Croc found a small treasure trove of Lesser and Greater Zima Healing Elixirs stashed away inside one of the fridges in the pharmacy. We were just lucky they hadn’t been destroyed in the raging inferno of burning vodka like so many of the other drugs and pharmaceuticals. I knew the store itself would naturally heal over time, but I was less sure that the supplies would regenerate—especially once I cut this section off from the rest of the Backrooms and turned it into my own interdimensional safe haven.
I regretted the need to burn everything down, but we hadn’t really had many other options. Croc and I had barely escaped by the skin of our teeth. If we’d done anything differently, chances were good that I’d be dead right now—just another hopeless casualty like so many of the Delvers that had gone before me. Besides, even with the destruction, there were still lots of prizes to be had. The Healing Elixirs were a huge win, but there was also a cooler filled with Mana Elixirs and another stocked with Stamina Regen Potions, which were called Electro-Quench—“Fuck Your Thirst!”
The potion was bright green and looked like Gatorade.
Most of the other drugs were gone, but the lab equipment itself was in decent shape, which gave me a small sliver of hope that I might be able to start creating my own elixirs at some point.
Two of the Lab Tech bodies were so badly burned and mangled that we weren’t able to recover anything off their charred remains, but we did manage to pick up another four Erlenmeyer Molotov Cocktail Relics, plus five Common Shards and two more Uncommon Shards. That brought me up to thirty-two Common Shards and thirteen Uncommon Shards—enough to start forging the pieces into usable Relics.
The Shards and extra Relics would serve as stock for my store or as fuel to level up my own abilities, but I still wasn’t sure which. It really depended on what my future customers wanted.
For now, I chucked everything unceremoniously into Storage and systematically worked through the debris and wreckage, looking for anything else worth salvaging.
The Internal Combustion Engine Trap had damn near obliterated the Harmacist and had taken a good chunk of aisle 9 along with it. The plague doctor lay in smoking pieces, scattered across the floor, while bits of inky skin and strings of intestine hung from nearby shelving units. Croc and I would have to clean that mess up before our grand opening.
I was gutted to find that the Harmacist’s silver syringe pistol had been transformed into an unusable twisted hunk of scrap metal and that the plague doctor’s oversized scalpel-sword had suffered a similar fate. The sword I could live without, but I’d been salivating over the prospect of running around like John Wayne, quick-drawing the silver syringe pistol and blasting the shit out of anything that looked sideways at me.
Some things were just not meant to be, it seemed.
It wasn’t all bad news, though.
The Harmacist’s body may have been mangled beyond belief, but there was enough of its torso left for me to recover two Relics.
The first looked like a set of small bronze scales, which might be used to measure the components of an elixir. It was a Common Relic appropriately named The Pharmacist’s Scales, which allowed me to exchange Mana for Health or Health for Mana in equal measure. Although it didn’t have any direct combat application, it had to be one of the most useful utility skills in my arsenal, just beneath the Compass of the Catacomber and Bleach Blaze.
I’d suffered some pretty horrendous injuries since Noclipping into the Backrooms, and in my estimation, praying to stumble across a lukewarm bottle of Zima was a terrible long-term survival strategy. As we used to say in the Marine Corps, hope is a shitty plan.
Healing myself completely would burn through the majority of my Mana, but at least it was a reasonably reliable way of not dying. I struggled to think of a situation where I might want to use my life force to supplement my Mana—especially considering how slowly Health Regenerated by comparison—but I’d also thought the randomly teleporting machete had been stupid too, and that had just saved my ass.
I added the Scales to my Spatial Core, which brought me up to nine Relics in total.
The tenth and final slot in my Spatial Core was shortly filled by the Harmacist’s second Relic, which turned out to be a Rare ability called Sterilization Field. The item itself had to be the strangest one I’d received so far. It was a white cube about the size of a toaster oven with a clear glass circle set into a small locking door. Inside the machine were a series of bulbs that emitted a blindingly bright blue light. There were several buttons on the outside, along with a label that declared the box to be a medical-grade UV Chamber.
