章 5: Pipe Dreams, but they took the crack.
A starry sky greeted the eyes of the boy.
His eyes widened, in wonder and child-like innocence.
The stars twinkled so brightly as if they were calling out to him, beckoning him.
Everything hurt, the boy thought.
The stars continued to twinkle.
The screams and yells from beyond, things breaking and being smashed, rage and madness.
The stars continued their silent dance.
The boy hurt, his chest tightened, his breath caught in his chest, his vision clouding in darkness.
The stars continued to beckon him.
The sobs of someone. Their despair and sadness, washing over the boy.
The stars continued their singing.
The tears started drying, leaving nothing more than empty sadness.
The stars dimmed.
They dimmed and dimmed until the screams of rage disappeared, the pain in his body receded and the tears finally dried.
Until the boy finally got up and closed his eyes.
===============
Mark had talked with BoB much more, mostly about the store and his trades.
"As I said, I can give ya supplies, weapons, upgrades, food, haircuts,"
"What? I can understand the supplies and weapons, but haircuts?"
"What? I like it. It's a very strange, yet highly professional Job requiring one to perfectly maintain what is the equivalent of dead skin, and give it the impression that it is alive in some way."
"I…ok. What about upgrades then? What do those entail?"
"Easy, give me the needed trade, and I can upgrade your equipment. Example, I can upgrade your clothes to be much more resilient, or it can auto-clean themselves, or I can also give them the ability to repair itself. For ya belt, I can give it much more power to its swing, and I can enhance the sound of the belt itself."
"You mean to make the cracking of the belt louder?"
"Louder? Boy, I can upgrade it to make it sound like thunder! Don't underestimate upgrades! Quality is always better than quantity!"
"I… Ok. I don't think questioning this bullshit will help with anything."
"Good. You're in the Backrooms boy, nothing makes sense here."
After a little bit more chatter with BoB, Mark left BoBs shop and continued to explore level 1.
Which, expectedly, lead to nothing else being found. Not even the scribbles or documents found in the future were here, only the monotone gray walls, and lights hanging up on the ceilings.
Mark, at a certain point, decided to just go to the next level, a much more dangerous floor, with much more enemies to fight.
"Level 2, here I come…" Mark mumbled as he looked for no-clipping objects.
================
Mark fell once more on his back, this time now fully aware of the fall.
He still hit his head.
Getting up, Mark looked at the now darker environment around him, hisses of gas echoing from unknown origins.
Dark corridors greeted Mark, lights flickered further down the tunnel, and things could be heard.
"It's time to hunt, I guess." Make mumbled as his eyes were drawn to the pipes. He tapped them with his claws, which in turn produced a deep clunk sound.
Slightly narrowing his eyes, Mark started to walk in a direction. Which was forward. For a long way.
Nothing else was lurking here. The only things that accompanied him were the hissing noises of the pipes.
Mark walked slowly, his eyes wandering at everything in the darkened environment, which only led to the discovery of many pipes.
Red pipes, blue pipes, black pipes, white pipes, and green pipes.
"Yahoooooo!" Mark yelled to himself, chuckling afterward. He would have also made a comment on the fact that the black pipes were much larger than the white pipes, but he was interrupted by a faint tapping noise he could hear.
Whipping his head around, he readied his claws in front of him and stared closely.
Everything seemed to stop, as he stared into the darkness. No hissing, no tapping. The darkness seemed to grow even larger as he stared before he was finally able to see what was in front of him.
White glowing light pierced through the darkness, a hauntingly large smile grew, placed just below two pure circles of white light.
"Smiler…" Mark gulped. He didn't know if he could take a Smiler, especially since he didn't know if it even had a body.
He continued his stare-down with the smiler, before he slowly inched backward, hoping to just run from this encounter.
Unfortunately, Smiler's were vastly different from weak Hound's, and the thing reeled its face back and screamed.
"FUUUUUUCK!" Mark's head suddenly blared in agony, and before he could recover, he was nailed in the stomach and was sent tumbling down the hallway.
Still not understanding anything of what was going on, Mark fumbled trying to get himself up, before he was able to grasp a pipe and hoist himself up.
Still shaken, Mark turned to the direction of the Smiler.
It was still there. Staring at him. Mark could've sworn he shall its smile widen as it spotted him looking at it.
Still heaving, Mark pushed himself off the support pipe and stared down the Smiler. Now understanding a little bit about it, Mark rushed at it.
"I've got infinite life's motherfucker, let's get at it!" Rising his claws high, he swiped at the face of the Smiler.
He felt the sensation of flesh-tearing, as another scream resounded from the Smiler. Backing up, he now saw that the Smiler's originally undamaged eyes and mouth, now sported slice's on its eyes and smile.
"So you do have a body…" Mark grinned, his eye's staring at the Smiler with a hungry smile.
"You are so fucked."
What happened next was nothing less than absolute overkill.
=======================
Mark leaned on the wall of the hallway, huffing, and puffing.
His face was splotched with some kind of thick, black substance that stuck to him.
Looking down at the corpse below him, Mark was finally able to see the body of the Smiler.
