As per the Keep-What-You-Kill rule of the Backrooms, Jakob and Temperance took the liberty of looting Kevin, while I picked through the eviscerated Kathy’s spatial core.

  The haul was better than I could’ve hoped for and after wading through the same type of low-level Relics for weeks on end, it felt good to finally get something new. Kathy had three Relics—a single Rare-grade and a pair of Uncommons—as well as one Rare Relic Shard. So far, the Shards had mostly served as currency, but in theory they could be used to craft actual, bonafide Relics. I hadn’t had much luck with it and everything I’d attempted to make resulted in trash-tier garbage, which was usually more of a curse than a blessing.

  If I could start crafting my own Uncommon or Rare Grade Relics, however, I’d need to take another stab at it… Not now, obviously, but once I had a little downtime and wasn’t in a hostile deathscape filled to the brim with murderous Dwellers who might try to feed me into a whirling lawnmower blade.

  The Rare-grade, fittingly called Eldritch Hair Tonic, was a bit of a mixed bag. It took the form of a bottle of cheap MLM shampoo that promised “super-human hair roots with the strength of ten full grown chimpanzees” right on the label. Apparently, it was the Relic responsible for the batshit crazy leg-tentacles that had been growing out of Kathy’s skull. When equipped, the user would sprout powerful tentacles capable of acting as extra limbs. The more levels the Relic had, the more tentacles you grew and the more autonomous they became.

  On paper, it wasn’t half-bad assuming you didn’t mind looking like a nightmare version of Doc Ock. Problem was, if you equipped the Relic for long enough, eventually the changes became permanent, and it was impossible to remove the Relic from your Spatial Core.

  I’d picked up something similar on the first floor called Mask of the Faceless. It increased sound and smell sensitivity by 10% each day, while simultaneously decreasing eyesight by 10% each day. Eventually you ended up without a face. No eyes. No mouth. Just pasty skin stretched tight over empty sockets. Seriously fucked up. I also had a sneaking suspicion that it slowly transformed Delvers into Dwellers, but that was pure speculation at this point.

  Needless to say, the Hair Tonic was a hard pass for lots of reasons, though it had potential assuming I could find the right Relic to forge it with.

  The real prize, however, was one of the Uncommons, which looked like a ball of orange cat hair mixed with a generous heaping of old phlegm. I’d been around the block long enough to know a giant hairball when I saw one.

  Feral Hairball

  Uncommon Relic – Level 1

  Range: Single Target

  Cost: 35 Mana

  Cooldown: 2 Minutes

  What is the opposite of pspsps? No idea, but you’re definitely gonna want to figure that out before you cast this. What begins as an innocent enough cough quickly escalates into a hacking wheeze that echoes across the battlefield, as you summon a grotesque mass of writhing flesh, matted with orange fur and studded with a disturbing array of twisted cat limbs.

  This sentient hairball latches onto enemies with its razor-sharp claws and teeth, delivering a barrage of frenzied attacks that leave deep, festering wounds behind. Each attack has a 25% chance to inflict Cat Scratch Fever—a truly nasty debuff that deals 1 damage/sec for 30 seconds and further reduces the target’s Health Regeneration by 25% for two minutes.

  The cooldown period was on the longer side, but the ability dealt decent damage, plus it also had a certain disturbing psychological je ne sais quoi that was hard to quantify. It immediately reminded me of Temperance’s Ball of Spiders and also brought to mind the Uncommon Ball of Flies Relic Jakob had received from the Shart-Stain Golem. As far as I knew, Jakob hadn’t done anything with that particular Relic, and I idly wondered if he might be willing to let me experiment on it.

  I was certain the three Relics would synergize well and thanks to the Researcher’s Codex, I could quickly and easily run an Analysis to see what the final product was likely to be. Temperance was due for a few upgrades anyway, and that seemed like a good option.

  The last Relic I pulled from Kathy’s corpse was an Uncommon which resembled a basic smart phone, with only a single app labeled SporeFeed. It was by far the strangest Relic I’d ever seen. It didn’t enable Mana Usage nor was it a purely physical Relic that utilized Stamina. As far as I could tell, it didn’t actually do anything. Not by itself. As the title suggested, it seemed to be an amplifier for some other, more powerful Relic.

