Doom System Survivor 2: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 5
“You made the right choice,” Bianca said.
Hiro took one last look at the Bunny Teen. “I know I did. Sorry.”
“For what?”
“For even considering it.”
They arrived at a building near the Williamsburg Bridge, where a glowing pupil beacon marked the Revenant’s location. The bridge itself—once a vital artery connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn—now lingered as a broken silhouette against the ruined skyline.
Memories surfaced as he looked out at the purple beacon.
Hiro had biked across the Williamsburg Bridge countless times. There used to be a restaurant he liked on the Williamsburg side called Martha’s Country Bakery, where they had apple pie and ice cream that tasted like it did in the Midwest. His mouth watered at the thought of it, but he ignored the craving that signaled he was also starting to get hungry. After we deal with the Revenant, he thought.
Along the way, they had seen two sentries and another Hunter—not for hire, thankfully—but Hiro still felt the weight of his earlier decision. Along the way, they had encountered a few low-level monsters, his follower count now past thirteen thousand with nearly five hundred Soul Cash in the proverbial bank.
While he didn’t regret rejecting the Bunny Teen, he was beginning to understand the implications of the Doom System’s new rules. If the First Interim had been defined by its misinterpretation of humanity’s drive for competition, the Second Interim had doubled down, this time with a focus on capital.
This made him think of Valeria’s theory that the Doom System was behaving as if it were a hallucinating AI, which triggered a new thought, one he hadn’t really touched on before. The problem with generative anything, from agents to advanced reasoning, was that it would actually get better. That had always been the fear, yet humans, like Pandora, were hellbent on opening that box with the assumption they could subvert evolution.
Hiro remembered AI getting to the point that it scared him, that he knew that it had the potential to replace so many aspects of humankind. Now, there would be no way to see to the end of it, no way to see if AI would become the Asimovian equivalent of robot overlords, or if there would be a merger of the two, a new kind of species, not unlike Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. The Doom System had seen to that.
Whatever this is, it’s not the AI Valeria thinks it is. The Doom System isn’t just reasoning or generating—it’s rewriting reality itself. It can color in and erase, build and destroy, all on a whim.
Three years on a stone, Hiro thought, recalling his grandfather’s favorite phrase, which had stuck with him since the gates opened. He wasn’t sure why it surfaced now, but it felt significant, like a puzzle piece he hadn’t yet placed.
“How long are you going to stand there talking to yourself as you stare off into the distance?” Bianca asked as she rocked Mishka in her tendrils. She had grown adept at retrieving the teddy bear from Hiro’s backpack and soothing it when needed.
Hiro glanced at her, appreciating her care for the teddy bear despite the surreal nature of it all. He gently took the bear from her and placed it back into his backpack.
“Okay, Mr. Quiet,” Bianca said.
Hiro leapt to the street below, his movements cautious as he scanned for potential ambushes. The rain had cleared, leaving the city slick and gleaming under faint light.
They started across the bridge, only to find the middle section had collapsed, its remains sunken into the East River. Because of the steel framing, he hadn’t noticed this from his rooftop position earlier.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Bianca said. “And I’m guessing you don’t want to swim in the East River again…”
Hiro stared at the gap, calculating the distance. He could attempt to use {Bounce}, but the span was likely too far, and he wasn’t sure if his abilities could carry him across.
“We need another way,” he said, scanning the broken bridge for any signs of a potential path forward. “And I have just the thing to pull this off.”
7
STICKS AND STONES
Hiro approached the edge of the bridge. It was easily a hundred feet to the other side, and while there was a chance he could climb to the top of the metal structure and make it across that way, he was certain this would be a better option.
“You really think this will work?” Bianca asked as she shifted a bit over his shoulder, as if she were gauging the leap.
“I do, and it will allow us to surprise attack the—” Hiro never finished his sentence as he saw a great force appear on the other side of the bridge. Clad in armor accented with gold filigree and a tiger mask covering the lower half of his face, his soon-to-be opponent sat astride a massive warhorse. The samurai’s helmet bore curved horns that jutted outward like branches of a demonic tree, intensifying his silhouette. His warhorse was equally menacing, its face obscured by a matching gilded tiger mask that traced the contours of its snout.
