The four of us spent the next nine hours grinding through murder game after murder game, each more interesting and batshit crazy than the last. We started with Whack-A-Mole, which cost a Gold Loot Token to play. The price tag seemed awful steep, especially considering what kind of badass shit a Gold Loot Token could buy in the Gashapon machines, but Jakob hadn’t led me astray so far, so I decided to trust him.

Whack-A-Mole ended up being a Tower Defense game. Sort of. And this time I didn’t have to play alone.

Croc, Jakob, Temperance, and I all shuffled through a sliding door and into a large circular chamber which, in perfect Backrooms fashion, was significantly larger on the inside than it appeared on the outside. Honestly, it reminded me of the colosseum in Rome, except instead of classical architecture—white marble, graceful arches, and Ionic columns—it was all strobing neon, grimy carpet, and insane carnival music.

Thirteen doors dotted the perimeter of the circular room at even intervals. Each was labeled with a bright neon number, one through thirteen. They were also large enough for a grizzly to waltz through, which was extremely disconcerting.

Directly in the center of the odd colosseum was a giant carrot.

The carrot was person shaped, with knobby arms, stringy legs, and a mop of eye-searing green hair. The person-shaped carrot was also alive, though it didn’t try to communicate with us in any meaningful way. Not even when Croc transformed into a giant blue carrot, covered in holes, to try to put the odd Dweller at ease. Instead, it sat in the center of the ring, weird arms clutched tightly around its equally weird legs, letting out distressed whimpers every few seconds.

The Carrot Man flinched whenever anyone got to close to it.

Dweller 0.754D – Beta-Carotene Bitch Boy [Level 4]

These poor, unathletic, ginger-body doofuses are among the most pathetic and miserable creatures in the Backrooms. For them, existence is pain—quite literally since they’re created for the sole purpose of being ripped apart over and over and over again. These guys are basically Prometheus but way less cool, since they never offended the gods by giving man the ability to produce fire.

They’re also as weak as newborn kittens and as useful in combat as a paper umbrella is in a monsoon. These things aren’t built for fighting, they’re built for fleeing. Not that they usually get very far. Their crunchy, vitamin-rich bodies are a tantalizing treat for the monstrous Tunnel Maulers, so often found in the Endless Cave of the Eighth Floor, and those things are fast. When the Tunnel Maulers show up for dinner, you’re really gonna wish you were anywhere else…

The goal of this particular game turned out to be surprisingly simple, if morbid.

Protect the poor carrot schmuck from progressive waves of gargantuan moles. The aforementioned Tunnel Maulers.

As expected, the Tunnel Maulers were each about the size of an angry hippo, built with thick, rippling muscle, and covered head to toe by coarse brown fur. Each paw was the size of a shovel and capped with three enormous claws, which could dig through the earth or eviscerate a victim with equal ease. The Tunnel Maulers had fleshy, tubular mouths, which made them look like oversized anteaters. That mouth, however, acted more like an elephant’s trunk and was ringed with jagged teeth capable of sawing through damn near anything.

The moles came in waves.

A door would open, disgorging one of the monstrous creatures into the arena with us.

One at first. Then two. Then three. Four. On and on and on.

The first Tunnel Mauler started off at lowly level 5, but each successive Mauler added into the mix gained an additional level. Which meant the second wave had one level 5 Mauler and one level 6 Mauler.

The creatures could dive into the earth and swim beneath the ground as though it were water, and their hide was so thick and tough that not even Temperance’s meat cleaver could fully penetrate. They were slow, lumbering creatures, so their attacks weren’t especially difficult to avoid, but when they did land a blow, they hit like sledgehammers. One emerged beneath Jakob’s feet and knocked the Cendral across the room and into the far wall as though he weighed no more than a stuffed animal.

There were a couple of saving graces.

First, the creatures weren’t after us at all. They were entirely fixated on the carrot man, who chaotically darted around the arena, trying his best to avoid the murderous behemoths. With that said, the Maulers would still obliterate anything that got between them and carrot guy. Which, unfortunately, was literally our only job. Get in the way. Save carrot man. Period. When the carrot died—inevitably ripped apart and devoured alive by the moles—the game ended.

The other saving grace was that, unlike the shootout gallery, my magic worked in this game. Even better, the Maulers were especially vulnerable to the Mana-based attacks.

I got to try my shiny new StainSlayer Maelstrom spell for the first time, and it was exactly as awesome as I’d been hoping for. The spell took longer to cast than I’d like, but the effect was worth the wait. Violent, swirling blue clouds formed overhead and poured fat, sizzling drops of blue-white corrosive rain down on anything inside a fifteen-foot radius. It left melted bodies, chunks of bloody meat, and foaming blue puddles of corrosive devastation in its wake.

Honestly, ensuring I didn’t accidentally catch my teammates in the area of effect was the biggest drawback to the new spell.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

For close combat and single targets, Pressure Washer worked like a champ, easily carving through the layers of fur, fat, and muscle like a hot knife through a pat of butter.

Still, even with Jakob, Croc, and Temperance, we only managed to get to the eleventh wave before one of the Maulers mangled the manic carrot.

“It’s like he has no sense of self-preservation at all,” Croc noted as the carrot actively ran toward a group of encroaching Maulers.

The dog was right.

The carrot was almost as scared of us as it was of the Maulers, even though we were actively trying to save the dumb shit. It had all the brain function of an actual vegetable and was literally too dumb to live. It ended up blundering into one of the Maulers during the eleventh wave and was subsequently ripped apart, orange gore splashing across the arena floor as the carrot mewled in pain. That part left me feeling uneasy, and I ended up using a blast of pressurized water to put the poor bastard out of its misery.

