“You didn’t have to,” Bianca said, a rare note of sincerity in her voice. She flexed her tentacles experimentally. “But I definitely feel stronger. Like a whole-ass new shield girl, ready to yeet some little fucker into the next Interim.”
“It’s important.”
“But your katana, your MIND stat… You never did explain why you wanted to upgrade that, by the way.”
Because the Doom System is always listening, Hiro thought. Or is it? He had never actually tested how much the system processed when spoken aloud. With however many Survivors were left, could it really be monitoring them all?
“Don’t you worry about that. I can upgrade it later,” he told her instead, deciding it wasn’t a question he could answer right now. As he stood there, Hiro pulled up his stats, expecting to see a reduced Soul Cash balance.
Hiro Johnson
Level Eleven
Current Title: Profit Prophet
STR: 1.4 [+0.5 Roulette Boost]
STA: 1.9 [+1 Roulette Boost]
DEX: 3.1 [+2 Roulette Boost]
REG: 3.6 [+2.5 Roulette Boost]
MIND: 4.4 [+3.5 Roulette Boost]
Soul Cash: 7, 363
Followers: 18, 413
Marks: Butcher’s Mark
“Wait. What the hell?” He blinked through the information again.
“What up, Bro?” Bianca asked. She had hopped ahead and now balanced on an overturned parking cone, one tentacle raised like a gymnast striking a pose.
“I have more money.”
“More money, more problems. I think that’s supposed to be mo’ money, mo’ problems, but that’s cultural appropriation—”
“Give me a second,” he cut in, waving off the garrulous shield.
His Soul Cash hadn’t taken as big of a hit as he’d expected. Hiro had spent five thousand to upgrade Bianca, and the only way he could have done that was because of the money granted by the multiplier.
While he hadn’t exactly run the math, his total should have plummeted. Yet when he checked again, it still sat comfortably at 7,363.
This doesn’t make any sense.
His eyes went wide as the realization hit him like a jolt of adrenaline, so suddenly and sharply that for a brief, panicked moment, Hiro thought he had triggered {Terminal Lucidity}.
Before, at the Santa merchant, he had burned through all the Soul Cash he had. But this time? He had only spent some of his Soul Cash. And the multiplied amount hadn’t just remained—it had recalculated to match his new total.
He brought his hand to his mouth, double-checking his numbers as his mind raced with the implications.
“Why do you look like you just discovered boobs?” Bianca asked, tilting her head at him.
Hiro shot her a confused glance. “What?”
“Something I heard someone say once that made me laugh.”
He ignored that. “I’m freaking because it looks like the follower multiplier didn’t disappear when I spent my cash back there. I had four-thousand-something before. The multiplier gave me over twelve thousand. I only spent five on upgrading your shield. I now have 7,363.”
“Wait, I’m bad at math. Doesn’t that sort of make sense. Twelve minus seven?”
“No, because that’s twelve with the multiplier.”
“Oh. Hold on. Hold the flip on. I get it now. You should have, like, way less. Some fraction of what you had before.”
“Exactly.”
“So is it, like, a bug, or whatever?” Bianca asked, her voice laced with intrigue.
“I don’t know.” Hiro chewed the inside of his cheek. “I need to test it.”
He glanced toward Central Park, where the purple beacon marking the Revenant loomed. Close to it, not far from what had once been the YMCA on the Upper West Side, was a bright column of light indicating the presence of a merchant.
“Where are we going?” Bianca asked as he shifted toward it.
“Merchant.”
“Ooooh, retail therapy? I knew you’d come around.” She twisted midair, tentacles curling with excitement as she pinwheeled toward him. Hiro extended his arm, and she used it to swing up onto his back, settling comfortably. “Let’s do it, but this time, let me do the negotiating.”
“I’ll think about it.” Hiro whistled for Hachi, who barked in response and took off after him. Bounding forward, Hiro leapt onto the nearest rooftop, then to another. If this works…
He followed the beacon to an old bodega on the corner of a cracked intersection. The place looked like it had been frozen mid-sentence, the bold red lettering on its awning faded but still legible.
BODEGA - ALL DAY BREAKFAST & COCKTAILS
“Ugh, I’d kill for a cocktail,” Bianca sighed, wistfully tracing the words with a tentacle.
