Doom System Survivor: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 38
“Not a step closer. Rena. You…” Valeria lifted her crossbow. As Hiro has seen before, a bolt magically took shape, which she pressed into the bottom of her chin. “You… you didn’t…”
“Val, put your weapon down,” Juan said carefully in a tone that told Hiro that he had talked someone down from a ledge before. It was firm, yet there was a gentleness to it. “We all saw what just happened.”
“This is so fucked,” Bianca told Hiro.
At a loss for words, he merely stepped forward, his palms on display. “Val, I know it hurts. I can only imagine—”
“Why? Why are we doing this?” she asked, her eyes watering. “What’s the point in suffering like this?”
Samuel spoke. “The point is we make it to the end. We stop—”
“Stop? How do we stop something that can do what the Doom System does? It lies, it’s violent, it’s relentless, and it’s fucking insane,” she said, sobbing now. “What’s the point in trying?”
“I can’t answer that one for you,” he told her. “But I can tell you that giving up isn’t how we win.”
“Win what?” she asked the Australian.
“What would Rena—”
“Let me handle this,” Juan told Samuel. “Val, I’ve lost my brother and my sister in the last three days. Now, I’ve lost Rena, who was as nice as anyone could be to me. Not to mention my family, my neighbors, the people I worked with. Everyone is gone. But if I did something like kill myself, if you do something like that, then all of their deaths are worth nothing.”
“I don’t think we win against the Doom System,” Hiro told her. “I think we fight it until it gives up. It could beat us right now if it wanted. But if we, as humans, as Survivors, just keep pushing back, maybe there is something to that, a tainted hope. We’ve already proven to ourselves and the system that we have something in us—”
“That dog in us,” she said through more tears. “Only now, you have a demon dog.”
“I do. And yes, that. We have something, and together,” Hiro told her, “we have much more. It’s what humans do. Try as we might, we are social creatures. We thrive off community and… and taking care of each other and caring for the outcomes of our lives. The Doom System can try all it wants to break us, but it will not break the human spirit.”
Valeria lowered her crossbow and took a deep breath in. “I didn’t know I needed a pep talk, and I still don’t know if I need one. But thank you.”
“We’ll come back to bury the body,” Juan assured her, “but we have to deal with the spider first. And then? Then, I don’t know, but we’ve made it this far, and I ain’t giving up. Ain’t no fucking way.”
“Nah, yeah,” Samuel said. “Same here.”
“Same,” Hiro told them.
“Val?” Juan asked. “Are you with us?”
Valeria took a final look at her partner’s dead body, cursed, started to cry again, and then steeled herself. “Let’s get that fucking spider.”
“But before we do.” Hiro went for the metal bottle of Doom System Go Juice. He uncapped it and tried to ignore the foul odor that followed. “We need to chug this.”
66
GIANT HOARDING SPIDER
The boost in stats from the Doom System Go Juice was certainly something Hiro noticed immediately after his first sip. The vomiting that followed didn’t seem to affect the boost either, which was good, because once he was done it felt like he had completely emptied the contents of his stomach.
“There goes your hamburger,” Bianca told him.
“Ugh…” Hiro pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Qué asco,” Juan said as Valeria mumbled something near him.
“Bloody rough.” Samuel wiped his mouth. He had been the only one that didn’t vomit, the Australian apparently with an iron stomach.
Maybe this will wash it down… Hiro took out his can of Munster and drank it, giving him an additional boost in STR. Better, he thought as he smacked his lips, but not by much.
“At least we’re good with the boost,” Juan said as he spat again. “Now, to find the spider.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Valeria told him as she shifted her goggles over her face, the ones that allowed her to find enemies.
“In that case, I’ll just run toward your direction. Just stay where I can easily see you. I’m sure I’ll hear a bunch of commotion, especially as that spider tears through shit.”
“Hachi will go with you,” Hiro told Juan. The dog barked, indicating that he at least partially understood what was going on.
“Right, see you all there!” Samuel moved ahead, the cloaked Survivor doing his teleportation-midair-twist movement. He reached a building, and Hiro joined him with {Bounce}.
“This Go Juice is brilliant, mate,” Samuel said. “Tastes like arse, but—”
A huge form crashed through the side of a glassed-in skyscraper ahead, sending debris to the street below. Hiro focused on the spider as it moved past and was provided a description.
Description: Infamous for their hoarding, Langley and Homer Collyer filled their Harlem mansion with nearly a hundred and fifty tons of junk, everything from pianos to discarded vehicles and broken furniture. Their home became so cluttered that Langley, who had started taking care of the increasingly blind Homer, was forced to carve out narrow pathways zigzagging through the garbage cluttering the halls of their mansion.
Tragedy struck in March 1947 when neighbors reported a foul odor emanating from the Collyer mansion. When the police arrived and forced themselves inside, they found Homer, dead from starvation after being buried in one of the rooms.
But Langley was nowhere to be found.
