Discount Dan

We headed away from the courtyard with the acidic water feature and the presumably carnivorous plants and to another intersection dotted with abandoned kiosks, which sold everything from candy and cheap plastic knickknacks to pungent-smelling facial creams and electric foot massagers. When I suggested that we loot them, Croc just chuckled and shook his rubbery head.

“Classic rookie mistake,” it said. “Are there some top-tier prizes to be taken? Of course. But you’ll never survive long enough to get ’em.” It chortled in amusement. “Everyone knows the kiosks are all rigged. Touch any of the items or even show too much interest and you’ll accidentally summon one of the Sales Sirens. They’re the perfect blend of metal and flesh, forged into the unstoppable selling machine. And by selling, I mean murder.”

Croc bobbed its head toward a set of wooden storage doors beneath a kiosk.

“Every kiosk has a set of those. They connect to a series of tunnels and underground caverns that link all the kiosks together, which is controlled by a single entity known as the Franchisor. The Sales Sirens themselves appear human, and though they’re rather weak, physically, you won’t find one lower than a level five.” Croc paused and glanced over one shoulder at me. “They have some truly insidious psychic abilities. You wouldn’t stand a chance, especially with a Grit score under fifteen.”

“What’s a Grit score?” I asked, edging a little further away from one of the kiosks.

“Oh, don’t worry about that too much,” Croc replied. “You’ll learn all about the various VIRUS stats once you finish integrating. Grit’s sort of like willpower, I suppose. It measures your mental determination and your ability to resist psionic attacks and psychic influences. You need to have a high Grit to go up against the Sirens. A while back, I was working with a Delver from Germany—a fella named Fritz. Headstrong, overconfident, wouldn’t listen to me. He tried to take on a Siren working at one of the hand cream booths with only a seven in Grit. Long story short, the hand cream was sentient and ended up crawling into Fritz’s lungs and then laying thousands of eggs inside his torso. Very messy.”

“I gotta be honest,” I said, “I find it a little off-putting that so many of the people you try to help wind up dead under some very horrific circumstances.”

Croc had no answer for that.

We ended up skirting the majority of the kiosks entirely by taking a narrow hallway with slate gray floors and beige walls, which led to the restrooms. Not that there was actually a restroom. Just an abundance of signs for them.

While we walked along a winding, disorienting set of identical corridors, I picked Croc’s brain about the Relics. There were a thousand things I wanted to know about the Backrooms and how they functioned—What the hell were the Backrooms? How the hell had I gotten here? How the hell did I get out?—but right now the Relics were the most important item on the list. They were the tools that would enable me to survive long enough to get those other questions answered.

“There are five different Relic ranks,” Croc explained, talking to me like I was a plucky third grader. “Common, Uncommon, Rare, Fabled, and Mythic. The same ranking system also holds true for Artifacts. The rarity level is assigned based on how frequently that spell or ability is spawned by the God Box amongst the Dwellers. Common through Rare Relics occur naturally—though snagging a Rare Relic above floor twenty-five is quite unlikely. Unless you kill a powerful Overseer or clear a Blight-infected area.”

“What about Fabled and Mythic?” I asked, constantly scanning the barren halls for any sign of threat.

“Yeah, those are a bit different,” Croc replied. “If you’re very lucky and you don’t die, you might be able to find a Fabled Relic below floor one hundred. Though, and I can’t stress this enough, no one, ever, under any circumstances, should venture that deep. As for Mythic Relics… They’re myths just like the name implies. Could be the Flayed Monarch has one, but I’ve never heard of any normal Delver finding one.”

Casual mention of the skinless horror sent a wave of goosebumps racing along my arms, but I kept my mouth firmly shut. I was a new Delver, still officially at level 0, with no legitimate reason whatsoever to even know who or what the Flayed Monarch was. I was starting to trust Croc a little, but I didn’t want to give anything away at this point. It was unlikely, but what if Croc was one of the Monarch’s Aspirants? Would the mimic dog immediately attempt to kill me once it knew I was in the crosshairs of the Skinless Court?

