Doom System Survivor: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 36
First, the D4 receptor.
A genetic study of more than two thousand prehistoric individuals worldwide found D4 more pronounced in those who migrated over the land bridge than those who maintained a genetic history in one location.
Known as D4 elongation, the part of North America closest to the land bridge showed 32 percent of samples with D4 elongation versus those of South America, where elongation reached an average of 69 percent.
Now, the fatbergs.
Once mysterious blackballs began appearing on the beaches of Sydney, Australia, scientists took notice.
Their initial thought was that the black balls were made of tar. Upon further testing, they discovered that they were actually what are known as fatbergs made up of human feces, methamphetamines, hair, fatty acids, food waste, bits of plastic, heart medication, and THC from industrial runoff.
Finally, the eunuch.
Emasculated by his father sometime between 1902 and 1905, Sun Yaoting’s family hoped that castration would gain Imperial influence.
Unfortunately for Yaoting, the village fortune teller had no way of knowing that the country would one day be run by a bear created by A. A. Milne, leading to Yaoting’s preserved genitals being discarded by his family during the Cultural Revolution because they were now considered taboo.
Now, the point.
D4 receptors plus fatbergs plus Yaoting’s discarded genitals were blended together into this handy little concoction, which will give you four sips of the foulest, rankest, and definitely chunkiest brew you’ve ever tasted.
However, each sip will grant you plus one to all of your base stats for an hour.
There’s always a trade-off, isn’t there?
Still shaky from the fight, Hiro unscrewed the lid of the drink and gave it a quick sniff. “Phew, that’s bad.” He quickly capped it.
“I’m so glad I don’t have a nose,” Bianca said. “Look at Hachi.”
Hiro glanced over to the dog to see his nostrils in the air as he tried to pick apart the smell. Hachi sneezed and started to growl. The dog’s focus shifted suddenly, ears going alert.
“We’ve got company,” Bianca said as Hiro swiveled around to find a pair of Spectators now standing in the streets, both in red robes. They wore masks like the Bunny Triplets, the ears already flopped to the side and starting to morph into sharpened blades.
Hachi exploded toward the pair as Hiro drew his odachi.
He thought Bianca would take a position on his arm until he saw her bounding forward using her tentacles like legs, where she launched herself at one of the Spectators, flipped around midair, blocked the Spectator’s ears, and then grabbed onto her opponent’s waist, Bianca able to bring him down so Hachi could go for the neck.
This left Hiro with his odachi over his shoulder, eyes narrowed on the other Spectator, who rushed toward him only to be beaten back by {Blade Whirlwind}.
Hiro went with {Bounce} from there, his huge sword overhead as he brought it down onto the Spectator, cutting off one of the sword ears and a portion of the head as well.
Soul Essence rushed into him, followed by another whirl of red energy as Hachi and Bianca finished their Spectator.
“The difference between us and other Survivors,” Bianca said as she returned to Hiro, “is that we make this look good. They not like us. I always wanted to say something badass like that.”
Hiro jumped back to the top of a building. There was something looming ahead, he could sense it, and all the yellow eyes in the sky over the city did little to calm his nerves. “Let’s not get too confident,” he told Bianca. “Remember what happened last time.”
62
REUNITED AND IT HURTS SO BAD
The Spectators were relentless. They appeared seemingly out of thin air, many with explosive throwing knives that kept Hiro on his toes as he attempted to reach the Trade Center. As he continued to fight his way through the madness, he came across one of the rat creatures with arms sticking out of its back and decided to try his {Stan} power.
I have to have a higher MIND than that thing.
Hiro watched the creature twitch, its eyes rolling into the back of its head as it came under his command.
“Yo, it worked!” Bianca said once a Spectator landed and the rat creature attacked it.
“Looks like it.” While Hachi took off toward another Spectator that had landed, Hiro cut the first one down with {Blade Whirlwind} using his odachi, which created a more powerful burst of energy, albeit one that produced a wide enough arc that the ends didn’t hit the same as the middle.
