James A. Hunter
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Backrooms 2: Kiosk Kingdom - Chapter 45
🕑 Added 2024-12-10 14:48:48 +0000 UTCForty-Five – Mana Optimization
When I finally couldn’t stand the heat any longer, I killed the water, toweled off, then tossed on a fluffy, run-of-the-mill white bathrobe and padded over to the kitchen. I fished a cold beer out of the fridge, then plopped my ass back down at the table to tinker with the Relics in my spatial core.
Despite all the new gear I’d acquired while battling my way through Eternal Suburbia, there wasn’t anything that warranted a spot in my active Spatial Core. Charbroiled Inferno almost made the cut—mostly because setting things on fire tended to be extremely effective—but the damage output and range just couldn’t compete with Hydro Fracking Blast.
A few of my new crowd control Relics resonated strongly with Fault Spike, so I spent a handful of minutes screwing around with various combinations, though I wasn’t particularly thrilled with any of the outcomes. Hazardous Chemical Slick and Fault Spike created a new Relic called Quicksilver Quicksand which, arguably, was a better crowd control skill than Fault Spike by itself, but it didn’t deal any damage, whatsoever, and I really liked dealing damage.
The thought of mercilessly smashing deformed Sunnysiders into a forest of earthen spikes using telekinesis was oddly cathartic.
Likewise, String Snare and Fault Spike produced an ability called Fanged Webbing. Instead of summoning a plain ol’ spider web, this summoned a movement restricting field of webbing filled with a swarm of normal sized black widows. It was a decent compromise which dealt less damage than Fault Spike on its own, but more than Quicksilver Quicksand. The spell was perfectly on brand for Temp, who took a perverse joy in tormenting people with insects, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Plus, there was no way to use the spell in a targeted way. The spiders attacked indiscriminately, and the Area of Effect was enormous. There just wasn’t a safe way to use it—not without leveling it substantially. And when I mashed all three Relics together like a triple car pileup, my Codex Compatibility Analysis returned an extremely unstable result.
So, I ended up leaving Fault Spike alone for the time being, and instead decided to upgrade a few of my current Relics.
Psychic Sovereignty was already at level 10, and I didn’t have enough Relics to push it all the way up to level 15. That left me with Hydro Fracking Blast, Stainslayer Maelstrom, Neural Slipstream, Unhinged Taxidermist, and Runic Resonance Trap, which were all currently at level 5. Looking over my available Relics, I could only push one of them up to Level 10. Knowing that, I began whittling down my options.
I immediately dismissed Runic Resonance Trap, Unhinged Taxidermist, and Neural Slipstream.
All were powerful abilities in their own right, but upgrading those didn’t offer much immediate benefit against the threats we faced from the Sunnysiders. Although Ed insisted that Big Bertha would destroy the Signal and deal a permeant death blow to the HOA, I’d spent enough time in the Backrooms to know there was no way it would be that easy. Nothing was ever that easy. I believed that the disruptor would work, but I was fully expecting to fight an army of homicidal Sunnysiders.
For that, I needed more concentrated peel-your-skin-off-and-ruin-your-whole-fucking-week firepower, which narrowed my options to Hydro Fracking Blast and Stainslayer Maelstrom. Both were viable choices. Thing was, Hydro Fracking Blast was already extremely effective, so I wasn’t sure that was where I’d get the most bang for my buck. Not to mention, the Sunnysiders seemed especially susceptible to the corrosive damage of my Maelstrom spell. Considering how many Kevins and Kathys, Timmy and Tammys there were, beefing up my only offensive AoE spell seemed like a good choice.
After half an hour of tedious ritual sacrifices, the deed was done and Stainslayer Maelstrom finally hit level 10, crossing the next power threshold. I couldn’t help but grin as I read through the updated description.
