Discount Dan

Laundry services.

It wasn’t the strangest request I’d ever heard.

That achievement belonged to Croc, who’d once asked for Froyo right after narrowly escaping a nightmarish Pac-Man creature the size of a Volkswagen. It was a strong contender for second place, though. After hearing Ajax rant for the better part of a half hour, however, his request started to make more sense. Turned out, getting fur suits clean even under ideal circumstances was a tricky business.

Getting them clean inside the Backrooms? Yeah, that was almost impossible.

The suits couldn’t be steam cleaned and though the Hold had a small suite of washing machines, they were always backed up. Plus, many of the most delicate accessories, like the head and paws, needed to be gently hand washed. Hand washing sweat out of a fur suit was one thing. But blood? Vomit? Oil? Shit? A thousand other unspeakable fluids and substances? Nope. No way. Living in the Backrooms was akin to receiving a doctorate in disgusting, and the Howlers were more acutely aware of that than anyone.

Most of the suits were also powerful Artifacts, which meant they were extremely durable and would self-repair overtime. But they didn’t self-clean, and blood was real hard to scrub out.

On this issue, at least, the Howlers and I had common ground.

My shirt was a tie-died swirl of pink blood and blue crab-viscera, my ratty bathrobe smelled like the inside of a hot porta shitter, and my shorts were so matted with sweat and grim they could stand up on their own.

I could only imagine how much worse it was for the Howlers, who were all trapped inside what amounted to fur-covered hazmat suits. And they couldn’t ditch their outfits any easier than I could ditch mine, no matter how much they might want to. Like my stupid fucking bathrobe—which I hated­­­—the suits were simply too powerful. Trading them would be like Tony Stark sticking his Ironman armor in the closet.

Which is why, with the cloying stench of my own body odor assaulting my nose, I listened to Ajax’s rant with keen interest.

According to the Fox, there existed a very special place. A laundry room, nestled deep in the bowels of the fifth floor, which contained a pair of locationally-bound Artifact Washers. Washers capable of cleaning anything. Many of the Howlers made a pilgrimage there once every couple of years or so, as though visiting some sacred shrine. But it was a perilous journey and many who set out in search of cleaner pastures never made it back.

Rumor had already spread far and wide about my unique ability to acquire bits and pieces of the Backrooms, so naturally, Ajax wanted me to find the sacred laundry room of the fifth floor and tack it on to Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains. Not only would doing so make me extremely popular with the Howlers, but it would also buy me enough goodwill to win Ajax’s vote. Two birds, one stone.

It was a big ask, though, not only because I’d have to find the location and kill whatever lived there to lay a claim, but because I only had so much square footage to work with. Adding the laundromat meant I wouldn’t be able to add something else down the road. Still, as the rancid stink of my own clothes tickled my nostrils, I found myself happily agreeing. Truthfully, I’d been meaning to add some sort of laundry service to the store anyway, and if it would lock in a lucrative partnership with the Howlers at the same time, it would be more than worth it.

I’d hardly spent any amount of time down on the fifth floor, and though I doubted it was any more dangerous than the seventh floor—home to both Howlers Hold and the Jungle Gym Jamboree—I didn’t want to take anything for granted. Back in Iraq, our Convoy Commander, Captain Donahue, had one simple mantra that he’d repeat ad nauseam: Complacency kills. Only the paranoid survive. That advice was right on the money and had saved my ass more than once.

Hell, despite Croc’s very vocal warnings, I’d gotten complacent about taking on the Kiosk Boss and it had nearly cost me my life. It was the third floor for Pete’s sake. It had never occurred to me that there might be something as powerful as Frank dwelling in plain sight. I’d been dead wrong.

In theory, the fifth floor would be far more dangerous than the third, and there was no telling what I might end up facing in a scared laundry mat with powerful Artifacts. I couldn’t afford to take stupid chances or go in unprepared—especially since I’d be venturing into the floor shorthanded. I’d have Jakob and Croc with me, as well as my disgusting new minions, but Temperance was staying behind at the Hold. Pulling guard duty to ensure Jackson and his zealots left Ajax in peace.

So, before we delved into the twisting hallways of the fifth floor, I had some business to take care of.

I had to restock my cache of potions and elixirs, level up a few of my Relics, and hit up a Progenitor Monolith to take care of my new titles. I’d also need to spend some time familiarizing myself with one of the Relics I’d received from Funtime Frank and the gang, Runic Resonance Trap.