Hiro didn’t know how many Spectators he had killed at this point, but he estimated it to be more than a dozen. The frenzy had become a blur, his opponents endless, even if they weren’t strong enough to put up a real fight.
That was another thing he had picked up on as more Spectators appeared. While the one in the subway had been tough, the Spectators he had fought since were manageable, especially with Hachi, Bianca, and now, the rat creature that remained under his control.
Yet he knew not to get confident.
As Hiro had learned since January that year, the Doom System always had a trick up its sleeve. Since it can modify the very nature of reality itself and break its own rules, he thought, I will constantly be at a disadvantage.
He landed on a street near the One World Trade Center, a road that would be hard to navigate with all the debris. There was smoke here, many of the buildings recently destroyed.
“See anything?” Bianca asked from her position on his back. “I’ve got nothing.”
Hiro listened intently for a moment. He had already heard explosions in the distance, and there had been a terrible cry, one that he couldn’t quite place, yet the area was surprisingly quiet. A thought came to him, one that he quickly swallowed: Could they all be… dead?
It was a very real possibility, one that made him hate the Doom System even more than it already did. This hatred stirred something within him, the rage he had grown familiar with.
“You good, bro?” Bianca asked as Hiro took a seat and started breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, like Samuel had taught him. Hachi approached, as did the rat creature, its eyes still rolled into the back of its head.
“Just give me a minute.”
“Right, a side effect of your Roulette Skill. I can help,” Bianca said.
“I don’t think you can,” Hiro told her as his temples pulsed.
“Trust me. How about a lullaby?” She began humming a lullaby, her voice vibrating on his back.
Hiro sat there for another few moments to control the rage. He thought about the things that had once made him happy, from simply going on a bike ride to long weekends and days off in which he was able to explore the city. He thought of Kyoto, the temples there that he had walked around with his grandfather, and trips to various beaches in Osaka Prefecture.
Bianca’s humming helped. He didn’t know what lullaby she was humming, and he suspected it wasn’t a lullaby at all because it sounded more like a K-pop song, but she continued, the shield vibrating, Hiro feeling better a few minutes later.
“You good?”
“I’m good,” he told her as he got to his feet, his eyes trained on the One World Trade Center.
They’re inside.
Hiro knew it at that point. He remembered that the inside of the building had massive ceilings over a large, open space where people once played piano amidst cafes and small boutiques. It would also explain why I can’t hear them, he thought as he pushed on.
“Hello?” Bianca asked after he had reached another block, Hiro now near one of the main entrances to the Trade Center. The glass was all blown out, and some of the steel framing had collapsed, but it looked like he would be able to sift his way through the wreckage and enter.
“Sorry,” he told Bianca.
“Wait, you’re seriously going in there?”
“Got to,” Hiro said as Hachi followed after him, the rat creature doing the same.
“Do you, though? And also, this rat creature, you’re going to need to name it if it keeps following you. Might I suggest Splinter?”
“Ha.” Hiro stepped into the vast, open space, much of which showed signs of looting and the decay from a number of things, including previous attacks from supers and explosions from Spectators.
A fight had clearly gone down here, and by the sounds of it, echoing down a hall, it was still happening. He took off toward the noises, his pace quickening once he heard Rena shout something followed by the thunk of Valeria’s arrows.
Hiro skidded around a corner to find a trio of Spectators; only these ones had golden robes and big sword arms covered in veins.
Rena was down. Valeria stood before her, crossbow aimed at one of the overpowered Spectators as Samuel rushed forward, the ends of his cape with a mind of its own as it knifed at the Spectators.
Hachi barked and leaped into action, followed by the rat creature, which was quickly killed by one of the Spectators.
“No, Splinter!” Bianca shouted.
