Discount Dan

The plan was simple, elegant, and as insane as it was ballsy.

Head over to Funtime Frank’s Jungle Gym Jamboree and grind the lesser Blight-infected Dwellers who lurked within, until eventually we were strong enough to take on Frank and his animatronic jamboree posse. I had my reservations. Croc and I had visited one of the Loot Arcades on the third floor, and though I wouldn’t want to fuck around with the Mobile Murder Muncher, it didn’t seem like a great place to grind out loot or levels.

The Arcade we’d visited was just too small.

Not much bigger than the arcade they had at the Kenwood Towne Mall in Cincinnati.

Temperance and Jakob assured me that wouldn’t be a problem.

It seemed the Loot Arcades of the seventh floor were legendary for their size, and apparently Funtime Frank’s Jungle Gym Jamboree was a legend even among other legends. Hell, it was the sole reason the Howlers had settled on this trainwreck of a floor in the first place.

Frank and his animatronic band had always been bad news, but they mostly stayed in the Big Top, which was well away from the gaming floor and the prize booth. The other horrors that called the Jungle Gym Jamboree home, however, were also stronger and far more aggressive than they’d ever been before. That’s what the Blight did. It deformed the body with raw Mana and twisted the mind with so much pain that only rage remained.

Which, according to Temperance and Jakob, made it a great place to grind. Tons of overpowered bloodthirsty Dwellers who would attack on sight? Check. Great access to loot? Double check. Plus no one else in a ten-mile radius would be stupid or crazy enough to step foot in there, so we wouldn’t have to worry about the Aspirants—not inside the Arcade proper, anyway.

There were a few things to take care of first, however.

I’d leveled up after our throw down with Mohawk and the others, and Jakob had given me my cut of the Relics from the Aspirants we’d killed. They were distributed based on a “keep what you kill” loot policy, so Temperance walked away with the majority of the trophies—since she’d officially taken out both Mohawk and Face Tattoos—but I scored a few good items. The spell slinger I’d killed had a few decent Relics, and even though most were a mixture of Common and Uncommon, she’d had a pair of Rare-grade Relics as well.

Four of the ten had been utility-based.

Homing Pigeon was the Relic version of the Twinning String, and allowed the user to tag a single location, then find their way back, while Warning Bells was a vastly shittier version of my Spelunker’s Sixth Sense. Similarly, Common Bestiary was a weak-sauce version of The Researcher’s Codex—except it only worked on Dwellers and only if they were under level 15. And, like Wikipedia, sometimes the info was just flat-out wrong, since all the entries came from Delver “observations.”

Her fourth Utility, Bed Rest, was a decent, if underwhelming, passive that let the user regain Health and Mana at an accelerated rate while sleeping.

She had one physical attack Relic, with a similar effect to my Force Multiplier but for bladed weapons, and another that minorly increased Constitution. The last four were all arcane focused, which was fine by me. She had one low-level Common ranged attack spell, Sanguine Blast, which didn’t even come close to the raw damage output of Drain-O Bolt or Pressure Washer. That one got put up for sale as soon as I could pass it off to Ponypuff.

The other three were keepers.

Insurance Pact was an interesting Uncommon-grade, Stamina-powered ability that allowed the user to make an “insurance pact” with an ally, allowing both pact members to share up to twenty percent of their max Health Pool with the other for ten minutes. I couldn’t see myself using that personally, but it would be great for someone who focused more on a support role. Like Jakob, who probably had an insane Health Pool, on account of his build and race.

I’d see if the Cendral wanted the item before putting it up for sale.

The next was a skill called Cashback Rewards, which was much more useful than the name implied. It was Rare-grade and allowed the user to form a link with a single enemy in line of sight. While linked, twenty-five percent of damage dealt to the enemy from all sources healed you instead. Although the spell cost was high, it had a good duration and only a ten-minute internal cooldown timer. Overall, it was a stellar skill that would be great for a squishy damage dealer like myself.

But that wasn’t the most interesting thing.

It synergized with the third Relic, an Uncommon-grade called Crimson Rain.

Crimson Rain itself was an AoE spell that rained blood and dealt 10 points of damage per minute for two minutes to anyone inside the spell’s effect radius. Good, but far from spectacular. Although Crimson Rain and Cashback Reward synergized, their compatibility was surprisingly low, clocking in at just forty-eight percent. But together, they also resonated with my Drain-O Bolt. When combined, the three Rare-grade Relics had a ninety-five percent compatibility rating.

I ran the full Codex Compatibility Analysis and carefully read through the report on the Relic iteration, just to triple-check before I did anything hasty.

