The Slave of Urare
The black masses flowed across the ground as though they had become one with the floor itself. They blanketed nearly every inch of the space, leaving almost no trace of the original surface beneath.
The monsters no longer bothered with concealment. They brazenly formed long tentacles and lashed out, seeking to coil around every ankle they could reach.
Minel swept Silence through the air in a wide arc. The tentacles froze solid in an instant, locked into whatever twisted shapes they had taken, then shattered and fell away. Yet the fragments were quickly reabsorbed into the oil puddles.
“…….”
Minel set his stance and drove Silence straight into the center of the nearest oil puddle. The blade sank deep, yet nothing froze.
Still no ice. He needed a proper method of dealing with them—but there was no time to pull out the Backrooms Compendium.
The oil puddles began crawling across the floor with startling speed, dragging themselves forward on black tentacles. What had started as separate puddles at every entrance now flooded the entire chamber. Calling it an oil sea would not have been an exaggeration.
A lone island adrift in a black ocean. That was where Minel, Hina, and Chori stood pressed tightly together.
“Chori. Can you make a house entrance?”
“I-it only works on walls, big sis.”
Even the nearest walls were crawling with monsters.
Then it came.
Rrrrrumble!
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Rrrrrumble!
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The mechanical noises that had been echoing around them swelled exponentially, hammering against their ears. Every machine sound they had heard until now had been nothing more than these creatures mimicking industrial noise.
There was nowhere left to run.
In that moment, something sharp and clear entered Minel’s vision.
“A ladder…….”
He sheathed Silence, seized Chori and Hina under each arm, and sprinted toward the ladder without a second’s hesitation. An ordinary body could never have managed it, but the physical enhancements from the Arcade made carrying both of them at a full run almost effortless.
The oil puddles responded at once, hurling tentacles after them. Minel shook every one of them off with sheer speed and somehow reached the base of the ladder.
Hina scrambled up first and barely managed to catch the child Minel tossed up after her. In those few heartbeats, however, the oil had already risen to Minel’s ankles. Worse—dozens of tentacles erupted from the surface, climbing past his ankles to reach hungrily for his knees and thighs.
Shiiing—!
Minel drew Silence again and carved through every tentacle around him. The intense cold froze them solid mid-air. He drove power into his legs, rolled free, then lunged for the ladder and hauled himself upward.
Crack! Crack!
Frozen tentacles and sheets of oil shattered into glittering shards as his feet tore free of them. When he finally pulled himself onto the platform at the top, Hina let out a long breath.
“They don’t seem able to climb this high. That’s one less thing to worry about.”
Minel nodded and peered down through the grated floor at the oil sea below. Countless tentacles rose from the surface, yet none could quite reach the bottom of the ladder. Amid the churning black liquid, yellow eyes flashed by the dozens.
Then the creatures began belting out every mechanical noise they knew, loud enough to deafen.
Rrrrrumble!
Rrrrrumble!
Clang! Clang!
Clang! Clang!
It sounded like the furious roar of a predator that had just lost its prey. That fury, however, was proof they were safe for the moment.
Minel drew the Backrooms Compendium from his inventory, opened it to the first page, and read the entry aloud for the others.
Sludge is a Normal-form monster that disguises itself as oil puddles. Its surface is as smooth as glass, and it conceals a pair of eyes within. Until those eyes open, it takes no damage of any kind.
It mimics mechanical noises and the clang of metal to scramble its target’s sense of direction. Its tentacles coil upward from the ankles, immobilizing the victim before crushing and smothering them.
It is heavily affected by gravity. Unless the core located between its eyes is destroyed, it will not die.
“It’s a good thing we climbed the ladder! I’m so glad!”
Chori shouted with pure relief, but Hina’s and Minel’s expressions remained grim. When the child looked between them in confusion, Hina spoke quietly.
“This temporary structure definitely isn’t part of the natural Backrooms environment. Someone built it on purpose to escape the Sludge.”
The countless traces they had found on-site made it clear that people came here regularly. The structure had been erected specifically for moments when the Sludge gathered in force.
Minel’s cold gaze swept over the openings that led out of the platform. Three artificial exits: a wall smashed open with a hammer, a window whose glass had been completely shattered, and a massive sewer pipe that had been cut through the middle.
“They must have evacuated through those three places.”
“Who?”
Chori asked, still lost. Hina answered softly.
“The people who used to work here.”
“Other people…….”
Minel carefully observed the movements of the Sludge covering the floor below. Some of them settled quietly into oil puddles again, while the majority dispersed through the various corridor entrances.
He rose to his feet. Now that he knew how to kill them, it was time to clean up.
“I’ll finish them off. Just keep an eye out for anyone coming.”
He launched himself back down to the lower level. Hina drew the Digital Vein and trained it on the three exits leading from the platform.
