Deciding to make a quick-ish pitstop before continuing on to the radio station, we left the stairwell behind and returned to the glorious splendor of the store with its perpetually stocked aisles and real human customers who weren’t going to transform into eldritch horrors at the slightest rule infraction. I took a deep, calming breath and felt tension drain from my shoulders.

After the aggressive normalcy of Sunnyside, seeing the Howlers in their colorful furry suits was actually a comfort. They were still weirdos, but they were my weirdos, I felt strangely protective of them all. These were my people, and I’d face down a thousand demon preschoolers to keep ’em safe.

We turned Ed loose and let him wander freely like a kid in a candy store, though I tasked Baby Hands with keeping an eye on the man—just in case. Although I believed Ed would be true to his word, he was still an incredibly powerful Delver who was also extremely paranoid and packing heat. Thankfully, he wasn’t hard to track. Woodstock had come along for the ride, and I could easily hear the bird threatening to “kill people with fire” from across the store.

Camo Joe stopped us on the way back to my private quarters with a status report.

Though we’d only been gone for two days or so, we’d already had multiple attempts by Aspirants to waylay our customers as they were either entering or leaving the storefront. One team of Aspirants was roaming floor three, attempting to create a blockade, while another was kicking around in the Lobby, killing new Delvers indiscriminately.

It seemed the Skinless Court was mobilizing in earnest and getting more ballsy by the day. These attacks were going to get worse before they got better—though, thankfully, the Doorway Sentinels were proving to be rather effective countermeasures. Turned out, my Horrors had temporarily driven off the first group and killed one of Aspirants from the second group.

Camo-Joe handed over a backpack filled with recovered Relics for me to sort through.

I should’ve felt guilty about the death of the Aspirant—that was a real person, after all—but I didn’t. As far as I was concerned, that asshole had it coming. Instead, I felt a small pang of regret about removing the Cold-Blooded Murderer Title from my SBR. Since the Sentinels were my minions, I passively received experience for any kills they made. The cold hard truth was that Delvers gave great experience, and if I’d left the title in place, I would’ve made twice the gains.

I aggressively shoved that thought away before it could take root in my mind.

I wasn’t going to let this place turn me into a monster. Not even if it killed me.

While Ed shopped and presumably gorged himself on bags of Doritos, Temp, Jakob, Croc, and I headed back to my room to talk over our game plan and distribute the Relics we’d picked up from the floor so far. We had a metric shit-ton, courtesy of the Swarmlings, but it turned out Jakob had also somehow managed to acquire a bunch from the Kevins and the Kathys we’d exterminated at the cookout. When I asked him about how he’d managed to pull that off, the Cendral had offered me a thin smile.

“Better time management,” he said matter of factly. “Surely you must have noticed that I didn’t dispatch nearly as many of the Sunnysiders as the rest of you? That was because I spent just as much time looting the corpses. As you might say, Dan, I had a gut feeling that we would need to make a rather expeditious withdrawal. I didn’t want to leave empty handed, so I raided every corpse I could get to.”

He laid the Relics out in a neat row on my table. There were eighteen in total.

“Some of these came from the Dwellers who I… killed,” he said, struggling with the word. It wasn’t hard to guess why. Although Jakob usually didn’t mind offing Dwellers, the Sunnysiders were far more human than most of the creatures who called the Backrooms home, and Jakob had a firm line in the sand when it came to killing people. “Many of them came from the creatures the rest of you killed. I think splitting them evenly between the three of us seems like a fair way to go, findest du nicht auch?”

“That’s fine by me,” I replied with a shrug. “Honestly, I thought we’d lost all the damned Relics, so anything is better than nothing.”

We played paper, rock, scissors to see who would pick first. Jakob won every single time.

I managed to beat Temperance who seemed to fundamentally misunderstand how the game worked, since she only ever picked scissors because, and I quote, “stabbing things with scissors is fun.”

Sadly, six of the Relics turned out to be Uncommon SporeFeed Amplifiers, which—on the surface, at least—were virtually useless.