Weeks of searching led to the grim discovery of Langley’s body, crushed beneath a booby trap of junk set up to deter intruders. At least that’s what everyone thought…
The truth is far more sinister. Rupert—the massive spider you see before you—was the real culprit.
Through repeated venomous bites, Rupert poisoned the Collyer brothers, driving them mad. The spider planted the idea that hoarding was the only way to protect themselves, their memories, and, more importantly, their homes.
Now, Survivor, Rupert has come to share that same message with you.
“I guess let’s kill Rupert, then!” Samuel said as he surged ahead.
The spider landed on a rooftop and quickly used its web to gather the A/C units, which it arranged on its increasingly large abdomen. There was a lot attached to it now, from cars to construction materials and even a few dead Survivors, all of it forming an armor around the spider’s body.
“It’s getting away!” Bianca said as Hiro cast {Kiss or Slap}, which failed.
“Try to get its attention,” she told him, the shield now attached to Hiro’s back.
Hiro thought of firing his finger gun at it but knew that he wouldn’t be able to reach the spider. Same with {Blade Whirlwind}, which seemed to have a range of about fifty or sixty feet.
“One sec.” Figuring it would be the best way to deal with a giant hoarding spider covered in junk, Hiro popped a Corruption cartridge in his vape pen. He soon joined Samuel, who had already portaled to another rooftop. They continued this way until the spider finally dropped down into a small dog park, where it became increasingly interested in a gazebo.
“Now’s our chance!” Samuel bolted in front of the spider and tried to strike it.
Hiro used {Thoughts and Prayers} to no avail as he landed behind the spider and went for his vape pen.
The spider nearly struck Samuel as Hiro exhaled a mustard-colored plume of smoke. While it barely dented the spider’s health bar, it managed to knock off some of the crap the spider had collected on its body, all of which tumbled to the ground and crumbled to dust.
“Bro, stop vaping and help your boy!” Bianca shouted, who had already come alive with her fuzzy pink tendrils.
The spider sprayed another Survivor with venom, killing him instantly.
“Cover me!” Hiro shouted to Samuel.
“I got you, mate!”
He popped in a Bleed cartridge as Samuel once again distracted the spider. Once the cartridge was locked in, Hiro released a red cloud of smoke over the spider and drew his odachi out of the air. He tried for a strike, but his hit was repelled by the armor the spider had since gathered in the form of junk.
“Just need to bloody get in there!” Samuel said.
Hiro bounced to the other side of the fight, where he got in front of Samuel and beat back the spider’s attacks using his odachi. The venom was much harder to dodge. While Hiro managed to avoid it, the caustic nature of the venom caused it to melt through anything it touched, including the stones on the ground.
“Almost there!” Samuel said as Hiro backpedaled with plans to surge forward again.
He had to take a double look once he caught a glimpse of what Samuel was doing. The Australian had removed his cloak, on the ground and curled up as his body split in two.
Hiro recalled that this was his Roulette Skill, that Samuel had said it was massively painful.
“Protect him!” Hiro told Bianca, who responded immediately by using her tendrils to skip toward Samuel.
“I really don’t want the venom on my shield, ugh!” she cried.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” Hiro batted the spider’s leg away with his odachi yet again.
“It’s hurting me, Hiro!” Bianca cried.
He glanced ahead to see the fuzzy pink shield covered in sizzling venom. Hiro jumped to the side and loaded his Healing cartridge into his vape pen just as two Samuels came up, both naked, one looking like he was moments away from dying as he stumbled away.
“Get it, mate,” said the Samuel on the left—who Hiro assumed was the clone.
Clone Samuel bolted into action, leaving the real Samuel staggering as Bianca, still covered in venom, cried even louder.
“Hold still, both of you—” Hiro took a big drag off his vape pen and released a healing white cloud of vapor over the two of them.
The changes were remarkably fast.
Samuel stepped out of the smog rejuvenated, focused on the fight again while Biance tumbled out, the shield using her tendrils to do a cartwheel.
“I’m back!” she shouted.
A glance at the spider’s health bar told Hiro that some of their strikes and the additional Bleed damage were working. It had reduced the spider’s health by about a quarter. Still a ways to go, but certainly enough to show them that they would be able to kill it.
Barking filled the air as Hachi reached the fight, followed by Juan and Valeria.
“What am I looking at?” Valeria said as she aimed her crossbow at the spider, the beast distracted by the pair of Samuels.
“His Roulette Skill,” Hiro said quickly.
“Samuel can clone himself?” she asked.
“He didn’t tell you?”
“It never came up. How do we kill it?” she asked Hiro as she kept her crossbow aimed at the giant spider.
“The junk it’s collected works as an armor. The more we can remove from its body, the better hits we can get in. I already blasted it with Bleed damage, so that’s helping.”
“In that case…” Juan began to morph to his metal form. He tossed his baseball to the side. “I’ll pull that shit off myself.”
“But watch out for its venom. It’s corrosive,” Hiro told him.
“Got it!”
“We’ll get its health down, and then I’ll personally take it down with my Roulette Skill,” Valeria said, anger and sadness flaring in her eyes. “Just give me an opening and the spider is mine.”