“You’re too young to drink.”
“Rude. I’m dead. Let me have this.”
“Just pour it on you?”
“Well, when you say it like that…”
“Let’s just get inside.” Hiro grabbed the metal security grate, the only thing still holding the shattered door together. He wrenched it open with a screech of metal on metal, swinging what was left of the door aside. “Easy enough.”
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The shelves had been stripped bare long ago, leaving behind only empty snack racks and dust-covered bottles of soft drinks no one had cared to loot. The air carried the stale scent of a place that had once been alive, packed with people grabbing overpriced Gatorades and bacon-egg-and-cheese on a hard roll on their way to work.
Hiro exhaled, rolling his shoulders as he prepared to test his theory. He had already seen the merchant stationed behind a plastic Covid-19 barrier that had never been taken down. He stood surrounded by an assortment of goods.
When does the multiplier trigger? Hiro thought as he grinned at the man, whose hair was slicked over to the right, his face and forehead covered in age spots. A surgical mask hid his expression, and his light blue polo was tucked into a pair of waist-high jeans.
A quick check of his stats told Hiro the multiplier hadn’t triggered just yet. “Okay…”
“Ah, Survivor,” the man said, his voice slightly muffled. “What will it be?”
Hiro watched in real time as the multiplier took effect, jumping from 7,363 to 20,921 Soul Cash. His eyes bulged slightly, his heart beating twice as fast for a moment. “It worked,” he whispered to Bianca.
“Good, then let me do the negotiating. I know he can’t hear me, but let’s make this money last, son.”
“I thought I was bro.”
“It just felt right,” the shield told him as she squeezed his arm slightly. “First, find out—”
“What do you sell?” Hiro asked.
“I have cocktails,” the man said, his jaundiced eyes raising as if he was wondering why Hiro hadn’t read the message outside. “I also have vape cartridges and energy drinks.”
“Do you sell stat boosts?”
“No, I do not.” The merchant spat onto the floor. “I used to but they were hard to keep in stock.”
“Okay,” Hiro told him, not sure what to think of his answer. “What about levels?”
“I can sell you one level. That’s all I have at the moment.”
“Can you add contacts to my phone?” he asked, thinking of Samuel and Valeria.
“I can’t.”
“Okay. How much for the level?”
“Since you’re a first time customer of the hour, how about I make you a deal? Nine thousand Soul Cash. What do you think?”
“Done, but before we settle up, what else do you have?”
Bianca tapped Hiro with her tentacle. “Is that what you call the art of making a deal?”
“It’s fine,” he told her. “This is good.”
The merchant’s eyes jumped to Hiro’s Bear Claw, the teeth of which pulsed, as if it was feeding off Hiro’s glee in figuring out the Soul Cash hack. But then, as they often did, his dad’s words came to him about asking the right question. Why would the Doom System allow such an obvious glitch? It certainly wasn’t there to help him.
Hiro chewed his lip for a moment. I have already spoken about it aloud to Bianca and nothing happened, he surmised. But before I speak to anyone else about it, I should at least stock up first.
“...so that’s what I have,” the merchant said, who had been rattling off everything he sold while Hiro zoned out. “Vape cartridges, the level, cocktails, and throwing stars.”
“Throwing stars?” Hiro asked.
“Definitely try to get him to throw some of those in,” Bianca said as she nudged Hiro. “I still think you can negotiate the level down, but I’d say try for the throwing star now.”
“What makes you think that, exactly?” Hiro mumbled to her.
“Just a hunch.”
“I want the level,” Hiro told the merchant, “what’s the best you can do on it?”
“The best?”
“Yeah, if I get a bunch of vape cartridges and other things.”
“The best is nine thousand. I don’t negotiate. The level will stay the same price. If you buy ten cartridges, I’ll toss in a throwing star.”
“Which do you have? How much are they?”
“I have Bleed, Corruption, Decoy, Poison, Inferno, Healing, and Anti-Fear.”
“And the cost?”
“Varies. But I’ll tell you what, howsabout I sell you ten vape cartridges of my choosing for five thousand?”
“Ugh, you are doing this all wrong,” Bianca told Hiro. “And I said to negotiate the throwing stars, not the price of the freaking level. But whatever. It’s fine. I guess this is where we are now.”