I didn’t know and I didn’t particularly want to find out. Certainly not until I’d visited one of the Monoliths and fully integrated my new abilities.

“See, the thing about Fabled and Mythic Relics is that they don’t occur naturally,” Croc continued without missing a beat. “Not like the Artifacts do. Fabled and Mythic Relics must be Forged by combining several lower-tier Relics with synergistic effects into a single, higher-tier Relic with a more specific or powerful effect. Thing is, combining Relics is very touch and go.

“It can be quite random, and there’s no telling what skill, spell, or ability will be generated. Combining a bunch of synergistic Rares to generate a Fabled Relic is just… Well, it’s mad, isn’t it? Instead of having three powerful Rare abilities, you might end up with a single Fabled ability with a power so specific and focused that it’s as good as useless. Who would do something like that?”

My mind immediately jumped back to the battle I’d witnessed between the time-worn gunslinger and the Flayed Monarch. Living deities would do something like that.

Now that I was starting to get a sense of how magic worked in this place, it was obvious to me that each of the two warriors must’ve had countless Artifacts and any number of insane and powerful Relics. Each had cast spell after spell, harnessing the forces of nature as though it were child’s play. I was betting every Relic they had was likely Fabled or Mythic. Clearly, those two were the type of creatures that inhabited the lower floors, and I happened to know the Flayed Monarch was actively gunning for me.

I’d been Marked for Death for a reason.

If I wanted to survive long enough to find a way out of this nightmarish hellhole, I was going to need to gamble big and pick up a few Fabled and Mythic Relics of my own. Thinking about that drew my thoughts to the brass compass tucked away in my tool belt. The encrypted item that had fallen out of the Monarch’s Spatial Core.

“What about Emblems?” I asked offhandedly, absently running my index finger along the cool metal.

Croc snorted. “Not even sure where you heard about Emblems, but you don’t need to worry about finding one of those.”

“It came up in one of the prompts,” I lied. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, I was to find one. What do they do?”

Croc shrugged. “Hypothetically, Emblems function the same as Relics, they’re just better in every conceivable way. Relics are powerful items, but there’s a catch. You can swap out individual Relics at will, but you can only ever have ten active Relics equipped to your Spatial Core at any given point—and that’s just as true for Dwellers as it is for Delvers, by the way. The reason why Emblems are so powerful is because they break that rule. Or bend it, anyway.

“I told you that Fabled and Mythic Relics are forged by combining several Relics with synergistic effects into a single, higher-tier Relic, right? It’s the same with Emblems. They aren’t spawned, they’re Forged. Created. But making one is difficult because the material requirements are insane. You need at least five Rare Relics which have already been Fully Tempered—meaning they cannot be Forged any further—and they all need to have a synergistic affinity for one another.”

I shook my head. “It sounds like you’re talking in cursive right now. Can you break it down shotgun-style for me?”

Croc mulled it over for a second. “To make an Emblem you take five extremely rare and powerful Relics, all with a related purpose, then fuse them together into a single set item. That item is an Emblem.”

“And why would someone want to do that?” I asked.

“Because,” Croc said, “all the core abilities and spells of an Emblem remain intact, but they can be equipped to your Spatial Core while only taking up a single Relic slot.”

The explanation clicked into place like a puzzle piece.

If I understood correctly, Emblems were less like individual abilities and more like a Class, which came with a bunch of different preselected abilities and spells. And I had one sitting in my tool belt. One that had presumably come directly from the Spatial Core of a demigod. I still didn’t know what the Compass of the Catacomber did, but that only motivated me to find a Monolith even quicker.

“Sounds confusing,” I replied, pulling my hand away from the brass compass. “Good thing I probably won’t live long enough to ever see one.”

“Now that’s the spirit,” Croc replied, waggling his tail.

“What about the Relic levels?” I asked. “My Bleach Bolt is currently listed as a level 1 spell. Can I level it up through use? Like when I get experience points?”

