“Foolish peasant! Filthy cur!” Masakado’s severed head barked. “My garments no longer bind me. The head shall finish what the body could not!”
Hiro braced himself behind Bianca’s Fuzzy Pink Shield as it shot fabric tentacles at Masakado’s severed head. The monster’s spine shifted right to avoid the tendrils, yet some still managed to strike it, attach themselves to vertebrae, and hold on until Masakado severed them.
Still holding his katana, Hiro pointed his finger at Masakado’s masked face and fired at it with his finger gun.
Pew!
“Dost thou think to blind me!?” Masakado roared as he whipped his spine tail around to beat at the shield’s tendrils. With his one good arm, he stabbed the odachi into the ground, which sent a ripple of energy forward that forced Hiro to dive right.
Pew! Pew!
Hiro kept shooting at Masakado’s mask, especially after he noticed that part of it was now chipped now. Each subsequent shot seemed to take more of the mask away.
Pew! Pew! Pew!
“Argh!” Masakado bellowed as his mask shattered. “You cheat! You cur!”
The samurai struck the ground again and used his odachi to lunge forward.
Hiro bounced backward to avoid Masakado’s next strike. He couldn’t use {Lupine Shift.} If he used {Kiss or Slap}, he ran the risk of replenishing Masakado’s health bar. He also didn’t want to use any One Hit Wonders, not when his opponent was at half health.
{Edging}? Hiro thought as he avoided Masakado’s spiny tail. It was a risk, and it would mean that he needed a higher MIND stat than Masakado, but Hiro had a pretty large boost with his current loadout. It worked with Atlas, maybe there’s a chance here? If not, spam him with attacks until he goes down!
As he reached a new clearing, Hiro turned back to Masakado and cast {Edging}. He shouldered up behind his shield, not sure of how the samurai would react. Much to his surprise, and soon, Hiro’s delight, the Roulette Skill sent the samurai into a frenzy.
Masakado bowed repeatedly, his spine cracking, the samurai cursing his enemies, shrieking in Japanese: “Kisama no chi de kono tochi o akaku somete yaru!”
Masakado screamed about how he would stain the land with his blood, the rest of his words hard to parse. The samurai’s frenzy reached a new level, one in which he dropped his odachi and began slapping his spine against the ground.
Hiro saw his opening and took it. He rushed toward Masakado, and severed the samurai’s head from his spine with one perfectly timed attack.
[A Revenant has fallen.]
Cheers erupted.
Level up!
Skill level up!
Sword Proficiency, D-Rank > C-Rank
You have new followers!
Hiro’s phone buzzed, and as Soul Essence rushed into him, he checked to see what his companion said.
I gained another level? Hiro thought.
The text continued:
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“What are my odds of that, anyway?”
Rather than go down that rabbit hole, Hiro glanced over to the giant sword, which was stabbed into the ground. It was easily a meter in length, and while it wasn’t quite the same size as his Buster Kunai, the odachi seemed like it would be impossible to wield.
Hiro put his katana away and approached the enormous blade.
Unique Item: Masakado’s Phantom Odachi
Grade: A
Upgrade: N/A
Description: Before you grab your favorite candy and dump it into a glass bowl, make sure that you have chosen only the most vibrant candies for visual impact!
These were the words etched into a human femur by the great Japanese master bladesmith and coping mechanism expert, Norimitsu Osafune, on a stormy August day in 1446.
Nearly six hundred years later, the world’s top influencers discovered Osafune’s translated text after a reverse ice bucket gender reveal challenge, sparking the trend of what we now call trauma dumping videos.
Unfortunately, as these influencers soon discovered, the recipe for social media carried a hidden curse—one that Norimitsu Osafune took to the grave. For each piece of candy dumped into the bowl, each trauma uttered, each video recorded, each ‘like’ received, Masakado’s Phantom Blade grew ever stronger…
Sheathed within the very fabric of reality, Masakado’s Phantom Blade is an optimum weapon for those who can bear the weight of its trauma.
It uses the very nature of reality as its sheath? Hiro thought back to the way Masakado had brandished it. Does that mean I can really pull it from thin air?
He hoisted the massive blade, Hiro even more surprised that he could wield it easily. He did a few twists in the air with it, the odachi about the same weight as his katana.
“Impossible,” Hiro whispered. That, or I’m getting stronger, he thought as he looked ahead to a tree stump.
Hiro used {Blade Whirlwind} with the odachi, which shredded what was left of the stump.
“Whoa.” He brought the enormous blade up, almost like he was going to rest it across his shoulders. Instead, he pressed it into reality itself, Hiro feeling as if he were placing something behind a curtain.
His hand tingled as the odachi completely vanished.
He was able to draw again, using the exact same notion, and pretending he was clutching his hand around the weapon’s grip. Hiro let out a rare laugh. “Holy fuck,” he said. While the Doom System had just tried to kill him by sending the Revenant, it had given him an incredible item, one that he knew would come in handy in numerous situations.
After practicing sheathing and unsheathing Masakado’s odachi a few more times, Hiro briefed through his status, which was becoming increasingly long. This would change in the next Interim, where his Roulette Skills, Bonuses, and Accessories would reset. And even though he was used to checking his status in this way, it still felt entirely surreal.
Hiro Johnson
Level Eight
Current Title: Wolf Ronin of Wall Street
STR: 1.8 [+1 Roulette Boost]
STA: 2.8 [+2 Roulette Boost]
DEX: 1.7 [+1 Roulette Boost]
REG: 1.8 [+1 Roulette Boost]
MIND: 2.4 [+2 Roulette Boost)
Soul Essence (SE): 179 [131 SE to next level.]
Stolen Valor: 4
Skills:
{Bounce}, Rank D
{Blade Whirlwind}, Rank F
{Beacon}, Rank A
{Sword Proficiency}, Rank C
{Kore Nani Neko}, Rank A
Roulette Skills:
{Lupine Shift}, Rank A
{Refund}, Rank B
{Sacra Limina}, Rank C
{Kiss or Slap}, Rank E
{Edging}, Rank B
{Inseminating Finger Guns}, Rank C
Roulette Accessory:
{Aura of Laughter} Hyottoko Mask, Rank B
{Bianca’s Fuzzy Pink Shield}, Rank B
{Masakado’s Phantom Odachi}, Rank A
One Hit Wonder:
{GoFundMerc}, Rank A
{Scania the Piss Disc Mimic}, Rank A
Followers: 5,691
City Survivors: 571,695
World Survivors: 342,661,813
Hunter Death Count: 61/89
Beast Death Count: 457/791
Marks:
Butcher’s Mark
He put his phone away as he turned back in the direction of Hell’s Kitchen, the merchant that Samuel had introduced him to who had the vape cartridges. Hiro adjusted his shield on his back, where it looped to his backpack and prepared to bounce toward Midtown.
His phone buzzed again.
“What could you want now?”
The message he read next caused him to nearly loose his balance.
“What?” Hiro asked as the blood drained from his face. Then, another thought: you are the Doom System.
Before he could say anything, text appeared on the bottom of the screen, the letters starting from the right and moving to the left.
“What the fuck?” Hiro whispered as he read the message again.
The words faded, the creepiness of their sudden appearance made Hiro feel gutted. He wanted to ask what the Doom System meant by this statement, but didn’t.
The system had lost its mind. That was for certain. All he could do was survive.
“Merchant, and then…” Hiro glanced up at the boats floating overhead. “Then Valeria and the others. The Spectators will be here soon.”