Doom System Survivor 2: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 40
“No… it’s… it’s the exit!” he shouted, just as the Soot Warden impaled a Survivor on a rapier-shaped baton and hurled the body into a nearby group.
“We don’t have time for the stairs to finish forming,” Kim said, panting. “The floor’s starting to collapse.”
The floor shuddered beneath them, groaning like metal under strain.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the polished surface, glowing with glitching code—red lines flickering in and out of existence. Segments of the ground began to drop in jagged chunks, not falling so much as being deleted, blinking out with bursts of static.
Tiles peeled upward at impossible angles, twisting as if the system couldn't decide which geometry to keep. Screams echoed as Survivors lost their footing and plummeted into nothingness, their bodies vanishing before they ever hit a bottom.
Samuel appeared. “We round up who we can. I’ll start with Big Mike.” He glanced back to Ben’s dead body, which was already starting to fade. “Fuck. Fuck the—”
“Not now,” Hiro told him.
“Right, thanks, Mate.”
Hiro whistled for Hachi, who came running. He grabbed the dog and bounced toward the opening.
He landed on the rooftop and set Hachi down. “I’ll be back,” he said, confirming something he had already wondered. If I reach the roof, is this all over? Apparently not.
Hiro dropped back into the chaos just as Kim let out a snarl and launched herself forward, her hair flaring with static as her wings snapped into arcs of pure electricity. She slammed into the White-Flame Warden with everything she had, screaming as lightning cracked down from the artificial skylight overhead.
The Warden staggered, armor sizzling. Kim landed behind him, grabbed a wounded Survivor by the arm, and launched toward the forming exit.
Another Survivor charged past the Soot Warden. Hiro activated {Blade Whirlwind} to cover her, unleashing a shredding gust that tore across the Soot Warden’s knees. Black ichor sprayed like a ruptured pipe. He followed with a rising slash, carving deep into the thigh—a geyser of steaming rot bursting free.
Big Mike roared back into the fray, only for Samuel to reappear behind him, panting. “We’ve gotta go, Mike!”
In a blink, the two vanished, teleporting to the rooftop in a crackle of static.
“Let’s move,” Hiro shouted, catching the eye of one of the trillionaire twins.
“You can fly?” the twin asked, disbelief in his voice.
“Not exactly.” Hiro reached a hand out to him as Bianca’s tendrils whipped out from under his jacket. They snapped tight around his waist and launched them both skyward in a burst of kinetic force and landed on the rooftop.
One by one, the others followed. Survivors sprinted and leapt. Some teleported. Others flew. Kim soared upward with two dazed survivors in tow. Samuel reappeared near the remaining twin and whisked him to the top with another blink of light.
“So the final floor is the rooftop,” he said under his breath as he looked back down to the two Wardens, who continued their assault—one tearing through Hiro’s Decoy with blind fury, the other battling a small squad of freshly reanimated corpses. Someone, it seemed, had been holding back some seriously grim magic.
“Is this everyone?” the second twin asked, eyes darting across the battered group now gathering on the rooftop.
Kim landed hard beside them, hair still sparking. “We’re all here.”
The first twin stepped forward, his tone suddenly calm, resolute. “I can finish this.” He winced. “It will hurt.”
“You’ve got this,” his brother told him.
“Yeah. Just… give me a second.” He thrust out his hand. A serpent tore free from his palm, thin as a whip at first, but growing fast. Its chrome-scaled body ballooned midair, stretching from garden snake to subway train in the span of a heartbeat as it screamed through the gash in the ceiling, coiling once like a loaded spring.
Then it dropped.
The serpent crushed the two Wardens with a sound like a collapsing cathedral, its mass folding inward as it hit, bones and metal groaning beneath the weight.
The rooftop shuddered.
[A Great Revenant has fallen.]
“We actually did it?” Big Mike glanced around, his look hardening when he saw across the East River. “Look.”
Hiro turned to find other Jailscrapers on both the East River and past the Hudson, several dozen in total spanning the horizon. Some were already starting to topple.
“Everyone around me!” Samuel said as the building lurched. “It’s going to collapse!”
69
THE SKILL, THE DOG, AND THE SHIELD
Hiro hit the ground hard, knees slamming into the pavement in front of the gate. The Financial District blurred around him, sharp angles and shadows where there should have been sky. Survivors stumbled and shouted nearby.
In the distance, the Jailscraper they had just been standing on began to collapse, groaning like a dying machine.
Before Hiro could process any of it, from Ben’s death to all that had just happened over the last few days, his phone buzzed.
He looked around. Other Survivors were pulling theirs out too.
Then came the groans.
“Bloody hell,” Samuel said.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Hiro thought as he read the text from his Companion.
“Yes,” Hiro said as Bianca joined him, the shield squeezing around his arm. “Begin the survey.”
“Another survey?” she asked. “Ugh, so stupid.”
Near them, Hachi barked, almost as if he were agreeing.
More text appeared.
“Five stars,” Hiro said bitterly.
He sat down hard, legs bent, arms resting on his knees. His head hung low, eyes fixed on nothing. Everything hurt. His body, his brain, the space behind his eyes. He didn’t know what part of him was still running, but it wasn’t anything good.
Around him, the other Survivors, from Big Mike, Samuel, Kim, and the twins, all answered the same question, awarding the Doom System with five stars.
More text.
Hiro clenched his eyes shut. “Five stars.”
“Five stars.”
Hiro couldn’t wipe the glare from his face as he stared down at his phone. Hachi came to him, and he placed a hand on the Shiba Inu’s head. “Five. Stars.”
“Five stars,” Hiro said.
Hiro didn’t hesitate.
He already knew what he wanted. What he needed.
“{Terminal Lucidity}, Bianca, and Hachi,” he told the screen aloud. “The Skill, the Dog, and the Shield.”
Around him, the other Survivors murmured as they each made their picks, voices hushed and uncertain.
Three dots pulsed on Hiro’s screen.
He started to wonder if he needed to say Bianca and Hachi’s official titles when text started to appear, deleted itself, and then reformed.
“Fine.” Hiro exhaled slowly.
He had expected this.
There was no way the Doom System was going to let him carry {Terminal Lucidity} into the next Interim, not with how aware it had made him. Yet it still stung. He slipped the phone back into his pocket just as the gate ahead began to glow.
“Uh, bro?”
Bianca’s voice.
He looked to his arm, expecting the usual coil of pink fuzz—
But the tendril was longer now. Thicker. Almost… humanoid.
His eyes followed it.
Standing just a few steps away, arms tapering into long, rubbery tendrils that flopped like pool noodles, was a girl in pink coveralls. Her hoodie was half-up, hair wild, eyes wide and impossibly alive.
“Bianca?” Hiro’s voice cracked. He blinked, not trusting what he saw. “Is that really you?”
His hand twitched toward his face—instinct, muscle memory. He paused, expecting the weight of the Bear-Dragon Claw. But it was gone. Right. A Roulette Accessory. Temporary. Just my normal fingers now, thank God.
He rubbed his eyes. She was still there.
Bianca spoke again. “I’m back,” she said as she looked down at her extended arms. “Human again. I think. What did you do?”
“I—”
The gate behind them blasted open, flooding the street in surreal light.
Hiro blinked once. Then again.
The System had taken everything. And yet, somehow, it had just given something back. Not mercy. Not grace. But some kind of jilted hope.
It was enough for now.
Doom System Survivor Will Continue In Book Three!
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