StainSlayer Maelstrom – Pro: Military-Grade Cleansing Power
Fabled Relic (Fully Tempered) – Level 10
Range: Line of sight
Area of Effect: 30' Radius
Cost: 35 Mana
Cast time: 5 Seconds
Effect Duration: 1 Minute
Cooldown: 30 Seconds
Summon a torrential downpour of military-grade cleaning solution that will liquify your enemies with a chemical compound so powerful and heinous, its technically banned under the Geneva Convention as a “chemical weapon of mass destruction.” As far as VRD is concerned, that’s actually a selling point! Unlike inferior versions, StainSlayer Maelstrom - Pro! is safe and fun for the whole family!
That’s right, instead of indiscriminate murder and mayhem, this version offers a targeted cleanse, dealing damage only to enemy combatants! All opponents caught in the “Splash Zone” suffer 150 points of Corrosive Burst Damage on contact, take an additional 5 points of Chemical Burn damage per second, and lose 2 points of Mana and 2 points of Stamina per second while inside the AoE.
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 all friendlies inside the “Splash Zone,” 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 Hague.
This Relic enables Mana usage.
It was better than I could’ve hoped for.
The cost, cast time, and cooldown had all decreased, though that wasn’t the truly impressive part. The single biggest flaw with the spell was that it dealt damage indiscriminately to anyone in range, including my friends. This upgrade removed that problem entirely. Hell, it didn’t just remove it, thanks to pH Balance, it actually turned a glaring weakness into a powerful strength. With this I could now melt my enemies and heal my friends all at the same time.
Satisfied, I left my room behind and headed down to drop my stained and reeking gear off with the Laundry Brownies at the Spin Cycle. I cut to the front of the line, which earned me a few withering glares from the Howlers patiently waiting their turn, but fuck it. I’d fought a literal shit monster to free the Brownies and annex the laundry mat and what was the point of having my own store if I couldn’t get a fast pass for the laundry room?
I dropped my clothes off, though, paused when I saw that the Brownies had erected a life-sized statue of me in the corner of the laundry mat. It was built from discarded garbage, just like everything else in their tiny city, but the resemblance was unmistakable. A group of twenty or so Brownies were crowded around the base of the statue, chanting complex iterations of “what the fuck” while others prostrated themselves before the statue. There was a wide metal altar at the base of the statue and perched on top were several beer cans and a slice of pizza.
My arrival caused a flurry of commotion, and more Brownies rushed out from their trash city, clad in red bathrobes that mirrored my own. I squinted then sighed. Not just bathrobes. They also wore jean jorts, white wife beaters, and several even had imitations of my paper Burger Baron Crown.
“Our savior has returned!” One of them squealed. When I looked a little closer, I realized it was Bertrim, the high priest of their weird cult. “What would you have us do, Chosen One? We live to serve thy will and do thy bidding.”
“Eh, just here to drop some clothes off?” I said, awkwardly lifting the bundle of dirty gear. “And I’m in a bit of a hurry, so I’m hoping you can do a rush job.”
Bertrim’s face grew somber, and his back grew rigid with purpose and determination.
“We shall move the heavens and the earth for you, Chose One. It will be done.”
I laughed nervously, set my gear in an empty laundry basket, then slowly backed out of the room as the Brownies swarmed my clothes like a school of hungry piranha. Once again, I had an uneasy feeling that this was all going to blow up in my face. I’d watched enough true crime docuseries to know that most cults had a way of spiraling out of control and ending with a catastrophic body count.
But that was a problem for future me to worry about, I supposed.
For now, the laundry was getting done, the Howlers were happy, and present me had to deal with the HOA. Honestly, I just didn’t have the mental bandwidth to care about the escalating weirdness happening inside the Spin Cycle.
I left the laundry mat behind, issuing a few halting apologies to the waiting Howlers, then headed over to the Progenitor Monolith, near the front check out. Taylor was working the concession stand and I shot her a friendly wave, which she returned with a thin smile. The girl looked exhausted, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. She and her friend, Stephanie, were pulling long shifts around the store and we had more customers than ever to deal with.
Both women deserved a raise, and I really needed to hire more staff to help out around the store. I could always fashion more Cannon Fodder Golems, but they lacked the charm and warmth of a real human employee.
