Discount Dan

After looting the corpses and recovering my speed square, I planted my VIP Doorway Anchor and popped into the store to distribute my five new Enhancement Points and swap around some Relics. The Doodles dropped a variety of Common and Uncommon Shards, but each one carried a Common-grade Relic called Doodle Buddy, which served as a summoning spell that allowed the user to conjure a level 4 Doodle. The minion would exist for ten minutes, or until destroyed.

The Mana cost was pretty high, at thirty a pop, and it had an internal cooldown of twenty minutes, so it wasn’t the kind of thing I could spam endlessly, but I felt like it had some decent potential. Since I only had ten slots to play with, I reluctantly swapped it out for Bad Trip—though I deposited the Uncommon Mind-based Relic into my own personal storage. The other five Doodle Buddies I added to the store’s Relic stock.

Harold the Terror Clown had also dropped a pair of Relics, one Common grade, the other Uncommon. Both were worthy considerations, at least initially.

The first, appropriately titled Balloon Menagerie, conjured slow-moving balloon animal bombs, which would seek out targets then explode for extraordinarily high burst damage. On the surface it sounded great, but once I cracked the hood and peeked below, I saw there were a couple of significant catches. First, the cast time for creating new balloons was ten seconds—which was absurdly long—and though you could hold up to five balloons at a time, they were extremely volatile.

A fact I’d witnessed for myself, firsthand. Breathe on ’em wrong or look at ’em funny and they were just as likely to nuke you as your enemies.

The other drawback—which was a deal breaker for me—was that the Relic resembled a red, rubber clown nose and when you used it, a corresponding red clown nose appeared on your face. As far as I was concerned, that made it even worse than the Mask of the Faceless, which slowly stole away the user’s face until they were a blind husk of a human being devoid of eyes or nose or mouth.

In my estimation, it was better to have no eyes at all than to bear the indignity of looking in the mirror every day, only to see a clown staring back.

Needless to say, I put the godforsaken Relic up for sale and would pray for the poor soul desperate enough to use it.

The other Relic was a small item called Squirting Flower. It looked like a bright yellow sunflower with a small plastic tube running out the back, which was attached to a red hand pump. Like the cursed nose, this particular Relic also summoned an accompanying physical manifestation, attaching a yellow sunflower to the user’s lapel, which could unleash a quick, concentrated burst of water that dealt five points of slashing damage on contact.

The Mana cost was next to nothing, but it was still dog shit compared to everything else I had equipped.

Thing was, it synergized with two other Relics: Slippery When Wet and the Scalding Torrent I’d picked up from the Steam Djinn on the second floor. Best of all, the three items all buzzed like a hornet’s nest when I brought them together, and when I ran the Codex Compatibility Analysis, it came back with an eighty-nine percent match for a badass little ability called Pressure Washer.

Pressure Washer

Rare Relic – Level 1

Range: Single Target

Cost: 5 Mana/Sec

People underestimate the power of water, forgetting that, given enough time, water carved the Grand Canyon. You don’t have millions of years to wait, though, so we cranked the power of water up to 90,000 PSI and funneled it into a stream the size of your pinky finger. This shit can cut through steel and is hot enough to boil a live lobster.

You’re welcome.

The target receives one stack of Water Erosion on contact, suffering 15 points of Slashing Damage, and receives an additional 5 points of Scalding Damage per second while directly in the water stream. For every three consecutive seconds spent in the water stream, an additional stack of Water Erosion is added, dealing 15 more points of Slashing Damage. When an enemy receives five stacks of Water Erosion, all damage dealt triples for each subsequent stack thereafter.

I whistled through my teeth when I read the report in its entirety.

Pressure Washer had a similar mechanic to the Flamethrower Relic, but without any of the terrible, potentially explosive, side effects. The additional stacking damage could make it a powerhouse long term. It did occupy the same ranged magical attack slot as Drain-O Bolt, which wasn’t ideal, and it didn’t have the Stamina or Mana drain effects, either. But it did have one benefit Drain-O Bolt was lacking.

It would work on anything. Not just organic matter.

My overall Athleticism score was still weak sauce, and casting magic was my strong suit.

Except, I didn’t have many offensive spells, which had nearly killed me during the battle with Harold the Terror Clown. Pressure Washer would give me some versatile ranged options, and I could also probably use it to slice through chunks of the Backrooms itself, if I needed to. I’d have to sacrifice Slippery When Wet, which sucked balls, since that was my only Crowd Control-style spell, but it was worth the price of admission.

