It took us the better part of a day to get to Funtime Frank’s Jungle Gym Jamboree—though between Jakob, Temperance, and Unerring Arrow, I’d never had an easier or more stress-free trip. Temperance seemed to intuitively know every inch of the seventh floor, even though that was impossible given its sheer scope, and as a level 25, Jakob could swat down anything that looked at us funny.
Well, not anything, anything.
We still needed to say our prayers, lest Goosey goosey gander—that goose-bodied shitweasel—throw us down the stairs like disobedient children.
But almost anything.
Not that the Cendral did much killing.
He seemed predisposed to nonviolence, even against the monstrous Dwellers, which was a mirror opposite of Temperance. She had a lady boner the size of Mount Everest for killing… well, everything. The colonial settler turned furry—words I never imagined saying, not in a million years—was a force of nature and she had a Spatial Core full of Relics designed to help her commit Dweller genocide. She killed things so aggressively and so fast that there really wasn’t much for me to do, other than navigate and scrawl survival tips on the walls in spray paint.
My constant need to advertise seemed to annoy the shit out of Temperance, who only wanted to go, go, go as fast as humanly possible so she could kill more things. But I wasn’t going to pass up a golden opportunity like this one, and for all her homicidal prowess, she couldn’t navigate this place the way I could.
The rather leisurely journey also gave me a chance to ask Jakob a few questions that had been bugging the absolute shit out of me for the past few weeks:
Namely, why in the hell was everyone so low-level?
It didn’t make any sense.
I’d been in the Backrooms for a little over a month and I’d already surpassed Delvers who’d been here for years. Sure, I had advantages no one else did, but the Compass didn’t make me inordinately stronger or faster than other Delvers.
So why the weird disparity?
Turned out, the reasons were legion, and the enigmatic German was only too happy to explain in excruciatingly comprehensive detail, which frustrated Temperance to no end. She was less interested in talking and more interested in stabbing.
“You must remember that your experience is quite atypical,” Jakob explained while Temperance looted the body of a Locker Lurker, which had tried to get the jump on us. The Lurkers were basically giant hermit crabs, who used the dilapidated lockers as makeshift shells. They were some of the weaker Dwellers on this floor, and easy enough to dispatch, so long as you didn’t run into a cluster of the clawed sons a bitches.
“Finding a powerful Navigation Relic so early on was an exceptional stroke of good fortune for you,” the Cendral continued. “Most new Delvers are not so lucky. And because of that, they cannot wantonly cavort across several floors over the span of a few weeks. It simply isn’t done. Even finding a stairwell to the next floor can take months, and the risks of such exploration simply aren’t worth it for most.
“Those lucky enough to survive the Lobby and find a way down often have a surprisingly simple list of goals: find a Progenitor Monolith, locate a reasonably reliable source of food and water, then carve out a space within close proximity to said food source. They will fight Dwellers who move into their territory if they must, but every battle is a terrible gamble. And most won’t venture far from their base of operations, unless great need drives them to do so.
“To be honest, that is one of the reasons why this whole enterprise of yours so intrigues me,” he continued, stealing a sideways glance at me. “The store is invaluable not only for its material resources, but for its ability to help Delvers transcend floors with relative ease. And the Twinning Rings allow even the newest Delvers to navigate with some fixed reference point. Intentional or not, you are single-handedly incentivizing exploration in a way I have not seen before.”
I grunted.
I hadn’t thought about any of those points, but it all made a certain degree of sense. There were still a few holes in his explanation, however.
“Just assuming for the moment that everything you said is all true,” I replied after mulling it over for a beat, “that still doesn’t actually explain why people are so low level. Sure, it might take ’em longer to level up, but even if someone hunkered down in one spot for a year and only killed Dwellers out of pure necessity, it should still only take a few months to hit level six or seven and then they could grind lower-level Dwellers without much worry about dying. Kill enough level-one and level-two monsters and you’re bound to hit level ten. Or is there something I’m missing?”
“There are still the traps to consider, Dan,” Croc said, its feet squeaking along beside me. “Arguably, the traps are a bigger danger than the Dwellers, even for more powerful Delvers. Unless you have some sort of Trap Sense Relic, you just won’t see those things until it’s too late. Approximately sixty-three percent of all the Delvers I’ve ever worked with died to traps or environmental hazards.”
“The mimic makes an excellent point,” Jakob agreed. “Having the ability to navigate is only half the problem, and there is one other factor worth taking into consideration. Perhaps the biggest factor of all.”
“And that is?” I asked, curiosity piqued.
