Pie-faced madmen with needle swords in heavily armored tuxes bum-rushed Hiro and Bianca once they reached the next chamber of the Central Park Catacombs. To combat the impending onslaught, Hiro summoned his phantom cats.

~Kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, NEKO!~

“What!?” Bianca laughed as the cats poured into the large, cavernous space.

“Just focus on killing as many pie fuckers as you can!” Hiro hit one with {Blade Whirlwind}, splattering its face.

Bianca moved into action with her fuzzy pink shield in front of her, tendrils lifting off its surface and her hammer flipping through the air and returning to her hand after each subsequent kill.

You have new followers!

You have new followers!

The prompts and their cheers came in rapidly as Hiro stayed behind Bianca, where he worked to support the teenage girl. It was clear she knew the enemy better than him, and the way her hammer zipped through the air made Hiro want to keep as far away from it as possible.

There were still plenty of targets for him to handle, Hiro picking off the pie-faced enemies that her hammer missed.

“Do you ever think about that seed vault in Norway?” Bianca called over to Hiro.

“Wha—?” Shouldn’t she be focused on the pie guys? Hiro used {Blade Whirlwind} to dome another one, its face spray pie filling into the air behind it.

The pie guys didn’t speak, but they did drop their needle swords whenever, which due to the nature of the space created a loud clinking sound every time one of them went down.

“The seed vault in Norway,” Bianca shouted back to him as she blocked another strike with her shield.

Hiro watched Bianca catch her hammer and lunge for one of the final pie guys. She tossed it rather than actually try to hit her opponent, the pie face exploded.

Seizing on an opening, Hiro darted forward and cut another one away. Beside him, Bianca loosed her hammer yet again. It passed through the air just a foot or so away from Hiro and brained the nearest pie face.

“Too close!” Hiro said as her hammer returned.

Bianca snickered. “You survived, didn’t you?”

Soul Essence poured in as Hiro handled the last two pie-faced swordsmen.

You have new followers!

Bianca wiped some of the pie guts off her face. She smelled her finger like she was going to taste it. “Joking,” she said. “I already tried it in a different chamber. It’s sour. Like Sour Patch Kids sour, or lemonade without any sugar.”

Hiro kept his sword at the ready. The chamber was clear, and he could see now why Bianca had referred to it as a hive. There were human-shaped indentations in the wall which was where the pie guys had been before their attack. At least he assumed this was the case.

“What’s with your shield?”

“It’s a legendary item or whatever.” Bianca lowered the shield. Yet again, Hiro noticed tendrils on the surface of the fuzzy pink shield starting to retract.

“And it has tentacles?”

“It does.” She positioned herself behind it. “It’s pretty cool. I want to upgrade it so the tentacles can grow longer and do more fighting. They’re useful now, but imagine if they were like a giant squid or something.”

“That would be something,” Hiro finally said. “What were you saying about a seed vault?”

“In Norway.”

He finally realized what she was referring to. “Wait, you mean the one that’s like a world seed bank?”

“Yes. That’s how we save humanity.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“We get rid of the Doom System and we rebuild. That’s what it’s for.”

“We would have to get to Norway.”

“What’s so hard about that?”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Do you know where Norway is on a map?”

“Somewhere in Northern Europe. The part that sort of looks like a hanging yet very deformed penis, you know, like Florida.”

“And Europe is where?” Hiro asked, trying to make a point.

“Across the Atlantic.”

“Which is an ocean. Something we can’t currently cross.”

“There are still people left.” Bianca checked her stats in a flash. “Nearly six hundred thousand City Survivors. Once we beat the Doom System, people will figure it out. They always do.”

“I don’t disagree there,” Hiro told her, not wanting to get into a conversation on how to beat the Doom System. He had heard plenty before in the nine months of his self-imposed exile. He decided to change topics: “It’s important to remember we don’t know how big this area technically is. It could be just New York and part of New Jersey. It could extend all the way through Connecticut. It could be every major city left in the world, which would be frightening as hell.”

“Bro, no. Don’t wish that upon us.”

“All I know about that number is that it keeps dropping. We’re the lucky ones.”

“Are we, though?” Bianca flourished her hammer and put it in a holster she had devised out of a leather belt. She placed her fuzzy pink shield on her back. “If we are true survivors, if we survive the Doom System, we’ll need to rebuild humanity.”

