Chapter 8

Why were there more bastards empathizing with Smile than talking about the navigator?

I wanted to show off my insanely cool lantern, but somehow the mood was making me look like some awful bastard who just liked bullying anomalies.

Then, at last, one gallery user finally got to the heart of it.

Jemmin was right. Leaving a safety zone was insane.

But if I'd spent a thousand years living here, what other ending was waiting for me besides going crazy?

If the ending was madness either way, then I figured the right move was to jump while there was still hope.

Suddenly, the gallery regulars were launching a full-scale recruitment war.

Hotelier and Jinsang, especially, were clinging to me so desperately it was almost pitiful.

I'd heard those two were fine as long as they were kept busy, but apparently they wanted out just as badly.

That part really was a problem.

For all I knew, I could move only to end up in a forest with not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a single electronic device in sight, and then I wouldn't be able to get advice or comfort from anyone.

Honestly, I was leaning on the gallery a lot, too.

But if all we did was huddle together and cheer each other on, wouldn't we just rot away slowly?

"Explore."

The operating procedure was simple.

The moment I said it, light shot out from the hole where the mannequin's face should have been and illuminated the place I was meant to go.

It had the same feel as that Smile bastard, but thankfully, once it had been turned into equipment, it didn't grin or start any weird phenomena.

Following the light, I stopped in front of an escalator.

The beam was pointing at the fourth step on the downward escalator.

Not a door or a wall, but a middle step on an escalator?

No wonder nobody could find it when they'd hidden the route like this.

Grumbling in disbelief, I stepped onto the tread, and, strangely enough, nothing happened.

Did I have to break it open?

"Are you trying to scam me? If I rip this step off, am I going to fall to my death...? Or plummet forever?"

The escalator's upper and lower ends were both connected to the same floor.

That mannequin boss had gotten wedged in here and met its end, too.

So if I smashed through the middle and went down, couldn't I get trapped in some endless falling loop?

Maybe Smile had set up a trap out of spite.

"Spit it out already."

I grabbed the lantern and shook it hard like a bartender working a cocktail shaker.

If that didn't work, I'd show it something even worse.

Then the light that had been illuminating the step started bobbing up and down like it was bouncing.

So I was supposed to jump on it?

"Well, it is the Backrooms. I wasn't exactly expecting anything normal."

After testing it with my heel and confirming it was pretty sturdy, I started jumping in place.

I'd walked and run on escalators before, but this was my first time doing this sort of thing on one.

But how many times was I supposed to jump, and for how long?

The rhythm of my jumps started to slow down.

If you were really screwing with me, you little...

"Nyaaah?! "

The step hadn't even broken, but I felt a sudden sense of weightlessness.

With a dropping lurch, I fell into the darkness.

I flailed my arms, but my hands caught nothing.

Was I even falling?

Nothing came into view beyond that first sensation, and no wind rushed past me.

The awful thought that I might be trapped here forever disappeared, thankfully, when my vision suddenly flared white.

"Agh!"

I missed the floor that had suddenly appeared in front of me and landed hard on my ass.

So I had fallen after all? It hurt, but for a drop that long, all I'd gotten was a numb backside.

I got up in a hurry, backed up against the wall, and held out the hammer and lantern as I watched the surroundings warily.

"...A warehouse?"

It looked like an old stone warehouse, its sides sealed off with rough concrete, and the pale overhead lights were so weak they looked ready to go out any second.

Everything was dark.

And it stank of old, stale mildew.

"I'm so screwed."

No matter how I looked at it, this wasn't an exit, right?

And it didn't seem like there were any electronics here either.

It was a fairly large square room, with nothing in the opposite corner except a single iron door, shut tight.

It looked like it really didn't want to be opened.

The rusted door alone was enough to make a person shrink back.

Still, if there was even the slightest chance that something behind it was an exit, or some useful item, or even an electronic device, I had to go check.

"Oh. Right. The lantern."

So it really was a warehouse. But this...

The text was heavily filtered, but from what I could make out, it looked like I could get back to the shopping mall I had started from.

If I could return to the safety zone, that was amazing news.

Should I try heading back once, just to test it?

"Explore. Explore, explore!"

But because of the filtering, the lantern gave me nothing but silence.

Stuck as I was, I sorted the situation out in my head first.

One: I could intentionally noclip by using the lantern.

Two: it seemed like each area was connected to a set Backrooms route.

Three: moving didn't mean I could immediately turn around and come back. Chances were, I'd have to clear some anomaly or some special rule unique to that place first.

"In the end, the only answer is to slam into it head-on."

I needed to check what was on the other side of that door. If there was an anomaly, I'd break it. Let's not be scared of a glorified pile of materials.

Huuuu—

Click.

The sound of the iron doorknob turning rang out loudly.

I froze for a moment and waited for something else to react, but there was no sound from beyond the door.

That nearly made my soul leap out of my body.

When I gathered my courage again and pushed the iron door, it answered with a hideous screech.

Shit, seriously.

I stopped once more and watched the slit it had opened, waiting for something to react, but there was still nothing but silence.

It was just a normal wall after all.

Rule-based? A time gimmick? At least let it be a weak anomaly.

I opened the iron door all the way and stepped into the next room.

Sure enough, it was another ordinary space with another iron door.

The only difference was that spiderwebs were hanging all over the warehouse.

"Ugh. Of all things."

I hated spiders.

They were hairy, for one thing, and they had too many legs.

And anyone who'd ever had a web slap across their face while walking knew exactly how horrifying that was.

Just imagining some bug or spider clinging to the web stuck to my head made my skin crawl.

Even peeling off that sticky junk was annoying.

The problem was, I had to get through the webs to open the next door.

Thousand Hands.

I used Thousand Hands, the mannequin arm-generation skill named after the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara.

With the long arms I conjured, I started sweeping the webs hanging in front of me aside.

Once I cleared them all this way and then canceled Thousand Hands, the problem would be solved.

Was I a genius or what?

As I kept pushing forward like that, the webs bunched up into something that looked almost like cotton candy, and the sight was both impressive and deeply disgusting.

Why were there so damn many?

I avoided the cotton-candy pile and opened the next door.

But it was the same warehouse again, with the same wall of spiderwebs and the same door.

"Sigh... huh?"

As I let out a breath and raised Thousand Hands again, something felt off.

Had that web cotton candy gotten smaller than before?

There was webbing all the way up to my elbows, but I hadn't stretched it that deep, had I?

...No. It wasn't getting smaller.

It was spreading.

Wriggle-

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

The webs were alive.