Once I wrapped this business on the twenty-fourth floor, I really needed to take a day or two to sort shit out around the shop. With the increased pressure and threat from the Aspirants, fewer and fewer Delvers were leaving the store at all and as a result, our sleeping accommodations were quickly nearing max capacity. Hygiene was also becoming an issue. There were public bathrooms that anyone could use, but they didn’t have showers, and we badly needed showers.
Even with the addition of Laundry Services, the BO cloud lingering inside the store was off the charts.
There was work to be done and essential infrastructure that I needed to add, but as with the Brownies that would just have to wait for later.
I sidled up to the Monolith and jammed my hand flat against the palm reader. The interface menu blinked to life, and I quickly selected the Delver Interface Portal option. I repressed a gasp when I saw just how many levels I’d gained. Twelve. I’d jumped twelve levels since entering Eternal Suburbia, bringing me all the way up to 35. That pushed me past Ed, and officially made me tied for the strongest Delver in the shop. Although, admittedly, both Jakob and Temp had probably also made similar gains.
Still, that nifty trick with the swarmling massacre had earned me a metric ass-load of Experience, so I suspected I’d outpaced both of them by at least a little.
Along with my twelve new levels, came 60 stat points that I could spend at will, and I already had a damned good idea of what I wanted to use them on. Right, smack dab at the top of the list was Grit. Although the Crown of the Burger Baron was an invaluable Artifact, I’d witnessed firsthand the damage that mind magic could do, and I never wanted someone or something fucking around inside my skull again. Not being able to trust your own mind or your own senses was far more horrifying than anything else I’d experienced on the twenty-fourth floor.
Plus, the Crown of the Burger Baron didn’t give me a flat Grit boost, but rather offered a 10% boost based on my base Grit stat. Which meant the higher I pushed the base, the bigger the boost I’d get from the crown.
Even though it hurt, I dropped a flat twenty-five points into Grit, officially making it my second highest stat, after Resonance. And, because almost all of my skills and abilities were extremely reliant on Mana, I decided to double down and add another twenty points directly into Resonance, bringing my base score up to 75.
The second I confirmed the choice, a spike of pain slammed into my stomach, and a blinding headache erupted inside my head. It felt like there was an angry gorilla rampaging around the inside of my skull. I dropped to my knees, wheezing for breath as white dots danced across my vision. I steadied myself on the monolith with one hand so I didn’t keel over on the floor, but for a long moment I thought I might pass out. Mercifully, the sensation didn’t last for long, and when it finally passed, I found a new prompt waiting for me.
Mana Optimization – Initialized
In so many areas of life, you meat bags understand that less is often more—like with bad cholesterol or syphilis. But for some reason, whenever your Mana Pool shrinks, you humans bitch and moan about it like little Wah-babies. Well, suck it up. With Mana Optimization, you trade in some of that fat, sluggish mana pool for a sleek, turbocharged spellcasting engine. Yes, your total mana shrinks a bit—boo hoo, cry-baby bitch—but in return, your mana regenerates faster, spells cost less, and your enemies feel the hurt with every cast.
Your Total Mana Pool experiences a one-time decrease of 20% (which might sound bad), but that’s offset by a significant boost to Mana Optimization (which is very good). This boost improves your mana regeneration rate, reduces the cost of all mana-based abilities, and increases your total spell damage output and efficiency by 5% across the board. Additionally, for every 5 Stat Points you invest in Resonance, Mana Optimization increases by 1% (Max 30%).
Variant Research Division – Optimizing destruction since 11973 S.E.
I read over the description and found that I was just as unamused as the system seemed to think I would be. A twenty percent drop in my total Mana was significant and a measly five percent increase in other areas didn’t seem to make up for the loss.
Still, the system was telling me this was a good thing, even if it didn’t seem like it on the surface, so I pushed my simmering rage to the backburner and started doing a little quick and dirty mental math. It didn’t take me long to realize that maybe my anger wasn’t entirely justified. Sure, at its current tier, I probably was getting dicked over. But only a little.
