I don’t know how long I was out for—could’ve been two minutes or ten hours. I didn’t have a watch on, and there were no windows or other organic sources of light, so gauging the time was impossible. It was quiet, though. Other than the omnipresent buzz of the lights above there wasn’t a sound, which was unnerving in its own way.
But at least I was alive. Hell, not just alive.
I felt like a million bucks.
I sat up, stretched my arms, cracked my neck, then did a quick inventory, running my hands over my chest in search of wounds. The dull ache from my ribs was gone, there was no sign of the splitting headache from my night of drunken debauchery, and my muscles and joints hadn’t felt this good in ten years. Maybe ever.
There was a black exclamation point blinking insistently in the corner of my eye. When I cautiously examined it, the symbol vanished and a new message from the Researcher appeared.
Even after ten thousand years, you humans still manage to surprise me from time to time. I had no expectations whatsoever that you would survive that encounter, much less serve as a tipping point in the battle. Yet here we are. Impressively done. Truly.
As a result, you’ve earned several Research Achievements.
Although this is quite irregular, I am going to prematurely assign a Localized Administrator to oversee your case.
There are hundreds of different Localized Administrators, each with their own unique disposition, and you will be paired with one best suited for your personality profile. Your Localized Administrator is responsible for managing your VIRUS Upgrade Interface, awarding research achievements, and allocating resources based on preset performance metrics and key Research Department Objectives.
It will serve as a guide during your time in the Backrooms.
Because of the anomalies associated with your case, be advised that you will not be able to fully integrate with the VIRUS Upgrade Interface or Redeem Loot Tokens until you exit the Lobby and locate one of the Progenitor Monoliths on the lower floors. Should you manage to escape the Lobby, I recommend seeking refuge in the nearest Safe Harbor, which is Howlers Hold. According to your Current Relative Position (CRP), Howlers Hold can be located on Floor 7, Quadrant 12, Sector 3 for the next three days, seventeen hours, thirteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds.
Although this is likely the last you will ever hear from me, on behalf of the Variant Research Division, I wish you the best of luck.
— The Researcher
I read through the notice and by the time I was done, I was even more confused than when I clicked on the exclamation point. VIRUS Upgrade Interface? Loot Tokens? Progenitor Monoliths?
I was just hoping this Localized Administrator would be able to clear some of this shit up for me, because I’d never felt more lost in the sauce. When I dismissed the message from the Researcher, a whole slew of new notifications erupted, one right after another, scrolling across my vision like the opening crawl in a Star Wars movie.
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Premature Administration
Don’t worry, premature administration happens a lot to guys your age—I think there’s probably a pill for that.
Reward: Lobby Access to a Localized Administrator, Iteration 1.13578092. Lucky you…
Research Achievement Unlocked!
My First Artifact
You’ve successfully managed to find and activate a Backrooms Artifact. Congratulations, you’ve accomplished something so insignificant that it’s basically the Backrooms’ version of a participation trophy. Still… you managed to do it within twenty minutes of being here. How you even found an Artifact in the Lobby is, frankly, impressive. Pretty sure that’s a new Backrooms record.
Reward: 3 x Copper Delver Loot Token, 1 x Silver Delver Loot Token
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Out of Your League
You’ve attacked a monster more than 100 levels higher than you. If I had hands, I’d clap—then I’d use them to dig your grave. That’s a ballsy move, even by my standards. No one in the recorded history of the Backrooms has ever done that and lived to tell the tale. Except you, apparently.
Reward: 1,200 Experience Points, 1 x Ruby Warlord Loot Token
Title: Out of Your League – Deal 10% additional damage to opponents more than five levels higher than you.
Note: Titles come with a wide range of passive benefits, which are always in effect, though you can only have ten titles in effect at any given point.
[Level Up! x 3]
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Death Wish
You’ve survived an attack from a monster more than 100 levels higher than you. Do you have a death wish? Because this is how you die a very painful, but often quick, death. At least, it’s quick if you’re lucky. The fact that you somehow survived is mind-blowing and definitely worth a little somethin’-somethin’.
Reward: 1,200 Experience Points, 1 x Diamond Sentinel Loot Token
Title: Death Wish – All healing Relics and Artifacts become 5% more effective when your Health drops below 15%.
[Level Up! x 1]
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Marked for Death
Whether by poor luck or through a series of even poorer life choices, you’ve somehow managed to cross paths with the Flayed Monarch—easily one of the most powerful entities in all of the Backrooms. You’re alive, but for how much longer is the real question. You’ve been Marked for Death, and all the Aspirants who serve at the pleasure of the Skinless Court will try to murder you on sight. On the plus side, all factions who oppose the Skinless Court will be more favorable to you.
“You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies” — Oscar Wilde
Reward: 1 x Gold Ambassador Loot Token
Title: Marked for Death – Deal 15% additional damage to all Aspirants of the Skinless Court!