Valeria, who had aimed her crossbow at Hiro upon his sudden appearance, changed its trajectory and fired it at the Spectators.
~Kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, NEKO!~
His phantom cats unleashed, Hiro cast {Thoughts and Prayers} to no avail. He skipped over {Kiss or Slap} because he didn’t know how much life the Spectators had, especially without access to their health bars.
“Where did you get that bloody thing?” Samuel called to Hiro once he drew his odachi.
One of the golden-robed Spectators rushed toward him and jumped, prepared to use his arm blades as scissors.
Hiro struck his opponent down with so much force that it actually surprised him. Not only did it instantly kill the Spectator, causing a huge flash of Soul Essence to rush into his chest, it also sent his opponent’s body flying backward, where it struck the other two Spectators.
You have new followers!
Valeria released a flurry of birds to distract the two remaining Spectators, who scrambled to regroup as Hachi and Hiro’s phantom cats kept up their relentless attacks.
“I’ve got this one!” Bianca said as she came alive, her tendrils growing in size and rushing forward to trip one of the Spectators. As the Spectator fell, Bianca rubberbanded toward him and slapped the edge of her fuzzy pink shield into the back of his head.
Samuel finished off the last Spectator as he whirled around, delivering numerous cuts. “Nice,” he said, Soul Essence pouring into him. “These buggers are worth 100 SE each.”
“Really?” Hiro quickly accessed his stats to see he had close to 300 SE. His next question was aimed at Valeria, who had since turned to Rena to fire a healing bolt and her partner. “Where’s Juan?”
“I don’t know. The raincoat bitch portaled all of us away, like I told you in the note,” Valeria said.
“Sadly, no Juan,” Rena said, “but it’s nice to see you again. Reunited, and it hurts so bad.” She showed Hiro the remnants of a healed wound on her arm. “Anyway, that sounded funnier in my head.”
“You said it was the meeting place, right? Or around there,” the Australian said. “What about you, mate? Where have you been?”
“Sleeping. A side effect of my Roulette Skill,” Hiro told him. “I headed to my fallout shelter to rest a bit and ended up passing out for over fourteen hours.”
“Hell yes, you did,” Bianca said.
“Can you all hear that?” he asked as the shield returned to his arm.
“Hear what?” Rena asked.
Oh God, Hiro thought. So they can’t actually hear her… This produced another thought, one that he quickly discarded based on their interactions so far. “It’s going to sound like I’m hallucinating, but the shield has been possessed by Bianca, the teenager I teamed up with in Central Park, the one I told you about,” Hiro said to Valeria and Rena.
“Your shield is possessed by a teenage girl?” Samuel asked.
“Correct. Watch. Um, Bianca, stand on the ground.”
“Really, Big Brother Hiro?” she asked.
“We have to prove to them that I’m not lying here.”
“Ugh.” She removed herself from his arm and stood on the ground using two tentacles, where she proceeded to do what looked like some sort of TikTok dance as she used another pair of tentacles to shimmy left and right.
Samuel burst out laughing. “Didn’t expect that.”
“So she can talk to you?” Valeria asked.
“She can. And she saved me.” Hiro detailed what happened in the East River after he had been portaled away from the fight against the Lady in the Yellow Raincoat.
“Good on you,” Samuel told the shield. She lifted a tentacle to him, and he fist-bumped it.
Bianca turned her focus to Hiro. “Did you like my dance?”
“Sure, sure.” He extended his hand to her, and she returned, her fuzzy tentacles wrapping into place around his arm.
“We need to get out of here,” Rena said. “It’s like a death trap, and they seem to keep coming from all angles.”
“It does seem like the Spectators appear out of thin air,” Hiro said.
“In that case, let’s go out and join the eyes,” Samuel said, referring to the big yellow eyes that had all opened up in the sky above the city.
“Because that’s not creepy,” Valeria told him. The group started back toward the main space of the One Trade Center, Hachi following after them. “Did you show up with a rat creature?” she asked. “Or am I the one hallucinating now?”
