.
And then how do I get it off? He found his tape line and got his fingernail beneath it. “Whoa,” Hiro whispered as he was able to pull some of it back. It hurt, just like the description had said, but it was entirely doable. “So it’s like real tape in that regard. But it’s also armor. In that case…”
It took him a few minutes, but Hiro eventually wrapped both his arms in the duct tape, leaving him about one and a quarter rolls to use later. He gathered his things, considered drinking one of his energy drinks, and decided against it as he checked basic stats.
Name: Hiro Johnson
Level Six
Current Title: Wolf Ronin of Wall Street
Followers: 1,256
Interim Performance Grade: B-
City Survivors: 632,198
World Survivors: 357,441,279
Beast Death Count: 388/791
Hunter Death Count: 55/89
“I need more followers so I can upgrade my vape pen,” Hiro said, only realizing after uttering these words how strange they sounded. He almost laughed but decided to keep quiet instead.
He had seen things from the window of the high-rise building in Billionaire’s Row. It had looked like a great battle at the time, but he was too far away to truly make it out.
His sword sheathed at his side, mask on his face, vape pen in one pocket, Buster Kunai in the other, and his arms wrapped in armored duct tape, Hiro moved on. To better protect himself, he took a path through Central Park that was dense with large stones and trees on either side, which would make it harder for an enemy to ambush him.
Or so he hoped.
He knew there would be time for reflection later, perhaps one day, or maybe when he rested before the gates opened. But now wasn’t that time. Now, he needed more followers; he needed to get stronger; he needed to…
“Survive.” Hiro came to something he hadn’t been expecting. Although, if he admitted it to himself, he wouldn’t have expected anything. “What the actual hell?” he asked as his eyes traced over the end of a skeletal tail, each vertebra the size of a minivan.
He looked ahead to see that the tail extended into the woods, parts of it buried in the ground.
He approached with heightened caution.
The tail wasn’t moving, and the way it was embedded in the ground made it appear as if it had been there for quite some time. Years, even.
To follow it or to continue on the trail?
Hiro decided to stick to the bone tail.
His hand now on the hilt of his katana, Hiro crept along the side of the vertebrae, noticing that the bigger the bones grew, the more sunken they were. The end of the vertebra had been large, but these ones were massive.
I don’t think I’m going to have to fight it. The bone tail seemed too dormant—ancient, even—like it had been there since the dawn of time. If it was something he would need to fight, how would he do it, and why hadn’t he received a description yet?
He pushed onward, stepping over some of the trees the tail had crushed.
Ask the right questions, Hiro thought, his dad’s favorite quote.
But how did one ask the right questions in a world like this, one turned completely upside down and populated with terrifying monsters spawned by an entity that no one understood?
Hiro pushed past the existential dread and came to an obvious question: If the thing is dead, what killed this thing? Then a stranger one.
“Does this place have necromancers?” he whispered, only realizing that this place was the city he had called home for the last several years. In that case—Are there necromancers in New York City?
A smirk took shape under his mask, one that quickly faded as Hiro reached the massive creature’s actual body.
It soon resembled an archaeological dig site, much of the monster’s giant form buried in Central Park. It was crocodilian in nature, and it seemed to have twisted at the last moment, which led several of its ribs to jut out of the ground.
“Some kind of dragon,” Hiro said as he noticed movement at the top of the monster’s spine, near the place where it met the back of its neck.
Are those… legs?
A pair of white marble legs ran in his direction, jumping from vertebra to vertebra. The legs, which stopped just past the knees, moved as if they were operated by an invisible person.
A red health bar appeared once the legs hopped to the ground, now just twenty feet away from him.
Hiro drew his katana, no question in his mind that he would have to fight the pair of legs.
He tried for {Kiss or Slap}, which failed. He then triggered {Blade Whirlwind}, which staggered the pair of stone legs through its slicing wind.
His attempt took enough of their health bar that he thought he would be able to cheese it by using the power again and again, yet upon his fourth attempt, the legs jumped over him, landed directly behind Hiro, and delivered a crushing heel kick to his back, which sent him flying forward.
He slammed into one of the vertebrae, which felt like hitting a brick wall. Hiro pivoted out of the way and spun just in time to swat at the legs, which had jumped toward him to deliver a finishing blow.
That kick would have taken my head off!
Hiro jumped back and used {Blade Whirlwind} again, which gave him enough momentum to push him away from the white marble legs hellbent on kicking the living shit out of him.
{Refund} allowed Hiro to absorb their next attack, which he redistributed back toward the legs, finally able to separate them.
Shock came across his masked face as the legs hopped back up on their own, now with two health bars the same size as the shared one they had just moments ago.
Hiro called his phantom demon cats to distract the legs while he focused on killing one. After the sound played out, seemingly piped from speakers in the air that didn’t and shouldn’t have existed, the cats charged the legs, which independently kicked at them.
Figuring he’d focus on the leg on the right, the one closest to him, Hiro rushed in with both hands on the grip of his katana. It was strange changing his strike trajectory to a downward motion, so he slid.
Like he was sliding into home plate, Hiro dropped to his knees and swung right into the leg, which took a good quarter of its health. The leg managed a side kick that Hiro blocked with his arm, his duct tape armor protecting him.
Hiro cut into it again, the leg falling and twitching as its health bar depleted.
“Shit!” Hiro shouted as the next leg, even though it was covered in phantom demon cats, managed to land a pointed kick on his shoulder in a place that he hadn’t wrapped with duct tape.
He fell to the side, the pain blooming within him, Hiro feeling as if he’d been struck by the broad side of a hockey stick.