StainSlayer Maelstrom: Industrial-Grade Cleansing Power

Fabled Relic (Fully Tempered) – Level 5

Range: Line of sight

Area of Effect: 30' Radius

Cost: 50 Mana

Cast time: 10 Seconds

Effect Duration: 1 Minute

Cooldown: 2 Minutes

Summon a torrential downpour of prescription-strength cleaning solution that falls with the subtlety of a sledgehammer in a glass factory. Instead of targeting a single mess, StainSlayer Maelstrom “sanitizes” all organic matter in a thirty-foot radius in a nightmarish baptism of ’roided-out, industrial-grade MegaBleach! Fuck yeah!

This stuff might even be powerful enough to cleanse your soul of the innumerable war crimes you’ve likely committed!

Like purifying flame, StainSlayer is an indiscriminate cleanser. Anyone caught in the deluge without proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) suffers 125 points of Corrosive Burst Damage on contact. While in the “Splash Zone,” they receive an additional 2 Points of Chemical Burn Damage per second and lose 1 point of Mana and 1 point of Stamina per second. Yeah, this’ll fuck shit up.

But wait, there’s more!

At any point during the duration of the spell effect, the caster may activate the secondary ability, pH Balance, to convert 25% of All Damage dealt by StainSlayer Maelstrom into sweet, sweet Health Regeneration for you, proving once and for all that cleanliness really is good for the soul. Side effects may include moral ambiguity, terminal regret, or a friendly visit from the EPA. This Relic enables Mana usage.

I whistled through my teeth. Hol-ee shit.

Although the two-minute cooldown time was less than ideal—since I wouldn’t be able to spam the ability—and the Mana cost was higher than I’d like, it was still a phenomenal spell. It dealt some brutal damage and had powerful DPS to boot, not to mention the Mana and Stamina drain effect. And the ability to convert 25% of all damage dealt to Health? That was a literal lifesaver for someone as squishy as me. Plus, I wouldn’t even lose any Relic levels, since Crimson Rain was at level 7 and Cashback Rewards was at level 4.

There were still a few drawbacks, though.

Just like with the original Bleach Bolt, this was only effective against organic material, so there was a good chance it would be worthless against Funtime Frank and his animatronic jamboree posse. Still, ninety-five percent of the Dwellers I’d stumbled across so far were organic, so Frank was a short-term problem. The other major drawback was that the spell dealt damage indiscriminately. Anyone stuck in the downpour was going to get boned.

Unless…

Unless they had the right Personal Protective Equipment.

With all the resources I had sitting around the store, there might be a way to deal with that particular problem. As a general contractor, my duct tape skills were without peer, and I also had access to plastic drop cloths, rain ponchos, and sunglasses.

If I couldn’t figure out a solution, no one could.

The only other drawback—though, I wasn’t entirely sure it was a drawback—was that doing this would Fully Temper the Relic. That meant no more forging. No more changes. No more upgrades. The skill would likely evolve and improve somewhat as I leveled it up, but the basic effects and functionality would remain the same from here on out. If I did this, I’d end up with my first Fabled-grade Relic—discounting the abilities inside the Emblem—but some small part of me wondered if I shouldn’t hold out for just a little longer.

Fabled was good, but it wasn’t Mythic.

But that was greed whispering into my ear, I knew.

There were Delvers who would give their left nut for a Fabled Relic, and here I was, seriously considering whether to hold out or not, because there might be something minutely better somewhere down the road.

Maybe.

If I was lucky and didn’t die first.

I had a good thing here, and if I didn’t act now, I knew I’d regret it sooner rather than later. As my grandad said, better to have one in the hand than two in the bush, especially since there was no guarantee that I’d ever even find a bush.

I accepted, forging the new Relic.

There was a potent rush of power when I added it to my Core. The sensation wasn’t quite as intense as when I’d equipped the Compass of the Catacomber, but it was in the same ballpark. StainSlayer Maelstrom was an object of real power. One that was on par with the abilities of the Flayed Monarch, and it was all thanks to the Compass. Without the Researcher’s Codex, I never would’ve smashed those three Relics together. The risk was simply too great.

But now I had another power, worthy of a dark god of the Backrooms.

With my shiny new Relic in place, I paid a quick visit to the Monolith and distributed the handful of Enhancement Points I’d earned from my last level up. Since we were going into a Blighted hot zone, I decided to drop two points into Preservation, bringing it up to seven. Maybe that was overkill, but when it came to debilitating, life-ending super-diseases, I was in the better-safe-than-sorry camp. I dropped one point into Grit, bringing that up to thirteen, then split the two remaining points between Resonance and Perception.

