Discount Dan

I looked over my newly upgraded stats once more before closing out my SBR tab.

Dan Woodridge

Specimen Biotag ID #03A-01-B00R7T569C

Variant Assimilation Level: 5

Race: Human, Archetypal

Current Experience: 3,715

Next Level: 4,250

Personal Enhancement Points: 0

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Health: 28

Health-Regen/Hour: 1.3

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Stamina Reserve: 16

Stamina-Regen/Minute: 1.2

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Mana Pool: 35

Mana-Regen/Minute: 2.9

Individual Adaptative Stats

Grit: 6 (5 + 1 Enhanced)

Athleticism: 5

Toughness: 6

Perception: 10

Resonance: 15

Preservation: 3

The only thing that had really changed was the size of my Mana Pool and my Mana Regeneration Rate. The overall amount of Mana I had at my disposal had quadrupled and my Regen rate had tripled. I could now cast Bleach Bolt seven times in rapid-fire succession before running dry. It still felt like my Regen rate was as slow as a narcoleptic sloth, but that just meant I needed to pace myself—be strategic in how I used the spells I had at my disposal.

I closed the Monolith Menu screen and fished out the brass compass, holding it flat against my palm. Time to see if this horse could run.

Compass of the Catacomber

Mythic Emblem

The Backrooms are filled with a thousand dangers, from lethal traps to ravenous Dwellers, but none are more deadly than the murky, ever-twisting, ever-changing corridors of the Backrooms themselves. Though many Delvers perish at the claws and fangs of inhuman horrors, even more die thirsty, hungry, and alone, trapped in a dark room with no way out.

Not the Catacomber.

The Catacomber is a twisted blend of cartographer and cryptic graveyard robber. Though lacking in combat prowess, a unique blend of skills and spells allows those holding this Mythic Emblem to map the uncharted depths, effortlessly venturing where others fear to tread. In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The Catacomber has both eyes open and a torch that will never go out.

As I finished reading over the Emblem description, I was surprised by how different it was than the other Relics I’d seen so far. Each Relic was essentially a single skill or spell, which could be leveled up, swapped out, or forged into more powerful skills at will. But they were always just a single ability. This was different. This read like an RPG class description. A class that specialized not in combat or even spell-slinging, but in navigation.

I’d played DnD and online MMOs for years, and I always tended toward the brawler builds. Hit first, hit hard, ask questions later. Under any other circumstances, I would’ve run as fast as possible to get away from a lame-ass class that revolved around disarming traps or making maps—even now it sounded so incredibly boring. But I wasn’t playing a game, I reminded myself. This was my life, and I was trapped inside of an endless labyrinth where everything, including the furniture, was deadly.

Because I’d invested the bulk of my Personal Enhancement Points into Perception and Resonance, I was as squishy and vulnerable as a basket of newborn kittens, but if the Emblem allowed me to avoid fights, sidestep pitfalls, and find shelter, it would be well worth my comparatively abysmal Athleticism and Toughness score.

I peeled my gaze away from the Catacomber description and looked at the six “Emblem Slots” listed beneath. In essence, each one was a distinct Relic, all fused together under one umbrella, just like Croc had explained.

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Emblem Slot 1: Mapmaker’s Eye

Fabled Relic (Fully Tempered) – Level 15

Mapmaker’s Eye is a passive feature that allows the Catacomber to generate a visual Map of the Backrooms as they explore. Unexplored areas stay veiled by the “Fog of War,” but once a section has been visited, the floor map will remain intact even after a “Floor Shift” occurs. The presence of benign and hostile Dwellers, secret doorways, and other Delvers will also be indicated on the Map.

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Emblem Slot 2: Surveyor’s Mark

Rare Relic (Fully Tempered) – Level 15

The Backrooms are a living organism, and as such, the corridors, rooms, and byways that make up each floor are extremely resistant to external change. Trying to alter or even mark the surface in any way is futile at best and potentially life-threatening at worst. Surveyor’s Mark is a passive ability that allows the Catacomber to mark their path through the Backrooms, leaving a trail others can follow.

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Emblem Slot 3: Spelunker’s Sixth Sense

Fabled Relic (Fully Tempered) – Level 15

After years of traversing treacherous tunnels and crumbling ruins, the Catacomber has developed an uncanny passive ability to detect insidious traps and spot concealed foes with almost casual indifference. Many develop an almost perverse fascination with disarming and rearming the traps, often to the rage of those who laid them in the first place. Their uncanny passive ability also allows them to spot loot from a mile off, much to the envy of their fellow adventurers.

