TV (1)
[Kim Daejang, you piece of shit]
Author: Namgogoedam
I hope you die in some sudden, miserable death, you bastard.
- IAmLegend: What the hell, he just floored it lol
- HorticultureIsRight: What happened?
- Kim Daejang: Why the hell are you so damn aggro?
- Namgogoedam: I tried to gauge the danger level by following you, and I damn near got killed, you bitch-ass punk.
- Kim Daejang: How is that my fault?
- Namgogoedam: That bastard kept sparring with the mannequin anomaly, so I thought it might be manageable, okay? Even looking human, it’s absurdly durable. How the hell are we supposed to take something like that down?
- Jemmin: You still don’t get that you can’t think of anomalies in normal terms? The weird one here is the idiot trying to take it down, Kim Daejang.
- IAmLegend: Even I, with the Heart Sword ability, can’t just go around killing every anomaly. Kim Daejang really is beyond normal.
I told them that if you kill a chicken, you get to eat delicious meat, and they go, "The chicken is way too strong, sniffle sniffle."
I share a useful tip, and they dump this kind of abuse on me.
I really ought to file an official complaint.
- Kim Daejang: Ban Namgogoedam from the gallery for a day. Reason: baseless verbal abuse and spreading impossible bullshit under someone else’s tip post.
- HorticultureIsRight: Shut up before I ban you first. And stop feeding people the idea that anomalies can be beaten.
- Kim Daejang: Feeding them ideas? I’m proving it with my own two hands!
- HorticultureIsRight: I’m saying it’s hard even if you have abilities. You almost died too!
At HorticultureIsRight’s words, I thought back to the mannequin centipede and the spider woman.
Hmm. It was doable.
There had been a little danger, sure, but if you used your abilities properly, you could win.
So while I let the idiot gallery members’ criticism wash over me, I kept browsing around, and then a post from the customer-service-rant guy, who normally only left comments, went up.
But what the hell was this supposed to mean?
[Maybe I should just give up... I can’t take this anymore]
Author: JinsangCustomerOut
I don’t even feel rested when I rest anymore.
The hallucinations keep following me, and I see them in my dreams too.
I just want to get away from those horrible voices whispering in my ear every day.
If I just close my eyes and give up, maybe it’ll all get easier...
Maybe then I could wake up from this endless nightmare?
- HorticultureIsRight: No, you can’t give up.
- Namgogoedam: Here comes another mental-breakdown post.
- Hotelier: It’s not even your problem, so stop talking trash.
- Namgogoedam: Like hell you wouldn’t run your mouth in another thread too. And if you’re just going by what you hear, what’s so bad about the Backrooms anyway?
- JinsangCustomerOut: I’ll pray that your customer calls you for sure.
- Namgogoedam: Go fuck yourself.
What in the world was going on over there for her to suddenly post like that?
From what I’d heard, she wasn’t even being chased or anything.
- Yup: Take off the headset, this is just a nightmare. Wake up.
- Namgogoedam: Long time no see, you creepy lurker.
- Hotelier: Moderator!
- Yup: I’m not creepy, no no no don’t do this, no wrong broken
- IAmLegend: Strong denial is basically confirmation.
- Yup: Then yeah that’s right yep! Confirmation right!
- Namgogoedam: Moooderator! This asshole just admitted he’s creepy himself!
- Yup: No, it is, but no, false, bad, you guys, be scolded, angry.
And now what was that supposed to be?
Was that the creepy lurker the gallery members had been talking about at the start?
An anomaly that infiltrated the gallery.
True to form, it was being dragged for egging on someone who said they were having a hard time.
Was it kind of stupid?
- Kim Daejang: So that’s the creepy lurker. But why does it talk like that? Doesn’t seem all that smart, honestly.
- Jemmin: It’s probably scraping up random characters from somewhere while trying to imitate people.
- Kim Daejang: It doesn’t seem like much, so why was everyone making such a big deal out of it?
- Jemmin: Intelligence itself isn’t actually that much of a threat, but when something like that keeps spouting nonsense, it still shakes people up. So they block it.
So it was just some ordinary troll?
And a stupid one at that, the kind that became a target for ridicule instead.
- Yup: No management, now let’s go, come back, take off the headset.
- JinsangCustomerOut: Get lost! I know you’re hiding in the manager’s corner!
- Yup: No, broken, my words, true, yep, I help.
- Kim Daejang: Hm? Can the creepy lurker see other people too?
- IAmLegend: Yeah. It’s a bastard that just keeps peeping through eyes that appear on walls. Total pervert.
- Yup: Not a pervert, no, false, wrong!
So it can roam around other Backrooms too?
Interesting. That’s actually a pretty compelling subject to work with.
- Kim Daejang: Hey, Yup Anomaly, want to come visit me too? I could use some help, and I’d really appreciate it if Yup Anomaly lent a hand.
- JinsangCustomerOut: ?
- IAmLegend: Hey, don’t go following some random uncle. That’s how you end up in serious trouble.
- Jemmin: Does somebody asking an anomaly to come find him really sound sane?
- Hotelier: Is this the comment where I’m supposed to call a moderator?
- Namgogoedam: That creepy lurker only replies to Kim Daejang, huh.