Dan Woodridge

Specimen Biotag ID #03A-01-B00R7T569C

Variant Assimilation Level: 17

Race: Human, Archetypal

Current Experience: 19,285

Next Level: 23,500

Personal Enhancement Points: 0

__ __ __

Health: 76

Health-Regen/Hour: 3.55

__ __ __

Stamina Reserve: 41

Stamina-Regen/Minute: 3.1

__ __ __

Mana Pool: 105

Mana-Regen/Minute: 8.21

Individual Adaptative Stats

Grit: 13

Athleticism: 12

Toughness: 17 (9 + 8 Enhanced)

Perception: 21

Resonance: 40 (44 – 4 Debuff)

Preservation: 7

Spatial Core - Active

(C) Moving Walkway – Level 1

(C) Force Multiplier – Level 1

(C) Doodle Buddy – Level 1

(C) The Pharmacist’s Scales – Level 5

(U) Mall Ninja’s Strike – Level 3

(U) Baldree’s Scale Mail Cuirass – Level 7

(R) Pressure Washer – Level 1

(R) Sterilization Field – Level 5

(F) StainSlayer Maelstrom – Level 5 (Fully Tempered)

(ME) Compass of the Catacomber (Fully Tempered)

Current Titles – Passive

Out of Your League, Deathwish, Marked for Death, Weapon of Opportunity, Legend in the Making, Overkill Overlord, Fish in a Barrel (E), Human Cannonball, Cold-Blooded Murderer (E)

My gaze lingered on my new title, carelessly tacked on to the bottom of my Specimen Bio-Report like a festering wound.

Cold-Blooded Murderer.

Natasha Anno, that was her name.

I knew nothing else about her, but my mind clung to that detail. I felt the crunch of bone beneath my falling hammer. The coppery scent of blood filled my nostrils. Rage and anger, guilt and regret all surged through me in a confusing snowstorm of emotion. She would’ve killed me. I knew that just as surely as I knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west.

Somehow, that fact was cold comfort.

Maybe it was that she’d been a woman. Call me a chauvinist, but my dad had taught me that you never laid your hand on a woman. It just wasn’t something real men did. I knew that was bullshit, and Iraq had taught me that lesson in the most painful way possible. We’d been rolling through Ramadi when a woman in a midnight-black burka charged our convoy and triggered a suicide vest, secured beneath the flowing garment.

There’d been nothing anyone could do, and Sergeant Martin had ended up dead as a result, pieces of him scattered across the dusty road and hanging from the power lines overhead.

Women could be just as dangerous as men, especially when backed into a corner with nothing to lose. But even though I knew that on an intellectual level, guilt still hung around my neck like heavy iron chains. You don’t lay a hand on a woman, my old man’s voice insisted in the back of head. Not ever. I idly wondered about him for a moment. Whether he was doing okay. How he and Mom would be coping with my disappearance.

Knowing him, the crotchety old bastard was probably making a nuisance of himself with Cincinnati PD. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he was down at department headquarters every single day, badgering the detectives or harassing the desk sergeant about my case. He was a retiree with nothing better to do, and he actively enjoyed being a pain in the ass.

I pushed thoughts of my dad away, along with the lingering guilt over Natasha Anno. I had better shit to do than wallow in self-pity over something I couldn’t change.

Focusing on the task at hand, I toggled over to my storage space and reviewed the other Relics I had stashed away. These were the ones that weren’t quite good enough for the Varsity Team but were still solidly in the JV Squad. Although none of them were currently equipped to my Spatial Core, I’d be able to swap them out in under a minute if the need arose. The Monolith let me quickly search and sort through my inventory until only the Relics showed up on the display.

1 x (C) Basic Camo Kit – Level 1

1 x (C) Tinfoil Hat of Mind Shielding – Level 1

1 x (C) Gremlin Groin Guardian – Level 1

1 x (U) Erlenmeyer’s Molotov Cocktail – Level 1

1 x (U) Burn, Baby, Burn – Level 1

1 x (R) Bad Trip – Level 1

Of the six, only Bad Trip and Molotov Cocktail were likely to see any use, but it was still good to remind myself what I had on hand. It was a bit like the tools in my belt—just because I used some much more frequently didn’t mean the others were worthless. A hammer was great, until you needed a Philips-head screwdriver or a socket wrench. In the right situation, any one of those Relics could be a value add.

Even the disgusting Gremlin nut bucket.