Discount Dan

As the die-cast Hot Wheels entered Frank’s gaping maw, I yelled, “It’s Cruising Time, you no good monkey fucker!” and the car enlarged to its full size. At twenty-five feet, Frank was one big ol’ chunky monkey. But his mouth wasn’t large enough to contain a full-sized sedan. Not even a subcompact two-seater like the Pinto. Frank’s head just… exploded as the car reached its full size. Blood, bone, and bits of metal flew out in a geyser as Frank’s body toppled to the side, landing with a thud, the twisted remains of Pinto right on top.

And just like that, Funtime Frank was dead. So was my car—an unfortunate casualty of war—though the heap of motorized shit had served me well.

With Franken-Kong and the rest of the jamboree dead, the metal dome walling us in retracted and disappeared back beneath the debris- and gore-splattered floor. We’d done it. Against all odds, we’d won. Beaten the monster at the heart of this place and purged the Blight while doing it, though we weren’t completely out of the woods yet.

Temperance and Jakob were both in terrible shape—though Temperance had taken the worst of the punishment. Frank’s spike attack had turned her into a furry pincushion. Right hand to God, it looked like someone had cut her down with a machine gun. Puncture wounds and lacerations dotted her body, and a great pool of blood was already congealing in a crimson halo by the time Croc and I got to her.

By all rights, she should’ve been dead. I legitimately couldn’t understand how she had survived at all.

Turned out she wouldn’t have, if not for Jakob.

Unbeknownst to me, the Cendral had equipped the Insurance Pact Relic I’d given him back at the Mart. The same Insurance Pact I’d received from the corpse of Natasha Anno, Aspirant of the Skinless Court. The Uncommon-grade ability enabled the caster to form an “insurance pact” with an ally, sharing up to twenty percent of their max Health Pool with the other for ten minutes. Jakob had formed the bond with Temperance early on during the fight, an act which had saved her life without a shadow of a doubt.

It was also the residual trauma from the pact that had knocked Jakob out cold and not getting mule kicked in the chest by Frank, as I’d first assumed. The pact didn’t just share the HP Pool, it also shared the pain both parties suffered while the ability was active.

It was a nasty side effect, though again, without it Temp would’ve died.

A few Zima Health Elixirs—and a little extra TLC, courtesy of Pharmacist’s Scales—saw both the Delvers back on their feet and good as new. Mostly. Temperance’s protective raincoat and rubber waders had been shredded beyond recognition. The items weren’t Artifacts, which meant they wouldn’t naturally recover over time. It was a small loss in the grand scheme of things, and nothing that couldn’t be replaced with a few quick raids.

Once I was sure my friends weren’t going to die, I took a minute to wade through the sea of notifications that had rolled in like the high tide. There were a lot of ’em, which came as a shock to no one.

[Level Up! x 2]

Research Achievement Unlocked…

Research Achievement Unlocked…

Research Achievement Unlocked…

I’d earned a broad swath of new achievements for a wide range of insane and borderline suicidal behavior.

Friendly Fire for redirecting one of Frank’s magical barrels directly into Drumbo Chumbo. Hit-and-Run for using a vehicle to murder an Arcade Boss. A third, called Barrel of Monkeys, for slaughtering more than fifty reanimated lab monkeys at once. I even earned one called Flame On! for setting myself on fire with my own Relic. I wasn’t sure if I was the most or least proud of that particular research achievement, though it did come with a Silver Firebrand Loot Token, which was a nice touch.

The fifth and final achievement was for clearing the Jungle Gym Jamboree Bounty. It came with enough loot and prizes to make all of the horrible, extremely traumatizing events of the past hour almost worth it.

It also came with a new title, though I wasn’t in love with the name...

Monkey Fucker

Slap my ass and call me a monkey’s uncle!

You did it, you crazy son of a bitch. You killed Funtime Frank and cleansed the Jungle Gym Jamboree of the encroaching Blight. Huzzah! And you didn’t just kill him, you really fucked his shit up good. Using a Ford Pinto to explode his skull? Absolutely insane and a stroke of genius. But also, the work of a true master murderer. This kind of raw chutzpah deserves a round of applause and enough loot to fill a bathtub.

Reward: 3,500 Experience, 10 x Copper Delver Loot Tokens, 3 x Silver Delver Loot Tokens, 1 x Silver Gambler Loot Token, 1 x Sapphire Binder Loot Token, 1 x Golden Kiosk Franchise Opportunity.