“The Researcher,” he replied, somber as the grave. “Many Delvers assume, erroneously, that when you kill a Dweller you receive experience points from the creature itself. A common misconception, especially because that is the way that it works for Dwellers, like Croc.” He motioned at the dog. “But you must remember that the Delvers and Dwellers are of an entirely different metaphysical nature. Dwellers are a product of the Backrooms, birthed by the Progenitor Engine, so their bodies are naturally compatible with the strange magic of this place.”
“If that’s true, then why do the Dwellers get progressively stronger the deeper down you go?” I asked. “Seems like strength would be a function of time, not location. The older a Dweller gets, the stronger they get. But Croc’s been around for decades, and it was only level seven when we first met. If it can just kill other Dwellers and eat their power, Croc should be ridiculously OP by now.”
“It’s a phenomenon called Mana Displacement Effect,” Croc said, chipper as ever. “If we kill other Dwellers we can consume and absorb their essence, which has an effect similar to experience points, but our Spatial Cores are leaky. Filled with holes just like my body.” The dog waggled its bottom, showing off the assortment of dime-sized gaps punctuating its rubbery skin. “And the less residual Mana there is on a given floor, the more quickly we leak until an equilibrium is reached.
“The floors furthest away from the God Box—that’s what we call the Progenitor Engine—have the least amount of total residual magic. People think about the Backrooms like a cake with a bunch of different layers. The Lobby is on the top, like a delicious layer of frosting, and the God Box at the bottom is the crisp, tasty crust. Boy, do I wish that were true, because I love cake. Especially ice cream cake. But instead of normal ice cream the layers are all Froyo.”
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“Are you hungry, Croc?” I asked.
“I am, actually. How did you know?” the dog asked.
“Just a wild guess,” I replied with a lopsided smile. “Anyway, you were saying the Backrooms are like a cake?” I prompted.
“No, I’m saying they aren’t like a delicious Froyo cake, even though everyone thinks they are. It’s actually more like a planet. And the God Box at the center is the source of all Mana and it pushes that Mana outward. The floors closest to the core have extremely high levels of Mana, and the layers furthest away don’t.”
“So the Dwellers down deeper are proportionally stronger on every floor because there’s more residual Mana—”
“Which means the Mana Displacement Effect is weaker,” Croc finished. “I.e., we leak less and can hold significantly more.”
“Then why didn’t you ever move deeper down?” I asked the dog in all earnestness.
“Because then I wouldn’t have been able to help new Delvers,” Croc replied simply, as though the answer should’ve been as plain as the nose on my face. “That’s always been my purpose, Dan. I was stronger once, a long time ago. Made it all the way up to level fifteen.” The dog shuddered, its shoulder slumping, it ears drooping. “That was far enough for me. It’s bad down there, Dan. Ugly and mean and lonely. Though not anymore.” The dog brightened visibly. “Because now I have a friend! And we can still help new Delvers no matter how deep we go! It’s a win, win!”
My smile broadened and I leaned over and patted the dog that wasn’t a dog on the head.
“Okay, I guess that all tracks,” I said, straightening. “So we don’t absorb essence, but instead earn experience, which comes from the Researcher. Does that mean there’s a Mana Displacement Effect equivalent, but for Delvers?”
“Yes and no.” Jakob shook his head firmly. “Once a Delver advances, the levels remain. The stronger a Delver is, however, the less experience they receive from the Researcher for killing creatures sustainably below their level. The Localized Administrators even actively penalize Delvers for grinding levels against weaker creatures for too long. Have you, perhaps, received some sort of evolving title which limits your ability to earn experience from lower-level Dwellers?”
I nodded. “Fish in a Barrel,” I said, feeling a prickle of unease race along my spine. “I don’t earn any experience for killing creatures beneath level five.”
“As I expected. I have a similar evolving title called Kinderspiel. Child’s Play, in the English vernacular. I unlocked it shortly after hitting level twelve and it evolved once more when I hit level twenty. I no longer gain any experience for slaying creatures beneath level ten. Temperance has a similar title as well, Forgone Conclusion, which limits her in the same manner.”
“I hate it,” Temperance growled over one shoulder. “They drop loot but don’t give any experience.”
“That seems counterintuitive,” I said. “Could be I’m wrong, but the Researcher seems like he’s actively trying to help us survive. At least that’s the sense I got from the few messages I received. And my Localized Administrator is a colossal dick, but it still seems like it’s in my corner. It seems like they’d want us to be as strong as possible.”
“No one knows the answers for sure,” Jakob said, “but there are a number of theories—though I find some are far more plausible than others. One camp, the Red Spectators, believes the Backrooms are a game. A giant, bloody colosseum designed for the entertainment of the Researcher, or perhaps some other distant superintelligence. They believe the system is thus designed to force Delvers to descend to deeper floors, where great threats wait.
