The glowing line leading me deeper into the backrooms guides me to the end of the room. I reach it without incident and follow it as I step into another hallway connecting various sets of rooms.

A part of me is a bit surprised to find that no monsters or any sort of goofy liminal nonsense happens to me as I slip out of the room. I am thankful, of course, but it’s a bit weird. I don’t look this gift horse in the mouth and I continue my walk, navigating down a narrow hallway with cautious eyes.

My senses are alive in new ways right now, allowing me to hear the hum of the lights that quash any hopes of silence from a disturbingly long distance away. “Super Soldier”, a perk I now own, magnifies my capabilities to four times peak human, which is a hilariously high bar especially in a setting like this, and this allows me to be certain that there is nothing of note nearby.

I begin to experience the monotony of exploring the backrooms almost immediately. Minutes turn to hours as I familiarize myself with an eerie landscape made up of mono yellow walls, bizarre hallways that lead to nearly identical rooms, and the annoying hum of the walls.

During this time my sole companion has been the long thin line I follow endlessly. The “sights” I see are bizarrely similar, with only slight variations. After a while I begin to entertain myself by looking for minute differences between rooms and hallways, sometimes things as minor as counting how many piles of mushrooms exist in a single room or hallway versus how many I spotted in a room I passed by an hour ago. All the while I diligently follow the glowing line.

At this point I’ve learned to trust my perks. I’ve seen firsthand how reliable they are, and I know that the ethereal trail I’m following is guiding me towards my destination: a way out of this bizarre, desolate wasteland. I keep my eyes open as I wander through the unnatural, supernaturally empty space.

As I wander deeper and deeper into the surreal and indifferent wasteland I’m now in, I find myself remarkably grateful for some very surprising perks. “Reduced Sustenance” is a godsend that allows me to wander nonstop for what must be close to twelve hours before I begin to feel even the slightest pang of hunger, and “Mental Resistance” allows me to simply focus on moving towards my destination.

Eventually I do begin to feel some actual hunger. When I do I pause and study my surroundings, all while I recall everything I currently know about my current situation and the new items, all of which are fiat-backed, in my possession.

The first thing I know is that I am trapped in the first level of the backrooms. The second thing I know is that I can leave, so long as I can survive the treks I need to undertake to make it to exits situated throughout the levels. I also know that I have remarkably valuable items in my possession, things that wanderers and survivors would quite literally kill for, invaluable objects like bottles of almond water and various meals and consumables.

I also know that I “possess” a wandering safe haven in the form of “Outpost Apollonian’, a place that supposedly follows me throughout this strange place. I pause my trek, in the middle of a hallway, and decide to experiment with one of my more valuable abilities: “Quest Markers”. I envision myself heading towards the outpost, and after a few seconds of focus I watch the line begin to move of its own accord. It is now leading me into a room not far from my current position.

I follow after it, curious to see where it leads because it is not telling me to go back the way I came. I only have to wander for five minutes, exploring just a small handful of rooms and cramped hallways before I find myself in front of a real, working door. I grin when I open the door and spot the exact hallway I walked through to exit the outpost at the start of my journey.

I walk until I’m in one of the small rooms that has a bed and when I reach it I sit down on the floor and take off my backpack. I open the thing up and I look through it, finding a range of items. Of immediate importance are things like a large book that I retrieve from the pack, and my stockpiles of weapons, as well as a number of meals packed into tight, generic packaging.

I retrieve one and begin to eat, enjoying a meal consisting of rather cold meats and plain veggies. I eventually down some almond water and shiver in delight as I feel the cool liquid begin to help me relax. The valuable nutrients within the restorative liquid immediately work with my new perks to help me recover completely from the stress I endured during my arduous trek this far into the backrooms.

While I adjust to the sensation of life in the backrooms I use my telekinesis to open the book and begin to read it. I immediately discover that it is about the backrooms and so I commit to reading some of it every day.