Croc chuckled and shook his head. “That would certainly make things easier, but sadly it doesn’t work that way. The Researcher equips you Delvers with the VIRUS, which allows you to channel the Mana flowing through the Backrooms. Unfortunately, the Relics are like the Dwellers themselves—they’re manifestations of thought from the God Box. Although many are activated by Mana, they are distinct constructs. If you want to level a specific Relic, you’ll need to cannibalize the Generative Energy bound inside other Relics.

“You can sacrifice five Relics to raise the level of any single Relic by one level. Once a Relic hits level 5, it will undergo a qualitative shift and will change in some fundamental way. The effect will become more powerful, perhaps. Or maybe you’ll be able to cast it on additional targets. Sometimes the cost will drop. Hard to say what will happen, but it’ll be good. Once a Relic reaches level 5 the cost to advance it further increases twofold. You’ll need to sacrifice ten Relics to raise it each additional level. Once a Relic hits level 10, it’ll undergo another shift, and after that, it’ll cost twenty sacrifices to raise it each subsequent level.”

I whistled through my teeth.

Doing a little quick and dirty mental math, I realized I’d have to sacrifice one hundred and seventy different Relics to raise just one single Relic from level 1 to level 15. Accumulating so many magical treasures sounded like a costly and dangerous process.

“What happens if I were to raise the level of a specific Relic then forge it with another Relic? Would I just lose all the levels I’d built up?”

“Naw,” Croc replied, shaking its rubbery head. “The total number of levels from both Relics would be averaged, rounding down. If you combine a level 5 Relic and a level 1 Relic, you’d wind up with a new Relic that starts off at level 3. There is one important thing to point out about levels, though. When you kill a Dweller and harvest a Relic it will always start out as level 1, but the same isn’t true for you Delvers. If you die, all of your Relics retain their levels.”

“Wait,” I started to say, “but wouldn’t that incentivize—”

“Merciless, bloodthirsty gangs of roving Delvers who hunt other Delvers in order to harvest their Relics?” Croc finished before I could get the words out of my mouth.

“Yep,” I said flatly, already guessing at the answer.

“Yeah, sadly we have loads of those,” Croc replied with a heavy sigh. “The Restless Bones usually operate between floors four and nine. The Sisterhood of Smiles are holed up on twelve. No telling where the Children of the Vault will show up—terrifying little buggers. And those are just the warbands I can think of off the top of my head. Here on level three, we need to worry about the Repo Reapers and Hudson’s Red Hands. They’re part of the reason we’re going to cut through Barry’s Blacklight Emporium. The Wisps are dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as either of those two outfits.”

“Wait, we’re on floor three?” I asked, suddenly disoriented. “That can’t be right.” I ran a hand through my hair while my mind turned over the puzzle. “I came down from the Lobby, which, if I even remotely understand the layout of this place, is floor zero.”

“That’s an easy mistake to make, especially if you’re new,” Croc said matter-of-factly. “You’re right that the Lobby is considered floor zero, but the thing about the Backrooms is that time, space, and reality all work differently here than they do in the real world. This place exists in its own reality called Superspace. Most people think of the Backrooms like a big cube. A box with the floors stacked on top of each other, all nice and neat like the layers of a cake.

“But it isn’t. It’s a jumble. A mix-up. Most of the stairwells on any given floor will likely connect to an adjacent floor above or below, but sometimes not. Sometimes you skip a floor or two. Sometimes you skip a floor or two dozen. Believe me when I say, you do not want to accidentally stumble down one of the latter. That’s a good way to get dead.” Croc paused and turned, doubling back down a corridor we’d already passed through. “Ah, here we are at last,” it said, stopping in front of a gray metal door that hadn’t been there twenty seconds ago.

There was a paper sign taped to the wall with the words “Shortcut to Mall Shops” in big red letters. It could’ve been Sharpie, but the way the paper crinkled made me think it was probably something else. Like dried blood. On the door itself was a brown placard with the words “Level 3, I-420: Barry’s Blacklight Emporium!”