Description: The employees of a plastic factory in eastern Tennessee never knew what hit them.
The hurricane didn’t come suddenly—warnings were plentiful—but when they asked to evacuate, their boss refused. Nature’s wrath, he insisted, was no match for productivity. Determined to keep their jobs, the employees stayed until the factory was swallowed whole, leaving most to drown in knee-deep, microplastic-laced water.
An internal company document later revealed that leave denial had come directly from Chief Execution Officer Takeda Shingen, a ruthless 16th-century daimyo inexplicably hired during corporate restructuring.
Hoping to salvage the company’s relationship with the community, Shingen distributed McDonald’s gift cards—valid only for a dollar meal burger and a small fries—to the deceased workers’ families, confident this would repair the company’s standing in the community.
“Let them eat burgers!” he declared in a garish meme posted to his social media pages featuring a Disney Marie Antoinette giggling over sizzling patties. When that flopped, Shingen tried the Oprah meme—"You get a burger! You get a burger!”—only to be greeted with even darker disdain.
Why don’t they like me? Shingen wondered as he marched around his room testing out Roman Salutes. Should I change my profile picture? Start a podcast? Buy a chainsaw? Another meme, perhaps?
Then, the darker thoughts came.
If they don’t like me, I will destroy them all. The plastic factories of Tennessee are fertile fields of despair, their souls ripe for harvest on my path to world domination. Let them eat burgers, the poor fucks—let them eat burgers!
“Okay…” Hiro said as he scanned the Doom System’s bloated description and any hints it may hold.
Shingen is vain, he thought. That much is obvious. He’s powerful—at least according to the Doom System’s historically inaccurate version of him. A heartless capitalist, memelord, asshole, whatever. All I’ve got to work with is his ego. If I can play to that somehow… but how? Offering my followers? Acknowledging his strength? Either one could backfire. There’s not much else I can do…
“Why are you holding Mishka?” Bianca asked, interrupting Hiro’s train of thought. “Wait, that’s what you want to do?”
“That’s exactly what I want to do. It’s not like using {Kiss or Slap} on the Pilgrim in Central Park.”
“Do what?”
“I mean some way to deal with Shingen using strategy, something against his narcissism. I don't have anything in my current skillset that fits the bill.” Hiro shook his head. “I’m not seeing something like that here. I am seeing the potential for an ambush, however.”
“How? Your new skill?” Bianca asked.
“I don’t want to waste A La Mode if I don’t have to.”
“Are you hoarding skills, bro?”
Hiro thought about the One-Hit Wonders he currently possessed, including {GoFundMerc}, {Scania the Piss Disc Mimic}, {North Korean Fece Balloons}, and {A La Mode}, his newest.
While Incognito Mode would allow him to get a sneak attack in, and he’d be able to protect himself with Safe Mode, he had a feeling using Mishka would cover at least one of those bases.
“I wouldn’t say I am hoarding them, I’m just trying to use them smartly. Although, the {North Korean Feces Balloons} might be helpful.” He recalled their explanation, which came to him so quickly that it surprised him. Call upon the troubled past and likely troubled future of North Korea by summoning red balloons filled with toxic feces to destroy your opponents. But be warned. You are not immune from their effects…
“You sure about that?” Bianca asked after he quieted for a moment.
Hiro looked to the other side of the bridge, where Shingen had drawn his sword, the blade glinting like liquid fire in the dim light. The mounted samurai shouted in archaic Japanese, his voice echoing over the collapsed bridge. His horse reared onto its hind legs, hooves pawing at the air in a menacing display of power and defiance.
“You speak Japanese, right?” Bianca asked. “What’s he saying?”
“He’s just threatening us.”
“Clearly, but what is he actually saying?”
Hiro tuned back into the daimyo’s cries of anger.
“Face me, coward!” Shingen bellowed. “Meet the judgment of the Tiger of Kai! I shall carve my name upon thy broken flesh! The water below shall cradle thy corpse as the fish feast upon their wretched remains. Even they will spit thee out in disgust, you savage!”