“There are others”—he glanced briefly at Temperance—“who believe the Backrooms to be a divine test of sorts. A proving ground, designed to sort the wheat from the chaff.”
“I can still hear you,” Temperance called back over one shoulder.
A slight blush crept into Jakob’s otherwise white cheeks, but he pressed on. “The Roomkeepers, like our Temperance here, believe the chosen few who pass the trial by making it to the thousandth floor are whisked away to a distant paradise world, where there is no suffering or pain or misery. But to get there, you must first endure the inferno and come away purified. That or be purged.”
“You make it sound like the Christian Heaven,” Temperance growled from up ahead, “but it isn’t. It’s more like Valhalla. Just an endless feast with food and beer and sex and violence. The Backrooms are here so that only the worthy may enter the Grand Hall.”
That sounded like a bunch of pseudo-religious bullshit to me, but then what the fuck did I know? Maybe this Researcher really was some all-powerful Viking god. Though even if that was true, I wouldn’t much want to worship a god who allowed this kind of butchery and tomfuckery to happen under his watch. Either he was an evil god or a breathtakingly incompetent one.
“The Cult of Noth believes all of this is some vast, global-governmental conspiracy called the Variant Research Division,” Jakob continued after a beat. “Sort of a Men in Black type organization. Some in the cult hold that the Backrooms was built by the VRD as a prison, meant to contain dangerous and anomalous entities from other dimensions and realities, while another, smaller faction, believe the facility was designed to force human evolution through unethical experimentation.”
Of the three theories so far, that sounded the most plausible, though I had a hard time swallowing most conspiracy theories. Not because I believed the government was morally above doing that kind of shady bullshit, but because logistically it seemed unlikely. I’d worked in the military—had deployed to war zones—and I’d learned people had big fucking mouths. They couldn’t help but talk and brag even when it endangered their own lives.
Orchestrating a conspiracy on a smaller scale, where maybe only a dozen people were involved, seemed conceivable. But a conspiracy on the scale of the Backrooms? That would take thousands or tens of thousands of people to pull off, and some shitty, low-level lance corporal somewhere would run his mouth eventually. No way could they keep this kind of thing under wraps indefinitely.
“I’m guessing you have a differing view?” I said, more statement than question.
“Indeed, I do. Though understand that it’s all pure conjecture.” Jakob’s lips stretched into a thin line and his eyes took on a hazy, distant appearance as though he were looking far off into some distant memory. “As I said, no one knows the mind of the Researcher, and if there are true answers to be found, I suspect they are buried so deeply on the lower floors that none of us will ever likely find them.”
“As for me, however, I think it has to do with the Blight. I don’t fully understand what the Blight is, or where it comes from, but clearly the Researcher is trying to eradicate it. The existence of the Job Board hints at as much. I believe his goal is not to find one champion, but to raise an army of champions capable of eradicating the Blight on the lower floors. The Job Board is the carrot—clear the Blight, get rewards. The experience restrictions are the stick.”
I turned his explanation over in my head, examining it from a dozen different angles. “That doesn’t track either. If the Researcher’s goal is to make an army of champions, why not just power level everyone the second they Noclip into the Lobby? Then they could just wade through the lower floors and butcher everything that gets in their way.”
Jakob pitched his voice low. So low, Temperance wouldn’t be able to hear us. “Because I unequivocally do not believe the Researcher to be some benevolent, all-powerful god. What if,” he whispered so quiet I needed to lean in to hear him, “his resources are finite?”
Huh. Now that was an interesting thought.
“If his resources are finite,” I said slowly, “he can’t afford to make bad investments. And we are the investments.”
“Precisely,” Jakob agreed, clapping me on the shoulder. “The first twenty-five floors are a gauntlet designed to show which new arrivals are worth investing in. But there is an artificial level cap. And if you want to push past it—to grow stronger and get better Relics—you will eventually be forced to go lower, which is also where the Blight is more pervasive.”
“You’re saying the people who camp out on these floors for years and years and years are the ones who’ve what? Given up?”
“Something to that effect,” Jakob agreed with a shrug. “And thus, the Researcher has given up on them. A crop that has yielded no fruit. Although, again, this is just my own speculation. Perhaps it is a cruel game for the amusement of some galactic audience. Or a vast conspiracy or an inferno, meant to purify the chosen for paradise. The only way to know for sure is to go deeper.”
The conversation had given me a lot to noodle on, but I couldn’t put the cart before the horse. If I wanted to live long enough to get actual answers, I’d need to survive Funtime Frank first. And that? Well, that would be easier said than done.
As we rounded a corner, I caught my first look at the Jungle Gym Jamboree and I instantly regretted the decision to come here…