Despite only being an Uncommon-grade Relic, it was the first and only Trap Relic I’d come across since venturing into the Backrooms. Given how common traps were, I was sure there were others floating around, but so far, they’d been tricky to find. I suspected that was because the majority of the floor traps weren’t set by Dwellers or other Delvers, but by the Backrooms themselves. They were just another part of the floor design, like carpet, or wallpaper, or drinking fountains.

I’d previously picked up a Trapsmith’s Pry Bar at Prize Booth on level seven, so I had everything I needed to get started. The real problem was that I hadn’t had enough time to properly master the fundamentals of the Relic. Most Relics were relatively simple to use and rather intuitive in design. All an intrepid Delver had to do was pop one into their Spatial Core, and boom, they had instant magic at their fingertips.

In most instances, the Relic’s themselves imprinted a certain level of knowledge directly into the user’s head. Like Neo, plugging into that badass Kung-Fu machine in the Matrix.

I called those Set-‘Em-And-Forget-‘Em Relics.

There were exceptions to that rule, however.

Some Relics had a rather steep learning curve and required a fair degree of practice or experimentation to use effectively. Mental Micromanagement was a good example, and so was my other new Relic, Unhinged Taxidermy. That one was as much art as it was science. I couldn’t just summon a minion all willy nilly, I needed to cobble them together from the left over remains of enemies, but I also needed to counter-balance the organic material with an appropriate amount of mechanical material.

It had taken me days to figure out how to use the crafting overlay interface, and even longer to get a working version of my first minion, Synthia 2.0. Getting a handle of the process had consumed so much of my time, I hadn’t gotten around to Runic Resonance Trap. I aimed to remedy that oversight before thoroughly exploring the fifth floor, known by most as Hotel Hell. Every time I ventured out into the wild expanse of the Backrooms, it was a calculated risk.

I wanted to make sure as shit that I was doing everything in my power to increase my chances of survival, and that meant getting a handle on my newest ability.

I let Jakob know I would be indisposed for the better part of a day to prepare for the Delve, then stopped by the checkout counter to grab a few extra Zima Healing Elixirs. Playing with extremely volatile magical traps was a dangerous proposition, all the more so because I had no idea what in the hell I was doing.

I really needed to add a dedicated “practice” space to the store, but beggars can’t be chooser, as they say, and I didn’t have anything like that just yet. So instead, Croc and I cordoned off the Home Décor aisle with some bright yellow caution tape someone had traded in and then—because I really didn’t want any accidental casualties—I had Baby Hands post up at the end of the aisle, to shoo away prospective rubberneckers.

I pulled out the Runic Resonance Trap Relic, which looked like a rusted beartrap with nasty metal teeth. The description popped up as I examined the item more closely.

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.

The Relic description only gave me broad brushstrokes of how the ability worked, but when I swapped out Baldree's Scale Mail Cuirass—a Rare-grade Relic, which boosted Toughness—and added Runic Resonance Trap to my Spatial Core, a wave of insight flooded my mind, unfurling in the back of my skull like some strange flower. A rather simple symbol tattooed itself directly onto my brain.

A basic trap rune. I also had a rough idea of how the sigil functioned.

The rune itself acted as a rudimentary mana battery capable of holding a magical charge. But it wasn’t just the energy it held; it was the shape of that energy. I hadn’t realized it until now, but in that moment, it occurred to me that there was no essential difference between the mana that created my Sterilization Field and the mana that summoned a storm of corrosive super bleach, capable of melting organic matter into a pile of burbling goo.

It was all the same essence.

The only difference was the “shape” the essence took and that was the purpose of the Relics. They molded mana in a specific pattern, forcing it to move in certain ways and take certain forms, like molten metal flowing into a casting die. Despite what they looked like on the outside, on the inside, each Relic was really just a complex construction of different runes and sigils that told the energy channeled through it what to do. How to behave.

It was supernatural programming code.

That explained why Relics that superficially looked different—say a Camo Kit and an Invisible Ink Pen—had the same end result: Basic Camouflage. Because they had the same internal “programing” structure.

That’s also why I needed to cast the spell to set the trap in the first place. The Trap Rune wasn’t capable of shaping mana—it just held the current configuration, storing it for later use. I wasn’t sure what to do with any of that information, but somehow, I knew the revelation was vitally important.

It was also something for future me to worry about.

Once the imminent threat of death and war weren’t hanging over me like a headman’s axe, I could afford to be a magical armchair philosopher. For now, though, the important thing was that I could use these runes to kill shit, and there were a whole lot of things in the Backrooms that needed killing.

