Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Goblins And Gateways

The first level of The Backrooms is known to those who are aware of the dimension as “The Halls”. This theoretically finite, though for all practical purposes’ infinite space, is as far as any single explorer can tell, an endless sea of rooms of various sizes covered in off-putting yellow wallpaper.

The maddening hum of fluorescent lights fills every corner of this vast space, even the rare few rooms where the lights themselves do not work, as does the smell of the old wallpaper. They are inescapable facets of being trapped on this level of The Backrooms, much like the yellow wallpaper itself which is now almost emblematic of the level. Inhabitants of this place either grow accustomed to these aspects of life here, or they are driven mad by them.

Gustavo continues his exploration of this place, still reeling from his discovery that the changes occurring to him are not just fantastical ones. Because it has only been an hour since he first ended a life, even that of a horrifying mutated animal, the sensations that he felt as he ended that creature’s existence remain fresh in his mind.

Fortunately for him, that is not the only thing that remains fresh in his mind: he remains aware that by touching things he can exert some level of control over them through the mysterious energy that seems to be produced in an anomalous organ he is fairly sure he didn’t possess before he entered The Backrooms. This knowledge comforts him, at least to some extent, as it means that if he’s careful and lucky he may not need to end another life soon.

The young man studies the multiple mental theaters he can perceive reality through as he explores the first level of The Backrooms. He has been diligently practicing this extremely unusual skill and thanks to his consistent usage of it his internal pool of eldritch energies has been steadily growing.

The windows into other parts of reality that he possesses he uses to explore this level of The Backrooms. He orders his energy to move throughout the region he is trapped in, using the stuff to go where he hasn’t. The energy obeys him, and as it circulates throughout the parts of The Halls that he hasn’t had the chance to explore yet the stuff begins to mature.

Gustavo is empowered by “Perks”, powers bestowed by the omniverse itself that are normally reserved for when someone enters a universe for the first time, awarded through a “System” created by the omniverse, or that relate to the true nature of someone’s soul.

In Gustavo’s case, the perks that are now circulating throughout his body, transforming it, relate to things like his frustrations with his body, and a powerful desire to control his own fate that he developed as a child due to how society treated him. The energy within him, once properly nurtured and understood by the anomalous entity, will give him the power that he unconsciously seeks: the power of control.

These perks, which Gustavo does not yet understand, all relate to either his nature as a jumper or the state of his soul. His desire for control has caused him to spontaneously develop an organ within himself filled with powerful, transformational energy, and his hatred of his physical disabilities has awakened his flesh resulting in him acquiring powerful and strange abilities. Deep within him lie other, as of yet untouched, aspects of his true nature that will awaken in time but for now the young man is already powerful in ways that few can understand.

With every mental theater Gustavo adds to his collection the energy he possesses grows a bit stronger. Every window through which Gustavo can perceive reality strengthens the young man, increasing the depth of his power, as well as the amount of energy he can use at any one time. Gustavo himself does not yet fully realize this, but he will in time.

He may not know it yet but with every action that involves his powers they grow stronger. In time, he will learn more about the strange depth of his own innate power.

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I find myself perhaps a few miles away from where I encountered and slew that gigantic dog about an hour after I defended myself. I am aware that my ability to bounce back from the actions I did in that weird instinctual haze is unnatural, but given that the alternative here is to be driven mad by what I saw, felt, and did, I am grateful for the unnatural in this specific instance.

There is something mildly comforting about the familiar at this moment. The humming of the fluorescent lights is comforting, as is the eerie smell of the old wallpaper that is plastered onto the walls that surround me. In some ways the relative lack of change in this space is kind of nice, even if I know that this sort of stuff could easily drive someone mad if they were here for days.  I don’t plan to be here for days.

As I make my way into yet another nearly identical room I take stock of the slow evolution of one of the changes that has occurred to me since I first entered this space. I can feel the pool of transformational and supernatural energy that I possess slowly beginning to flow throughout my body. This is not a fast process, but I can very keenly feel a tiny trickle of the energy circulating throughout my body, filling every organ, limb, and muscle of mine with the eldritch power I can now wield.

I have infected every room I have entered since I first discovered this well of power with some of it and in doing so I have… exercised this muscle. I have not pushed myself to the limits with each use of this, but even half-hearted efforts to practice it are still efforts to practice it and I have been feeling the results for the last few minutes.