We split those evenly, two apiece, then divvied up the rest of the haul, with Jakob getting the first pick of the lot. Several were Relics we’d seen before, including Lawnmower Wind Blades and Whiskey Fists, one additional Eldritch Hair Tonic and another Feral Hairball. The rest, though, were shiny, new, and unequivocally badass—all except for a Relic called Flesh Melon. It was new, sure, but disgusting beyond imagination. It allowed the caster to temporarily transform uncooked human flesh into succulent watermelon for easier and more palatable cannibalism.

It’s messy, it’s horrifying, and it tastes… well, surprisingly okay, assuming you can stomach the whole eating-a-person-but-it’s-technically-a-fruit-now thing.

There were also two Rare-grade Charbroiled Inferno Relics.

Unlike many of the other Relics we’d picked up from floor twenty-four, these granted a mana-fueled spell ability without also tacking on some horrifying and permanent body modification. While active, it temporarily turned the caster’s arm into a makeshift blowtorch, which dealt significantly more damage than my original Burn Baby Burn Relic, without any of the awful side effects—mainly, setting yourself on fire while using the ability.

I knew Ed had that Relic equipped and I suspected Woodstock probably had the same spell tucked away in her spatial core as well. It would certainly explain a few things, including the bird’s unnatural fixation with death-by-inferno.

We also picked up two Neighborhood Watch Relics—another ability listed in Ed’s SBR Overview. One version resembled a pair of binoculars while the other was just a bright orange road-guard vest with a badge that read “Safety Patrol” in garish, reflective letters.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Despite differences in appearance, both served as passive navigation abilities, helping the user detect hidden enemies, traps, and potentially useful items. Essentially, it was a watered-down version of my own Spelunker’s Sixth Sense. However, there was one small bonus. The longer the user stayed in a specific Quadrant or Sector, the stronger the ability became, eventually granting small passive bonuses to teammates.

I had no use for something like that and, as far as I knew, both Temp and Jakob already had their own navigation Relics. They’d be perfect to sell in the store, however. There was literally no better ability for a new Delver, fresh in from the Lobby.

As Croc had pointed out more than once, hostile Dwellers weren’t the most dangerous part of the Backrooms—not by a long shot. The monstrous creatures may have been the most terrifying and aggressively violent part of the Backrooms, but approximately sixty percent of all new Delvers were killed by traps or environmental hazards. Countless more perished thanks to starvation or dehydration, lost and alone and stranded in some closet without any hope of finding resources or safety. Neighborhood Watch would help with that.

The last three were all Rare-grades.

The first was a Stamina based passive called Eldritch Resilience, which offered many of the same perks as my Burger Baron Crown. Resistance to psychic attacks, minor-protection against fear-based effects, and immunity from most sanity-draining abilities—such as Gossip Circle, which was another of the new Relics we’d picked up from the Sunnysiders. It was a particularly nasty mind-fuck spell, and it also happened to be yet another of Ed’s core abilities.

Gossip Circle

Rare Relic – Level 1

Range: Area of Effect, Expanding

Cost: 1 Mana/Minute

It turns out that in a neighborhood war, no weapon is more powerful than gossip. Imagine all the petty rumors from a suburban HOA meeting, cranked up to eleven, worming their way into your brain on a never-ending loop. With just a whisper, you unleash a wave of malicious gossip that slithers into your enemies’ heads, planting seeds of doubt, betrayal, and deliciously sweet paranoia.

At first, they just start side-eyeing each other. Then it escalates. Fast. The longer you keep this Relic active, the wider the area of effect grows, and the juicier those rumors become, until your enemies are ready to throw hands—or kitchen knives, or Molotov cocktails—at anyone nearby. Especially that bitch, Kelly, who had the sheer audacity to tell Stacy that Paul slept with Erin during the company Christmas party. I’m going to gut her like a goddamned trout!

Best of all, Gossip Circle is dirt cheap to cast (because, let’s face it, starting rumors is practically free) and it’s what we in the biz like to call a Sanity Cracker. Leave it running long enough, and it’ll grind down mental stability into a fine, powdery dust… Just like the dust the government probably sprinkles all over your food to give you early onset cancer. Soon, your enemies will be reduced to paranoid wrecks, consumed by suspicion, turning on each other, and—if you’re lucky—maybe even taking themselves out of the fight completely.

The Relic was powerful, but also dangerous. Insidious, even.