Title: Monkey Fucker – Deal 15% additional damage to opponents more than ten levels higher than you.

Interestingly, another prompt appeared beneath the new achievement.

Synergistic Resonance Detected!

You have two active titles with extreme synergy. Would you like to Forge Out of Your League and Monkey Fucker into a new Title?*

Yes/No?

I hadn’t realized that titles even could be combined like Relics.

Croc had never mentioned the possibility—although it was likely that Croc didn’t know either. The one steadfast truth I’d learned about the Backrooms was that no one knew everything. Hell, no one knew most things. And even the stuff they thought they knew was probably wrong.

There was an asterisk next to the prompt, letting me know I could run an analysis of the new title using the Researcher’s Codex. Because I wasn’t an idiot, I hit yes and read over a rather dry but thorough report of the derivative title.

The two titles basically did the same thing already, so combining them made sense for a variety of reasons. First, the effects wouldn’t stack separately, which meant I’d be wasting a title slot. Second, the two titles were far better together than they were apart. And last, but certainly not least, I wouldn’t get stuck with a title called Monkey Fucker. That alone was enough of a selling point to persuade me to hit yes.

I accepted and gleefully read over my new title.

New Title Forged: Punch-Out!! Champion – When facing an enemy 5+ levels higher than you, all damage you deal is magnified by 3n%, where n is equal to the level difference between you and your opponent.

I cackled like a maniac, earning curious and concerned glances from the others. I didn’t care what they thought. Even with a bit of quick and dirty mental math, that meant I’d deal 15% additional damage to anyone five levels higher than me, and 30% more damage to someone ten levels higher. The Flayed Monarch was at least level 100, so did that mean I’d be able to score 300% damage against him? Probably. Though even that might not be enough to put a dent in the monster’s Health Pool.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only title that had changed.

Listed just below Punch Out!! Champion was my Fish in a Barrel title. It had also evolved without my consent, just like Jakob had said it would. Perfect.

Title: Barracuda in a Barrel (E) – You exude an aura of pure carnage. Dwellers more than ten levels below you will actively avoid you and slaying any Dweller below Level 10 grants no Experience.

This is an (E)volving title. This title cannot be unequipped. Is the little wah-baby sad because they can’t murder Dwellers too weak to fight back? Well cry me a river, you murder hobo, because I don’t give a shit.

It took us another hour after that to mop up the scene and loot the corpses.

Although the reanimated monkeys didn’t have any Relics of their own, each had at least one Common-grade Shard a piece. We walked away with ninety-seven Shards in total. Even split three ways, it was a fantastic haul for half an hour’s worth of work.

Then there were the Relics.

Each of Funtime Frank’s badly taxidermied bandmates had at least two—Beatrix the bass-playing nightmare-bear had three—while Franken-Kong himself had four. That gave us thirteen in all. Split four ways, that was three apiece, though Croc didn’t want a share. As a Dweller, the mimic didn’t use Relics in the same way we did. All the dog wanted was “the leftovers”—a phrase and notion I had no desire, whatsoever, to investigate further.

After a little haggling, Jakob and Temp ended up with four Relics each, while I got five since I’d been the one to land the killing blow against Frank. The fact that the Pinto was trashed beyond repair also factored in. Artifacts like that didn’t come along all that often, and scoring an extra Relic seemed like a fair exchange.

Deciding which Relics to pick was a tough call because they were all amazing, each in its own unique way. Melodic Wall conjured a Mana Frequency Shield, capable of dispelling spells on contact, while Thick Fat boosted Toughness and soaked up physical damage like a sponge. Adaptive Immunity was a particularly interesting Relic that offered a unique form of resistance immunity. When activated, the caster developed 50% Resistance to the last type of damage they received for ten minutes.

Like I said, they were impressive skills—some magical in nature, others physical—but most I passed over for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, Melodic Wall was a shittier version of Sterilization Field, and I already had a powerful Toughness-boosting Relic in the form of Baldree’s Scale Mail Cuirass. Things like Adaptive Immunity or Thick Fat made far more sense for a close-combat tank like Jakob. There were a couple of ranged offensive spells as well, Harmonic Blade and Synthwave Shock, but neither was quite as good as Pressure Washer.