  SporeFeed Amplifier

  Uncommon Relic – Level 1

  Range: Linked Neural Network

  Welcome to the future of perception management, because reality is a dystopian nightmare, and the real-world sucks donkey dick!

  Embrace the power of the SporeFeed Social Filter, which seamlessly smooths out the rough edges of reality, applying a virtual airbrush to everything around you. Ugly truths? Gone! Past traumas? Numbed! The inherent messiness of human experience? Eradicated! Stretch marks, unpleasant blemishes, even unsightly face tentacles—all erased right before your very eyes. What more could you possibly ask for?

  While the SporeFeed Amplifier itself doesn’t create new illusions, it does boost the power of all existing SporeFeed illusions within a 50-foot radius, making those illusions brighter, more dangerously convincing, and easier to lose yourself in. Those under the Amplifier’s influence for extended periods may begin to experience lingering effects, such as an inability to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not, even after leaving the Amplifier’s range.

  The more linked Amplifiers in a given area, the more powerful this Relic becomes.

  The SporeFeed Social Filter: Showing life the way it should be!

  It came as no surprise when Jakob reported that Kevin also had a SporeFeed Amplifier tucked away inside his spatial core. The existence of the strange Relic explained some of what was happening around here. Jakob had been right. There was a mass illusion in play and although the Dwellers weren’t the source of that power, they served as mobile wifi routers that boosted the signal. Assuming every single Dweller on this floor had one of these Amplifiers, then it wasn’t hard to understand why the illusion was so powerful and pervasive.

  I still wasn’t entirely sure why the Burger Baron’s Crown wasn’t doing more to protect me, though. It was a Fabled-grade Artifact, for shit’s sake.

  Maybe the illusionary magic of this place just really was that strong? Although I couldn’t discount that possibility, I felt like there was still more to this story than I fully understood.

  Aside from the SporeFeed Amplification Relic, Kevin had also had two other Relics—one Rare, the other Uncommon.

  Unsurprisingly, Lawnmower Wind Blade launched a razor-sharp blade of hardened air. But just like with Kathy’s Eldritch Hair Tonic, the downside was that equipping it radically altered your physical appearance. In this case, by replacing your chest cavity with the underside of a lawnmower. I wasn’t sure how that was anatomically possible—I was pretty sure you still needed things like organs to live—and I had no intention of finding out, especially since the change would become permanent after just a few hours.

  The second Relic, Whiskey Fists, was an Uncommon Stamina-based ability that allowed the user to fly into an uncontrollable drunken rage, drastically increasing Athleticism, Toughness, and Health Regen, while tanking Perception, Resonance, and Grit. Using it also left you with a monstrous hangover, which could linger for an hour or more. Under the flavor text, it read: You know how I get when I drink. Still, I wouldn't have to use the belt if you just behaved better...

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The words hit uncomfortably close to home.

  My dad had never hit me or my brother, but I’d grown up in small-town Ohio, where more than a few of my friends showed up to school with black eyes or broken arms. “Ran into a doorknob” or “fell down the stairs” were the usual excuses, though everyone—including the teachers and the town sheriff—knew the truth. They just didn’t give a shit. It was one of those dark, unspoken realities of suburban life that no one liked to acknowledge.

  None of the Relics fit with my current build, and a small part of me hesitated to even sell the damned things. There were more than a few Delvers who’d be stupid—or desperate—enough to use something like the Wind Blade or the Hair Tonic and wind up as a monster for their trouble. At the same time, I also wasn’t anyone’s babysitter. I wanted to help other Delvers, but it sure as shit wasn’t my job to decide what was best for them.

  I didn’t know what the right thing to do was, but I also didn’t need to decide right now. I still had some time to noodle on things and there was always a good chance that I’d die horrifically before it ever became an issue at all.

  I did, however, bring up my idea about attempting to forge Temperance’s Spider Ball into something newer and better. She was extremely hesitant at first. The lady took an almost perverse pleasure in hitting things in the face with a ball of spiders, but once I explained how much more lethal the spell could be, she perked right up. Jakob still had the Uncommon Ball of Flies Relic sitting in his Storage Space and was more than happy to donate it to the cause. We were a team, after all, and what was good for one of us was good for all of us.