- Yup: None of your business, don’t poke around, keep searching near your computer, even if you hide it’s useless, no wrong broken.
- Namgogoedam: This fucking bastard, moderaaaator!
- HorticultureIsRight: I got back from work and what the hell is this;; it’s okay.
Ah, it looked like I could have gotten it to bite.
If I could catch that thing and use it like an eye, I might have gotten information out of it. But there it went, tossing ash over everything.
It could’ve become a good friend to our Smile guy.
Since it was called an eye, maybe I could’ve fit it into Jack-o’-Lantern’s empty sockets?
“Haa... I’m bored.”
The gallery was fun, but only up to a point.
The moment I looked away from the POS terminal, I saw the shopping mall lying there in dead silence.
Back when I was in the abandoned warehouse, I’d been so desperate to come back that I thought I’d die. But now that I was back, it didn’t feel comforting so much as suffocating.
It felt stagnant. Rotten.
Should I try the next Backroom? I’ve got the bracelet now too... If an anomaly shows up, I can just bind it with spiderwebs and kill it, right?
As someone who could craft gear from anomaly materials, my chances of survival would keep going up the more Backrooms I cleared.
Besides, if I wanted an exit, I’d have to keep no-clipping anyway.
And if I cleared it, I could always come back here again, so there wasn’t a single reason not to take the challenge.
- Namgogoedam: Is dying in the process just not part of the conditions or what?
- Kim Daejang: Even if I die, I’ll die as a warrior. Valhalla calls to me.
- IAmLegend: The anomaly will probably just butter you up and eat you.
- HorticultureIsRight: You got a grave site picked out already? Is breathing that annoying to you?
As soon as I wrote that I was thinking of moving again, the concern came flooding down like rain.
Relax.
Armed with the power of Spidey and Black Moon, I was invincible.
A monster snagged in spiderwebs was just a nice chunk of material.
“Might as well go for it. Search.”
The lantern’s light reached the escalator, then the abandoned warehouse, then kept shining on the steel door of Warehouse 1.
I opened it and went to Warehouse 2, then opened the closed door again and returned to Warehouse 1.
So if you bounced back and forth through the door, you no-clip?
He should’ve told me that sooner. I wouldn’t have suffered all that bullshit.
I gave the lantern a thump on the head for not telling me there was an easy route.
What, you think it was because an anomaly was there? Tch. Just means there wasn’t enough effort.
“Oh.”
After about twenty times of hearing the steel door creak, the dark warehouse suddenly changed into a bright room.
Yellow wallpaper all around. A single white light overhead.
In the middle of the plain room sat a table and an old CRT television, left all by itself.
- Current Area: TV Viewing Room
- Exploration ■: ■■■■ abandoned ■■■■, ■■
Huh. Viewing room?
For now, I couldn’t see any anomaly.
A room barely three pyeong in size would be a problem if the anomaly was your roommate, though.
What was this... a different way for an anomaly to show up later?
I opened the door in the back, and all there was beyond it was a yellow wall.
There were handles on both sides of the door, so how was it even supposed to close?
What’s the clear condition here?
I pressed on every wall in the room’s corners and edges, but there was no hidden door.
If there was a rule book, they’d better follow it, so I checked every drawer in the table too, but there wasn’t a single sheet of paper.
If it wasn’t a rule, then at least an anomaly should show up...
I even wandered around the room, which didn’t even have food in it, before stopping.
“Hmm... can’t use the gallery on a TV?”
These days everything had to be smart TVs and internet connections by default.
But wasn’t this thing supposed to be in a museum?
I’d never seen a TV this fat before.
If Lantern hadn’t told me it was a TV, I would’ve thought someone had stacked an old drum washer on top of something.
And how the hell do I turn this on?
There was no remote, and beside the screen were only two big dials with numbers on them and two small ones.
TURN... ON. Is that the power switch? I twisted it and-
Chiiiiiik- zzzzt-
A gray, crackling field of static flickered on, and the sound of hissing interference filled the room.
It powers on without even a visible cable.
So the big ones must be channel selectors?
I slowly turned the stiff dials, but the screen was still full of noise, and all it did was screech at me.
Tch. Was this not it?
Still, I didn’t give up, and I tried searching for hidden rules by grabbing both dials and turning them together.
If you’re going to bring a TV here, the least you can do is show me something.
“Ugh, annoying.”
The static was getting on my nerves, so I turned the power off again.
No, I tried to.
“Bam- bam-bam-bam bam-bam- Classic Cinema-!”
“Whoa, something happened. But is it trying to show me a movie?”
The TV gave me no answer, only displaying a black-and-white screen along with some old classical music.
So the gallery wasn’t happening.
Wait, was this that classic horror-movie setup?
The one where the ghost crawls out of the TV.
At the thought of smashing its head the moment it appeared, I grinned and gripped my hammer and Black Moon.
“Today’s feature presentation is- ■■.”
But then the screen suddenly started drowning in severe static.
I stayed on guard, tightening my grip on Black Moon and staring hard at the screen-
“Huh?”
The instant I blinked, a black-and-white basement spread out before me.
And the blurred TV image, like a lingering afterimage, twisted into a prompt on the screen before disappearing.
Your role is Victim 15.
Break out of confinement and escape.