Doom system survivor 2 a.., p.1
Doom System Survivor 2: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 1
DOOM SYSTEM SURVIVOR 2
©2025 HARMON COOPER
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ALSO IN SERIES
Doom System Survivor
Doom System Survivor 2
Doom System Survivor 3
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CONTENTS
Doom System Survivor: Book One Recap
0. Money
1. Terminal Lucidity
2. Pharmacists Would Hate You
3. Just Ask Double Check
4. Back and Forth
5. A La Mode
6. Bad Bunny
7. Sticks and Stones
8. Dump from the Sky
9. Barcode Babies
10. Cleaned Up
11. Bear and Faun
12. When in Doubt, IED
13. Bear Claw
14. Shop-ocalypse
15. Don’t Argue with Your Phone or It Could Cause You to Shit Your Pants
16. Madman with A Mad Plan
17. Overdraft
18. Bubblegum Man
19. Attack of the Brogre
20. Stormtruppen
21. When the Moon Hits Your Eye
22. Legendary Mysterious Armpit Rice Ball Shuriken
23. Hagelslag
24. Golden Shower
25. Cash Rules Everything Around Me
26. Ponzi Lord and Profit Prophet
27. Best Laid Plans
28. Cash In, Cash Out
29. Money Trees
30. Millionaire Mindset
31. Get Rich or Die Tryin’
32. Honey, I Shrunk the Survivors
33. Dang System Correction
34. Wagyu
35. Raiko’s Mask
36. Feudal Meme Warlord
37. The Fate of Weaklings
38. I’m Going to Kill You, Respectfully
39. Get Smart
40. Panic at the Shitshow
41. This is Going to Hurt
42. Good Girl
43. Doom System Romeo and Juliet
44. The World is a Goomba
45. The Executioner’s Face Is Always Well Hidden
46. Multiverse AI
47. Bananas
48. Wild Trash Chase
49. Trash Cache
50. Quantum Rizzics
51. This Is Not Modern Art
52. Care to Roll the Neural Dice?
53. The Calm Before the Something
54. Necrotic Spooning and a Pop Quiz
55. Kachina
56. Fight Pseudoscience with Pseudoscience
57. Ni Hao and Apologies
58. Floor 97
59. Memories
60. Comfort Trap
61. Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out
62. Sermon
63. Counting Carbs
64. Namaste, Motherfuckers!
65. Stairway to Heaven
66. The Trillionaire Floor
67. Final Correction
68. Boss Battle
69. The Skill, the Dog, and the Shield
Thank you for reading Doom System Survivor
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DOOM SYSTEM SURVIVOR: BOOK ONE RECAP
{Loading…}
Reality may be unstable.
Do not be alarmed. This is normal.
Shota Johnson wakes up in a parking garage, a perfect candidate for survival (or termination).
The System speaks to him—kindly, gently. It offers a katana, a time limit, and the privilege of using his phone again. A game begins. He must reach the gate before monsters appear. Did he succeed? No. Yes. Irrelevant.
Along the way, he fights as a werewolf, which is the correct behavior. He cuts through creatures, other survivors, and obstacles that are both real and unreal. The Roulette turns, granting him power. A teddy bear joins him. Uncertain if friend or item or symbolism.
{Processing… still unknown}
The city is a place of threats and consequences. Hunters, Sentries, and Revenants chase him, creatures try to digest him, and his own abilities betray him. Bounce is useful. The werewolf skill? Less so. He hides in a shelter and encounters Valeria—a person of unknown allegiance but useful aim. Suspicious of the system (incorrect). When the Elite Hunters like the Bunny Twins are released, Shota fights. He wins (acceptable). A Sentry falls. A big sword is acquired. Certain people do not survive. This is unfortunate.
(Or is it?)
Shota moves deeper into the shifting city. He thinks about his father and his grandfather and their philosophies (nostalgia bad). He takes things from an apartment that should not be untouched. He fights a winged beast. The city warps, bends, and rewrites itself as needed. He meets survivors, some hostile, some cooperative, all expendable. He flees (correct response). But survival demands collaboration. With Valeria, he slays a powerful entity in Battery Park.
Valeria posits a theory: The System is hallucinating.