Variant Research Division: Sterilization Field
Rare Relic – Level 1
Range: Self
Cost: 50 Mana
Duration: 20 Seconds
Every Alchemist knows that working with volatile chemicals and arcane elixirs is dangerous enough without errant strands of magic floating around. Unleash the power of Variant UV-C Bulbs and conjure a bubble of ethereal blue-white light, designed to keep bad magic out and your organs in.
This shimmering field not only travels with you, but also reduces all incoming magic and elemental attack damage by 50%. Even better, any enemy spellcaster trapped within the Sterilization Field who has a lower Resonance Score than you will be unable to activate Mana-Based Relics until leaving the bubble’s Area of Effect. This Relic enables Mana usage.
“It’s more than protection – it’s DOMINATION!”
I’d seen the Harmacist use this skill firsthand to dampen the effects of the red gas cloud and my Bleach Blaze spell. At 50 Mana, Sterilization Field cost a metaphysical arm and a leg to use and would wipe out every ounce of Mana I had at my disposal, but the possible applications were staggering and endless. Sure, it wouldn’t protect me at all from taking physical damage, but even without forging the Relic further, this was a cornerstone technique that I could structure the rest of my build around.
It would be useless against Dwellers like the Roid Gremlins or mimics who mostly relied on physical strength and beating the shit out of their opponents, but it could defang anything that used magic. Things like the Photophage or the crow-faced Lab Techs. Or maybe even the Flayed Monarch.
Though, admittedly, I’d seen the skinless horror show wield that curved khopesh like it had been born with the blade in its hands. The ruler of the 999th floor could probably gut me like a trout without ever using an ounce of magic.
Still, this felt like a small step in the right direction.
Killing the Harmacist earned me 750 experience points, not to mention the added 1,250 Experience for clearing the Job Board Mission, and all the Loot Tokens that came with it as a bonus—five Copper Delver Loot Tokens, two Silver Delver Loot Tokens, and one Gold Mercenary Loot Token. The massive influx of Experience rocketed me all the way up to level 12. Next time I visited a Progenitor Monolith, I’d have fifteen more Personal Enhancement Points to distribute, though most of those were going straight into Resonance.
I also had a string of new unlocked achievements waiting for me, which I casually read over while ripping through a bag of beef jerky and chugging a can of Peak Dew—“Different Elevation, Same Dewy Goodness.” The beef jerky was dry and, like the Jolt Cola, the Peak Dew soda hurt my teeth. Not that I cared. After eating nothing but candy bars and Froyo, this was a feast delivered from on high—like God raining down manna from the heavens.
Except this manna from the heavens left me with burps potent enough to strip paint.
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Merc for Hire
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How does it feel to recklessly put your life on the line while mercilessly slaughtering others for cold hard cash? Or was it experience points? Fame? Doesn’t matter. The principles are the same. You’ve officially sold your soul and proven you have the careless disregard for your own life necessary to take on some of the dodgiest gigs the Researcher can dream up. Now get your ass back out there—the grind awaits!
Reward: You already got paid for this and we both know it. Don’t try to double-dip, dickwad.
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Combination Mechanic
Most people say that randomly smashing a bunch of Relics together is a fool’s game. At best you’ll probably ruin a perfectly good skill, at worst you’ll murder yourself and everyone else inside a fifty-foot radius. But that hasn’t deterred you—which might not be the high praise you think it is. Still, you’ve created not one, not two, but three unique Relics, forging shitty bullshit into slightly less shitty bullshit. My hat’s off to you.
Reward: 1 x Silver Forger Loot Token
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Bargain Basement Hero
Holy cheaply made armor, Discount Dan! You’re like Batman. If Batman was a hobo. Living under a bridge. With terrible credit and a crippling mental condition. What the fuck is wrong with you?! You just cleared a two-star bounty clad in gear so low level, you couldn’t give it away at a yard sale. For all the protection your current equipment offers, you might as well have ventured in bare-assed. But hey, who needs fancy OSHA approved dungeon-delving equipment when you’ve got guts, guile, and a pair of cajones the size of bowling balls.
