The Clump
Going to the 6th Floor was all for the sake of escaping the Backrooms.
If anything could be obtained through a quest, then all he had to do was uncover a way out right here.
The bartender’s smile faded. He nodded, very slowly.
“Escaping the Backrooms… Do you truly want that? Few people ask so bluntly.”
“So? You can’t take the request?”
The man set down the glass he’d been polishing and continued in a lower voice.
“It’s possible. However, you can only hold one quest at a time. Accepting is free, but abandoning one requires a Blood Crystal penalty equal to its cost.”
“Just tell me what it is first.”
The bartender carefully laid a hand on the table and tapped it with his index finger.
At once, letters bloomed in the air.
Escape the Backrooms
📍 Conditions: Hunt five different rare monsters anywhere on the 5th Floor and bring back five different trophies from them.
⚠ Restrictions: Complete the entire process alone, without outside help, and without advancing to the 6th Floor.
Minel blinked and scanned his surroundings. The floating text followed his gaze as if the words had been carved straight into his pupils.
The bartender bowed his head and finished.
“Will you accept?”
Rare monsters—he had met two of them already. Against the Smiler, all he could manage was barely dodging its attacks. The Shocker he had only brought down by stacking miracle upon miracle.
Hunting five different ones of that caliber with no outside help was flatly impossible. And whether trophies even dropped with any certainty was another question entirely.
Minel asked the important thing first.
“What’s the penalty for abandoning it?”
“One thousand Blood Crystals.”
That was basically the system telling him not to take it. Of course a quest that rewarded escape from the Backrooms wasn’t going to be easy.
He changed the question.
“What about going to the 6th Floor?”
Without a word, the bartender tapped the table again. The text before Minel’s eyes shifted.
Advance to the 6th Floor
📍 Conditions: Hunt any one rare monster anywhere on the 5th Floor.
Compared to the escape conditions, it was almost simple. One rare monster instead of five. Outside help allowed. No trophies required.
Even so—it was still a rare monster.
Minel briefly pictured the Shocker. Before you even got to strength or speed, the lightning wrapped around its body was already broken. Farming gear and then challenging it probably meant preparing just enough that a fight could actually take place.
He finished thinking and consulted Hina. She turned his words over in silence, then gave her answer.
“I think I understand the structure of the 5th Floor.”
“Yeah?”
“Quests generate something that matches whatever reward you name, right? That means we could ask for information or items needed to take down rare monsters. Farm slowly that way, and eventually hunt one.”
Minel nodded. He felt it too—unlike the floors before, the 5th Floor seemed to lay its strategy out in the open. The difficulty just wasn’t low.
“Then first we need to decide which rare monster.”
“Let’s ask about that as well.”
Hina stepped forward and spoke to the bartender, requesting information on the rare monsters that appeared on the 5th Floor. In return, he issued a simple quest with that intel as the reward. Hina blinked a few times, then murmured,
“He says to go outside and hunt any one monster.”
On the surface it sounded trivial. But with no knowledge of the 5th Floor’s conditions, they couldn’t call it easy. Still, by the standard they had just established, the difficulty could be read indirectly.
“What’s the penalty?”
“One Blood Crystal.”
A quest you could abandon for a single crystal? In game terms, it was basically a tutorial.
“Any restriction on outside help?”
“Hm? Ah—no. Nothing like that.”
“Then let’s do it.”
Minel accepted the same quest. As he started for the tavern door, Hina spoke up.
“While you’re out, I’ll dig around for information. How party-based quest recognition works, how to earn Blood Crystals on the 5th Floor, whether there’s an Arcade or merchants or a blacksmith, how Chori’s house skill functions—things like that.”
“Good thinking.”
Minel nodded and headed out—only to lock eyes with Jacques. The man grinned and raised his glass in a silent toast. Minel looked away and left the tavern.
Clunk.
The moment he shut the door and stepped forward, the texture of the air changed. A cool, damp breath brushed the tip of his nose.
The overall impression was of an underground cavern. Ceiling height looked about ten meters. Jagged stalactites hung like awls, and between them buildings had been forced into the rock as if jammed into place. Pillars and arches carved by human hands crossed the natural stone, giving the impression of an ancient temple half-buried in the earth.
Patterned flagstones paved the floor. The surfaces were worn smooth, the designs faded beyond recognition, but the feel underfoot alone told of a building far older than any living memory.
Light spilled from jewels set into the ceiling. A soft glow wrapped the space like a blue mist, faintly illuminating the dungeon’s interior. Turn your head and you found passages—paths or cracks, hard to tell which—tucked into the darkness on every side.
“Now this feels like the Backrooms.”
Minel took a long moment to study his surroundings, as if settling his breath. The pattern of the floor, the rough scrape of his fingertips along the wall, the distant drip of water.
The safe zone the 5th Floor provided ended at the tavern. He swept his gaze across the branching paths sunk in shadow. Every entrance, every corner, every place where sound bent—an attack could come from any of them.