“What about energy drinks?” Hiro asked.
“I just have Pink Bull and Rizz. That’s what I meant by cocktails.”
Hiro knew Pink Bull gave him a boost in Stamina. He had once used it after drinking Knockout Punch at Samuel’s suggestion. With his current boost in MIND, he was also able to remember exactly what Love the merchant had told him about Rizz, strangely enough: “This one increases your charisma, which the system interprets as your willingness to risk it all. If you need to run into a burning building to chase a mimic that stole your lunchbox? Drink a Rizz. If you are really looking to do something daring that will get you more followers? Rizz it is.”
“And their cost?” Hiro asked.
“Five hundred a pop, but I only got one of each,” the merchant said, which was a trend Hiro had started to notice.
“Fine. Toss them in.”
This seems to be something the Doom System is orchestrating to stop people from spamming buffs. But that still doesn’t explain the monetary loophole, he thought as the merchant added up the totals.
“One level, ten cartridges, two energy drinks, let’s call it fourteen thousand Soul Cash and I’ll toss in a throwing star. Deal?”
“Deal,” Hiro said after doing the math quickly in his head.
Sure enough, his Soul Cash dropped to 6,921 as the merchant placed cartridges on the counter and slipped them under the plastic barrier. Hiro now had a single Bleed, Decoy, Shadow, Inferno, Healing, and Anti-Fear cartridge, as well as two Corruption and two Poison cartridges.
Next came the energy drinks—cocktails, as the merchant had called them—Pink Bull and Rizz, which he put in his backpack. I’ll need to sort some of this, he thought as his hand grazed Mishka and the mask that he’d yet to get Hachi to wear.
The level up prompt followed, accompanied by the buzz of his phone, which he assumed meant his Companion was updating him on his stat increases.
Level up!
Hiro checked the message quickly to see he had received a boost in Stamina and Regeneration, but not MIND, he thought, which was what he had been hoping for.
“And finally, your throwing star.” The merchant grabbed a white throwing star wrapped in what looked like seaweed and slid it through the barrier, Hiro presented with yet another strange description:
Roulette Accessory: {Legendary Mysterious Armpit Rice Ball Shuriken}
Rank: C
Description: Haggling and desperate otaku, listen up!
Do you crave the forbidden flavors of depravity? Are you hungry for something soft, sticky, sweet, stanky, and slightly unsettling? Do you have a sworn enemy not excluding the person you see in the mirror every morning after your post-coffee dump?
Well, today’s your lucky day!
Straight from the underground culinary scene that Japanese royalty refuse to acknowledge, we bring you the Legendary Mysterious Armpit Rice Ball Shuriken!
Crafted under only the strictest conditions of hygiene one can find in Yoshiwara, this delicacy-slash-deadly-weapon is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.
Here are the requirements:
- The maker (握り巫女 – Nigiri Miko - “Rice-Gripping Shrine Maiden”) must be young, beautiful, and follow strict armpit hygiene protocols.
- The armpit must be hairless, blemish-free, and odorless.
- The maker must be willing to watch the customer eat the rice ball in its entirety without breaking eye contact.
And here are the instructions.
(I hope you’re taking notes!)
The Rice-Gripping Shrine Maiden should place the balled rice under her armpit and gently press and knead it, allowing the rice ball to absorb the mystical sweat and spiritual energy of its creator.
Then, she must add the proprietary blend of soy sauce, fermented squid ink, ghost pepper extract, and the crushed dreams of salarymen nationwide.
The final step is to wrap it in seaweed and mold the rice into a shuriken.
Congratulations, Survivor! The Legendary Mysterious Armpit Rice Shuriken is now ready to be hurled at enemies or consumed for an unpredictable buff/debuff.
Toss it. Eat it. Feed it to an AFPAC keynote speaker after a quick waterboarding and hope for the best. Only fate will decide what happens next.
Use wisely—or don’t.
That’s the fun part!
“Seriously?” Hiro asked as he eyed the seaweed wrapped throwing star.
“So gross,” Bianca said, “that can’t be something people actually do.”
Hiro didn’t respond. Instead, he turned his attention back to the merchant, Hiro paying extra careful attention not to get any of the rice that was sticking out of the poorly formed throwing star on his fingers. “Do you have something I can put this in?”