Hiro’s phantom cats surged forward, joined by Hachi. Mounted Takeda 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 Takeda with {Blade Whirlwind}.
“You cur!” Takeda drew a katana that seemed normal until the blade elongated into a sharp whip. He charged 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 Takeda’s next attempt. Worth a shot! 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 tentacles. She latched onto Takeda and his warhorse, coiling tightly around them both. Takeda’s eyes gleamed with a cold fury as his blade shrunk to its normal size. 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 Takeda’s exposed side. But the warhorse reared up, its hooves smashing into the ground inches from Hiro’s feet, forcing him to stumble backward.
“Foolish!” Takeda 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 blocked 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 dropped to the ground, growing in length. This is going to suck, Hiro thought as he covered his face with his arm and cast {North Korean Fece Balloons}.
“What’s this?” Takeda roared as red balloons appeared in the air over the fight. They dropped and exploded all at once, releasing steaming piles of shit and a toxic green mist onto Takeda, his warhorse, Hachi, and Bianca who just so happen to be too close.
“What the fuck, Hiro?” she shouted. “At least warn me before you some a dump from the sky!”
“You foul creature! You filthy flea!” Takeda’s seething horse started to buck until it threw him off. The daimyo hit the ground and lost his sword in the process, which bounced in Bianca’s direction.
She grabbed it with her tentacles and hurled it off the roof, the teenager still wailing about being covered in shit.
His health bar is down a quarter! Hiro thought as he took Takeda in, who was much shorter than Hiro would have expected, the daimyo extremely bowlegged. In catching another glimpse of him, he noticed that Takeda wore some armor with Louis Vuitton’s logo on it, like Masekado, the samurai Hiro had faced in the First Interim.
Takeda 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 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 Takeda, causing the daimyo to lose his sword.
Got him!
Hiro prepared to clear the gap between the two only to have his plan abruptly interrupted as Takeda’s horse got hold of itself 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 horse’s neck. She managed to drag it to the side, her sudden appearance startlingly 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 Takeda cried as he drew a smaller blade. “Turn and face thy doom!” He rushed at Hiro, slashing his wakizashi 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 Takeda tried, the daimyo was unable to get a hit in.
There were more opportunities that Hiro knew he could have taken to win the fight, yet he kept getting knocked back by the powerful stench in the air from his One Hit Wonder. The foul odor wasn’t constant—it came in waves, each more potent than the last. Just when he thought he’d steeled himself against it, the smell would surge, sharp and suffocating, as if it were alive. He desperately wanted to cover his mouth, but couldn’t with the furious way that Takeda kept on him, the daimyo’s maddened movements growing faster and faster.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Hiro managed to send a blast of energy forward with his next parry, one that knocked Takeda to the side. He was just going in for the kill when Mishka started to wail, which threw them off balance and allowed Takeda to jump back to his feet.
The daimyo placed his hand over his face and removed the bottom portion of his mask. He tossed it aside, the metal clattering against the ground, as he opened his mouth and unleashed a plume of purple fire that surged toward Hiro.
The flames rush forward, threatening to engulf Hiro entirely, Hiro not able to step aside in time. He expected to be burned, but then he was hit with a strange visual, one that made Takeda grow in size, the daimyo looming over him menacingly.
The terror that followed frozen him in place. His skin pricked as if icy needs were pressing into him, is a deep, gut-wrenching dread settled in his stomach. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, Hiro just standing there as shadows deepened and warped the fog around him, producing terrifying faces that all leered and snarled.
It hadn’t been fire. Takeda has used Fear against him.
Hiro dropped his odachi, the blade vanishing in a flash. Get a grip, he thought as the hallucinations grew stronger, the faces larger, threatening to consume him entirely.
Suddenly, a bark broke through the fog as Hachi jumped at Takeda, snapping him back to the present. Slobber flew out of the filthy demon dog’s mouth as he latched onto Takeda’s arm, stopping him from driving his wakizashi into Hiro’s stomach. This gave him a moment to reassess what was happening, to better understand the fact that the fire didn’t burn him, that he was still standing.