I whistled through my teeth as I read.

The first three abilities alone were enough to make the Compass of the Catacomber a priceless item that anyone inside the Backrooms would kill for. I’d spent less than a day here, but after wandering aimlessly through the Lobby—constantly on the move from unseen threats, stalking me from dim shadows—I knew exactly how miserable, disorienting, and dangerous this place was.

Even my rudimentary attempts at creating a map had proven useful, but in a place this size, I doubted that walking around with reams of paper was a tenable solution. But a map that I could look at in real time? And one that actively labeled secret passageways or hostile enemies? Yeah, that would make life considerably easier. That, paired with Spelunker’s Sixth Sense would let me easily avoid so many of the environmental dangers the Backrooms had to offer.

Sure, I’d still have to worry about running into a gang of cannibalistic Delvers or roaming packs of tentacle-faced Dwellers, but I wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally having my face melted off by an acidic water fountain.

Surveyor’s Mark was less immediately applicable, especially since I had the map to help guide my feet and I was currently alone. If it was included with the Emblem, however, I was sure there was a good reason for it.

If the first three abilities made the Emblem priceless, the last three made it a treasure fit only for a king. Or for a god.

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Emblem Slot 4: The Researcher’s Codex

Fabled Relic (Fully Tempered) – Level 15

Despite its current function, the Progenitor Ship was originally designed as a Researcher Vessel. As such, it contains a host of valuable information on all the Delvers and Dwellers who now inhabit its endless and ever-changing corridors. This passive skill grants the Catacomber a Credential Key for all restricted Variant Research Division Labs and additional insight into the varied inhabitants of the Backrooms, including their strengths, weaknesses, skills, and behaviors. The Researcher’s Codex Notes will be accessed, compiled, and disseminated through your Localized Administrator.

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Emblem Slot 5: Pathfinder’s Unerring Arrow

Fabled Relic (Fully Tempered) – Level 15

Range: Line of Sight

Cost: 30 Mana

Duration: 30 Seconds

Using the Pathfinder’s Unerring Arrow, the Catacomber conjures an illusionary blue arrow, visible only to them, which will lead unerringly to any objective fixed firmly in the Catacomber’s mind. With each step taken, the conjured arrow extends its reach, always pointing in the optimal direction, bypassing obstacles, dangers, and hindrances, which allows the caster to navigate even the most treacherous environments with unflagging confidence.

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Emblem Slot 6: Corvo’s Blanket Fort

Mythic Relic (Fully Tempered) – Level 15

Kids all over the world are well-acquainted with the boundless joy of rearranging and repurposing couch cushions and bed blankets to make an awesome fort. This is just the grown-up, extra-dimensional version of that. Use Corvo’s Blanket Fort ability to cordon off a portion of the Backrooms and claim it as your own, transforming the area into a cozy little pocket dimension that you can always retreat to when the going gets too rough.

As with any good blanket fort, your pocket dimension can grow by adding extra material. The Catacomber can add 2,500 square feet of space to their Blanket Fort for every Variant Assimilation Level earned. Think of it as a high-end real estate investment, only with fewer property taxes and more flesh-eating monsters.

But the best is yet to come.

As with all real estate, they say it’s all about location, location, location, and with Blanket Fort, you always have an optimal location. This ability allows the Catacomber to create one Doorway Anchor per two Variant Assimilation Levels. A Doorway Anchor can transform any standard door within the Backrooms into a dimensional gateway that connects directly to their slice of paradise. Doorway Anchors can be moved at any time and may be set to private or public, restricting who can enter the comfort of your own personal hell.

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!

As I finished reading, a cold sweat washed over me, and I found myself acutely aware of how much trouble I was in. The Compass of the Catacomber was… Amazing didn’t quite feel like an adequate term, but I wasn’t sure anything else fit. Incredible? Astonishing? Divine? It was all of those things and then some. In the Backrooms, knowledge was power, which made the Researcher’s Codex a weapon that would start paying dividends the second I used it.

And it was nothing compared to Pathfinder’s Unerring Arrow or the ridiculously named Corvo’s Blanket Fort. Although Mapmaker’s Eye would allow me to draft a map in real time, it was still limited in scope—I needed to physically go someplace before the Fog of War lifted, but Pathfinder’s Unerring Arrow would allow me to sidestep that limitation. It could take me anywhere I wanted to go with a thought.