I can tell that there is more to this power than I yet understand, but I can also tell that this power is a weird thing that I should avoid using lightly. I can use it to infect and influence small living things, and if the power can grow than it’s not a wild leap for me to assume that someday I could use it to control people… The moral implications of that are dark, but this is my power. It is up to me how it is used.

That said… I remember what I did to that hound. I need to learn to master my instincts. If I can master both my powers and my instincts so that I am not overwhelmed even in the strangest situations I’ll be able to confidently use my powers and defend myself, or even other people. After all, there’s dogs here and I’m heading towards a place called “The Ruined City”, there’s a very real chance living people exist somewhere in this space and if they do and I can help them, it’d be good of me to do so.

As I make my way north I decide to try and practice using my weirdly corruptive energy a bit more creatively than with just my hands. The stuff is circulating throughout my body, albeit rather inefficiently, so I know I can do more with it than focus on my hands.

I try to focus on the energy that is in my feet. I feel it respond to my will, awaiting my orders like someone else might feel when a subordinate is ready to get told what they need to do next and I smile. I will the energy to flow into my shoes, which are thick and firm boots, and the energy in my feet does so. I then focus and with the same effort that someone else might apply to remembering song lyrics from a song they liked but didn’t love, many years ago, I feel the energy in my boots condense into a tiny seed.

The energy that I expended doing that is quickly replenished by my internal pool of power and in moments my feet are again filled with the energy. I can also feel something curious change within my boots. The things feel both lighter and more protective, as though they have been improved somehow by being filled with my energy…

Now that I actually think about it, that dog was massive and supernaturally fast, and yet the corrupted bullet I fired from my corrupted gun seemed to rip through it. I’m no professional soldier or anything so I don’t know much about guns, but the damage my bullet did to a mutated monster-hound seems a tad bit suspicious. I wonder if my energy can improve things somehow? If so, then that itself has interesting implications…

I continue making my way north, and as I do my boots occasionally fill the floor beneath me with my bizarre energy. They can do this thanks to the seed of the energy that refills their spent stores of the stuff without me having to pump power into them and thanks to this my eldritch eyes expand in number far faster than before.

While I continue my marching I repeat what I did with my boots with the rest of my clothes. It takes me some time, but in a matter of minutes all of my clothing has been reinforced by my weird power. As a consequence of this the energy flowing throughout my entire body has been greatly reinforced, and I am far more attuned to the energy than before. I can keenly feel it and I can sense that it is subtly reinforcing my body as well, which would explain how I could run so fast earlier.

The hound was able to chase me down, or it would have been if I hadn’t shot it, but that’s because it was supernaturally fast, not because I was slow. The knowledge that my body is reinforced by my power is reassuring and it fills me with the confidence needed for me to speed my exploration of this place ever so slightly. My pace is subtly faster than before, especially now that I no longer stop to touch the walls of individual rooms as I make my way through them.

I continue to wander the rooms before me for perhaps two hours before I eventually stop. I have not really stopped moving since I encountered that blasted dog that I devoured, so even though I have some level of supernatural endurance I exhale relievedly when I lean against a wall of yet another nearly identical room and drop to the floor. My supernatural energy seeps into the wall behind me even as I begin to open my backpack.

I open the handy and clearly supernatural object and am surprised when I see something new inside of it. Filling the entirety of the pocket of the backpack I have just opened is a diminutive creature with green skin and long ears, and a weirdly curvy body. The creature is dressed in medieval looking clothes like she is cosplaying as a villager at a renaissance fair. She looks at me and smirks.

“Hello there!” She says, speaking with an accent that I can only describe as “Vaguely Jersey-esque”. She starts to fly, despite not having wings and I watch her curiously. When she exits the backpack she grows a bit, going from perhaps a foot tall to a little over four feet tall. I feel a strange connection to her instinctually, one that helps dull my reaction to this but not in a way that worries or frightens me.

“Uh… Hello. Who are you, and what were you doing in my backpack?” I ask her, causing the woman to smile at me.

“Oh, if you’re worried about something like space… Don’t be. Your backpack is anomalous. When you next look at it, it’ll be filled with the items you were looking for.” She explains, causing me to risk a glance into the thing and see that she is correct. The food and drinks I was planning to eat are inside of the open pocket, and at least at a glance they are unharmed.

“As for me, well… I’m your familiar!” She says, in a rather bubbly way. My eyes narrow as she offers that subpar explanation, causing her to laugh.

“Oh wow, do you not know what is going on? About items, or anything?! Is this your first jump or something? It must be!” She says, a note of awe slipping into her voice as she takes in that revelation. I assume she must be telling the truth by considering a few different factors, namely the fact that I have never heard of a “Jump” before, and by studying the tonal shift she underwent when she realized that I am somehow a novice at… whatever is happening.