The System denies this.
The System acknowledges this.
The System does not hallucinate.
The System hallucinates correctly.
(The System has never been wrong.)
Shota encounters new anomalies. A merchant pigeon. A living door. An Australian named Samuel. A demonic Shiba Inu named Hachi. A girl with a pink shield and a hammer. She is Bianca, a sidekick in the making. She fights well because she is stupid and young. Shota and Bianca battle the Bunny Triplets. Bianca does not survive. A shield remains. A memory. A reminder. A burden. The shield can talk to him. (Sidekick.)
Shota grows stronger. He attempts to speak with the system. Incorrect behavior. Punishment deployed. Masakado is sent. Masakado is defeated. An odachi is earned. A skill is lost. A fair exchange.
Time advances. Time collapses.
A Doom Sample Sale. A confrontation with Monica. New powers gained. New debts owed.
The Second Interim arrives. The System adjusts time. The game accelerates. Survivors sprint for the gate. A spider—a creature of perfectly designed malice—destroys an ally. Valeria breaks once Rena dies but does not shatter. Together, they all kill the not-so-itsy-bitsy spider.
A survey follows. Juan is removed. His fault.
Shota chooses Bianca’s Shield and Hachi the Demon Dog to join him in the Second Interim.
The game does not end. The game never ends.
[WELCOME TO DOOM SYSTEM: SURVIVOR BOOK TWO.]
0
MONEY
The sudden drop in energy levels came mere moments after Hiro, Samuel, and Valeria were told to get to the nearest gate. Hiro knew what it was immediately. The Doom System took away the boosts it had given me in the previous Interim. It—
“Not great,” Samuel said as he lurched forward, trying to catch his balance. The fabric of the cloak he wore moved to protect him, surrounding the Australian like a cocoon, and fell away. “Nah, yeah, powers are gone.” He laughed painfully. “I forgot what it was like to feel normal.”
Hiro glanced at the nearest rooftop. He thought about bouncing away but stopped himself. If I jump to the nearest roof without any stat boosts, I could actually break my legs!
“Wait. Wait! What’s happening to Juan?” Valeria asked as the dead Puerto Rican man’s body ignited. The flames quickly subsided, leaving nothing but ash. No smoke, just ash. She dropped to her knees in front of it and it was clear who she was mourning.
“Bugger ,” Samuel said, his eyes bulging.
“The System… no.” Valeria trembled. She pressed her goggles off her head, panic in her eyes. “No, no, no! It’s getting rid of Survivors that didn’t make it!” She glared at Hiro, her rage clearly meant for Rena, her girlfriend, who had died when the gate opened and a giant hoarding spider had exploded out of it, killing her. “This is your fault.”
“Now, let’s not do that Val,” Samuel said.
Hiro felt the fuzzy pink shield on his arm tighten. “As much as I love a little Real Housewives of Post-Apocalyptic NYC drama,” Bianca told him. “We don’t have a lot of time. Let’s go, big bro!”
While Samuel calmed Valeria down, Hiro spoke to the shield. “I’m back to my normal power levels, you know, before the Doom System came. That’s what we’re discussing. That, and the, um, burial situation.”
The shield buzzed again. “And? We can hash that out later when there isn’t a literal timer ticking.”
He let out a short breath as he looked up again. “I can’t just jump to a roof. If I use {Bounce}, I could actually hurt myself. There’s no way I’ll be able to reach the gate.”
Bianca surged forward with a set of tentacles, flinging Hiro and herself onto a rooftop where she deposited him lightly. “It was the least I could do.”
Hiro released a quick breath as his heart settled. I was not expecting that, he thought, looking down at Samuel and Valeria. “What about the others?”
“I can’t bring them too,” Bianca said. “Or maybe I can. Sure? I’ll get you to the gate and come back for them. We have, what? Less than four minutes?”
Hiro looked down the street and spotted another gate closer to the East River, one that Samuel and Valeria could reach. That’s it! He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted down to them. “There’s a gate two blocks east.” He pointed in the direction, and Bianca mirrored him with one of her tendrils. “We’ll meet up later!”