  Besides, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the three would form an unholy abomination of mass destruction—a suspicion the Codex Compatibility Analysis quickly confirmed.

  Writhing Ball of Dire Mosquitoes

  Rare Relic – Level 1

  Range: Single Target

  Cost: 35 Mana

  Cooldown: 30 Seconds

  Statistically, mosquitoes kill more people than any other creature of earth.

  Dire Mosquitoes make regular mosquitos look like little bitches. Just imagine a mosquito the size of a Japanese Murder Hornet with eight legs, quarter inch fangs, and the disposition of a rabid alley cat. Now imagine a hundred of them attacking all at once. Crawling beneath your clothes. Burrowing their way beneath your skin. Laying their young inside your flesh while they eat you alive.

  Yeah, that’s a fucking Dire Mosquito.

  They’re basically nature’s way of telling you to go fuck yourself.

  Ball of Dire Mosquitos inflicts 90 points of Bleeding Damage over 30 seconds, with a 5% chance to trigger Infestation with each cast. When an Infestation occurs, Juvenile Dire Mosquitos burst from the Afflicted victim’s skin, dealing an additional 25 points of Hemophilia Damage and starting the cycle anew at no additional mana cost. Dire Mosquitos also radiate Aura of Pestilence, amplifying disease and poison damage from all other sources by 25% for two minutes.

  Aura of Pestilence can stack up to three times. This Relic enables Mana Usage.

  Everything about the spell was so utterly god-awful that I almost felt bad unleashing it upon the world.

  Temperance had different feelings on the matter.

  “It is truly a thing of horrid beauty,” she said, tearing up a little, before insisting that I forge the Relics. It was hard to fault her. Ball of Dire Mosquitoes was a significant improvement over her current Relic, and it would pair perfectly with her Smallpox ability. Three stacks of Aura of Pestilence would increase her Disease Damage output by double—maybe more. I’d never been much of a math guy, but I knew numbers going up was a good thing.

  By the time we were done raiding the bodies and upgrading Temp’s Relic, the massive illusion that lay over the entirety of the floor had snapped back into place. In a blink, the sky was once more robin’s egg blue, the grass was deep green, and the houses were no longer fleshy tumors. The illusion didn’t banish Kevin or Kathy’s corpses, though. They looked normal again—the tentacles were gone and there was no sign of the lawnmower torso—but they were still, very dead and very dismembered.

  “Don’t suppose you want to clean that up?” I asked Croc, nodding toward the corpses. “I mean, I’ll take what’s left to Taxidermy if you don’t want ’em, but I did promise you a heap of bodies. This could be a good downpayment.”

  The dog, back to looking like a normal golden retriever, grimaced and shook its head.

  “You know, Dan, I never would’ve thought I’d turn down a free meal of delicious corpse meat, but I think I’ll have to pass. And honestly, I think you should leave them here.” The mimic padded over to what remained of Kevin and sniffed. Its tail dropped down between its legs. “These things are sick, Dan. It’s not Blight…” the mimic hesitated. “But it smells almost the same. Rancid, but not in a good way. I’m not the resident expert, but I don’t think you should bring these things back to the store. They could be dangerous.”

  Huh, now that really was unexpected. Croc was rarely wrong about stuff like this, though, so if it said to leave the corpses be, that’s exactly what I planned on doing.

  We jumped back into the golf cart, and I cast Unerring Arrow before we took off, determined to find a way out of this suburban hellhole.

  I was a little worried that the rest of the floor’s residents might now be hostile toward us, but just like with the illusion, everything went right back to normal. Most of the Kevins were still out mowing their lawns or tinkering around in the garage while most of the Kathy’s walked their dogs or drank wine in pairs of two or three. When the sun finally dipped below the horizon and halogen streetlights kicked on in earnest, most of the Kevins stowed their mowers and moved on to other tasks.

  More often than not, that meant grilling.

  Although most of the houses had patios out back, everyone grilled on their driveways, swathed in aprons with spatulas or tongs in one hand.