67
SURVEY SAYS
Hiro reversed the grip on his blade and bounced forward, intent on doing the same thing that Juan did by landing directly on the spider’s back and delivering some Bleed damage.
“Stabilize me!” he told Bianca as he flew through the air, Hiro veering to the left of one of the spider’s massive legs that continued to engage Samuel and his clone.
Fuzzy tentacles shot out of the shield now on his arm as Bianca latched onto some of the debris and tossed Hiro around to the back of the spider.
The spider shot a web that yanked it to the rooftop of a smaller building while Hiro remained on its back, Juan holding on as well.
There! Hiro lunged for an opening and drove his katana in, shocking the spider enough that the beast naturally buckled forward. Juan used the spider’s momentum to pry part of a bus stop off its body, which went flying to the ground below just as Samuel and his twin appeared.
Thunk! Thunk!
Valeria’s bolts kept coming as Hiro summoned his phantom cats, hoping that they could get into the smaller openings and deliver more damage to the spider’s body.
The huge arachnid jumped to the ground again, Hiro not able to hold on this time. He flew to the ground with it and would have collided with the trees of the small park had it not been for Bianca.
“Saving your booty once again!” she said as she swung Hiro to the far right of the spider and deposited him safely on the ground.
Samuel and his clone continued to get as many hits in as they could. Valeria did the same from the outskirts, her bolts flying in fast.
Hiro spotted a glint of silvery metal on the creature’s back, indicating that Juan was trying to peel off more of its protective debris. Juan had already used his {El Coquí’s Curse} skill, a swath of the spider’s body now covered in tiny frogs. But there didn’t seem to be enough to devour it, and even with Hiro’s phantom cats and his demon dog, their proverbial pets weren’t making much of a dent.
Hiro thought back to the description.
It had been another one of the Doom System’s strange mish-mash of words and historical facts, something about a pair of hoarder brothers that the system claimed had been influenced by the spider.
What if I…?
Jumping back, Hiro got into a position where he was able to fully observe the beast as it fought off the others. He watched as the spider kept opening its mouth and firing venom at the Survivors that remained.
“You ready to finish this motherfucker off?” he called over to Valeria.
“What are you planning?” she asked through quick breaths, the woman overcome with a rage that Hiro had yet to see from her.
“I’ll peg its head; you crush it from there.”
“Got it. Juan, Samuel, get out of there!” Valeria shouted as Hiro shifted Bianca onto his back.
“I need to do something,” he told her.
“Yes, Big Brother Hero?”
“Just get me in close—”
“You got it!”
Hiro took out his Buster Kunai and gripped it tightly as he left the ground courtesy of Bianca, who brought him into the air, the shield traveling toward the spider as if she were moving on stilts.
There! Timing it just right, Hiro loosed his Buster Kunai and put all the strength behind it.
The spider naturally fired a web at the huge weapon, planning to collect it. Yet Hiro’s amplified strength and the momentum of the Buster Kunia morphing to its largest form were too much for the spider to correct, forcing the greedy arachnid onto its back.
Whooompf!
Valeria dropped a wrecking ball on the spider’s belly, bringing its health bar down to critical. The Bleed damage finished it from there, Soul Energy rushing into all of them.
[A Great Revenant has fallen.]
Hiro fell to his knees, feeling a sense of both joy and apprehension for whatever would come next. He took in a deep breath and then another as everything settled around him.
We did it… he thought as cheers erupted in his head.
“We’re such badasses!” Bianca said, the shield naturally moving around Hiro. He blinked his eyes open to find her shimmying her fuzzy tentacles in front of her. “Fuck that spider!”
Hiro’s phone buzzed.
Normally, he would have ignored it, but the other Survivors’ phones started buzzing as well, to the point that they all got them out in one way or another.
“Great,” Valeria said, the first to respond to the text that now appeared before Hiro. She was bent forward now, trembling, her eyes bulging, face illuminated by her phone.
Hiro read the message that followed with disdain.
“What’s it saying?” Bianca asked as she moved closer to him, the shield peering at his phone. “A survey, right…”
Hiro turned away from the others and gave his phone a quick confirmation. “I’m ready.”
Hiro stared at the question as Juan sounded off somewhere beside him. “Seriously? Fuck you, mamabicho, that’s how I’d rate your performance.”
A bolt of energy fired from the sky. It punched through the back of Juan’s head, the Puerto Rican man dead before he hit the ground.
“Holy crap!” Bianca said.
“J-Juan?” Valeria clenched her eyes shut to contain the anger.
Hiro gulped. “Five stars,” he finally said, hating every bit of what he was being forced to do.
“Five stars,” Valeria said bitterly.
“Nah, yeah. Five. Five stars,” Samuel told his phone, the Australian trembling with rage.
Hiro’s phone buzzed, and more text appeared.
“Five stars,” Hiro said.
The others did the same, all three hating every moment of it.
Hiro let out a deep breath. “Five… stars.”