Gossip Circle was basically weaponized paranoia and because it could be perpetually running in the background, there was no telling how much damage it could do over time. Idly, I wondered if that’s what had happened to Ed. Had he unwittingly been the victim of this Relic before eventually claiming it for himself?

That seemed like a strong possibility—though nine years of isolation could probably do that even without the help of magic.

The last Relic, Mutable Persona, was a powerful, personal illusion spell that allowed the user to alter their physical appearance in some rather astounding ways and it specifically paired with the SporeFeed Amplifier Relic, which all the Sunnysiders had equipped. Curiously, the mana cost was even lower than Gossip Circle—almost as though the spell was designed to be run around the clock.

It wouldn’t let you look like a horse or enlarge yourself to the size of a city bus, but so long as you more or less maintained the same basic form and shape, the sky was the limit. Facial features, skin coloration, height and weight—even the sound of your voice. With this skill, Jakob could appear to be human if he had a mind to, or Temperance could assume the guise of a Cendral. Croc could actually look like the dog it had always wanted to be, while I could adjust my clothes, so I didn’t look like a hobo living behind the dumpster outside of Home Depot.

Of course, it didn’t actually change the way you looked.

Just the way other people saw you.

In total, I walked away with two more of the SporeFeed Amplifiers, one more Whiskey Fists, one Neighborhood Watch—which I planned to put up for sell—Mutable Persona, and one of the Charbroiled Inferno Relics. Not a bad haul, all things considered. And that wasn’t even accounting for the loot I’d taken off the Swarmlings.

Once we finished sorting through everything, Jakob politely excused himself, bound for the pharmacy, while Temp took off to check on Wraith. She wanted to make sure Jackson and the rest of the Roomkeepers hadn’t caused any new problems while we’d been gone. I dispatched Croc so it could go grab some celebration Froyo and pay a visit to the Howler kids. The mimic had promised to tell them about our adventures. That seemed like a terrible idea to me, since our adventures were horrific, but the dog was so excited that I just couldn’t bring myself to rain on its parade.

I took a few extra minutes to sift through the Relics Camo Joe had given me, searching for any hidden gems. Most were standard for a level 15 Delver and were things I’d seen before—Sucker Punch, Basic Camo Kit, and Warning Bells—but there were a couple of surprises that would be worth adding to my personal inventory.

Iron Jaw was a physical passive that significantly boosted Toughness and reduced damage from blunt force attacks, while Brick Toss literally let you summon and launch a magical brick at your enemies—“Nothing in life hits quite like a Brick to the Face!” I wasn’t sure what to do with that yet, but I liked the simplicity of it.

Hazardous Chemical Slick was almost exactly like a skill I’d had once upon a time called Slippery When Wet. It created an incredibly slick patch liquid that caused enemies to slip and fall—though, it also had an extra advantage. The chemical spill itself was wildly unstable and would react violently to any elemental attack, setting off a chaotic and unpredictable elemental chain reaction. It effectively transformed any single target elemental ability into a potent AoE attack. The drawback was that any friendlies caught in the slick would be just as susceptible to potential damage.

With all my new Relics finally sorted and cataloged, I headed over to my private bathroom, peeled off my gore-soaked clothes, and slipped into the shower. I cranked the heat up until it was so hot I almost couldn’t stand it, then I just stood there for a few minutes, letting the water sluice over sore muscles and wash away the fetid, black swarmling goo that stained my hands and arms. I had to vigorously scrub at my skin with a bar of soap before the inhuman blood finally faded and vanished.

But even with the blood gone, the memories remained.

I absently thought about Ed’s vampiric abilities and wondered if he could target specific memories, because there were more than a few that I wouldn’t mind having gone. With a shudder, I picked the bar of soap back up and scrubbed at my hands again. Thinking about the swarmlings and the shart stain golem and, most of all, Natasha Anno.

The first person I’d ever killed—though I knew she wouldn’t be the last.

Somehow, I doubted it worked that way, though.

And even if it did, I wasn’t sure I would let those memories go, even as terrible as they were. Sometimes, the pain was the only thing we had. The only thing that let us know we were still alive. And sometimes, that pain was what kept us from repeating the same mistakes over and over again.