The Fear is an illusion… The Fear is an illusion…
With a shaky hand, Hiro grabbed his vape pen. He shakily popped in the Anti-Fear cartridge and took a big inhale of it. He exhaled a cloud of purplish smoke, one that quickly spread over the area and removed the Fear from the air.
As if someone had snapped their fingers, Hiro was no longer scared. Once again, he drew his odachi from the air just as Takeda tossed Hachi away and threw his head back, the daimyo prepared to release another plume of purple fire.
Ignoring the terrible smell, one that continued to force him to hold back vomit, Hiro surged forward with his Odachi. He used its range to his advantage, the blade swiping through the air with a whistle as Hiro cut into Takeda before the man could release any more flames.
Hiro didn’t stop. He followed this up by driving his blade forward, his body shifting with it as Mishka shrieked in his backpack.
“Thou… thou…” Takeda expired, the daimyo dropping his head.
He expected for applause to erupt in his head. Instead, a new realization came once he heard a muffled yell from Bianca.
The daimyo is down, but his health bar is at the quarter mark. I have to kill his horse too!
Hiro gritted his teeth, swiveled on his heels, and hit the charging horse with a blast of energy.
This threw the horse off balance as it continued to buck wildly at Bianca, who had wrapped her tentacles around its face and eyes, effectively blinding it.
Seizing the newfound opportunity, Hachi and the final phantom cat remaining sprang into action, rushing toward the thrashing horse to distract it enough to slow the beast, allowing Hiro to thrust his odachi upward on the tail end of a bounce and straight through the warhorse’s chest, slaying the monster.
[A Revenant has fallen.]
Hiro landed, his breath hitching as he once again was hit by the smell.
You have new followers!
You got cash!
The Zone of Influence faded, as did Takeda and his warhorse. Hiro assumed the daimyo would leave behind his wakizashi, but the only thing that remained was the horse’s golden face mask.
He covered his mouth with his arm as he read the description.
Roulette Accessory: {Raiko’s Mask}
Grade: B
Upgrade: N/A
Here’s a lightly edited and tightened version of the Doom System description:
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Description: The TL;DR version of the Annals of Esarhaddon, which chronicles the military campaigns and achievements of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, can be summed up as follows: is there a better way to instill fear in your enemies and remind the public of your total imperial power than displaying decapitated heads in Nineveh?
If that can’t be answered empirically, how about riding into town on a horse wearing a mask made of boiled gerbil leather, lacquered gold, and etched with swirling patterns of knotwork and flame—symbols of the endless cycle of destruction and renewal, later known as the ouroboros?
I guess it’s safe to say that reality does, in fact, eat itself. But by the time you understand this, Survivor, it will be too late.
Either way, the mask is yours. Because you weren’t smart enough to secure a horse at an upstate equestrian facility when this all started, the dog you insisted on bringing with you from the First Interim will have to wear it.
But you know how demonic dogs are: definitely not friendly, and definitely not trying to dress up for a social media post. Still, if you do manage to get your dog to wear this mask, your fearless pooch will shift into a monstrous, horse-sized beast, gaining immense strength and agility.
Hiro picked up the mask, which had since shrunken to a size that would fit the demonic shiba inu.
“Ick! We need to get out of here and bathe somehow,” Bianca said.
Hiro ignored her as he examined the mask. The outer side was just as he had seen on the horse, with a swirling design in the gold and a set of horns. Inside was a carving of a snake eating its own tail, the ouroboros, he thought as he turned to Hachi.
The dog’s tail instantly lowered.
“It won’t be so bad,” Hiro said.
Bianca laughed. “I can’t wait to see you try to put that thing on him. But seriously, bro, we gotta go. This is the shittiest situation we’ve been in yet.”