Three Reasons
The reaction was nothing like when Minel had walked in alone.
Every gaze in the tavern locked onto Minel’s party.
The boisterous chatter died away. Even the rattle of dice across tabletops fell silent.
It was inevitable, really. Beauties who drew the eye the way Hina did were rare, and a child like Chori simply did not exist here.
They had always traveled together, so Minel had never really noticed—but few parties stood out as much as his. And in the Backrooms, standing out was an invitation to danger.
“A family for a party… and you brought a kid all the way up here. Must be pretty strong.”
A low voice cut through the hush.
The man blocking Minel’s path looked to be in his forties. Muscle bulged at his shoulders, visible even through his clothes. The scent of sweat and leather mixed with the tavern’s stale air.
The woman behind him stood a step back, watching him with an easy, smiling gaze—clearly his lover.
“What do you want?”
Minel’s clipped words only made the man smile wider.
“The Backrooms are full of weird bastards, you know? Having people depending on you means you’ve got some sense of responsibility. At least common sense ought to work with you, right?”
“…….”
“Looks like you just came up from the fourth floor. Let’s talk a bit.”
There was real regard in the man’s eyes—the cool appraisal of a veteran sizing up a potential comrade, mixed with quiet respect for someone who had carried a family this far.
Even in the real world, shouldering a household was never easy. In the Backrooms the weight was many times heavier. That, it seemed, had moved him.
Minel had no intention of opening up. He began to perform.
“I won’t give you a single scrap of information about me or my family. If that’s still fine with you, go ahead.”
His voice was hard, like a stone rolling across dry ground.
The man gave a short laugh and, with casual familiarity, reached out and tapped Minel’s shoulder.
“Fine. But you’ll at least tell me your name, right?”
A brief contact. Even without malice, Minel hadn’t noticed until the hand was already on him. He looked at the man with a strange, assessing gaze.
As if it were nothing, the man lifted his hand and called the bartender.
“One for this friend here.”
While the bartender nodded indifferently and wiped a glass, Minel’s party took seats at the man’s table. The chairs scraped harshly against the floor.
The man cast a single sharp look around the room. An invisible pressure rolled out through the air. Those who had been staring in open curiosity all turned away at once, burying their eyes in their cups.
“My wife’s a looker too. Caused plenty of trouble even back in the real world. No need to thank me. Name’s Jacques. Wife’s Annette.”
“Minel. Hina, Chori.”
The bartender brought the drink—the same one he had given Minel earlier.
Jacques raised his glass high with a cheerful smile.
“Cheers.”
Minel clinked glasses with him. Jacques immediately tipped his head back and drained the cup in long gulps, his throat working, the liquid vanishing in seconds.
Minel lifted his own glass, then slowly set it down again. The scent of whiskey brushed his nose, but his lips never touched it.
Jacques glanced at the gesture, set his empty glass down with a solid clack, and grinned.
In the lamplight the smile looked hearty, yet behind it lurked a keen edge testing his opposite number.
“Cautious type. I like that.”
Around them people pretended to drink, ears pricked, trying to eavesdrop while feigning conversation.
Minel ignored them and asked,
“What’s the fifth floor like?”
Jacques spread both arms theatrically, indicating the tavern itself. Overhead, hanging lanterns swayed in the draft and threw long shadows across the walls.
“Setting’s roughly medieval. Places like this are scattered around, and what connects them are caves. But not just caves—dungeons, properly speaking.”
“Dungeons?”
“Monsters come out. Items too. Shame is, everything tops out at medieval tech.”
“Meaning no firearms.”
“Not ‘none’—completely banned.”
“Banned?”
Jacques smirked, shot Annette a quick look, and continued.
“The fifth floor is a firearms-forbidden floor. Every firearm is banned. Try shooting one later if you want. The bullets straight-up won’t fire. When I first heard it I thought, what kind of bullshit is that? But hey—Backrooms. It does whatever it wants.”
A firearms-forbidden floor…
He had never imagined such a thing. Two enormous advantages—Digital Vein and the bullet-immunity skill—were simply gone.
Could other floors ban other things?
They were only on the fifth, yet the Backrooms still kept outrunning every expectation.
Minel forced down the flood of new questions. The goal was already fixed.
“Do you know how to reach the sixth floor?”
“There’s no one who doesn’t.”
Unexpected. Until now every emergency stairway had been tightly hidden.
“Why’s that?”
“Just take a quest. Say you want to go to the sixth floor as the reward, and they tell you exactly what to do.”
So even that could count as a reward.
Minel glanced around the room.
“Then why is everyone still here?”
“Because it’s ridiculously hard. That’s why I came up to you. I could tell just from your eyes. The kind of look you never see on someone who’s already given up.”