Its oddly human cries would probably haunt me until the end of my days.

Although the Maulers didn’t drop Relics or even Shards, they gave great experience points—far better than the bird-chested goblins from the shooting gallery. Plus, we got tickets. Seven hundred and fifty for making it all the way to the eleventh wave. Not too shabby, though we would’ve earned an even thousand had we managed to win the game and survive all thirteen waves. We would’ve played again, but each game had a twenty-four-hour cooldown period.

There were plenty of other games, though. And they were all just as disturbing as Whack-A-Mole.

Each was based on a classic arcade game or carnival attraction. Assuming those games were live action and produced by the director of the SAW franchise.

I’d played Duck Pond more than once as a kid. My parents would take me whenever the traveling fairs rumbled through during the hot summer months of southern Ohio. A legion of semis and RVs would roll in like the high tide, take over an abandoned section of parking lot, and set up their rusted rides and con games for a few weeks at a time. Then they’d pack up and move on with heaps of cash, leaving before they had a chance to outstay their welcome.

My family would go every summer, often more than once, and Duck Pond had been among my favorite games, mostly because you were guaranteed to win. All you had to do was fish out one of the floating rubber ducks from a plastic kiddie pool, then you’d win whatever was stenciled on the bottom of said duck. Most of the prizes were terrible, but like I said, you always came away with something in hand.

The Backrooms version of Duck Pond was more or less the same.

Except the rubbery ducks were each the size of a Rottweiler. Some ducks were exactly what they appeared to be and awarded tickets.

Other ducks were mimics—some as high as level 20.

Others still were bombs.

Or arcane traps.

One just sounded like a car alarm going off, but there was no way to shut off the blaring racket.

Thanks to Spelunker’s Sixth Sense, though, I was able to easily avoid the terrible assortment of traps, so we cleaned up.

We stopped just once to raid one of the many concession stalls that littered the vast arcade. There were several food courts scattered around the Jamboree, but they all required either tokens or tickets and I wasn’t keen to spend my resources on food. Not when I had all the resources I needed back at the store.

But the concession stalls were different.

Those were guarded by Adolescent Snack Shack Sentinels, armed with cystic acne and razor-sharp spatulas. None of the zit-faced Dwellers were higher than level 10 and we put ’em down in short order, giving us access to all the food we could eat.

Most of the stands served soft pretzels, cotton candy, or other equally garbage food, but thanks to Unerring Arrow, we managed to find one with thick, cheesy slices of pizza, perfectly cut crinkle fries, loaded nachos, and charbroiled hotdogs that tasted like the ones you could get at the ballpark. Best of all, the food offered temporary buffs that lasted for up to four hours in some cases.

Eating the pizza granted the Stuff-Crust Health Bar, which restored five points of Health over five minutes and increased Health Regen by 2% for four hours. Eating more than one slice restored additional Health, though the Regen bonus didn’t stack, which sucked a wrinkled nutsack. Finishing an extra slice did renew the buff duration, however. The nachos came with the Carb Load buff, which had a similar effect but for Stamina. Those buffs could run concurrently, which made them even better, so long as you weren’t afraid of packing on a couple thousand calories.

The crinkle cut fries were just fries, but they were finger-licking good, so that was something.

As for the delicious all-beef franks, they gave the Gas Station Hotdog buff, which prevented you from contracting food poisoning and reduced damage from disease by 5% for three hours.

Although the bonuses were small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, in the Backrooms every little advantage mattered.

While working my way through the better part of half a large pizza, I decided to use Corvo’s Blanket Fort to add the entire stall to the storefront. Sure, we had plenty of food already, but the sheer convenience of having hot pizza, loaded nachos, and ballpark franks on demand was too tempting to pass up. The rectangular metal box was also only ninety square feet of total space, which was next to nothing. Not compared to how much I stood to earn from the stand.

I was positive my customers would happily pay a premium for the extra buffs, even tiny ones. We could also serve the piping-hot food with frosty cold beer, which we had plenty of.

Corvo’s Blanket Fort

You’ve selected 90 square feet of eligible Progenerated Material Resource Space. Would you like to use Corvo’s Blanket Fort to convert the selected material into a Personal Superspace Dwelling? Proceed Yes/No?

I’d never accepted faster in my whole life.

Fat and happy, we hit the bathroom, making sure to check for mimics before using any of the toilets, then got back to the grind.

We played High-Striker—the carnie game where you use a mallet to send a puck flying toward a bell high overhead—and Ring Toss. Balloon Darts, Space Invaders, and a real-life version of Frogger. Except we were the frogs and we had to duck, dodge, and dive our way through an army of sentient cars with a taste for human blood. We fought swarms of goldfish piranha and horrifying funhouse clowns. Clambered over tottering rope bridges, suspended high above lagoons filled with unholy crocodiles the size of Cadillacs.

We burned through Loot Tokens and endured more nightmare games than I could count, and we still didn’t get through even a fraction of all the possible games.

By the time we were finished, every muscle in my body ached and throbbed, I could barely stay on my feet, and every inch of me had been splashed or splattered in blood, shit, vomit, or fluids even more unspeakable in nature.

We’d also earned just over ten thousand tickets, and I’d jumped from level 17 to level 20, while Temperance had made it all the way up to 21. Even Croc had advanced and was now sitting at level 16. The mimic was still substantially lower than the rest of us, but Dwellers also leveled slower by nature and had to constantly kill things to keep from leaking like a sieve. Conversely, they could also absorb Mana passively, so once we made it down to the lower floors, Croc would probably blow past the rest of us in an eyeblink.

Tickets in hand, we headed over to the prize redemption booth to pick out some swanky new prizes.