Ultimately, I picked a more eclectic assortment of Relics. Not quite as traditionally straightforward, but useful in different ways.

The first was a bizarre Rare-grade Relic called Unhinged Taxidermist. It was the same ability Frank had used to summon barrels overflowing with reanimated lab monkeys. Monkeys who had almost torn me limb from limb, I might add. It was a summoner Relic that worked in a similar fashion to my Cannon Fodder Minion ability, though with a few slight differences. As with Cannon Fodder Minion, I couldn’t just conjure prefab minions from thin air.

Instead, I needed to build them.

The difference was, I couldn’t use random garbage…

I needed corpses. Corpses and machines.

In true Doctor Frankenstein fashion, I could play with the powers of creation to smash together machine and flesh, forging unholy abominations not fit for the eyes of mankind. Pretty badass, honestly.

Unhinged Taxidermist

Rare Relic – Level 1

Cost: 50 Mana

Cast time: 10 Minutes

Material Components: 1 x Corpse, 1 x Relic (Common Grade or Better), Mechaniks

Ever wanted to play God with a wrench and some spare monster parts? Well, now you can! Who needs friends when you can stitch together the leftover chunks of yesterday's enemies with whatever scrap metal you have lying around? Not you, which is good, because people will actively avoid you when they see your grotesque entourage of Taxidermied Horrors.

You may create up to 2 Minions for every Relic Level.

Once forged, your minions can be summoned or banished to an extra-dimensional subspace container at will. If destroyed, vanquished minions will be instantly returned to their subspace container, and once repaired, they can be redeployed. Each Horror’s stats and capabilities will vary wildly based on the quality of components used.

This Relic enables Mana usage and comes with a complimentary tetanus shot.

Reading over the description, I realized it was distinctly possible that Frank’s bandmates had been human, once upon a time. Nowhere in the Relic description did it say the corpses had to be from Dwellers…

It was impossible not to picture Synthia Lynx with her feline face, mangy electric blue fur, and the crude stitches crisscrossing her body. I couldn’t get the thought of Drumbo Chumbo out of my head. Their eyes, strangely human and frozen in terror, would haunt my nightmares for years to come—assuming I made it that long, which was no sure thing. Not here.

It was a fucked-up skill, without a doubt, but it was also powerful. And I needed power.

So, as gross as it was, I took Unhinged Taxidermist for myself and then harvested what remained of the band to my Subspace Storage System. The maximum weight allowance was only two thousand pounds, which meant I needed to be picky. I would’ve loved to scoop up what was left of Frank in a bucket and haul him back with me, but the big ol’ son of a bitch was four or five thousand pounds easy.

With a little help from Croc and Temperance, I collected the serviceable bits and pieces from the rest of the slaughtered bandmates. Arms and legs. Animatronic innards. Vex Vixen’s head was entirely gone, but the rest of her was mostly intact and Synthia Lynx was almost entirely in one piece. I also reclaimed whatever I could from the Pinto. It would never function as a motor vehicle again, but maybe with a little tinkering and elbow grease it would get a second life as a minion.

When I was done salvaging what I could, Croc finished what was left.

The next Relic, another Rare, also came from Frank and seemed to be part of a paired set with Unhinged Taxidermist. As twisted as the first Relic had been, the second was arguably worse.

Much worse.

Form FleshTron, Go! allowed the caster to temporarily “absorb” all summoned Taxidermied Horrors, transforming them into a mech of meat and metal with the caster piloting the unholy abomination from the inside. Like Voltron but worse. That had to be the ability Frank had used during the finale of the battle. The one that let him suck up the scattered Reanimated Lab Monkeys like a Shop Vac and transform into a kaiju of fur and fangs.

The cost of using the Relic was extremely high. Prohibitively so.

It had a thirty-second cast time, a 120 Mana cost, and a forty-eight-hour cooldown period. Worst of all, once the spell guttered and died, I wouldn’t be able to summon any minions at all for a full day. Obviously, it wasn’t the kind of thing that I’d want to have equipped regularly, but it would make one helluva Ace in the hole if things ever went truly sideways. In the Backrooms that wasn’t a question of if, it was a question of when.

I tucked that one away for later.

Fault Spike was an Uncommon I’d looted off Drumbo Chumbo.