“Well?” Bianca asked as Hachi anxiously moved along the edge of the bridge, the dog clearly ready to engage.
“He’s basically saying that he wants me to face him,” Hiro translated, “and that he’s going to carve his name into my skin. After he kills me, the fish below will eat my remains, but they will spit me out in disgust.”
Bianca roared with laughter. “Dang, he straight up roasted you.”
“I would say something about sticks and stones, but we are far beyond that point. Let’s get this over with. And once we are back in the past, you are in charge of Hachi.”
“Okay,” Bianca said, yet again displaying her usual confidence.
Hiro squeezed the teddy bear to his chest, and the world warped around him, reality peeling away like an old film reel burning from the center out. The dim, apocalyptic haze vanished, replaced by the crisp clarity of a bright winter day. There were bicyclists on the bridge now, weaving through traffic—some delivery drivers, others joyriders. A couple walked past, hands clasped, arms swinging in rhythm, oblivious to the shift in time.
The sudden bite of the winter air cut through Hiro’s clothes, a stark contrast to the thick, grimy warmth of the present. He exhaled, steadying himself, and glanced at the timer again.
01:30
01:29
01:28
“To the other side,” Hiro told Bianca, who was already looking down at her hands, mesmerized by her own being. “We have to hurry!” He took off, still with Mishka clutched to his chest.
Bianca quickly caught up with him, Hachi following behind. “How far do we have to go?” she asked as she passed him quickly. “Hey, I’m faster than you! Ha!”
“Focus,” he called after her, but by this point Bianca had surged off, the teenager easily able to catch up with the woman who was jogging.
“Don’t go too far—” Hiro started to say as Hachi happily chased after Bianca, her laughter echoing in the crisp air. It was still hard to wrap his head around the sensation, the rare, fleeting miracle of being in a time and place that felt safe. There was no sense of being hunted here, no unfiltered carnage spawned by a force he could hardly understand.
Bianca turned back to him, grinned, her joy infectious. The lightness, the freedom, and letting the tension in his chest loosen almost caused him to slow, yet Hiro knew the stakes—he knew where he needed to go.
I need to keep moving, he thought as he passed a guy talking loudly on his earbuds in a language that sounded like Spanish—maybe Portuguese. The man barely acknowledged him, which brought a small smile to Hiro’s face.
Classic New York.
No one questioned what he was wearing or why he was sprinting across the Williamsburg Bridge with duct-taped forearms and a teddy bear held tightly to his chest. Bianca, still in her fuzzy pink suit, drew just as little attention as she had the last time they’d come to the past, the teenager skipping ahead and calling for Hachi to keep up. It was all so normal—almost boringly pedestrian.
And then, it wasn’t.
Then, Hiro slowed his jog, got into position, and motioned for Bianca to join him.
00:15
00:14
00:13
“Are we ready to do this?” he asked her.
“I think,” she said, slightly out of breath. “That was fun. We have to come back to the past.”
“Agreed.” Hiro released his hold on the teddy bear and felt the shift as time snapped back into place, the brightness of the past swallowed by the shadow of the present.
Hiro now stood behind Shingen, the samurai still scanning the far side of the bridge, poised to strike. With a silent nod to Hachi—his signal that things were about to go down—Hiro reached into the air and drew his enormous odachi from nothing, the blade gleaming in the grimy city light.
Time to end this.
8
DUMP FROM THE SKY
Hiro’s phantom cats surged forward, joined by Hachi. Mounted Takeda Shingen reared back, but his warhorse was unable to stop some of the cats from leaping towards the horse’s legs and grabbing on. The beast slammed its hooves down, scattering some of the cats as Hachi barked wildly and Hiro hit Shingen with {Blade Whirlwind}.
“You knave!” Shingen drew a katana and barreled toward Hiro, who bounced out of the way, and slapped against the Zone of Influence barrier.
As he had done before, Hiro used the barrier to ricochet away from Shingen’s next attempt.
Worth a shot, he thought as his eyes jumped from the health bar over the Revenant’s head as he cast {Thoughts and Prayers}, which failed yet again.