“I did. Another power I have called {Stan},” Hiro told Valeria.
Her eyes darted to the upper mezzanine, and she brought her crossbow to the ready. “Sorry,” she said, relaxing to some degree. “I thought I saw something. Getting jumpy. Hungry.”
“All I see is that McDonald’s,” Samuel said. “A hamburger and a beer. I’d settle for either, really.”
“Ooo, you should tell them,” Bianca told Hiro. “Maybe they can all travel to the past with you.”
Hiro stopped and took out his phone. “Companion, can other people use Chromokuma with me?”
“Do what, now?” Samuel asked him as an answer formulated.
Hiro glanced up at the hamburger chain and considered how this could work. “Does everyone want a hamburger?” he asked.
“Fuck yeah we do, mate,” Samuel said for Rena and Valeria. “Even a shitty one from McDonald’s. But how would we get something like that?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Hiro said, a smile taking shape beneath his mask.
63
GO FOR A BURGER
The plan to travel back in time to get hamburgers was simple: Hiro would hold the teddy bear to his chest, his other arm locked with Samuel, whose arm was locked with Rena, whose arm was locked with Valeria.
“And then we steal, threaten, do whatever,” Valeria reminded them. “Because, like you said, three minutes.”
“That’s right,” Hiro told her. None of them seemed fazed by the fact Hiro hadn’t shared this power with them previously; none of them seemed fazed by anything at this point. The Doom System has either broken us or forced us to evolve out of constant trauma.
“Can’t believe we’re about to do a Macca’s run, but I’m here for it,” Samuel said.
“And we have to eat it there, right?” Rena confirmed as they got in queue inside the restaurant, the four of them now behind the counter of the McDonald’s. “What about fries?”
“That’s right,” Hiro told Rena. “Fries might be difficult, but if you can stuff them in your mouth, do it.”
“I can definitely do that. What about any of our gear? Your shield, for example.”
“Yeah, what about me?” Bianca asked. “Also, I’d kill for a fry. Seriously.”
Hiro looked up at the yellow McDonald’s sign, which was missing a few of its letters. “From what I’ve experienced before, my weapons don’t come with me. I don’t remember if my backpack stayed on or not, but my katana definitely wasn’t there. So I don’t know.”
“What if I appear with you all and just fall off your back, or something?” Bianca asked him.
“Let’s hope that isn’t the case.” Hiro looked around. “I can put you on the counter. Actually, yes, that might be a better idea. To defend us just in case.”
“Because we can be attacked here while we are there,” said Samuel. “Is all of this really worth a hamburger? You’re bloody right, it is!”
“Fine, I’ll stay here and be everyone’s favorite guard dog after Hachi.” She removed herself from Hiro’s back, the fuzzy pink shield using her tentacles to take a position on the counter. “Have fun,” she said in a jealous way.
“Let’s give it a shot,” Hiro told the other Survivors. “We grab whatever hamburgers we can. We have three minutes. We can probably demand a burger too because they keep them in those little plastic cubbies, or whatever they’re called. But three minutes.”
“I’m so ready for this,” Samuel said as he licked his lips. “I just wish we could add a quick trip to the pub to this little sojourn as well. Next time!”
“Next time.” Hiro squeezed Chronokuma close to his chest, and the four of them appeared behind the counter at the McDonald’s in the One World Trade Center, startling the employees that were moving about.
“We’re here for your hamburgers!” Samuel announced with a grin as Valeria raided the metal pick-up tray. Three hamburgers had just come down the chute, already wrapped.
As the employee started to stumble backward, Valeria commanded that they make more. “Now. As many as you can!”
Hiro glanced to the other side of the counter, where he saw people waiting to pick up the orders they placed on electric kiosks. A few had already pulled out their phones. This isn’t going to play well on the socials, he thought, but then, he also didn’t give a shit.