Although I was sacrificing a sizable chunk of my mana pool, every single spell I had would now cost less to cast and deal extra damage on the backside. That paired with the slight increase to my mana regeneration almost made up the difference. But if I could bump my efficiency up to ten or fifteen percent—or, god forbidden, hit the thirty-percent max—the one time reduction wouldn’t even matter.
The revelation also got me thinking about the rest of my stats.
Was it possible that they also had secret, inbuilt rewards for hitting certain thresholds? If that was true, what would the benefits for Grit look like or Perception? I also wondered if there was more than one threshold for each Stat—it stood to reason there might be, since that was also how the Relics worked. Relics improved at levels 5, 10, and once again at 15. Maybe Stats worked the same way, even if the threshold scale was different?
Neither Jakob, Croc, nor Temperance had ever mentioned anything about this, but then it was distinctly possible that neither of them had leveled up any single stat enough to cross over one of these thresholds.
Either way, this drastically changed things.
As curious as I was, though, I wasn’t likely to get answers any time soon and I still had more points to divvy up.
Begrudgingly, I turned back to the task at hand. With both Grit and Resonance taken care of, I had fifteen points left to spend. Perception was invaluable, since it worked with my Catacomber Abilities to help identify threats and enemy weaknesses, so I added 6 points bringing it up to thirty. My Preservation score was still extremely low and knowing the Blight would only get worse the deeper we went, I opted to tack on an extra two points, bringing my score up to a flat 10.
That left me with seven points.
Some part of me wanted to distribute them evenly between Athleticism and Toughness, but I decided to dump them all into Toughness instead. Much as I hated to admit it, I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that I wasn’t a tank or brawler. I was DnD equivalent of a squishy Mage, complete with fancy wizard robes—though my robes were of the bathroom variety. Fact was, being able to physically hit harder didn’t matter, but soaking up damage did. Most of my fighting was going to be done at range, but I needed to be able to survive any errant spells that came my way.
With my stats finally taken care of, I turned my attention to my ever-expanding list of titles. I’d unlocked two more and needed to figure out which ones to cut and which to keep.
Although Toddler Terminator was decent in theory, it was really only useful against Dwellers marked with the Adolescent and Juvenile tag, and the only Dwellers I’d ever seen labeled that way were mimics and the kiosk crabs. Under most circumstances, a title like that would be dead weight, but my gut told me the bonus would also apply to the Timmys and Tammys. Hopefully I wouldn’t need to kill the children of Sunnyside by the bucket load, but with the soon arrival of the Bleeding Moon, it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.
Human Cannonball wasn’t really doing much for me, anyway, so I swapped it for Toddler Terminator—though, admittedly, I felt a little guilty about it. No one wanted to be labeled as a baby killer, yet here I was wearing the title like a campaign medal pinned to my chest. This was war, though, I reminded myself, and sometimes in war you had to do things you weren’t entirely proud of to survive.
As for Chain Reaction, adding that particular Title was a no brainer.
I relied heavily on secondary effects like Wild Surge or Gavel of Get Fucked, and anything that increased the odds of triggering those effects—no matter how minutely—was just too good to pass up. After a few moments of careful consideration, I removed Bloodbath and added in Chain Reaction in its place.
Finally finished, I looked over my updated SBR with approval.
Dan Woodridge
Specimen Biotag ID #03A-01-B00R7T569C
Variant Assimilation Level: 35
Race: Human, Archetypal
Current Experience: 132,075
Next Level: 142,500
Personal Enhancement Points: 0
__ __ __
Health: 98
Health-Regen/Hour: 6.85
__ __ __
Stamina Reserve: 54
Stamina-Regen/Minute: 5.5
__ __ __
Mana Pool: 157
Mana-Regen/Minute: 16
Individual Adaptative Stats
Grit: 46 (42 + 4 Enhanced)
Athleticism: 16
Toughness: 22
Perception: 30
Resonance: 75
Preservation: 10
Spatial Core - Active
(U) Runic Resonance Trap – Level 5
(U) Fault Spike – Level 5
(R) Unhinged Taxidermist – Level 5
(R) Sterilization Field – Level 5
(R) Existential Dread – Level 5 (Fully Tempered)
(F) Hydro Fracking Blast – Level 5
(F) Neural Slip Stream – Level 5 (Fully Tempered)
(F) StainSlayer Maelstrom – Level 10 (Fully Tempered)
(F) Psychic Sovereignty – Level 10 (Fully Tempered)
(ME) Compass of the Catacomber (Fully Tempered)
!!! Current Titles – Passive !!!