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Masochist-in-Training
You suffered a single attack that reduced your Health by more than ninety percent. I’d ask if you’re okay, but there’s no way that you’re okay. I’m going to give you a reward, but I feel conflicted about it, since I don’t want to positively reinforce this type of bad behavior.
Reward: 4 x Copper Medic! Loot Token, 1 x Silver Medic! Loot Token
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Research Achievement Unlocked!
My First Elixir
So, you’ve had a hard day at the office and suffered a catastrophic crippling blow that has left you tiptoeing on the line between life and death? Just another average Tuesday in Newfoundland. Crack the fridge and pull out a refreshing, medical-grade Zima—The #1 Bone Healing Juice in the Market! Guaranteed to make your Insides feel like Glimflam!
Reward: The delicious, refreshing, lightly carbonated taste of Zima is its own reward, amiright?
I read through the list of increasingly bizarre notifications, which served as a disturbingly concise record of everything that had happened in the past couple hours.
Using a magical Pog Slammer to summon an impenetrable dome of arcane energy?
Check.
Leaving the safety of said impenetrable dome to save some weird hobo with an anime sword by hurling my hammer at a skinless horror with the lower body of a centipede?
Double check.
Having my body pulverized and my bones crushed, only to be miraculously saved by chugging the forerunner to White Claw?
Yahtzee.
I wasn’t exactly sure what Loot Tokens were or how they worked, but I figured I could worry about that once I got clear of the Lobby and found a way to the first floor. Problem was, I had no clue where I was, how big the Lobby was, or how to leave.
The utter lack of signage certainly didn’t help the situation.
With a grunt, I stood and took a slow look-see around, trying to get my bearings.
There was no sign of the gunslinger or the Monarch, but the devastation and carnage they left behind was still readily apparent. The two-man Armageddon had smashed through columns, split the walls open, and burned the carpet to cinders, though, strangely, the damage appeared to be fading.
Though maybe fading wasn’t quite the right word. It was more like the damage was healing. Almost as if this place was actually a living organism, clothed with yellow wallpaper and tacky carpet instead of skin or scales.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I headed over to examine a zigzagging crack in the plaster. As a general contractor, I’d hung more than my fair share of sheetrock and laid plenty of wallpaper, but as I ran my fingers over the jagged edge of the damage, I knew right away that this wasn’t drywall, brick, concrete, gypsum board or any other construction material I’d ever worked with before. The material was wet, pliable, but also oddly fibrous. It felt more like a slab of beef than sheetrock, and when I pulled my fingers away, they were covered in slick, clear mucus.
Holy shit. Maybe this place was healing itself.
I suppressed a shudder and actively pushed away the dark thoughts cycling through my head.
That didn’t matter right now, I told myself. The only thing I needed to focus on at this moment was getting as far away from this particular location as fast as possible. I’d chucked a hammer at the head of an eldritch horror with god-like power and likely cost it a victory over a deadly rival. There was a good chance that freak show would come sniffing around sooner or later, looking for a little payback, and I didn’t want to be here when it showed up.
But I also didn’t want to risk leaving anything valuable behind.
I didn’t know where I was or how long I’d be stuck in here, and I wouldn’t survive long without supplies. And, if the legendary fight between the post-apocalyptic gunslinger and the skinless horror-show had taught me anything, it was that every item could potentially be a valuable, life-saving tool.
Even a 1990’s POG slammer.
First, I picked up the empty glass Zima bottle, which had rolled away from my hand after I’d passed out. The Greater Healing Elixir description still populated when I closely examined the bottle’s properties, but the elixir had been a one-time use item. Now it was just a bottle.
I still shoved it into one of the outer pockets on my tool belt.
I didn’t have anything to drink from, and even if the bottle could no longer heal what ailed me, I could always fill it up with water on the off chance that I ran across a faucet or drinking fountain.
Next, I made my way up the hall, rummaging through the debris and smoking rubble in search of anything else that might be useful. Most of the magical trinkets the two clashing deities had tossed around had been completely obliterated.
The plastic green army men had shrunken back down to size and whatever magic they’d once contained was now gone. There were shredded playing cards and pieces of tacky, plastic mall jewelry lying all over the place, but they were likewise destroyed beyond repair.
A few things had survived, though.
In the hallway, buried beneath a chunk of rubble, which looked like sheetrock and felt like fatty gristle, was a pitted brass compass. The same compass that had fallen out of the Monarch’s chest after the gunslinger had run the creature through with his foam sword. At a glance, it looked like something you might find in a discount bin at a roadside antique store.
Carefully, I poked it with the toe of my work boot, making sure it wouldn’t explode or grow teeth and try to eat me.
When nothing immediately terrible happened, I breathed a small sigh of relief, then gingerly picked it up off the floor, turning it over and over in my hands. It vibrated with a subtle thrum of energy and sent a gentle ripple of warmth through my arms and into my chest.
This thing, whatever it was, had power with a capital P.