Need a stairwell? Just think of one. Food running low? A little magic, a splash of razzle-dazzle, and boom, I’d know exactly how to get there in the quickest, most efficient manner possible.

As for the Mythic Corvo’s Blanket Fort ability…

I literally couldn’t think of a more powerful skill in an endless, ever-changing dungeon. With that, I could create a safe haven, one which would be accessible at any point from any location within the Backrooms, and unlike the other Relics, this one would scale with me over time. I could attach more and more spaces as I leveled up, until I essentially had my own self-contained kingdom with everything I could possibly need within.

It was awesome.

That was also the problem.

It was too awesome.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that this was the kind of power kingdoms were built upon. Literally, in this case. I wasn’t sure how the grizzled gunslinger with the foam anime sword had knocked this Emblem out of the Flayed Monarch’s Spatial Core—probably some sort of specialized Relic or Artifact, if I had to guess—but there was one thing I knew as certain as the sun rose in the east and set in the west: the Flayed Monarch would come looking for this particular lost treasure.

Even if I somehow managed to give the Compass back to the eldritch warlord, I got the sense he wasn’t exactly the forgiving type. More the slice-your-skin-off, boil-you-in-oil, then hang-you-to-death-with-loops-of-your-own-intestine type.

This compass had effectively painted a target on my back that was visible from outer space. Sure, the Backrooms were enormous, but I got the sense that the Monarch had eyes, ears, and hands all over the place. It was only a matter of time before a member of the Skinless Court found me. Once they did, the Flayed Monarch would come a-callin’, and when that happened, I’d be a dead man. End of story.

Unless…

Unless I figured out a way to use the Compass to my advantage.

But therein lay the second problem.

Although each of the Relics contained within the Emblem was ridiculously overpowered in their own way, they weren’t ridiculously overpowered in the right way. I had a bunch of high-end screwdrivers when all I really needed was a rugged, hard-hitting sledgehammer. Sure, they would help me survive the Backrooms, but they wouldn’t help me survive the wrath of an angry god, and that was my long-term goal. Really, my only goal at this point.

Every single skill was utility oriented.

None of them would make me stronger, faster, or offer me extraordinary combat capabilities. They offered information, convenience, and safety. Under any other set of circumstances, finding the Emblem would’ve been a one-way ticket to easy street in the Backrooms. But given my particular situation, it would only delay my inevitable, and very painful, death. What I needed were Artifacts and Relics. God-tier ones. The battle between the gunslinger and the Monarch played out in my head, just like it had a hundred times before.

A cloud of telekinetically controlled flying weapons. A legion of loyal minions. Corrosive rain that melted anything it touched. The ability to blink effortlessly through space and time. To throw lightning bolts from the palm of one hand. That’s what real power looked like.

The Compass couldn’t give me any of that.

Not directly anyway. But…

The barest shadow of an idea began to form.

True, the Compass couldn’t directly give me the power to go toe-to-toe with the Monarch, but maybe there was a way it could indirectly help me achieve my long-term goals. I ran one hand absently through my hair as I turned that notion over and over inside my head. Information, convenience, and safety. As the words tumbled through my skull like a record stuck on loop, it hit me.

Information, convenience, and safety weren’t just me problems. They were problems for literally every single soul trapped inside the Backrooms. That’s why the Compass was so valuable in the first place. Even the most capable Delvers—beings with unimaginable, godlike power—still needed food to eat and a place to sleep. They still needed safety and information. That was a universal problem and it just so happened that I had a universal solution.

My dad had been a serial entrepreneur, always moving from business to business and side hustle to side hustle. He would invent things or fix things or sell things. Sometimes he’d buy junk from the flea market and try to flip it, like they do on those HGTV shows. He was never very good at it. Other times, when money was tight, he’d do odd jobs—tinkering with lawn mowers or installing fences on the cheap. I’d never met someone handier with a wrench, but he also had the follow-through of a bored toddler.

My dad was a hard worker, but he also dreamed about easy money and had enough get-rich-quick schemes to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The cold, hard truth of it was his ideas rarely panned out. Most times they bit him in the ass. There was one thing about business that he’d taught me, however, which had stuck with me even all these years later. If enough people have the same problem and you can fix it, then you’ve got yourself a license to print money.

Unerring Arrow, as useful as it was, could only help me. Same thing with Mapmaker’s Eye or Spelunker’s Sixth Sense. But Corvo’s Blanket Fort?

Well, that could help everyone.