“The Doom System has control over our physical reality. It stopped all planes, boats, cars, motorcycles—gas and electricity do not work. Weapons. We’re not getting to Norway any time soon is what I’m saying.”

“You don’t know that. You just summoned ghost cats. There may be a portal power. Who needs a ship when you can summon ghost kitties?”

“If we make it to the next Interim, the Doom System is going to take away our Roulette stuff,” he reminded Bianca,” which, for me, is nearly a quarter of my abilities, including this mask. It will be like starting over.”

“Fuck the Doom System. I’ll make it work. You will too.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Okay, what’s your favorite color? Answer without thinking.”

“Dark blue,” Hiro told her.

“Basic, but predictable. Favorite food?”

“Does coffee count?”

“Is it a food?”

Hiro shrugged. “I don’t know, pizza. I like pizza.”

“Any particular kind of pizza? Please don’t say Hawaiian.”

“Pepperoni.”

“New York, Chicago, or some other style?”

“I’m an equal opportunity consumer when it comes to pizza.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. My favorite color isn’t pink, just in case you assumed that was the case because of my shield. I like beige. It makes me happy. My favorite food is tiramisu. So we both like Italian food. See? We know each other now.”

“Do we, though?”

Bianca turned to the exit. She brought her hands over her head as if she were a ballerina and did a single spin. “Lighten up, Hiro. It’s the only way to stay sane.”

Says the girl who seems insane, he thought. Then again, she was able to clear a chamber of enemies out relatively quickly.

Hiro debated if he should invite her to the gate or not. He had told Valeria he would find more people. Juan would be there, especially now that he’d lost his brother and sister. Samuel the Australian would be there as well.

“Something is ahead!” she called back to him. Bianca shrieked, her cry cut short by an instant thud.

Hiro reached the next chamber to find Bianca suspended from the air by a substance that looked like gauze, the tendrils of her shield flailing madly. Aside from her face, she was completely covered by the material.

Crouched beneath the teenage girl and looking up at her was an obese giant also wrapped in the material, rolls of his fat jutting out from in between the strips of gauze. His eyes glowed with a golden hue upon seeing Hiro, a health bar spawning over his head.

Description: According to both NASA and the European Space Agency, the Laschamp Event occurred nearly 43,000 years ago. This sudden yet short reversal of Earth’s magnetic field had a profound effect on the extinction of the Neanderthals and, improbably, the creation of the first Homo sapiens billionaires.

During the Laschamp Event, the Earth’s magnetic field shifted over the course of 250 years, followed by 440 years in its reversed state. This resulted in more cosmic rays reaching the planet, disrupting Earth’s geometric shield.

The Homo sapiens billionaires saw an opportunity.

They harnessed the power of these cosmic rays to create a new geometric shield. The Neanderthals were forced into labor, building colossal shield generators while the billionaires taxed them for their own protection. To enforce this tax, the billionaires created the terrifying creature that stands before you, a monstrous tax collector built to extract wealth and command obedience, empowered by a kind of greed that you, Survive, could scarcely imagine.

If you don’t pay the tax, you’re fucked.

If you do pay the tax, you’re fucked.

Either way, brace yourself—this could hurt.

Shit. Hiro used {Bounce} just as a bolt of blue and what he assumed was cosmic energy fired past, searing everything it touched.

He slammed into the ceiling of the chamber, his impact dislodging Biance, who fell on top of their opponent.

The stones over the entrance he had just come through collapsed, trapping both of them in the chamber as Hiro slammed against the ground. Back to his feet, he ignored the pain that pulsed down his spine and hurtled his Buster Kunai at the monstrous tax collector. The throwing knife dug into its chest, staggering the mini-boss.

Now able to move, Bianca rolled to the side and started to dry heave.

Her eyes pulsed red as caustic bile shot like a water cannon from her lips. It sizzled upon reaching the monstrous tax collector’s body, their opponent’s health bar taking a beating as he . barreled over and began to grow, gauze snapping, his full girth making itself known one blubbery fold at a time.

Bianca scrambled back over to Hiro and wiped her mouth. “It will crush us,” she said, her voice raw, painful to hear. “Hit it with something. It’s getting bigger!”

Hiro didn’t skip a beat. They were trapped. The Doom System, damned as it may be, had given him the One Hit Wonder known as Instant Discount Ozempic for a reason.

He didn’t know what it would do to the monstrous tax collector, but it was worth a shot.