The first part of the book is all about the backrooms broadly, explaining things like “Splicing”, an ability that I myself possess thanks to two perks, and the nature of items like almond water. I skim this section, making sure to note the big details all while speed reading. I grin when I reach the section about the part of the backrooms I’m in: “The Halls”. 

This level is this continuity’s version of a classic backrooms environment: the dreaded, sometimes insanity-inducing, monochromatic office room. I take my time and read through the books notes on this level. I knew about this version of the backrooms long before I embarked on my chain which is helpful and this book confirms that what I recall about this continuity’s take on the entrance to the backrooms is mostly correct.

There are minor details that I had forgotten about during my time in Chronicle. One important example of a thing I didn’t recall is that it actually is possible to find other people in this version of this level and that it’s possible for people to form settlements and even cities, but that those cities are impossibly rare. I could find one, if I wanted, but that’s because I possess a hell of a power in the form of “Quest Markers”.

With “Quest Markers” if it’s possible for me to find something and I want to find it… I can get to it, eventually. This simple fact is greatly reinforced by my telekinetic abilities, which tremendously enhance my ability to reach locations since I can do things like fly with ease.

I spend an hour intimately familiarizing myself with the section of my book on this level. By the time I’m done I feel a bit tired and so I take the container I just emptied and put it in my inventory, causing the thing to vanish as it enters a realm I control. My new abilities are tremendously helpful and I fully intend to make use of them to make this trip easier.

I walk out of the room and through the hallway until I find myself in front of the closed door leading in and out of the outpost. When I do I place a hand on the door and activate a new power of mine named “Lock Down” which freezes the door so completely the only way for someone to open the door is if I say so and only if I undo my power.

Once I do this I take a few minutes to memorize every square inch of this space and to explore it fully until I find that there are no other entrances or exits. This means that I am as safe as I possibly can be, a fact which helps me relax as I walk to one of the bedrooms and almost throw myself onto one of the beds. I fall asleep almost instantly, not even bothering to undress.

I wake up sometime later and immediately check my surroundings. I am unsurprised to find that I am safe, and so I immediately get up and begin to move. I telekinetically grab my backpack and put it on as I focus on my broader goal of exiting this level and eventually the backrooms altogether. This causes the glowing line I used yesterday, as far as I can tell, to reassert itself in my vision and I begin to follow it again.

I reach the door leading out of the outpost, unfreeze it, slip past it, and then freeze it again. In minutes I am in new territory, venturing deeper and deeper into the backrooms. This marks the beginning of a period that lasts for a while, after a few days of monotony I stop keeping track of the days, but I do know that eventually about a month must have passed...

My days begin with me exiting my outpost, which never fails to be more than a short walk away from me, and going on a painfully long walk. During the walk I busy myself by doing small things like reading my book or tending to the arms I now own, and each walk lasts an entire day.

I spend at least a dozen hours, usually closer to fifteen or sixteen, a day walking. I do not encounter any other living beings, and occasionally I come across the long abandoned ruins of things like makeshift homes or even massive rooms where multiple homes and other “buildings” made from scraps of carpet fill out rooms that are easily multiple miles long.

My days end with me slipping back into my outpost and locking it down. When I do I eat a single meal, drink some almond water, and do some light reading, take a quick “shower” in a bathroom like area within the outpost that has enough space for multiple people to use it at once, and finally go to bed. This routine lasts a full week before anything noteworthy happens.

On my seventh day in the backrooms I finish off one box of meals. Each of the compartments within my backpack is larger than the backpack itself, and I assume my backpack can only contain the boxes where individual items are safely stored because of some combination of liminal surreality and fiat-backing.

I deposit the empty box into my inventory, and go to bed unworried because I am already cognizant of the basic rules about this kind of thing: fiat-backed items tend to replenish themselves if given enough time, unless their descriptions explicitly forbid it. When I wake up and leave the room I’ve claimed as my bedroom I immediately find a new box of meals waiting for me.

I immediately use my telekinesis to stuff the box into my backpack, grateful for some basic confirmation regarding my long term survivability as well as the fully supernatural nature of my backpack, which momentarily opens up wide enough for me to put the box inside of it before returning to its normal size.

Other than this, and a nearly identical event concerning a box within my backpack containing almond water some days later, my first… month or so in the backrooms passes without incident. There is something brutal, psychologically about the difficulties that come with a month of true isolation in a landscape as desolate as the first level of the backrooms. I do not suffer, a lot at least, during this time because of my items, meta-knowledge, and perks, but I know that normal people would not have as good a go of it as I’ve been having.

Normal people would lack my resources, probably the single most helpful sort of things I possess, and they’d lack my meta-knowledge and perks. With my items anyone made of decently stern stuff, psychologically, could survive like I have been so far.

Maybe thirty three or so days into the world’s longest hike something breaks the monotony of my trip so far: I encounter something. Something is a powerful word, since I am in another long room and on the far end of it is a single and strange animal.

The room I’m in is as yellow, damp, and unpleasant as any other room so far in my journey has been, but it differs in a single, powerful respect: it is occupied. Each of the four corners of the room is filled with large mushrooms, and my powerful senses allow me to determine that the creature on the other end of the room is currently going to town on one particularly large mushroom, wantonly devouring it. I use my truly superhuman vision to study the monster and note how powerful its muscles seem to be, all while taking advantage of several of my new perks.

I am affected by a number of perks that affect my senses, some of which also affect my surroundings. One of the big perks at work right now is “Super Soldier”, the perk that makes me a true superhuman by bolstering every aspect of me to the extent that if someone were to quantify my physical stats they’d be four times greater than those of a peak human. At the same time I’m getting to see the practical impact of other perks which have not been especially notable since I’ve been by myself, such as “Overclocked FPS” which allows me to see the world at a rate that makes everything around me look like it’s in slow motion, which synergizes with “Slow Down”, a perk I’ve been using to passively enhance my speed. 

The thing in the distance is a hound, a gigantic, incredibly aggressive, and worryingly common type of entity encountered throughout multiple backrooms continuities. Hounds can be described, perhaps overly simplistically, as the backrooms version of something approaching a caricature of wolves, if you made them incredibly dumb and astoundingly aggressive. I am a powerful, perk-packed being, and I am still tempted to turn around and take a longer way to reach my destination rather than to try and deal with the beast ahead of me.

A perk, one of my new ones, prevents me from feeling fear in a traditional sense but the sight of the beast ahead of me still makes me do mental calculations as to whether or not it’s worth taking the time to engage the animal when I have viable ways to get around it. I could easily backtrack and take an alternative route so I don’t have to deal with the monster, but at the same time if I avoid this encounter then I lose out on a valuable resource…

In Chronicle I would have been considered a social-type jumper: a jumper who focused on social aspects of life and whose primary means of navigating the world was to use social relationships to my advantage. My telekinesis was a powerful secret weapon, but it was something that I kept a secret and that I tended to avoid using in big situations. With the perks I received when I first arrived here my strategy can change.

In this setting I can be a powerful hunter, and the perks I received from Generic First Person Shooter incentivize such a strategy… In my repertoire of death and destruction, I possess perks that allow me to kill enemies and raise them as zombies under my control and I have an ability to summon generic versions of enemies I’ve faced and defeated as minions that serve me and follow my commands.

It takes me a few seconds to decide that this is as good a chance as any to practice some of my newer, more game-changing abilities. I reach into my pack and pull out a sniper rifle, even as I begin to activate “One Shot”. “One Shot” is a perk that lets me charge an attack, increasing its damage output. I kneel and look down the scope of my gun so I can aim my attack as effectively as possible, even as perks begin to subtly stir and come to life within me.

Experience that I “have” (thanks to perks) that I never earned with guns and other ranged weapons begins to guide my most minute of actions, subtly guiding me and making my inexperience with these kinds of weapons a non-issue. I feel myself grow increasingly familiar with the weapon I am using even as my next attack passively continues to grow in power while I study the gigantic beast I am about to kill.

I spend a full minute charging my attack before I sigh and take the shoot. I feel the recoil of the gun, but my enhanced strength coupled with my innate, perk-granted knowledge of this kind of weaponry allows me to endure the vibrations and watch as the bullet rockets towards the distant beast. Even with my perception of reality the bullet speeds through the air before slamming into the flank of the monster. The bullet penetrates the beast and I immediately feel it die as multiple perks work in sync to increase the damage done to the beast.

Energy surges into me as the beast dies, and I sense my most useful perks affect reality as a handful of objects materialize next to the fallen monster. I have perks that warp reality in game-like ways such as materializing supplies whenever I defeat an enemy and causing me to feel energized whenever a foe falls.

I smile as I feel an opportunity to raise the monster, an opportunity which I take when I close my eyes and willingly expend a small amount of energy. The extra energy I just gained fades from my body, which is not a pleasant sensation but I take the loss in stride as I begin to walk towards the corpse which is already beginning to get up.

I take a beat to reach the beast, and when I do I immediately get a chance to make use of other perks I now possess. The creature still has a surprisingly large hole in its body, precisely where my bullet slammed into its torso, and I intend to heal that. I watch as the creature turns to face me, moving in slow motion, and I sigh in relief when it looks at me passively rather than with nearly mindless hatred. Dark blood spills out of the hole, and I watch as it pools beneath the monster.

I point a finger at the monster and I make use of “Bullet Hell”, a perk that lets me fire projectiles even without a gun, that are color coded and enact a series of effects depending on the color. A green projectile rockets out of my finger and touches the head of the canine, instantly beginning to heal the beast. In seconds the bullet hole that marked the end of the hound’s life seals itself, its thick hide stitching itself back up. I watch the flesh mend itself and am slightly grossed out by the sight of it but I am still thankful that I have this handy ability.

By the time the process is done the hound looks exactly how it did in life, and it continues to regard me with an impressive passivity. I study the hound with a smile and I activate “Respawning Mooks”, which causes a menu to appear in my mind’s eye that currently denotes two types of enemies: “Gangsters”, and “Hounds”.

“Gangsters” being on the list is interesting since it means that my adventures back in Chronicle are, at least in this regard, carrying over. It also means that I can summon human minions even without cloning myself, which is an ability I can now do.

“Hounds”, of course, are also on the list. They are the only other direct option on the menu, but there are two more sections on the thing that I opt to investigate: “Upgrades” and “Vehicles”. I scan the “Upgrades” section first and note that I can purchase things like ranged weapons for my summoned gangsters, and enhancements to the hounds that make them larger and more deadly. The fact that I have to purchase ranged weapons for my gangsters means that by default they must not come with them, but the ability to spawn bodies, even and especially human ones, that I can command and incorporate into my strategies is intriguing and an ability I will definitely be leveraging sometime in the future.

When I study the “Vehicles” section I am delighted to see that I can purchase vehicles of various sizes, which if purchased will allow me to summon, desummon, and then resummon a pair of vehicles a few times a day, and each time they get resummoned they get fully repaired and refueled. This would tremendously improve my ability to traverse this landscape, as well as my ability to help others across it if I start a faction of my own. I spend a moment studying this menu, before wondering if I can somehow earn some “in-store” currency or something to purchase the upgrades and vehicles, before a notification appears and urges me to put something in the menu.

I walk over to a mushroom and rip it from the floor. Doing so takes me a moment, but when the mushroom is in my gloved hand I lift the thing and watch the menu ask me if I want to turn the fungus into in-store currency. This makes me smile, and so I allow it to consume the fungus, which causes the thing to disappear and for me to get a single unit of currency from the store. I wince at the sight of the exchange, and I decide to experiment with other things I can gather and sell, to see if everything only gets me a single unit of currency or if the fungus is unique for some reason.