Jacques’s voice stayed hearty, but a grim undertone ran beneath it.
Minel thought of the quitters Balan had mentioned—the hollow faces slumped in chairs, rolling their glasses and nothing more.
He asked at once,
“How hard?”
Half of Jacques’s face, lit by the tavern lamps, curved into a smile. In the quiet his words came low.
“Hard right away. Nothing much dropped on the third or fourth floors, right? Here you have to slowly farm items of the right grade and level, get stronger. That’s what we call farming. When you feel like you’ve gotten somewhere, you challenge it. Still tough as hell, though.”
His gaze no longer belonged to a cheerful drinker. It belonged to someone who had scraped past death more times than he could count. Minel did not miss that look.
“How many times have you tried so far?”
The question tightened the air again. For the first time, darkness settled over Jacques’s ever-bright expression.
“Too many. Barely survived every single time. That’s why I’m still roaming taverns looking for good party members. Hundreds of times. At this point I can tell just by the face who’s going to last and who’s going to die.”
“That so? Am I one who’ll make it?”
Jacques’s eyes sharpened.
“You’re not the type to die pointlessly.”
“…….”
He continued in a low, firm voice.
“Most of them just talk big, then die in under a second. Majority of the ones sitting here are like that. They never even get to try.”
A stir ran through the tavern. Someone set down a glass for no reason; someone else cleared their throat in irritation. No one openly contradicted him. Everyone knew it was true.
Hina glanced at Minel, uneasy. Chori clutched his hand, face tight with tension.
Minel simply watched Jacques. Neither defiance nor agreement showed in his eyes.
Jacques lifted one corner of his mouth in a crooked grin and muttered to Annette beside him,
“See? Guys like him are rare. Doesn’t bluster that he’s different, doesn’t bow his head either. Just listens, thinks, judges. Looks like we finally found a real one.”
He said it deliberately loud, for everyone to hear. Then he leaned back deep into his chair and added quietly,
“I’ve challenged it hundreds of times. Crawled out of death’s door hundreds of times. Now I’m getting out. Out of this godforsaken fifth floor.”
A short silence.
Minel exhaled slowly and answered,
“I refuse the offer.”
Stillness settled again beneath the swaying lamps.
Jacques nodded and asked,
“Mind if I hear the reason?”
There was no need to explain. But Jacques had treated him with genuine sincerity so far.
“Three.”
Minel met Jacques’s gaze without flinching. The tavern’s murmur died once more.
“First. You said you’ve tried hundreds of times and barely survived each one. You also said most of the others died while only your side always lived. Could be coincidence. But when it repeats, it stops being coincidence. Maybe you alone knew the escape route or the retreat signal. Maybe you used someone as bait every time. I’m not stating it as fact. But if you want to survive, you start from the worst assumption.”
“…….”
Jacques’s smile cracked, just a little. Annette bit her lip as if she had forgotten how to breathe.
Minel continued, unmoved by their reactions.
“Second. You said you’ve hit hundreds of taverns looking for good party members… but maybe not. Stay too long in one place and rumors pile up. Tricks you use often start to show. You could just be avoiding that.”
“…….”
Jacques absently touched the empty glass. Light flashed across its surface in a brief pattern.
“Third. You said you trust me because I’m the head of a family—responsible, someone common sense works with. True. But a party like that is also predictable. More than anything, the weaknesses are clear. If something goes wrong, it’s very easy to calculate around them. Don’t you think?”
Minel’s voice was low and even, like a quiet wave. Not a tremor of emotion—more like someone reading from a manual.
Jacques stared at him for a long moment, then let out a long breath and returned to a composed expression.
“Hearing that explanation only makes me want you more.”
“Regrettably, I refuse.”
Jacques shrugged once, lifted his glass, then set it down again.
“All right. I won’t force it. But I still want to go with you. We’ll stay in this tavern as long as you’re here. If you change your mind later, just say the word.”
Conversation at the nearby tables gradually swelled again.
Minel answered briefly,
“Fine.”
He rose and walked between the tables. Hina and Chori gave Jacques and Annette a small nod of farewell and followed.
Hina spoke in a voice only Minel could hear.
“You must have liked Jacques quite a bit, though. It’s rare for the quiet Minel to explain anything that thoroughly.”
“We’ll watch him for a while.”
Minel stopped in front of the bartender. The cloth polishing a glass slowed and halted.
The bartender smiled at him. Minel asked at once,
“I just name the reward I want, right?”
“From what I overheard earlier, you want to go to the sixth floor? For that you’ll need to hunt a rare mon—”
“No.”
The firm answer made the bartender tilt his head.
“Then what reward do you desire?”
Minel answered in a calm, level voice.
“Escape from the Backrooms.”