“Huh… I suppose I need to be the one to explain this, don’t I? That’s weird. Umm… Okay, so you are a ‘Jumper’.” She begins, after spending a few moments considering what to say next.

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“”Jumpers’ are beings that can travel throughout the omniverse, the totality of existence. They are attuned to the omniverse itself, and they move throughout it with supernatural ease. The act of moving from one portion of the omniverse to another is known as ‘Jumping’. When a jumper jumps from one universe, multiverse, or pleniverse to another they grow in power, acquiring ‘Origins’, ‘Perks’, and ‘Items’, and sometimes other things as well. Depending on their destinations anyway. Some jumpers can acquire origins, perks, and items, in other ways but I don’t know if you can, and I want to focus on what is known about you by virtue of your nature as a jumper.” The “Familiar” tells me.

“First jumps tend to be weirder and more chaotic than other ones, so you could be a normal jumper and just because of the fact that this is your first jump weird stuff is happening. Now as for me… Well, I am a special type of ‘Item’ that is sapient, and capable of growth, but all ‘Items’ are a bit weird.” She explains, while I grab some food from my backpack and a bottle of almond water.  

“Items, in this context, are possessions that are attuned to your soul. Your backpack is one such item. I am one such item. All items, in this context, are anomalous and can have any number of properties. Your backpack, while not infinite on the inside has an abnormal carrying capacity, unique durability, and is soul-bound to you which makes it impossible for you to lose it permanently.” The goblin-like creature says, even as she walks over to me and sits down next to me.

“I am weirder than that. My intended purpose is to be a battery for the corruption that you must have been wielding.” My “familiar” explains, causing my eyes to widen.

“’Corruption’?” I utter, shock changing my facial expression. Calling it that implies that this power of mine is something dark and sinister. The creature next to me laughs.

“Yes, silly! I suppose you must not have been using it aggressively yet. The energy you wield is capable of doing all sorts of things. What have you done with it so far?” She asks, causing me to chuckle.

“I’ve… I’ve mostly infected walls, the floor, and my clothes. I have figured out how to make seeds of the stuff, and I’ve infected one animal, a cockroach, with it. So I know it can do stuff to living creatures, but I encountered some sort of mutated dog and when I tried to infect it with the energy it didn’t work.” I tell my companion, and her eyes widen at the end of that explanation.

“You… You must have encountered an anomalous animal. Anomalous beings can resist the corruption, especially if it is wielded by someone with little experience wielding it.” My companion explains, gently. I look at her, even as I split a sandwich and offer her half of it, before I next speak.

“How do you know all of this stuff?” I question, and while she rejects my offered sandwich, she does not reject my question. She considers it curiously before shrugging and looking at me.

“I don’t know. I do know what I know, but the mechanism behind how this information was revealed to me is not something I know. I just have knowledge baked into me. Heck even my memories only go back to a few minutes ago when I… began to exist, in your backpack.” She tells me, before smiling savagely.

“But I do know that I can learn more if you let me. And if you use me, for what my intended purpose.” She tells me, her eyes twinkling with an emotion I can’t quite place. There s a mischievous glimmer in them, a spark that I can tell marks her, defines her, but is beyond my ability to meaningfully articulate.

“How… How do I do that? I just… touch you, right?” I eventually ask, causing that mischievous glimmer to intensify.

“Well… Yes, you could do that. We could be boring, and inefficient, and just hold hands. Or you could prioritize efficiency.” She tells me, with a smirk.

“Allow me to explain something about the nature of the supernatural energy flowing through you. It is not a generic sort of neutral energy, master, it is a corruptive, sinful, transformational thing. The power inside of you is tied to sin, specifically the sin of lust. Mastering lust, or at least understanding it, is a vital part of mastering the corruption that is even now becoming an integral part of you...” The goblin declares, a smug look on her face as she reveals this.

“If we want to be efficient, the way you’ll transfer your excess energy is by slaking your lust using me. If you do I’ll teach you all about your powers! Even the ones that are not tied to the corruption inside of you. When we connect I’ll be able to look inside of you and learn about the powers you possess.” She says to me, in a sing-songy voice. I look at her silently, and I consider her offer.