For now, he followed the main thoroughfare guided by the jewels’ light.
How long had he walked? A peculiar sound began trailing him from behind.
“……”
Minel kept his stride natural and angled an ear that way.
A monster? But the footfalls were nothing like a Hound’s. Those things would have been growling already.
Something else, then? Yet the way the steps matched his own so precisely said this was no mindless beast.
The Backrooms had three categories of danger: the environment, monsters, and people. Which of those this was needed no debate.
“……”
The ceiling jewels were placed at intervals, so the path brightened and darkened in rapid succession as he walked. Matching that cycle, Minel advanced one segment at a time, slipping from shadow to shadow.
At a sharp bend he deliberately stopped.
In that instant—half a beat late—a footstep sounded. Whoever it was hadn’t realized he’d halted and had taken one more step.
Not professionals, then.
Minel left the bright main road and melted into a dark crevice nearby. In a narrow alcove that looked like a dead end, he crouched like a predator and set his hands on Noise and Silence.
Soon, faint footfalls whispered across the flagstones. Then the shadows resolved into shapes.
Three. No—four.
Every one of them carried weapons wreathed in a cold blue aura. A chill light ran along each blade, rolling as if it were one with the dungeon’s darkness.
“What? Where’d he go?”
“Took a side path, maybe?”
“Classic newbie. Walked himself straight into a dead end.”
“Eh. If he’d stayed on the main road we’d have killed him anyway. Maybe he got lucky.”
Their eyes had already gone yellow, and murder sat plain in their voices.
Minel quietly drew Noise, lined them up in his sights, and pulled the trigger.
“……”
No sound. No flash of light.
Something that wasn’t quite a smile crossed Minel’s face. Firearms-ban floor, just as advertised—Noise might as well have been broken.
They still hadn’t noticed him. He holstered Noise and silently drew Silence from the opposite hip.
Then he dropped low like a cat and charged.
In that same moment, the jewel-light overhead cut out as if snuffed. Darkness closed in.
KRA-BOOM!
With a crushing roar, a massive bulk dropped from the ceiling. A reek that tore the air heralded a monster whose shape was almost impossible to parse.
A twisted hybrid of insect and beast, it crashed down on the man in front and swallowed him whole.
“Gyaaaaah—!”
The scream rose and was immediately drowned by the wet sound of chewing. Crimson blood sprayed into the dark.
“D-damn it! A C-Clump!”
“Of all things, a Clump!”
“R-run!”
The three who had survived by luck bolted toward the tavern. The monster that had swallowed a man whole came pounding after them.
In the light, its form almost looked human—until a second glance made the wrongness obvious. Limbs were attached at slightly warped angles. Joints like knees bent the wrong way. Hands and feet knotted together in bunches. Multiple sets of limbs fused into a single mass of flesh that skittered and pounded across the floor faster than a man could run.
“I-it’s too fast! Fight! Hey—we fight together! We can win!”
The one lagging furthest shouted, spun, and swung his blade at the Clump. Steel bit into an arm and a leg; blood fountained. Relief broke across the man’s face.
But the Clump’s other arms and legs were fine. They seized him, heaved him high—and tore its mouth wide, the gash splitting past the face, past the neck, all the way to the shoulders. Into that vast maw, the man vanished whole.
“Urgh! Shit—”
“Run! Just run!”
The last two, shaking with terror, fled for the tavern again. Then the Clump’s joints ground out a grotesque sound, and countless arms and legs shot outward in every direction like tentacles. They snared both men’s ankles; tangled fingers erupting from the elbows clamped their throats and slammed them into the stone floor.
Neither even managed a proper scream before they died.
The Clump rolled lazily over and began swallowing them one by one.
Minel watched the grotesque spectacle, his grip on Silence tightening.
Not even in the same league as a Hound.
Hounds were beasts that came on with teeth and claws—simple, predictable. This was something else. Arms and legs moved as if they belonged to other beings entirely. Some twisted and stretched; others snapped and lashed out without warning. Its strength was overwhelming, its speed beyond human, its motion so mutable it defied prediction. There was almost no tell before any action.
Minel flicked his fingers and opened the Backrooms Field Guide. The four deaths had bought him a comfortable distance.
Clump — An advanced form monster composed of human bodies randomly tangled and fused together.
It clings to ceilings and walls and strikes from ambush. Its shape is unstable; it crawls or rolls to move, stretches its limbs like tentacles to seize people, and consumes them, incorporating their bodies into itself.
A direct confrontation is difficult. The standard strategy is a prolonged fight—slowly severing its limbs one by one.
A clear chime rang through the cavern as he opened his inventory.
At the sound, dozens of pairs of eyes flared across the Clump’s body. Each pair was a different shape—eyes of the people it had already eaten, still in use. All of them raked the darkness where the sound had come from, then locked precisely on Minel hidden within.
The eyes vanished. Dozens of hands and feet erupted outward. The Clump curled itself into a ball the way it had before and came rolling straight at him.