Punch-Out!! Champion, Deathwish, Marked for Death, Weapon of Opportunity, Legend in the Making, Overkill Overlord, Barracuda in a Barrel (E), Profane Purifier, Chain Reaction, Toddler Terminator
Not too shabby for a general contractor from Cincinnati who’d only noclipped into the Backrooms less that three months before. Or was it two months? Four months? God, time was hard to keep track of here. It was like being perpetually stranded in Vegas, only worse.
Regardless, my growth was impressive.
Although I was happy with my current progress, there were still a few more things that needed doing before we took our final shot at the Nexus Pulse and the HOA. I headed over to the pharmacy and slipped into the corpse cooler after a few quick words with Jakob. Unsurprisingly, the Cendral was busy working in lab, testing this or that—though what exactly he was working on, I couldn’t tell. Honestly, even if he told me, it would probably be over my head anyway.
I took a few minutes to pull Drumbo out of storage and survey the extent of the damage.
He had not faired particularly well against Mr. Wiggles, which came as no real surprise. He’d lost both legs below the knees and one arm, though I was happy to see his angle grinder attachment was still firmly in place. I pulled out replacement body parts—gangly legs from the Bellhops on five and more chitinous crab armor from kiosk crabs. I’d grabbed a couple of swarmling corpses as well and attached several arachnoid legs to Drumbo’s back. They tensed and curled like the fingers of some enormous hand.
After very narrowly losing Drumbo to Mr. Wiggles, I realized I’d grown surprisingly attached to the malformed creature. Both him and Synthia 2.0. Sure, they were monsters with no real personality, yet they were my monsters and I’d be sort of sad to see them go. Though, admittedly, there was so little left of the original Drumbo, that we were running into a Ship of Theseus situation. Not that it really mattered to me.
So long as I thought of the Horror as Drumbo, he’d be Drumbo to me.
And I wanted Drumbo to last a while longer.
The last thing I needed to do was upgrade his processing power. Mr. Wiggles had badly damaged the Uncommon Health Eater Relic at Drumbo’s core, and though technically it would still function for a little while longer, I had to imagine the Horror would be operating at quarter capacity, at best.
Luckily, it just so happened that I had several Rare-grade Relics that I didn’t really want to sell in the store for moral reasons. If I put something like Lawnmower Wind Blade or Eldritch Hair Tonic up for sale, someone would undoubtedly buy and use it, and I would wind up feeling both shitty and partially responsible when it ruined their fucking life. The Relics were good though, powerful, and I didn’t just want to sacrifice them either, since that seemed like a waste.
Using them to help power my Horrors seemed like a winning strategy all around.
With Drumbo laying flat on my operating table, I used the Minion Masher 3D overlay to open the Horror up like a frog ready for dissection and pry the old Relic from the creature’s chest. The Relic was so badly damaged that it couldn’t be salvaged, so I tossed it out with a sigh, before sliding Lawnmower Wind Blade into the vacant spot in Drumbo’s chest cavity. The Relic clicked into place just like changing a set of double-A batteries and the monstrosity blinked its eyes open, then sat up on the table.
I was more than a little surprised when Drumbo started to change. His torso stretched and elongated, forming the boxy underside of a lawnmower just like the Kevin’s who called Sunnyside home.
Now that… Well, that was interesting.