It was best to describe it as incredibly skinny. Its limbs, torso, legs, and neck were sticking onto what could be described as the smiler's bones, whilst its feet, hands, and face were abnormally large.
Of course, its body was diced and sliced, so it wasn't a very accurate assumption of its body, but it was most likely close.
"Disturbing as hell…" He murmured, lifting up one of its arms, or at least trying to.
"What the fuck, why is it so heavy?" He heaved, trying to pull the arm up once more.
He eventually managed to move the creature's arm,
or at least trying to.
"What the fuck, why is it so heavy?" He heaved, trying to pull the arm up once more.
Finally managing to heavy its arm up, Mark tried to look at its back, hoping to see anything else on the creature's body.
Nothing was found.
Mark sighed, before finally checking the system on what skill he got from the smiler.
[Entity slain! Obtained passive skill, Muscle and Mass!]
⇐===========>
Muscle and Mass lv1
Increase both the density of your muscles, and your mass in a single skill!
Warning!: This passive skill can be turned on and off, but will cause extreme pain to the body whilst turning on/off.
Currently: Off
⇐===========>
Mark gulped at the warning of the skill, now terrified by the fact that the system was openly saying it would hurt.
"Why didn't it do it for the hound claws?" Mark mumbled, before breathing deeply and turning on the skill.
His skin seemed to bubble and shrink, clinging to the bones in his arms. His ribcage seemed to strain, as his various organs were squeezed tightly. His scream was caught in his mouth, as every part of his body was squeezed just below the breaking point, before suddenly expanding again, and oxygen entering his body.
He gasped and wheezed, coughing up saliva onto the hard concrete floor. Groveling his head onto the ground, Mark simply stared wide-eyed into the floor, his body still trying to process the fact that it wasn't just squeezed to death.
====================
"Finally! We're here!"
"We would have gotten here sooner if you hadn't lost the compass."
"Shut up, you! I did no such thing!"
"It's ok if you're embarrassed by it, just don't go lying. Mama wouldn't like to hear ya lie."
"I… ok, fine, you win. I lost the compass, but only for a split second, ok?!"
"We were searching for two hours."
"Just! God's above, you are lucky to be my brother!"
"Hehe, I know."
The two men, Skinny and Giant, we're currently talking and walking deep inside a forest before they came upon a large wooden house.
From cobwebs to holes on both the top and sides of the house, it looked like every part abandoned.
"We're here. You know the code right?"
"Hm… maybe?"
"Oh, I swear to gods…"
"Oh, Oh! Wait, I remember!"
Giant went up to the door of the house, cleared his voice, and spoke.
"Pray be the gods between,
Of those so lost in the scene.
Of creatures of nightmare,
O dream of fear's."
The door did not open.
"You… are you absolutely certain that was the code?"
"Hm… Kinda?"
"What do you… what?! There is only one fucking code, how in the holy fuc-"
The door creaked open, wooden hinges screeching at the stress of the door being swung open with sudden force.
The two men looked at each other, nodded their heads at one another, and each went inside.
The interior of the house was as destroyed as the front.
Cobwebs to broken floorboards. Mold and moss crept at the corners of the building, and a horrible smell wafted itself into the room.
A strange brown mushroom stood in one corner of the house.
Giant and skinny each walked in single-file until they met another door.
"..What is it?" A voice spoke from behind the door.
"We've been compromised. The Church found our base of operations. We managed to cover the door, and get out."
Silence dawned in the house, and whilst skinny was slightly sweating in nervousness, Giant was moving his feet up and down.
"The woods so soggy…"
Skinny gave him a look of fury, before going back to staring at the door.
"...This is rather… unfortunate. How did the church manage to find out?"
"Traitor. That, or we got clumsy with one of our supply routes."
"..."
Skinny stood still, hoping and praying to be saved by some divine intervention.
"...Hmmm… Alright. I hope you can divert their attention then. It would be best that they do not discover the door."
"Understood." Skinny put a hand to his chest and bowed, before pushing Giant and himself out of the house.
Silence once more, before the being behind the door spoke once more.
"...Gods save us if they find the door."
===============
"Sir! Here to report!"
Decked out in pristine white armor, the armored person looked toward the soldier in front of him.
"What is there?"
"Mostly dark-arts artifacts and books, but we found something peculiar hidden."
"And what is it?"
"It's a door, sir."
The paladin stared at the knight, before signaling the knight to lead him.
"We weren't really sure as to what to do, so I decided to go and get you, sir."
"That was the best course of action. Trying to poke at random things in a Dark Arts lair is like trying to poke at a dragon."
The paladin scanned his eyes around the cave, he could see the evil that crept everywhere. Every surface seemed to be dyed in it, runes carved into the walls praising some entity.
Narrowing his eyes, the paladin lowered his gaze, until he saw a group of soldiers huddled up to one wall.
Pushing through the crowd, the paladin finally saw what they crowded around.
A simple wooden door.
Everything about it screamed simple, from the delicate wooden frame to its brown color.
The paladin narrowed his eyes, confusion, and curiosity bubbling up in his head, he reached for the handle.
He opened the door.
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