What if, instead of transforming the blanket fort into my own, personal Fortress of Solitude, I made it a place that specifically catered to other Delvers? A place where they could come to buy, sell, and trade? A place to grab a bite to eat without having to worry about whether something was going to eat you instead? A refuge to catch a few minutes of uninterrupted shut-eye without the constant fear that you would never wake up again?

From my handful of correspondences with the Researcher, I knew there were Safe Harbors that served a similar function. But unlike the Safe Harbors, my trading hub would be faction neutral—except for the dickheads from the Skinless Court, of course, who could go fuck themselves—and, even more important, there would be access points far and wide. With enough elbow grease, I could plant doorways on damn near every floor. I could even plant them in every Safe Harbor, creating a fast travel network for Delvers to move through.

Hell, being able to reliably move from floor to floor would solve a whole host of problems I hadn’t even considered yet.

And inside this glorious hub, I’d have everything anyone could ever need to survive the Backrooms. Supplies. Food. Safety. Intel. All of it. And in payment, I’d collect Relics and Artifacts for myself. Not to mention countless favors and endless goodwill, which I would hopefully be able to leverage against the Flayed Monarch. As things stood, there was no way I could beat the Monarch alone, but maybe I could do it through the power of teamwork.

Teamwork and a splash of capitalism.

This was my best—or, more realistically, my only—shot at long-term survival.

The only question now was, what kind of store did I start with?

What would serve as the beating heart of my Backrooms trading empire?

A hotel of some sort was the first place my mind immediately jumped to. The Backrooms were a nightmare, and finding a safe location to rest was a dubious proposition at best. Most hotels usually had a small, attached restaurant and a little gift shop that I could use to sell items.

That was a solid option, but there were also a few complications.

First off, even small hotels were big. Picking up a hotel straight out of the gate would burn through the majority of my square footage, and there was no way I’d be able to properly run anything larger than a quaint bed-and-breakfast without staff. I’d need a cook, cleaners, someone to work the front desk and handle check-ins, plus another person to deal with the shop. That was a goal I could work toward long term, but for now, I needed something smaller and more efficient that focused on what I really wanted to accomplish: acquiring all the Relics and Artifacts I could get my hands on.

I could resell the worthless Relics or sacrifice them to level up the Relics in my Spatial Core, but I was also bound to come across some useful items that would allow me to get more powerful as well.

The hotel idea was out. At least for now. Next, my mind skipped to a grocery store.

That could be a solid option, too. Smaller. Easier to manage. I could find a camping surplus store to raid, then set up a few cots for folks looking to sleep. The accommodations wouldn’t be glamorous, but it would be safe, and people would pay a hefty premium for safety. It would also have ample food and supplies—though restocking things like fresh produce or meat would be extremely difficult. Plus, once I got to thinking about it, I realized most of the items inside a grocery store were luxury goods.

No one would have access to a fridge or a pantry, although that could probably be circumvented by using the Subspace Storage System. The Storage System was time-locked, after all, which meant any perishable items stored within would stay good indefinitely. Still, the thought of some postapocalyptic survivor taking the time to make a home-cooked meal seemed laughable. Food that was quick and easy to eat on the go like beef jerky, chips, or protein bars would be far more useful.

The grocery store was better than the hotel, but still too specialized.

What I really needed was an ol’ timey general store. Like the kind of place that would exist in an 1800s western frontier town. A location that was small and manageable, with just enough room to set up sleeping spaces, that also had a little bit of everything. Food. Medicine. Basic hygiene gear. Decent bathrooms. Survival items. Good shelf space. Eventually, I’d be able to attach other structures, but the general store would serve as the beating heart of the operation.

But what the hell was the modern equivalent of a frontier general store?

A Walmart, maybe? That was in the right ballpark but had a lot of the same problems as the hotel. Too big. Too much shit. Impossible to manage, even with Croc’s help.

What about a gas station? No. That had the opposite problem. Too small, not enough shit.

I continued to kick it around, running my hand along the stubble at my jaw. I’d need to trim my beard before too much longer. My fingers froze as I abruptly recalled the last time I’d taken a vacation. I’d been running late for my flight, and I’d packed up all my hygiene gear in a frantic flurry, throwing stuff blindly into my travel bag. In the rush, I’d forgotten to grab my razor from the shower. I’d needed to buy a new one before I ended up looking like a disheveled marmot, so I’d stopped by the one place that I was certain would have what I needed.

Because they had a little bit of everything.

In a flash that felt like divine revelation, I knew exactly what I needed to find...