With a surge of excitement, I recalled Drumbo back into Storage and brought forth Synthia, who looked more like some sort of crustacean Power Ranger than the feline animatronic monstrosity she once had. After seeing initial success with Drumbo, I had the former Lynx crawl onto the stainless steel table and opened her up as well. She was powered by a rather underwhelming passive called Bed Rest, which let the user regain Health and Mana at an accelerated rate while sleeping.
I pried that sucker free with a grunt, retaining the husk of the now burnt-out Relic in my Storage, then popped in Eldritch Hair Tonic.
This time, I wasn’t at all surprised when Synthia sprouted a trio of wrist thick hair tentacles, which were so long she could use them as legs. In a blink, she went from Shellfish Power Ranger to Crimson Predator. Those hair tentacles would not only allow her to move more quickly, they’d also significantly extend her effective reach. And since she only needed two of the tentacles to lift herself into the air, I didn’t feel at all bad about fusing a circular saw to the end of one of the new hair limbs.
Between the chainsaw, the tentacle circular saw, and her crab claw hand she was now a triple threat.
As with Drumbo, I banished Synthia back into the spatial void, then took a few minutes to raid the corpse cooler for extra body parts. There was a good chance I’d need to repair my minions on the fly and there was no guarantee we’d be able to make it back to the store. Maybe Ed’s paranoia was spreading, but I figured it was better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. Once I’d stocked up on my gruesome supplies, I swung back over to the Spin Cycle to pick up my freshly laundered clothes.
I found them waiting for me, neatly folded and still warm.
I awkwardly thanked the Brownies, then quickly ducked out of the laundry mat before they decided to sacrifice something other than a pizza to my name. Feeling a thousand times better now that I had clean clothes and a hot shower, I swung by the Pharmacy and collected Jakob, then used the DeWalt Etheric Walkie Talkies to page the others.
Temp was in the breakroom catching up with Ajax, learning all about what was happening at the Hold, while Croc was loitering over in the refrigerated section, eating as much Froyo as the mimic could shove into its face hole. I told Croc to meet us over at the breakroom, then Jakob and I took off to go find Ed and Woodstock.
Thankfully, I could hear the bird squawking from halfway across the store.
The pair were sitting in our makeshift food court, the bird threatening anyone who got too close with a violent and fiery death, while Ed stuffed his face with an unreasonable amount of food. Greasy paper plates and balled up napkins covered most of the table and from the look of things, he’d demolished almost an entire pizza by himself. He was working on the last slice, which was piled high with crushed Doritos, then smothered in liquid cheese from the nacho dispenser. Ed’s eyes were bloodshot red, and I had a sneaking suspicion that he’d imbibed a fair amount of weed during our short absence.
His snacking habits certainly seemed to confirm my suspicion.
Still, when I told him we were gearing up to go, he just nodded, managed to devour what remained of his unholy pizza pie, then quickly pulled himself from the table and brushed his grease smeared hands against his jeans.
“This place is awesome, Hoss,” he said, blinking slowly. “Once we take down the signal, I may never leave this place again. Pizza, nachos, hotdogs and snacks that just endlessly refill themselves? I don’t think I was this happy even before noclipping into the Backrooms. The entertainment is great, too.”
“Entschuldigung, entertainment?” Jakob asked curiously. “I wasn’t aware that Dan had added any sort of entertainment.”
“Not that kind of entertainment,” Ed said, waving away Jakob’s words. “I mean people watching. The monster thing, Ponypuff? She just yelled at one Delver so bad that he stared openly weeping. It was…” He lifted his hand and made the chef’s kiss gesture. “I laughed so hard I thought I might puke. She’s even meaner than Woodstock and no one’s meaner than Woodstock.”
“Kill you with fire,” Woodstock agreed, eyeing the monstrous pony working the register with open admiration.
“Do we really have to go?” Ed asked, sounding equal parts sad and resigned.
I grunted and nodded.
“Well, can’t say that I’m any rush to leave this place,” he replied, “but the sooner we take down the signal, the sooner I can close that chapter of my life for every. Let’s get at it, kemo sabe.”