I forged the shiny new Relic, added it to my Spatial Core, then quickly used the Monolith to drop three more points into Resonance, and a point apiece into Grit and Athleticism.

Then Croc and I were back at it, scouring the seventh floor for the elusive Howlers Hold.

***

Even with Unerring Arrow to guide us, the process was as slow as old people shuffling through the food line at a Country Buffet.

The Arrow was awesome—a literal lifesaver that made navigating the floor possible—but it still had limitations. It ate Mana like a hungry pit bull and only lasted for thirty seconds at a time, plus the Backrooms were just fucking enormous. The Arrow was great for finding a targeted location within a single quadrant or even finding an exit or stairwell to a specific floor, because there were lots of available options.

But when the location you were looking for was several quadrants away?

It was a slog, even with the perfect route laid out like a magical version of Google maps. I felt like Frodo, trekking my ass across half of Middle Earth to return the One Ring.

Croc and I spent the next two days tediously grinding through the School Zone, avoiding countless school-themed traps and legions of Doodles, Clowns, and even worse horrors.

There were packs of Hellraiser bondage nuns who weren’t particularly strong, but wielded a powerful mental magic called Repressed Catholic Guilt, which could leave you weeping uncontrollably on the floor.

We avoided Quadrant 17 like the plague, since apparently it was home to the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Silent Shadows, which added extra time onto the trek.

The playgrounds, which were everywhere, were even worse.

The equipment was all built from old sheet metal that was as hot as a stove burner and so rusty that even looking at ’em would give you tetanus. The dusty sandpits beneath the playgrounds held gargantuan worms, which had clearly been inspired by the Shai-Hulud of Dune. That or Tremors. It was hard to say, though they were terrifying as hell either way. Croc and I had to American-Ninja our way across the scalding playground equipment, swinging from monkey bars and scaling dubious rope bridges as though we were kids playing the Floor is Lava.

Except if you stepped on the floor a giant sandworm would eat your leg.

The worst terror by far, however, was Goosey Goosey Gander.

That sadistic, goose-bodied motherfucker.

Every so often as we trudged through the winding halls of high school hell, I’d hear a faint snatch of that old nursey rhyme. A nursery rhyme which had both confused and frightened me as a kid.

Goosey goosey gander,

Whither shall I wander?

Upstairs and downstairs

And in my lady’s chamber.

There I met an old man

Who wouldn’t say his prayers,

So I took him by his left leg

And threw him down the stairs.

It was creepy and unnerving as shit. What even was a goosey gander? Why was it in some lady’s chamber? And, most importantly, why the hell did this goose feel the need to commit elder abuse?

All I had were questions, never any answers.

The voice would only whisper a single line of the poem at a time, and sometimes the words were so faint that I almost thought it was a trick of my imagination. Until the last line bled from the air and a mutant horror goose—half man, half goose, easily ten feet tall, and built like a brick shithouse—materialized out of nowhere like an Avenging Angel of the Lord, fully prepared to smite the wicked. Before I could do a damned thing, the asshole goose-man summoned a set of concrete steps, picked me up by my ankle, and hurled me down the stairs with a flick of his wrist.

I broke my collarbone and lost about fifteen percent of my total HP, due to the fall.

And then, just as quickly as he appeared, the horror goose vanished.

Gone in the blink of an eye like a bad dream.

Except then the rhyme would start all over again, the tension building and building with each passing line. Every hour or so, I’d hear another snatch of verse and I knew the goose was one step closer. And it wasn’t like I could do anything to stop the monster. It was level 42, so even if I threw every spell I had in my arsenal, it wouldn’t even make a dent in its Health Pool. The impending sense of dread and doom, coupled with the complete helplessness of the situation, was a form of intense psychological warfare.

A form of intense psychological warfare that worked extremely well.

Pretty soon I was jumping every time I saw a shadow flicker in the corner of my eye.

The goose pitched me down the stairs four more times before I finally remembered the rules, so neatly scrawled on the chalkboard in the classroom. Rule number three, Good boys and girls always say their prayers, or they will be taken by the left leg and thrown down the stairs.

The innocuous line had seemed dumb and random at the time, but I started muttering a short prayer whenever the rhyme started up again, and the goose finally let me be.

The whole time, I left copious notes, warning other Delvers about the multitude of dangers, as well as nailing more and more red Twinning rings to the walls, which all led to a door that I’d planted not far from where Croc and I had first entered the floor.

Say a prayer. Doesn’t matter to who. Just say a prayer or that sadistic Goosey Gander chucklefuck will literally throw you down a set of stairs.

—This Survival Tip brought to you by Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains.