Mere minutes after I killed the monster sound fills the air in the room. Distantly a pair of generic, “Respawning Mooks” style hounds, work on harvesting mushrooms, while the zombified hound I created when I slew the first entity I’ve encountered since I arrived here is beside me awaiting orders.

I myself have begun the grind of working to obtain a few thousand in-store units of currency so I can purchase upgrades for my minions. I study the zombified hound as I consider the different options available to me in the upgrade menu.

Currently I have two types of spawnable minions: gangsters and hounds. The upgrades for hounds are cheaper than the ones for gangsters, because the ones for hounds make them bigger, stronger, and do not give them new forms of attack. The upgrades for gangsters, on the other hand, do give them new abilities, particularly a ranged attack in the form of guns. Expanding the abilities of my minions, rather logically, costs more than upgrading their existing abilities.

If I want gangsters to be as powerful a minion-type as they can be, I need to purchase the gun upgrade for them. As it stands right now I could outfit them with some of my spare weapons but doing so would cause me to risk losing the guns and I don’t know how fast such weapons replenish. Thankfully ammo is a non-issue since I have an item that gives me the ability to create ammo in a range of forms with no difficulty, sadly ammo without guns isn’t all that useful aside from when it comes to things like grenades.

Distantly one of the hounds rips a mushroom from the floor. I don’t even turn and look at the thing, I simply use telekinesis to lift the fungus into the air and bring it to me. When it is in my possession I put it in the menu and watch how much currency I have increase by a single unit.

I take a single step and activate one of my abilities, “Always Cover”, an ability which lets me manipulate things I’m in contact with. I target the carpet underneath me and I manipulate all of the carpet I can, which is all of it in a range of five meters around me. The stuff is concentrated into a single thick ball that I grab and put into the menu that allows me to summon minions and upgrade them. The floor underneath the carpet is simple stone, almost like we’re actually in a poorly decorated cave…

I am delighted to find that this time I get five units of the currency, and this significant leap makes my goals feel much more possible. Especially since every room in this blasted place has carpet…

I shut my eyes and utilize an ability I’ve never actually used before: my power to clone myself. This vital ability allows me to create three clones of myself and in seconds I am perceiving reality through a curiously video-game-like split screen. My eyes are closed but the eyes of my clones are not, and our minds are connected, allowing me to effortlessly use their senses as well as my own, and allowing them to do the same thing.

I open my eyes and look at them curiously. They are all dressed in full body tactical armor like I am, and no one can see our eyes or any part of our bare bodies. One of them wields a large shotgun, another holds a combat knife, and the final one is holding a rifle, all of which are sourced from my “Your Arsenal” item.

I nod at them and they instinctively know what I want them to do. For the next few minutes we get to work tearing up portions of the carpet in the room and depositing the clumps of carpet in the menu, steadily clearing out the room. Once we’re done I have almost 250 units of currency in my menu, and that brings a smile to my face. When we’re done we begin to move again, and this becomes an infrequent part of my daily routine, but with a slight twist.

For the next few days my new retinue, which consists of my summoned hounds, the zombified hound, my clones, and myself, continue to venture deeper into the backrooms. Periodically my two clones will take a hound and split off from the rest of us. During this time they’ll go a few rooms away and extract the carpet in the room for the sake of slowly increasing how much currency I have. They’ll then use flight, telekinesis, and some of our other newer abilities, like parkour and post-peak-human speed to rejoin us, or head straight for Outpost Apollonian if we’ve been out exploring for hours and hours already.

Our trip here would be massively extended if I extracted the carpet from every room I’ve explored, and it’d create a massive, unignorable trail leading to us if we did that. A part of me sincerely wishes I could have gone to Generic Merchant before I came here. There’s a perk in there that lets me turn stuff into money, which would be incredibly handy right now.

This is the only modification of note made to my schedule in the wake of me defeating the hound, though I do endeavor to hone my telekinetic abilities and to continue to train my powers so I’ll occasionally work to perform varied telekinetic feats while my party and I brave the loneliness of the backrooms. We continue our long, unrelenting expedition, and days turn to weeks, which eventually turns into a period of time roughly equal to a month and a half.

On my seventy-seventh or so day in the backrooms my party finds ourselves in front of an unusual sight. We are standing right at the edge of a hallway and directly ahead of us is a vast… sea of some sickly looking, wine-colored fluid, covering the submerged floor of the room. I study the scene ahead of me and I note that the line I’ve been following unrelentingly for weeks not only leads us here but stretches ahead of us and disappears at the other end of the mile-long room.

“Alright… I guess we can only continue by flying across the sea of carpet fluid.” I remark, before I lift myself up with my telekinesis and I am quickly joined by my companions. I desummon the hounds, able to just summon them again on the other side of the sea, and I use telekinesis to lift the zombified hound into the air. The thing passively stares at me and waits for me to do something.

I warn my companions to make sure their telekinetic force fields are on, and I reinspect my own for a beat. I am quickly satisfied when I feel that the thing is still operational, which takes me grabing one of my pistols and using it to impact the force field that surrounds me.

In the wake of the new perks I’ve collected my Chronicle force field is actually only one layer of protection out of several, but I am still delighted to find it operational and protectively covering me. My clones discover the same thing, and in no time at all the four of us, plus the undead hound, are sailing through the air high above the noxious fluid covering the eroded floor beneath us.

We all sail through the air, each of us individually using telekinesis. My clones are as powerful as I am, making this ability truly terrifying even in the hands of a baby jumper, and what’s more is that this ability allows me to train my powers at four times the rate that I normally could. This is one of my favorite cloning perks aside from the one in Generic Cartoon World, Stunt Doubles, which lets me make ten clones rather than three, even if it has other limitations that make it less useful in some respects than this power is.

We leisurely sail through the air above the sea of life-threatening fluid. The stuff is one of the “Objects” identified in my book on the backrooms, I recognize it from the color and the fact that there is so much of the fluid, as the book states that it’s not uncommon for wanderers to find a sea of the stuff in sections of the level. I think it wouldn’t harm me, due to perks I possess, but I’d still rather not find out and I know it’d harm my minions if I let them wade into the stuff since they are so much shorter than I am.

My companions and I sail above the wine-colored ocean, unbothered by the fluid. As we traverse the strange ocean, I am allowed to see an example of how powerful perks from another setting can be. Even something as simple as flight is an unparalleled power in this particular setting, since so many threats are confined to the ground.

With this power I could fight a hundred hounds and be hilariously unbothered by them since they lack the ability to fly. There are flying threats in this version of the backrooms, which does differentiate it from any version of the liminal archives I’m familiar with, such as female deathmoths, but they are rare and they’d make valuable targets since if I hunt one I can summon more of them. Gaining flying allies and servants beyond my clones would be incredibly handy, since it’d mean that my faction could take to new heights and utilize ranged weapons more effectively than we can at the moment.

We fly for several minutes, continuing to move above a vast sea of noxious fluid. The fluid, normally a real danger to anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in limspace is not at all able to affect us. Eventually we follow the line long enough that we see a room that is not covered in the unnatural stuff. When we reach the room we all land on it, and I grin beneath my mask. My allies fly over and past me, taking the hound with them, and when we are all settled I turn and look down the long stretch of rooms we’ve flown through.

I watch the sea for several moments as one of my clones resummons my minions and begins to explore the small room we’re in. Behind me the line stretches on for an unknown length, going deeper and deeper into the level. I eventually turn my attention back to my allies, and nod at my clones and minions. We resume our journey into the backrooms, but don’t have to wait long to come across more excitement.

We make it a few rooms past the wine-colored sea without any sort of surprises but about an hour after our adventure we reach a narrow hallway and I faintly hear the sounds of distant conflict. The soft, at this distance, sounds of violence reach my ears, and I hear a very human pained cry emanate from somewhere in the distance, some rooms ahead of me. I glance at my clones and hounds and urge my followers to follow me before I sprint off towards the source of the sounds.

I begin to move, making use of my new max speed for the first time. My new physique comes with a new baseline for my speed, elevating me past a normal peak human in terms of both speed and endurance. I take advantage of this, coupled with “Super Sprint”, a powerful perk that lets me activate a short-lived burst of speed that moves me at four times my normal max speed, which was already multiplied by four when I became a “Super Soldier”. This speed is further enhanced by my ability to speed up my own movements with perks like “Speed Up” and “Speed Down”.

In nanoseconds I reach the end of the hallway and then I am charging through the next room, a large and empty space. The slowed sounds of some distant conflict reach my ears, louder now, and I continue to dart towards the conflict. My enhanced physique coupled with my powerful perception allow me to trust my instincts as I race towards some mysterious conflict, unsure of what I am about to see.

I feel “Super Sprint” recharge when I reach the end of the room I’m in and I activate it as I enter the next space I’m running through. I feel my body rocket forward as I begin to approach the source of the commotion.

I dash through a few connected rooms and cross a distance of a few miles in a handful of seconds thanks to the fact that I’m actually running thirty-two times faster than a peak human can. My surroundings blur as I speed through this part of the backrooms.

I eventually reach the source of the sounds and I am unpleasantly surprised when I find that I can’t see a thing. I’m at the end of a large room and ahead of me is a hallway that is pitch black. This is one of the rarest types of rooms on this level in this continuity, a space where light refuses to illuminate the gloom and a home for a particularly savage type of entity.

The sounds emanate from somewhere ahead of me, and I reach inward and activate a new perk: “Advanced Sensors”. This perk causes there to be a visual overlay that allows me to perceive reality in new and advanced ways.

Whenever I blink my vision changes, allowing me to do things like see in the infrared spectrum, and with x-ray vision. This allows me to perceive the large room ahead of me, and the conflict that is occurring within it.

The room ahead of me is a large square space, and in the middle of it is a woman who is on the floor, bleeding. Four strange creatures surround her, monsters with the forms of gigantic cats and with Cheshire Cat smiles: Smilers.

Smilers are devious bastards that in this continuity cannot stand the light, and so hostilely attack anything they can lure into the dark that has technology that can be used to project light. I retrieve my pistol and I dart forward, aiming the gun at the smiler closest to the woman. I fire two rounds and the sounds of the gun cause the creatures to begin to turn towards me, moving in slow motion even as the bullets speed towards the entity.

I make my way to one of the smiles further away from the woman and I hit it with a closed fist, even as I use gestureless telekinesis to assault some of the other monsters. The cats are massive, the size of panthers at least, but they weigh surprisingly little. This works to their disadvantage, allowing me to lift them into the air and toss them towards their ally.

The bullets hit the smiler and the beast lets out a piercing yowl as it is critically injured by the first bullet. The second projectile kills them, and I watch as the fact that my foes are in close proximity to each other come back to bite them. The second bullet inflicts grievous harm on my foe, and does more than enough damage to end its life. I sense the ability to summon smilers under my control suddenly become a thing I can do, and watch as the smiler closest to the deceased one suddenly roar in pain as the excess damage leaps from its deceased pack-mate to it. This noise stuns the other smilers, and I telekinetically toss the third smiler, the least harmed of the monsters, towards its friends even as I point a finger at my foes and release a powerful burst of lightning at them.

“Arc Railgun” is how I can do this, a perk that grants me offensive-focused electrical abilities. The lightning dances through the air between my foes and I before it hits one of the smilers, the one I punched. This causes the cat to mewl in pain, even as the electrical energy begins to surge towards the cat’s nearest companion. I glance at the fallen woman, and use telekinesis to reach out and ungracefully pull her towards me. She skids across the floor, groaning all the while, and when she’s away from the monsters I use “Always Cover” to create most of a dome around the two of us.

Carpet and stone begin to surround us, and as it does I reach into my pack and pull out a grenade. I pull the pin and then I toss it at our foes, some distance away from us. When the thing clears the dome I close it completely and move the woman behind me. A few moments pass, though due to my enhanced perception it feels like forever, and then I feel, and hear, the explosion of the grenade. The fallen figure beside me groans in pain, as she feels the floor beneath her vibrate slightly. I turn towards her and I focus on a neat trick I can now do.

The air around me begins to warm up as I turn on a handy ability I possess: “Healing Aura”. Normally this ability would cause the air to heat up and for me to light up, and in fairness my thermal vision detects this, but since I’m in some bizarre room that defies physics I can’t see such a direct change with my mundane vision. I watch as the woman’s wounds begin to close, and as her overall state begins to improve. It is not tremendously fast, but it’s still happening before my eyes which signals how quick it is and the fact that it’s faster than my own body-mod granted healing factor.

“There there, I got you.” I tell the woman, even as I purposefully slow down my perception of reality so that I can match her speed. I kneel down and pick up the light figure, even as I mentally tell my clones to stay here. I unmake the protective dome I created with a thought, and I adjust my goals so that my line is guiding me towards my outpost. I see the line with my thermal vision and I begin to follow it. She groans in pain as I take us towards my rather odd mobile home.

Reaching the outpost takes us a few minutes of walking through the dark and right when I reach the room where the door is located I step into a room where light works. This allows me to see the woman, and actually take in her details.

She is a somewhat short, surprisingly tan brunette, dressed in casual clothes that are clearly made from some carpet, indicating that either she is a skilled tailor or that she has been here long enough to find other people who can make clothes from the carpet. Some of her body is exposed, but nothing intimate. Her wounds are healing, cuts becoming less deep and eventually healing altogether. She is still not all here, mentally, and I can tell she is still in pain. Something that surprises me is that she has dog ears, somehow, and I have no clue how that’s possible. They are real things, naturally affixed to her head, above her human ones. Her mind is a mess, something I can feel due to my proximity to her and a handy psionic ability set I possess.

I reach the door, open it with telekinesis and step past it, desummoning one of my clones so that I can use him as a guard in the outpost just in case, and order the other two to secure the area where the door is located even as I take the woman with me into my outpost. I step into one of the nearby bedrooms and place her on a bed placed on the floor.

I sit down in front of her, and as she slowly begins to return to her senses I reach into my pack and withdraw a meal secured in a plastic container and a bottle of almond water. I open the bottle before I slowly approach her and hand her the thing. She has a dazed look in her eyes, but I can see her wits are slowly returning even as she reaches out and takes the bottle from me. She seems confused at the thing and only moves when I pantomime the action of drinking the bottle. She mimics this but as soon as the liquid touches her lips her eyes widen slightly and she begins to regain some semblance of autonomy.

The more of the bottle she downs the more her wits seem to return to her. Her eyes widen when she finally, fully, perceives me. To be fair, I am a mysterious figure who saved her from a dark room and a horrible fate, and I am also dressed in full combat-ready body armor, wearing a mask that covers my entire face. I look… scary.

“I… My mind is still a mess.” She says, speaking with a surprisingly deep voice, seconds after she finishes the bottle and looking at me in confusion and… something else I can’t quite recognize. I nod at her.

“It’s okay. You’re safe. I rescued you from a pack of smilers.” I explain, succinctly. She trembles when she learns this and I give her a second to take in this news.

“My friends… My mom.” She says, after a few seconds of processing what I said. My eyes widen when she talks about her mom, as the implications are bizarre.

I’m unsure of whether or not she is somehow mentally broken by this place and thinks she’s in a place where she can reach her mom, or if her mom is actually in the backrooms. If her mom is here, is this woman a native of the backrooms, someone born and raised here or has she somehow encountered a relative in the backrooms, a space easily the size of continents if not whole planets?