“Be careful.”
“Yeah.”
Minel approached the nearest oil puddle first. It had pooled innocently beside a stopped machine, looking for all the world like ordinary oil. Yet Minel had clearly seen the yellow eyes flash inside it.
He deliberately stepped on the edge of the puddle.
Splorch.
Black oil splattered sideways. The surface rippled faintly, and a very dim yellow light seeped out from within. Minel tightened his grip on Silence and stomped the puddle again with force.
In that instant the yellow eyes inside blazed open.
Shiiing—
He brought Silence down in a vertical cut, but the moment the tip touched the surface it bounced off with a hollow clang. In its puddle state the surface was hard as glass.
Minel narrowed his eyes slightly and kicked the puddle hard with the tip of his boot.
Splorch—!
The smooth surface ruptured; black liquid burst outward. A pair of yellow eyes flashed in the depths. Minel drove Silence straight between them.
Crrrack—!
The blade pierced the core. The Sludge cracked like fractured glass, then vomited boiling muck and a Blood Crystal from its interior. The tentacles that had been stretching in every direction scraped the empty air and scattered like torn rags.
Shhhhhhrrrk—!
A fishy stench rose from the entire floor as more tentacles lunged for him like leeches. Minel stepped into the center of the mass in a single stride and began targeting the space between every pair of eyes in turn.
Crrrack!
Crrrack!
Crrrack!
The first one burst like boiling water and melted into the floor. The second let out a sticky, gurgling scream. The last one writhed madly and tried to flee; Minel reversed his grip and hurled Silence into its core like a spear.
The moment all three cores shattered, the surrounding Sludge convulsed as though they had shared a single heart. Then they began creeping toward him in unison.
Rrrrrumble!
Rrrrrumble!
Clang! Clang!
Clang! Clang!
The entire floor shuddered like factory machinery. Metal-on-metal impacts rang out from every direction, mixed with the sound of hard components grinding inside the Sludge’s bodies.
There were still too many of them.
Minel immediately retreated and leapt back up onto the temporary structure. Black tentacles raced after him with a metallic shriek.
“They’re slow.”
He climbed the ladder again. The remaining Sludge merely gathered around the base like dogs that had chased a bird up a tree.
After enough time had passed and the creatures dispersed, Minel jumped down once more and methodically slaughtered them. Each time he repeated the pattern, the number of Sludge occupying the chamber dwindled noticeably.
The Blood Crystals they spat out added up to far more than he had spent on the 2nd Floor.
“Not a bad haul.”
When the final Sludge finally died, Minel stood breathing hard, Silence hanging loosely at his side. Not a single black puddle remained anywhere in the space.
That was when Hina’s voice rang out, high and sharp.
“Minel! Someone’s here!”
Minel looked up at her, then snapped his head in the direction she was aiming. Through the hammered-open entrance stood an old man well past sixty, staring at her in panic.
A scrawny frame. Hair half gone. What little remained was straw-white. He wore almost nothing—only a filthy rag barely covering his groin.
Terrified, he raised both hands above his head and sank to the floor on the spot.
“Keep him covered.”
Minel climbed the ladder at speed. He gestured for Chori to stay behind Hina, then approached the old man slowly.
The man did not dare meet his eyes. He was half-prostrate on the ground, his entire body trembling as he muttered the same words over and over through cracked lips.
“Almighty Urare, protect me with eternal lightning. Almighty Urare, protect me with eternal lightning. Almighty Urare, protect me with eternal lightning.”
Minel stopped directly in front of him, Silence still leveled.
Up close, the old man’s skin was cracked like dried earth, and black, hardened oil grime packed the undersides of his nails.
“Stop.”
Minel’s voice was short and sharp.
The old man kept staring at the floor, reciting the same sentence at a mechanical pace.
“Almighty Urare, protect me with eternal lightn—”
Minel lifted the man’s chin with the tip of Silence.
“Who are you?”
Only then did the old man raise clouded eyes to meet Minel’s.
“I-I am… a slave of the Almighty Urare.”
“Urare? What is that?”
Fear and rapture mixed in the old man’s gaze.
“She is… the one who burns us clean… the heart of lightning itself…….”
“…….”
Minel’s brow furrowed. The old man gazed into empty air as though beginning a long sermon.
“She parts the black blood of the Sludge and burns away the rotting flesh. Urare’s lightning does not discriminate among sinners…… It cleanses everyone, everyone—”
He broke off and began to laugh. The sound that scraped out of his dry throat was like an old machine grinding its gears.
The old man spread his hands toward Minel. Calluses and burn scars covered every finger.
“You as well…….”
“…….”
“Will you believe in Urare?”
The old man’s face began to shine as though it had become a sun that transcended all things. But it was not merely light.
Crackle.
Lightning began to pour from every pore of his face.