Fault Spike

Uncommon Relic – Level 1

Range: Line of Sight

Cost: 5 - 50 Mana

Cast Time: 2 Seconds

Duration: Permanent Terrain Alteration

Taking the phrase “get fucked” to a whole new level, Fault Spike summons between 1 and 10 razor-sharp earthen shafts capable of spit-roasting your enemies like a luau pig. Because luau pig is definitely what you were thinking when I said spit roast. Fault spikes are considered permanent terrain alterations and will stay put until the Backrooms decides to undo your handiwork, so don’t place them anywhere you don’t want them long term.

Each spike deals 25 points of piercing damage on contact and the target is afflicted with 1 stack of Uncontrollable Hemorrhaging, dealing 2 points of Bleed Damage for each second they are impaled. Another stack of Uncontrollable Hemorrhaging is applied every five seconds. If five stacks of Uncontrollable Hemorrhaging accumulate, the target suffers Earthbarb and any attempts to remove the spear deals an additional 25 points of Tearing Damage. This Relic enables Mana usage.

I’d personally been on the receiving end of that particular technique, and Frank had used it to turn Temperance into a bona fide pincushion. It was a nasty AoE spell, which also had some solid crowd control potential—one area where I was sorely lacking.

It also happened to resonate with my Pressure Washer skill.

In theory, the two items could be forged, though when I used Codex Analytics, I was less than impressed with the overall result. The two skills only had a twenty percent compatibility rating, which meant there was no telling what I’d end up with. Hard pass.

Frequency Modulator, on the other hand, I snagged specifically because it resonated with two of my other active Relics. On its own, Frequency Modulator let the caster “shift vibrational frequency” for five seconds, making them semi-intangible and 95% resistant to all forms of physical damage. It was a damn good ability all on its own. When combined with Mall Ninja’s Strike and Moving Walkway, however, the net result was mind-blowing.

When forged, the three Relics created my second Fable-grade Relic, Neural Slip Stream. At its core, Mall Ninja’s Strike was a camouflage spell with an added sneak-attack damage buff, while Moving Walkway was the Backrooms’ version of a basic haste spell. Neural Slip Stream took the best parts of all three abilities and merged them into a single, powerful effect.

When triggered, it transformed me into a being of pure thought. At level one, it made me both invisible and intangible for up to five seconds. No one would be able to see me, and while intangible, I was 90% resistant to all forms of damage, both melee and magical—though telepathic and psychic damage increased by fifty percent.

On top of that, I’d be able to move like the wind and phase through physical objects and terrain hazards. Basically, the damn thing turned me into an avenging specter capable of tearing across the battlefield and dodging even the deadliest attacks. With a thought, I’d be able to effortlessly close the gap with my enemies or gain some breathing room, depending on the circumstance. It cost 25 Mana to cast and had a thirty-second cooldown, but that was nothing.

The single biggest drawback was that I couldn’t deal any damage while in Spectral Thought form.

Still, for five seconds, I’d be a ghost. And I’d be the next best thing to invincible.

As good as the other Relics were, the last was the one I was most excited for, even though it was only an Uncommon.

I’d finally earned my first Trap Relic, something I’d been actively hunting for ever since my battle for the MediocreMart. As I read over the Relic description, I cackled with feral glee.

Runic Resonance Trap

Uncommon Relic – Level 1

Range: On Contact

Cost: 15 Mana

Cast Time: 20 Seconds

Duration: Until Activated

Material Component: 1 x Runic Engraver’s Awl (Artifact), 1 x Compatible Surface

If you’ve been in the Backrooms for longer than two minutes, you’ve likely stumbled across, or been irreparably maimed by, one of these bad boys. This is the most versatile of the three Basic-Bitch Backroom traps: runes, tripwires, and pitfalls. Nothing fancy, but it’ll get the job done. Some moron blunders along and BAM! It’s raining men!

Well, pieces of men, anyway. Or women. Or monsters. Or you! This thing doesn’t discriminate.

Use a Trapsmith’s awl to inscribe an invisible conductor rune onto any compatible material surface and imbue said rune with a Mana-based effect. You must cast the spell to store it; all Mana spell costs remain the same, but the stored spell effect is reduced by 50%. That’s called Mana Leakage for you technical sorts. How much Mana any given Rune can contain depends upon the Relic Level.

This Relic enables Mana usage.

Learning how to effectively use the new Relic would take some time, patience, and practice, but once I did, nothing would be safe.

Not a Single. Damned. Thing.

Flayed Monarch included.