As with the bottle and the Slammer, I examined the compass and a description box appeared, rendered in the same eight-bit graphics as the rest of the message boxes.
This one was different, though. Restricted.
Compass of the Catacomber
Mythic Emblem
Whoops! Looks like you’ve stumbled upon an encrypted item. Because this Emblem is rendered in Archaic Variant, language iteration 1.01, you cannot fully view its properties without a Perception of 10 and you cannot equip it to your Spatial Core without a Resonance of 15. To fix this issue, exit the Lobby and visit the nearest Progenitor Monolith to finish fully integrating with the Backrooms’ VIRUS.
I dismissed the words and stowed the compass.
Like everything else in this place, the error message left me with more questions than answers.
There were two other items that had survived the destruction: my trusty 19 oz claw hammer and the Snake and Skull Slammer that the gunslinger had loaned to me.
I fished the hammer off the floor, hand wrapping around the hickory handle, but faltered a second later when an identification icon briefly flared over the hammer’s blunt metal head.
I narrowed my eyes and glanced at the symbol with suspicion.
19 oz Vaughan Hammer – “Foe Bane”
Rare Artifact
Type: Blunt Weapon, Personal Significance (Enhanced)
Victory through superior Hammer power!
Behold, the mighty 19 oz straight claw hammer! This legendary tool is the perfect blend of elegance and functionality, ideal for smiting your foes or hanging a picture frame. Crafted by the finest blacksmiths of the Vaughan Manufacturing Corporation, this versatile tool can pry open treasure chests or rip the arms off the Faceless Ghouls on the First Floor.
It’s the perfect addition to any arsenal.
But this simple-appearing tool is more than it seems. Used to strike a critical blow against the Flayed Monarch, this hammer has garnered additional Significance, transforming it into a Legend in the making…
Effect 1, The Bigger They Are: Through concentration, Foe Bane can be invested with Mana, allowing it to grow or shrink in size. Regardless of apparent size, it will never seem to weigh more than 19 oz for its bonded wielder. To activate this effect, the user must first equip a Relic that enables Mana usage.
Effect Slot: Empty
Effect Slot: Empty
Effect Slot: Empty
I read through the description once, twice, then a third time.
Unless I was somehow misreading things, my hammer was now a magical weapon. One that could grow and shrink by investing it with “Mana”—though how I was supposed to do that, I wasn’t quite sure. I focused on the tool in my hand, then shut my eyes and envisioned it swelling up to the size of a sledgehammer. Something stirred faintly inside my chest, a flicker of gentle heat, here then gone. When I cracked one eye, the hammer was still the same size it had always been.
Feeling just a tiny bit of disappointment, I slid the hammer back into its customary loop on my belt.
Still, I was curious. If the hammer had somehow gained magical attributes, what about my other gear? I pulled out my trusty demolition screwdriver and saw that it too had a muddy identification icon. Excited, I quickly pulled it up, but found that unlike the hammer, it was listed simply as a Common Artifact with a standard description. The only interesting thing of note was that, like the hammer, the screwdriver was listed as having “Personal Significance.”
There were also two empty Effect Slots located at the bottom of the item description.
A quick check revealed that all of my tools were like that.
And not just them.
My Redwing work boots. The nut-hugger jorts. Even the ass-ugly red-and-gold Versace bathrobe, which I’d literally never seen before. Each and every one was listed as a Common Artifact with Personal Significance.
That didn’t mean anything to me now, but both the Researcher and the strange Error message I’d received from the Compass of the Catacomber had mentioned leaving the Lobby to unlock additional features. I was betting that if I could find a way to get off this floor, some of this stuff might start making a little more sense.
The last item I retrieved was the Snake and Skull Pog Slammer, which I’d tossed to the gunslinger during a moment of epic heroism. That or epic stupidity. I’d learned long ago that the line separating the two was often a mighty thin one, but since I’d survived the ordeal, I was going with heroism.
I took a few extra seconds to pull up the description—double-checking that the Artifact was still in working condition. I’d used the entirety of the Artifact’s two minutes of magical protection during the battle between the gunslinger and the Monarch, so for the time being it was nothing more than a glorified paperweight.
Or an actual Pog Slammer.
At least, that’s what I thought until I realized the Cooldown timer had changed.
Time Until Reset: 6 hours, 23 minutes
My memory was a little cloudy since I’d been on the verge of being murdered, but the last time I’d looked at the Slammer, the Time Until Reset had been around twelve hours. Which meant I’d been unconscious for just over five hours. I dismissed the pop-up and slid the Slammer into my pocket, since it was now the most valuable item in my possession. Not only could it generate a protective shield for two minutes a day, but the cooldown feature also served as a rudimentary clock.
A clock set to Newfoundland Standard Time, but a clock all the same.
Now that I’d scavenged all the usable items from the scene of the battle, the only thing left to do was to get my ass moving and find a way to leave the Lobby.