The leg jumped and attempted to stomp on his face. Hiro rolled at the last moment and threw his arm out, his katana slicing against the leg and knocking it to the side. Nursing his arm, trying his best to ignore the pain, Hiro got to his feet, winced, and hit the leg again as it staggered backward.
He brought both hands onto the grip of his katana and drove it down onto the knee.
“Fuck you,” he whispered as the leg fell, its health bar depleted.
Applause erupted in his head.
You have new followers!
Soul Essence poured into him, and his phantom cats faded.
Ka-Boom!
Hiro pivoted toward the explosive sound, his sword arm instinctively coming up across his chest as he was tossed backward by a spray of metal pellets.
38
EDGING WITH THE PILGRIMS
Hiro was just scrambling to his feet, trying to figure out where the shot came from, when another fired in his direction.
Ka-Boom!
He dove for cover as the pellets ricocheted off a tree, sending splinters into the air as the loud sound echoed in his head.
Gotta keep moving! Hiro thought as he hit the ground, shifted to his side, and tried to make sense of what was firing at him as he also scanned the area for cover.
The giant vertebra; that’s the only cover I’m going to get with shots like that, he surmised as he glanced to the huge beat that had fallen in Central Park.
In moving toward cover, he finally got a glimpse of who was firing at him.
A man in a wide-brimmed pilgrim’s hat and an outfit that looked like something a Union general would wear quickly prepared his flintlock musket for another shot.
Like the other Sentries Hiro had encountered, which he was increasingly starting to see were New York City statues that had been warped by the Doom System, the Pilgrim had a red halo around his head.
Description: A little-known fact about Plymouth Rock is that it originally lay in a vast sunken continent known as Icelandia. By dating zircon crystals, a team of Nordic researchers were able to descend to the center of the Earth, not unlike Jules Verne, where they discovered a long-abandoned Hot Topic that had a unique collection of sexual euphemisms in place of goth get-ups and Taylor Swift tees.
According to this ancient tome of sex they discovered, fellatio, something that everyone seems to enjoy, was once referred to as “twirling the stem,” while female oral gratification was known as “seeking the seed.”
Another term for an erection was “tree of flesh,” and an orgasm was euphemistically referred to as “bursting the fruit.”
The medal for best phrase probably goes to “splitting the melon,” referring to rear copulation.
Sex itself was known as “matching the bird to the nest,” a phrase that the man standing before you loading his flintstock musket would have no part of. You see, this man, known as the Pilgrim, would have burned down the Hot Topic in the sunken continent of Icelandia because of his Puritan nature.
The Pilgrim never copulated in any position other than missionary, but he was a big fan of what is known as “bundling,” which was a practice in which a courting couple would share a bed, their bodies separated by a plank of wood.
To prevent himself from having an illness known as spermatorrhoea—which you’d likely call a “wet dream” because of the way modern English has sullied the language—the Pilgrim wore spiked gloves, which he has on now. He should be wearing a device known as a Jugum Penis, which consisted of a steel clip with serrated teeth to deter unwanted erections, but it had yet to be invented in his time.
Too bad.
Sexually repressed, not unlike the Gigachad you recently killed, The Pilgrim doesn’t like your exotic mask. He doesn’t like who you come from or what you represent. He is fairly certain you don’t believe in the same God as him, and he is entirely sure in his reasoning for shooting you for trespassing.
After all, it is his God-given, American-ordained right to defend his territory, which just so happens to be Central Park.
“Dude, what?” Hiro whispered as he hit back at the Pilgrim with {Blade Whirlwind}.
His opening attack petered out just before striking his opponent, yet it did cause the statue to hop off the rock it had been perched on, preventing the Pilgrim from loading his musket.
Hiro used {Bounce} to send himself up and over the Pilgrim, his mind racing as he tried to figure out what to do next. There’s the energy drink called Smoke Zero, which would let him exhale smoke…
Hiro swiveled his bag around, stuffed his hand in, and found the Smoke Zero can, which he popped and chugged in one big gulp.
The burp that followed was the loudest and strongest Hiro had ever produced, one lasting a full twenty seconds as he released a thick cloud of black smoke, obscuring his surroundings. He followed this up with {Kore Nani Neko}, his phantom cats all racing toward the Pilgrim and yowling in the process.
Bang!
A shot rang out, the Pilgrim’s attempt way closer to Hiro than he would have liked.
Should I use {Sacra Limina}? Hiro thought as he moved behind one of the large vertebrae for cover. Wait. The Pilgrim is a prude. Could these batshit descriptions actually have meaning behind them? I should use {Kiss or Slap}. What if Kiss actually hurts him?
The Roulette Skill known as {Kiss or Slap} would either knock the Pilgrim down to a quarter of his normal health or heal him back to 100 percent. Since Hiro had barely put a dent in his health bar, there was really nothing to lose.
Ka-Boom!
Another shot from the Pilgrim slammed into the giant vertebra Hiro was currently crouched behind. He ducked forward, his eyes clenched shut as bits of bone and smoke blew past him.
The ground shook. Or, at least it felt that way, as if the enormous monster skeleton in Central Park had actually come to life. Focus, Hiro thought as he moved to the next vertebra. He peeked around the corner to check the Pilgrim’s heath bar as the smoke began to clear.
Ka-Boom!
A pellet from the Pilgrim’s shot hit Hiro’s arm, where it was protected by his armored Duct Tape.
“Fuck it.” Hiro jumped into the smoke and triggered his Roulette Skill.
Kiss or Slap? KISS!