“My turn!” Bianca surged forward with explosive speed, swinging into action with her fuzzy tendrils. She latched onto Shingen and his warhorse, coiling tightly around them both.
Shingen’s eyes gleamed with a cold fury. With a deft, almost effortless motion, he slashed downward, severing one of her tentacles in a clean, brutal arc.
“Ow!” she shouted, the shield moving away.
Anger swelling within him, Hiro lunged forward with his odachi aimed for Shingen’s exposed side.
The warhorse reared up, its hooves smashing into the ground inches from Hiro’s feet, forcing him to stumble backward. “Foolish!” Shingen bellowed, his voice like rolling thunder. He swept his sword in a downward motion, the blade elongating yet again.
Hiro barely managed to raise his odachi in time to block the daimyo’s attempt. The clash rang out, sharp and metallic, his arm trembling under the force. Yet the daimyo pulled back, his warhorse pawing at the ground and snorting as Bianca prepared to latch on yet again.
For a fleeting moment the tension hung heavy in the air between them, the daimyo studying Hiro with disgusted interest, the tip of his blade pointed at the ground. Might as well get this over with, Hiro thought as he covered his face with his arm and cast {North Korean Fece Balloons}.
“What’s this?” Shingen roared as red balloons appeared over the fight. They popped all at once, dropping steaming piles of shit and a toxic green mist onto Shingen, his warhorse, Hachi, and Bianca, who just so happened to be too close.
“What the fuck, Hiro?” she shouted. “At least warn me before you summon a dump from the sky!”
“You foul creature! You filthy flea!” Sickened by the overwhelming stench, Shingen’s seething horse started to buck until it threw him off. The samurai hit the ground and lost his sword in the process, which clattered in Bianca’s direction.
She grabbed it with her tentacles and hurled it to the edge of the Zone of Influence, the teenager still wailing about being covered in shit.
His health bar is down a quarter! Hiro thought as he took Shingen in, who was much shorter than Hiro would have expected, the samurai extremely bowlegged.
In catching another glimpse of the man, Hiro noticed that Shingen wore some armor with Louis Vuitton’s logo on it, like Masekado, the Revenant he had faced in the First Interim.
Shingen coughed and wheezed as his horse tried to flee, only to slam into the protective barrier. “Peasant! Thou scum-born worm! Wretched cur of the earth!”
Hiro finally caught a whiff of the results of his attack.
“Oh god,” he said as the foulest scent he could ever remember smelling came to him. It was a sickly, overwhelming stench, a noxious mix of sulfur, rotting meat, and burned hair. Hachi also reacted, the dog whining as he ran to the border of the Zone of Influence, where he tried to claw his way out from the smell’s reach.
Hiro stumbled backward, his free arm pressing against his nose in a desperate attempt to block the stench. A blast of power from Hiro’s katana staggered Shingen.
Got him!
Hiro prepared to clear the gap between the two only to have his plan abruptly interrupted as Shingen’s horse got hold of itself and charged at him with terrifying speed.
The horse would have trampled him had it not been for Bianca, who used her tentacles to loop around the steed’s neck. She managed to drag it to the side, her sudden appearance startling the creature, who continued snorting at the terrible smell. Hachi came in as well, the soiled dog nipping at the horse’s hooves.
“Face me, coward!” bow-legged Shingen cried as he drew a smaller blade. “Turn and face thy doom!” He rushed at Hiro, slashing his blade through the air. It was all so fast, yet Hiro managed to keep a step ahead, able to fully understand the daimyo’s trajectory. No matter how hard Shingen tried, the samurai was unable to get a hit in.
Hiro knew he had chances to end the fight, but each time, the stench from his One-Hit Wonder sent him reeling.
The foul odor wasn’t constant—it came in waves, each more potent than the last. Just as he thought he’d steeled himself against it, the smell would surge again, sharp and suffocating, as if it had a will of its own. He wanted to cover his mouth, but Shingen gave him no chance, the daimyo’s attacks growing faster, his movements more frenzied with every strike.