Reward: 1 x Gold Armorer Loot Token. Get yourself something nice… Hopefully something that resembles dignity.
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Overkill Overlord
Blam! Bam! Kaboom! That’s the sound of you using a tactical nuke to swat a goddamned fly. Do you feel good about yourself now? By defeating an enemy with an attack that dealt 10 times more damage than necessary to kill it, you’ve officially landed yourself the Overkill Overlord Research Achievement, proving that “excessive” is just another word for “extra fun.”
Reward: 5 x Copper Delver Loot Token, 1 x Gold Slayer Loot Token
Title: Overkill Overlord – Gain a 2x Experience Bonus when dealing more than 10 times the amount of damage necessary to kill any opponent.
I wasn’t eager to go back to the Loot Arcade anytime soon—the Mobile Murder Muncher was still the worst of the horrors I’d seen so far—but I was starting to rack up a significant hoard of tokens once again, including several silvers and golds. The prizes I would no doubt gain would be worth the danger, but that could wait for a little longer. First, I wanted to set up a cordon and get my personal Blanket Fort up and running.
I killed the rest of the beef jerky, chased it down with the remainder of the too-sweet Peak Dew cola, and pushed off the counter with a groan.
“What’s the plan now?” Croc asked, easing his way out of a nearby aisle with strings of gristle and bloody meat dangling from his blue, rubbery snout.
“You’ve got a little something right here,” I said, gesturing vaguely at my entire face.
Croc’s jaws stretched and a huge tongue emerged, pulling the excess strips of meat into his mouth. “Is that better?”
“Yep, you got it all,” I said, feeling queasy.
Intellectually knowing Croc was a carnivorous monster was somehow very different than watching him slurp down chunks of raw monster meat, but I kept my mouth shut. The mimic was terrifying and vaguely disgusting, but it had also proven itself to be an ally a hundred times over. So long as Croc was eating my enemies and not me, I didn’t really care.
“Did you find the medicine you needed?” the dog asked.
I dropped my gaze and couldn’t look at the mimic in the face.
“Yeah, about that…” I said slowly, rubbing at the back of my neck. “I’ve been putting this off for a while, but I’m not sure it can wait any longer—”
“Oh god,” Croc blurted, “you’re dying. Wait, no, it is hemorrhoids. Or you have cancer. But it’s contagious cancer and now I have it too.”
I barked a laugh that I didn’t really feel. “No, it’s none of those things. It’s…” I trailed off, not sure how to explain. “Maybe it’s better if I just show you.”
I fell silent and let things go hazy as I pulled up my mini map until it filled most of my field of vision. I could see all the details of the MediocreMart—from the registers by the front door, all the way to the still-smoldering pharmacy in the back. Marked on the map were the corpses of the dead Dwellers, their bodies rotting away, and the whole area glowed a faint shade of blue, which indicated it had been cleared of both enemies and Blight.
Although this was my first time using the Blanket Fort ability, the knowledge for how to use it was already nestled deep in the base of my brain, like a memory half forgotten. I raised a finger and began to trace it across the map, outlining the edges of the newly liberated MediocreMart. In the peripheries of my vision, a blue light bled from the air, following the course of my finger like an ethereal serpent.
As I traced, a numeric counter appeared in a corner of the map, tracking how much square footage I had to play with. The skill granted me twenty-five hundred square feet per character level, which was more than enough to cover the entirety of the store. Which was great news, since there were several other locations I wanted to add in order to really maximize the skill.
I finished tracing the perimeter of the store, connecting the edges of ghostly blue light together, then took a few seconds to mark the sliding glass doors as the designated Entryway Anchor point. As I did, a new prompt appeared.
Corvo’s Blanket Fort
You’ve selected 14,200 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?