The imitation of a goblin is a beautiful creature, with dark green skin and brown hair. She has ample, enticing curves and there’s something about her accent that I enjoy hearing. And she knows things that I don’t… It takes me a moment to warm up to the idea of taking her up on her offer, but I eventually pull the goblin-like creature into a steamy kiss. Our warm lips lightly collide and begin to wrestle, as I discover that the goblin is surprisingly dominant and eager to please.

She energetically kisses me back, her unnaturally long tongue sliding into my mouth and searching for mine. I begin to feel a torrent of the energy, the “Corruption” I produce and control, flow into her and as it does I feel her body warm up and even grow taller! More and more of the energy flows into my companion, and the moment before she pushes me away I begin to smile as I feel the energy inside of her acclimating to her body.

“Whoa, what a rush!” She exclaims, excitedly as she looks at me with a bright twinkle in her eyes. She is almost as tall as I am now, and I can sense her taking ahold of the corruption inside of her. She wordlessly condenses the stuff into a number of seeds inside of her.

“Master, that was an excellent kiss! I can’t wait to see what you do with those lips in the days to comes. Now just give me a second to study the corruption that I am now generating…” She says, even as she shuts her eyes for a moment. She makes a number of small, satisfied sounds and then begins to smirk.

“You know master, your initial powerset is no joke! That said, lacking awareness and knowledge of the mechanisms by which you can access your powers is certainly a bit rough. But, now that you have me, there’s a lot we can do with your current powers.” The goblin-like creature whispers, mysteriously.

She gets up and then turns and offers me her hand. I place the now empty bottle that I was drinking from during my familiar’s explanations remarks in my backpack and I accept her hand, causing her to begin to easily lift me to my feet.

“I think it might be best if we walk and talk, master. That way we can make our way closer to our intended destination… Out of this place.” She tells me, causing me to chuckle. However, right as she finishes lifting me to my feet I hear an explosively loud, and incredibly distant noise, almost like an animal howling in agony. I turn in the direction of the noise, and I tell my familiar to follow me before I begin to sprint towards it.

I run, faster than I’ve ever run, in the direction of the noise. As I speed towards it I begin to hear other noises in the general direction of the first sound. The noises are all animalistic, but they are also profoundly feral, like coming across a maddened animal in the throes of a primordial forest or something.

Eventually I see something I’ve never seen in the few hours I’ve been wandering this place: a visually different room. Ahead of me is a room that is pitch black, aside from some faint source of light that sheds a thin glow that from this distant I can only barely see. I can also hear the hisses and yelps of animals in pain, and I pull out my gun as I dart closer and closer to the distant room.

When I make it close enough to the room I am heading towards that I am only three rooms away I slow to a stop and I stomp the ground beneath me forcefully, pumping an intense amount of corruption into it. The corruption gives me a valuable set of eyes underneath me and I order that energy to surge into the room I am heading towards, which is still a fair distance away.

The energy is faster than ever and in a matter of nanoseconds I watch as my secondary eyes reach the darkness-covered room and allow me to see something weird: three gigantic cat-like beings grinning at a supernaturally large, but still much smaller then the three cats hunting down a… peer of theirs, feline as well as a perfectly normal looking and mundanely proportioned stripped cat. The two cats are surrounded, not only by the weird cats, but also by five of the same type of dogs that I encountered mere hours ago.

I also see what is responsible for the small amount of light in the room. Rather than having four walls, one of the dark room’s walls is a weird opening that seems to reveal a rift in time and space that manifests as a kind of portal to what I have to assume is an entrance to the next level.

The light comes from an electric wall-mounted light placed on the wall of a large brick hallway that is wildly different from the rest of the level it is either a weird part of or somehow bleeding into. The wall that should obstruct this view, and thus frame the normally square room that would await this visitor if they were a normal room, is just completely gone. Where it should be waits a short walk and then somewhere other than level 1, almost… a basement of sorts.

My goblin runs up behind me and smiles. She is still gorgeous, with no sweat marring her body or any makeup running down her face from having to run in the middle of the night. I can feel how grateful she is to be pumped full of corruption, even before she begins to speak.

“Master… I have a plan!” She tells me, brightly. I turn to her and smirk, ready and eager to defeat these strange creatures. I motion for her to speak up, as I am eager to begin to think of how to stop those weird creatures attacking the monster and possibly more mundane animal alike that they outnumber.

“It’s time to really use your flesh.” My familiar tells me, mysteriously. My face takes on a more skeptical countenance, but I don’t want to stifle her creatively this early into our relationship. Plus she knows more about my powers than I do! I turn and grin in the direction of the clashing animals, eager to have more of a chance to meaningfully practice my powers, and with backup no less!

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