Enemy Encounter!
When I woke and checked the gallery, the Backrooms regulars were still drowning in nostalgia stirred up by the personal-history investigation bait, trading their sob stories back and forth.
And so on. There were plenty of users who simply couldn't bring themselves to share.
"Well, I'm the one trying to extract information here, so I can't exactly demand they hand it over."
If I pieced it all together, I might be able to infer a rough picture of the Backrooms ecosystem—but the spectrum of what this place could be seemed so wildly varied that I wasn't holding my breath.
(Photo of a rice ball and a bottle of water)
Eat and eat and eat, and it's still just rice balls~
Food, schmood—it was just a rice ball double-sealed in foil and plastic wrap. Figuring that once one started going bad, I wouldn't be able to finish the rest either, I said a little prayer that I'd find something else edible before then.
(Photo of the third tunnel entrance, mud stretching in a long trail)
Today, the road ahead runs red with war.
With the odds of a fight this time sitting at around ninety-nine percent, I needed to travel light, so I left the oxygen tank behind. One flashlight in my left hand, the pickaxe in my right. At this point, I almost felt anxious without that familiar grip in each hand.
"Hmm... should I bring one more pickaxe?"
They say dual-wielding is the mark of a doomed man, but a second pickaxe is a different story. With only one weapon, there'd be nothing left to do if it got weapon-broken out of my hands. So I decided to stash one more pickaxe in my bag.
Then I cleared the entrance—rolling aside and stacking up the oxygen tanks I'd used to block the way, carving out enough room to get through.
"Shall we, then?"
Ge-ek—
Feeling Yagwang-i's weight settle onto my newly available left forearm, I set off.
"It's cleaner in here than I expected."
Ge-ek—
Aside from the mud dripping at regular intervals across the floor and trailing off in one long line, the third tunnel was surprisingly tidy. No moisture, no traces of grass or moss growing anywhere. It wasn't the kind of dirt wall that would kick up sandy dust, either—the walls were hard, as if the whole thing had been petrified in one piece.
I kept my guard up and pressed slowly forward, but the scenery simply refused to change.
"So the mud-rock guy moves faster than I thought when it wants to?"
Maybe it was because I'd only ever seen it creeping up slowly, but I'd assumed its movement speed would match. Could've been wrong about that.
Geu-geuk—
"Oh. You found something?"
That was when Yagwang-i, perched on my right arm, made a sound.
Huh?
My right arm?
Yagwang-i isn't on my right arm.
Ge-ek—
I turned my head toward my left arm, and there it was, perched exactly where I'd left it.
"Then what just made that sound?"
Crack... crack...
Something was coming apart. The sound was coming from the right-hand wall.
"Enemy encounter!"
Thud!
I retreated slightly toward the tunnel I'd come through, then swept my flashlight across the wall where the noise had come from.
Kwarurururu!
Geu-ge-e-ek—
Brilliant light came pouring through the collapsed wall—as if to say that what lay beyond wasn't cave, but the outside world.
"An exit!?"
Mud men were emerging from the wall one by one.
"...Yeah, no way that's it."
Clutched in their hands were my own flashlights, familiar as could be.
"These things... stealing other people's property...!"
Info update: once mud men pull free of the mud, they run off with whatever they can grab. I'd copied the flashlights in generous numbers to begin with, so I hadn't noticed a few going missing with a casual glance.
Gi-e-ek—!
Pat—
"Ugh..!"
The moment the mud men's flashlights all swung toward me at once, the staggering brightness bouncing off the narrow cave walls whited out my vision for an instant.
These things use items!?
Cheolbeok—
As I turned away from the glare, I heard their footsteps closing in.
Right. They're made of mud—of course they'd squelch like that.
A glance back showed faint outlines in the gloom.
"Light's no problem. I've got plenty of flashlights."
Actually, I didn't even need to hold one myself. The beams ricocheting around this narrow cave lit every direction at once.
Click!
Whack!
I killed the flashlight in my left hand and hurled it at them.
Ziiiing—
Immediately after, I unzipped the pack on my back and gripped a pickaxe.
"I was hoping I wouldn't have to pull this one out..!"
Kku-uk—
A pickaxe in each hand, left and right.
Glancing back, I saw my thrown flashlight had struck one of the ones they were carrying—two flashlights now lay on the ground. With less light aimed my way than before, it was much easier to face forward.
Their formation was plain to see.
"Five of them, and no pickaxes."
You should've stolen the pickaxes, idiots.
Tak—
I crossed the two pickaxes in front of my eyes.
Gi-i-ek—!
Chal-pak—
Through the gap between the crossed pickaxes, I could see mud men charging in. And behind them, more scrambling to recover the fallen flashlights.
They weren't that fast. More than enough time to respond.
"Allow me to harvest your deaths."
I charged straight into the oncoming pack, meeting them head-on.
At least, stronger than these guys.
Ge-ek—
"That's right, it was mostly your doing, wasn't it."
A one-versus-five fight, sure—but their only weapons were flashlights. Solid enough to crack my skull open, granted, but a flashlight shorter than even a three-section staff and a pickaxe are in entirely different leagues of reach. Besides, apart from their heads, which felt vaguely clumped together, the rest of their bodies just splattered apart harmlessly whenever they touched me.
They did reform right back into shape, though. Like ghosts pulling themselves back together, really.
I couldn't deal damage to them—but conversely, attacking anything but their heads did zero damage from my side either.
Head-only damage mob, fine. But now that I'd already figured out the weakness—
—or so I thought, and while I was letting my guard down after finishing off the five, Yagwang-i alerted me to a sixth mud man appearing out of nowhere. I blocked the flashlight it swung with the Yagwang-i shield, then gave its head a firm, satisfying knock-knock with the pickaxe.
"So now the tunnel splits."
One passage continued straight ahead; the other was the one the mud men had burst out of through the side wall. The long trail of mud stretched down both—the forward passage, and into the hole the creatures had torn open.
"At the very least, I can tell the front and the side are connected."
If I went straight ahead, would it gradually curve right and loop back around to here?
"Well, forward it is, for now."
Keep walking, keep walking, and someday I'll meet every mud man in the whole world~