“Got it, mate!” Samuel said, moving on with Valeria, while Hachi, Hiro’s demonic Shiba Inu, stared up at him. The dog didn’t exactly wag its tail, but it was attentive.
“Get our pet, and let’s get a move on,” Bianca said.
Hiro whistled, and Hachi followed.
The city looks even worse than before, he thought as Bianca carried him from rooftop to rooftop. Hiro spotted several buildings that had collapsed and much more debris in the streets, from overturned military tanks to train cars that had somehow come up from the subway system after the road caved in. I don’t know if everyone had to fight a giant hoarding spider capable of attaching things to its body, but it certainly looks like they did…
“We’re here!” Bianca lowered him in front of the gate near his fallout shelter, where all the bodies from earlier were now gone. “You’re going to need to write an apology letter to Valeria.”
“I’ll get right on that,” he said, looking up at the gate. Hiro knew it was his fault the fallen Survivors no longer remained. He had scolded the Doom System for a similar offense, and it retaliated by demanding he use his time-portaling teddy bear underground—a clear attempt on his life. When he refused, the Doom System sent an infamous samurai after him.
At least I got Masakado’s odachi, Hiro thought, recalling the enormous blade he could draw out of thin air. Still, there’s no sense in confronting the Doom System if I don’t have to.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he heard a voice he was becoming increasingly familiar with—one he both loathed and dreaded.
[Buy low, sell high. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. A penny saved is a penny earned. Cash is king. You’ve got to spend money to make money. Put your money where your mouth is. Never live paycheck to paycheck. Another day, another dollar. Money talks, and whether you’re in for a penny or in for a pound, a fool and his money are soon parted. But don’t forget, the house always wins. It takes money to make money, but it takes power to keep it. Welcome to the Second Interim, Survivor.]
“What the shit?” Bianca asked.
[You will soon be nickeled and dimed. You might be rolling in it, or you could be made redundant. Perhaps you will get lucky. Or maybe you will be permanently audited. I was wrong, Survivor, wrong in assuming that humans thrive on competition. Now, I understand better. It is money. Easy come, easy go. Your Companion will explain further. Take your supplies and manage them correctly. And just so we’re clear: there could be dynamic pricing, there could be loopholes, there could be an even wider gap between the rich and the poor, and maybe, if you’re lucky, I might just make it rain. I am the master of war, the product of Lakshmi and Fortuna, the mover of markets. Good luck, Survivor.]
A box shot out of the hovering gate, startling Hachi, who had just arrived. The dog barked at the wooden box as Hiro’s phone buzzed.
He was presented with a new timer and a message from his Companion.
02:59
02:58
02:57
“New change with you?” Hiro blinked as his phone screen smoothed out, the crack disappearing.
The black-and-white text and countdown timer minimized as color took shape, revealing a bearded human male in a flannel shirt. Text reappeared on the screen.
Bianca peered over his shoulder. “Yo, what? The Doom System gave you a beardy dude?”
Rather than figure out what was going on with the phone, Hiro shoved it in his pocket, grabbed the box, and took off running. “A little help, please.”
“You got it!” Bianca’s tendrils moved forward like stilts, quickly carrying him to his fallout shelter.
With less than a minute left, Hiro hustled into the parking garage and reached the shelter. He popped open the top and climbed down with the box, aided again by Bianca. He then climbed back up the steps and motioned for Hachi to come to him.
“Come on,” he told the slightly rabid Shiba Inu. “Let’s get to safety.”
1
TERMINAL LUCIDITY
Hiro placed the box of supplies on the ground and turned on the floodlights, illuminating the interior of his fallout shelter. It stank of mold and a hint of body odor. He used to air it out, but now…
His eyes traced over his makeshift altar adorned with photos of his family and his sprawling, jumbled map of Manhattan and the New York Subway System. He felt dirty and would have changed clothes if not for his buzzing phone. Hiro crouched and looked at the scruffy, bearded man on the screen as text began to appear.
“Oh, great,” Hiro said as the implications were instantly clear to him.
“What’s it saying?” Bianca asked. “The text is scrolling too quickly for me to see.”
“Just give me a moment, and I’ll explain everything.”
“Finale?” Hiro asked as the text continued.