Researcher’s Codex Note: Doing so will amputate the selected material from its current Spatial Location and transfer it to an extradimensional Superspace pocket, accessible only through a designated Doorway Anchor. Additional sequestered Progenerated Material can be grafted onto the current space at any time. For a full list of Blanket Fort features and options, please see the Blanket Fort DIY Operations Manual, available after claiming your first section of the Backrooms.
I mentally selected “Yes” and both the prompt and map vanished. The whole room violently shook and rumbled like a raging bull, knocking Croc from its feet and many of the items from the shelves. But the tremors only lasted a few seconds, and once they passed another short notice swam into view in all its eight-bit glory.
Congratulations, you’ve officially created your very own Personal Superspace Dwelling, or PSD—not to be confused with PTSD, which are two very different things, as we learned the hard way. To complete the process, and fully cordon off the selected location, you must first plant a Prime Doorway Anchor Point in an exterior Backrooms location.
7 x Items have been added to your Subspace Storage Space: 5 x Standard Doorway Anchor, 1 x VIP Doorway Anchor, 1 x Blanket Fort DIY Operations Manual.
Would you like to assign a name to your new Personal Superspace Dwelling? If not, the name on record will remain with its current designation: MediocreMart. Yes/No?
Unlike the last message, this one gave me a moment of pause.
A name.
Of course, I’d need to name the place, but I haven’t given it any thought until right now. I’d had a few bigger, more pressing things on my mind. Like mimics. And mutated Pac-Man. And Molotov-cocktail-hurling birdmen. Now that I had a chance to breathe, however, I realized I couldn’t leave the name as it was. Although MediocreMart was a painfully accurate description of this place, it didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
If I was going to get Delvers from countless floors to shop at my little interdimensional general store and funnel me all their excess Relics and Artifacts, I was going to need something catchy. Something memorable. Something I could use to advertise.
A line from one of the achievements I’d just unlocked bubbled up to the surface of my mind. Discount Dan. It was dumb, but it also had a certain ring to it. But it needed something else. Something more. Something to give prospective customers a better idea of what kind of wares I’d be offering.
As a kid I’d always loved going to the flea market with my dad. We had a big ol’ flea market not far from us called Big Time Bargains, and about once a month my dad and I would head out that way to look for deals and flea markets were, hands down, the best place in the world to find deals. That and pawn shops. As a perpetual handyman, my dad was always on the hunt for used but well-loved power tools.
Going to the flea market was work for him, but it was pure joy for me. Rummaging through other people’s junk, searching for all the little gems they might’ve overlooked. And there were always treasures to be found, because as the saying goes, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Every month I’d walk away with something. Old coins from places I’d never heard of. Pokémon cards and comic books. Old-school video game cartridges for consoles that were no longer in production.
Who would want those? Me and my dad, that’s who. We had an Atari and a NES, the Super Nintendo and the Dream Cast, the first-generation Xbox and the PS1 and 2. All picked up for dirt cheap from Big Time Bargains. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up and my dad was a frugal man, so we never had the newest things, but he had an eye for a deal like no one I ever knew. I wanted to make a place that he would want to shop in. A place where one man’s trash could be treasure to the right buyer.
“Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains,” I said, the words little more than a whisper under my breath.
There was a brilliant flare of light and the prompt disappeared, replaced by the map once more. The name above the section of real estate I’d just carved out for myself now read Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains in blocky black script.
Research Achievement Unlocked!
Safe Space Warrior
The real world generally doesn’t care about your personal comfort and it sure as shit doesn’t come with Safe Spaces, no matter what your high school teacher told you. Unless your name is Dan. Apparently, you are such a special snowflake that the world literally revolves around you. At least a little. Still, I wouldn’t let this go to your head. Good money says you’re dead within a week. RemindMe! 1 Week
Reward: 5 x Copper Delver Loot Token, 1 x Gold Entrepreneur Loot Token
I dismissed the achievement notice with a wave of my hand and turned away from the counter. Croc was looking up at me with a reproachful gaze.
“Dan, I think maybe we have a few things we need to talk about…”