At face value, the inscription process was quite simple.

Step one, use the Engraver’s Awl to carve the conductor rune into a “compatible surface.”

Step two, cast a “compatible spell” and the rune would soak the magic up like a dry sponge, storing it for later use.

Step three, profit.

In theory, easy.

In reality? Well, that was quite a bit more complicated.

What exactly constituted a compatible surface or spell? Could I store effects fueled by Stamina? How temperamental were the runes and under what conditions would they activate? Did the activation conditions change based on the type of spell stored? If I carved the rune incorrectly, would the whole thing blow up in my face?

I had a dozen or more questions and no answers, which is exactly why I needed to experiment.

The first thing I quickly discovered was that the runes were, in fact, wildly unstable and finicky. In many ways, they reminded me of my ex-girlfriend Shelia, who’d once set fire to my underwear drawer and slashed my truck tires for reasons I still didn’t fully understand. And, just like my ex, the conductor runes were just as liable to blow up in my face as they were to blast an enemy.

There didn’t seem to be a safe way to practice until I figured out that offensive spells weren’t the only ones that could successfully be stored. Relic effects fueled by Stamina didn’t work at all, but everything else was fair game, including things like Pharmacist’s Scales, Bad Trip, or even Mental Micromanagement. It took a little trial and error, but eventually I worked out the kinks.

First off, the size of the “mana battery”—which is how I’d come to think of the runes—was directly proportional to the Relic Level. The rune could hold approximately 10 Mana worth of energy for every level. So, at level one, the rune could only contain spell effects that cost ten Mana or less to cast. If I tried to pump in more mana than that, boom. The rune became unstable, and the spell would detonate on the spot, blowing up in my face and doing a decent chunk of damage in the process.

I damn near lost a finger learning that particular lesson.

I’d made quite the scene. Hunched over, clutching the ruined stump of my thumb while blood spurted across the floor every time my heart thumped. The whole aisle soon looked like a scene out of one of those SAW movies. Thankfully, my thumb had stayed attached by a thin thread of skin, and a Greater Healing Zima fixed me up without issue. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure I’d permanently traumatized my other new hire, Stephanie, who’d come running when she heard me caterwauling like a wounded baboon.

She’d puked all over the blood covered aisle, before darting off to get help. Some of the barf splashed onto my bathrobe, reminding me once again why getting a magical laundry mat was so worthwhile.

Thankfully, Baby Hands was made of sterner stuff and had a much stronger stomach. Well, he didn’t have any stomach, technically. With the golem’s help, we had the aisle back to normal in less than twenty minutes.

Still, not my finest moment.

After that, I decided upgrading the Relic was at the tippy top of my priority list.

The store had acquired forty-seven trash-tier Relics over the past several days. Things like the Beer Goggles, which distorted depth perception and made the user’s vision slightly blurry while offering no tangible benefit. Or a Relic that resembled a plastic bottle of medicated foot powder called, Powder of Persistent Itching. That one caused the user to experience an incessant itching sensation at random intervals and in random places.

One moment the itching might be between your toes, the next it felt like super crabs crawling all over your crotch. I genuinely couldn’t fathom why it existed.

Needless to say, the Relics were so utterly worthless that I couldn’t even forge them into something less shitty—not even with the Researcher’s Codex to assist me. The only thing they were fit for was sacrifice.

I burned through twenty of ’em, cannibalizing the power contained within. That brought my shiny new Trap Relic up to level five, allowing it to store up to fifty points of Mana. Enough to accommodate even my most heavy hitting spells like StainSlayer Maelstrom or Sterilization Field—not that I planned to practice with those spells. I had no desire to set off a chemical monsoon inside my store. But the upgrade meant I wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally overcharging the conductor rune and subsequently losing more body parts.

That wasn’t the only benefit either.

Level five was the first advancement threshold and whenever a Relic surpassed a threshold, it evolved in some fundamental way. Sometimes it became more powerful. Other times it would unlock an additional effect or secondary ability. The results were unpredictable and dependent on the Relic itself, but the changes were always an improvement in some way.

In this case, I unlocked a new secondary ability called, Runic EOD Handler. It allowed me to safely touch or handle any Runes I’d personally carved without setting them off. It also granted me a ten-percent increased chance to safely dismantle Runic Traps crafted by someone else.

With the Relic upgraded, the secondary ability unlocked, and a tsunami of fun and deadly ideas dancing through my head, Croc and I took another stab at things.