  There was usually a single Kevin tending to the meat while others loitered about in lawn chairs, sipping generic off-brand beer while they chatted about the local college sports team—in this case, the Sunnyside Wild Cats. The Grill Kevin always seemed to be the Alpha of the group, clacking his tongs authoritatively while the other lesser Kevins trickled by, asking about the doneness of the meat, or suggesting the Cook Kevin flip the burgers.

  It would’ve been a fascinating sociological study if it wasn’t so batshit crazy. Like watching some kind of docuseries on the habits of the North American male, as narrated by David Attenborough.

  Much as I hated to admit it… The food smelled good.

  Great even.

  The tang of barbeque sauce and the sizzle of meat left my mouth watering. I had no intention of partaking, but I caught Croc sniffing at the aroma with a longing expression plastered across its doggo face. Even Temperance seemed half tempted to pull over and grab a bite and it was impossible to miss the outsized growl of her petite stomach. I fished out one of the concession-stand hotdogs from my Spatial Core and offered it to her, but she just screwed up her nose and shook her head.

  The All-Beef Frank was still piping hot, since my personal Subspace Storage System was time-locked, but compared to the rich, heady fragrance of barbeque, the dog smelled terrible. I was hungry but the thought of eating anything other than what the Kevins were grilling was nauseating.

  After another thirty or forty minutes of driving, we finally found ourselves in a cul-de-sac on the edge of the development, bordered only by vast cornfields that stretched out for miles beyond sight. There was a huge cookout in full swing with both Kevins and Kathys swarming all over the place like worker bees, but that wasn’t what caught my eye.

  Nope, we’d finally found the next kiosk and Jakob had been right on the money.

  A huge swatch of cornfield had been flattened and rudely cleared away and in its place was a striped tent in shades of red and yellow with a sign that read Pyro Emporium unfurled along one side. More signs hung from the canvas walls proclaiming one simple word over and over and over. Fireworks!

  I spotted the narrow flap that served as the entrance, but there was no way to get inside. Surrounding the Pyro Emporium Fireworks Popup tent was a solid wall of residents, packed four bodies deep—though these weren’t your typical Sunnysiders.

  The men were noticeably bulkier than their counterparts and wore denim jeans and Carhart jackets instead of khakis and polos. Most were level 35, and every single one of them was named Kyle. The women, all fittingly name Karen, were also level 35 and looked like they spent their weekends doing an aggressive combination of Crossfit and Hot Yoga. There must’ve been a hundred of them in total, all standing silent sentinel around the kiosk.

  Dweller 0.19735A – Symbiotic HOA Thrall – Alpha Kyle [Level 35]

  The Alpha Kyle is the HOA’s enforcer class—a walking middle finger to decency, reason, and drywall everywhere. Unlike the aimless Beta-Bitch Kevins who haunt Eternal Suburbia, this guy is a prized attack dog. A roided-out shitkicker extraordinaire fueled by a diet of Monster Energy, gas station boner pills, and pure, uncut testosterone. If overcompensation were an art form, the Alpha Kyle would be its Mona Lisa.

  Physically, Alpha Kyles are terrifying. They can punch a hole through 5/8ths inch drywall like it’s wet tissue paper—and will happily prove it, especially if you accidentally make eye contact with their girlfriend, the Feral Karen. While Alpha Kyles aren’t exactly tactical geniuses, what they lack in strategy, they make up for in raw aggression. They’re fast, relentless, and maddeningly difficult to take down, especially when hopped up on their signature “Kyle Juice.”

  Unlike the party goers, just a few houses down, the Kyles and Karens didn’t talk. Didn’t move. Didn’t even seem to blink.

  I wasn’t entirely convinced they were even breathing.

  It was like they were fleshy mannequins or maybe robots, who’d been set to standby mode. But I was certain that they wouldn’t stay that way if we tried to get inside that kiosk. Something Jakob had said earlier tickled at the back of my mind, “the residents don’t mind you being here. But they very much mind if you try to leave.” Whatever was calling the shots around here knew we were trying to get out and it was trying just as hard to make sure we didn’t.