Three days after the holiday reunion party, we found ourselves standing outside the bitter, snow swept corpse of the Mall Christmas Kiosk, where we’d unceremoniously beat Krampus to death like a bargain-bin pi?ata at a kid’s birthday party. Despite that, there was no sign the battle had ever happened. Krampus’s body was gone—currently hanging on a meat hook in cold storage—the elves had all melted to goo, and the gore had been dusted over with a thick layer of fresh powder.

  Once more, it was an eerie liminal space. Cold, empty, and abandoned.

  I was just glad nothing else had moved in to take Krampus’s place while we’d prepped for our decent to the 75th floor. I’d heard talk about an enormous Yule Cat and the last thing I needed was a battle against a pissed off kaiju kitty with anger issues and the desire to turn my body into a scratching post.

  We’d rolled the dice by waiting for so long, but it was an unfortunate necessity.

  We were running on a razor-thin timeline, but after everything we’d just survived on the 45th floor, I wasn’t about to go in blind when we descended to the 75th. We needed to be ready for anything. That meant restocking my spell cards, figuring out how the new Glyph Arrays actually worked, and taking full advantage of the Soul Forge.

  As my platoon commander had often said, “Success comes down to the Six P’s: Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.”

  Even after three full days, I’d barely scratched the surface of what was inside the forge. I hadn’t managed to catalog everything yet—not even close—and a lot of the equipment was still a complete mystery. Sure, there were plenty of Fabrication and Mana Infusion Tables, but there were other, weirder pieces of tech too. A Gravitic Pulse Forge, an Alchemo Alloy Smelter, a Plasmic Distillation Vat, a Quantum Binding Cradle. One piece of equipment, in particular, caught my eye, though—the Multi-Vector Charge Coil, which, according to its glowing info panel, could dramatically boost the destructive potential of traps.

  I had no idea how it worked, but after a few hours of tinkering, and a few missteps—including a particularly feisty explosion that resulted in singing off one eyebrow—I had a basic handle on it.

  With a working knowledge of the Charge Coil, I set to work upgrading my spell cards.

  Although my new Runic Glpyh Array Relic was clearly the upgraded version of Runic Resonance Trap, the basic mechanism was still the same. Carve the desired sigil pattern onto a compatible surface using an Engraver’s Awl, cast the applicable spell to store for later, and let the magic happen. The real trick was figuring out how to layer multiple runes without them blowing up in my face. There was also some additional complexity because not all sigils played well together.

  For example, in theory, I could nest both Frostfang Spire and Charbroiled Inferno into one nifty trap card, but when activated, fire met ice and the result was... neither.

  Instead, it unleashed a boiling cloud of superheated steam that scalded everything in a fifty-foot radius—friend, foe, or unlucky bystander. Instead of a precision tactical strike, it was a brutal, indiscriminate AoE murder machine. Sure, there were scenarios where something like that might come in handy, but they were few and far between. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up killing myself or someone I actually liked by accidentally handing them the magical equivalent of a live grenade.

  Mostly, I focused on augmenting and upgrading my current spell cards to make them last longer and hit harder. Basic Balloon Menagerie just wasn’t gonna cut it, so I juiced it up with the catastrophic flame damage from Crematorium Incinerator—liberated from the smoldering corpse of the HOA—and layered in an extra effect from a Common-grade Relic called Screw Summoner. The name sounded impressive, but all it really did was conjure 5 to 20 loose drywall screws.

  They didn’t do anything and had no magical properties.

  It was literally just a handful of matte-black, one-and-a-quarter-inch drywall screws. The kind every contractor across America had in the bottom of a drawer or squirreled away in toolbelt pouch. Total trash… unless I got creative. When combined with the other two, it created a homemade, balloon-fueled IED with plenty of extra shrapnel damage.

  After endlessly tweaking the configuration and tinkering with a wide variety of triggering mechanisms, I finally assigned the layout to the Runic Auto-Scriber and produced an entire pack of Claymore Animal Balloons cards. Between the Auto-Scriber and the Multi-Vector Charge Coil—which both increased the trap efficiency and reduced the cooldown time when crafting traps—I was finished in under an hour, which was record speed.

  My Discount Doppelbangers also got a badly needed upgrade.

  On top of the base spell effect, I also nested Butcher’s Maw and Venomous Payload.

  The first upgrade gave the Doppelbangers a serious durability boost—they could now absorb 40% of all damage aimed at me, and they’d stick around for a full minute on the battlefield. Admittedly, in a life-or-death battle, sixty seconds was a long time. Maybe even too long.

  So I added in a few new conditional triggers, letting me flip the proverbial kill switch and send them into a murderous frenzy whenever I felt like it. And, thanks to Venomous Payload, when the Doppelbangers exploded, they now unleashed a toxic poison cloud that affected all enemies in a ten-foot range.

  It was a win-win.

  Well, it was a win-win for me, anyway.

  I doubted the poor suckers on the receiving end of the exploding suicide clones would see it the same way. But then, if someone had done something to warrant getting blown up by a kamikaze Doppelbanger, I didn’t really give a shit about what they thought.

  My Health and Mana Spell cards also got a little TLC.

  With Harper along for the ride, the spell cards weren’t nearly as important as they’d been once upon a time, but it was still nice to have ’em around in case shit really hit the fan. And it was always good to have a little operational redundancy built into the pipeline for critical systems. Like not dying from internal hemorrhaging or Yeti tuberculous. If Jakob went down, either Croc or I could off-tank, and if Temp took a serious hit, we still had plenty of damage dealers in the rotation.

  But if something happened to Harper?

  No one could do her job, so we’d be well and truly fucked.

  Elixirs and spell cards weren’t nearly as good as having a secondary healer in our lineup, but they were better than nothing.

  For sake of ease, I decided to combine both Health and Mana Regen into a single card, then added in a third Uncommon Grade Sigil called Bless this Mess, which boosted the effects of all Restorative Spells by 25%. The Regen Grenades, as I’d taken to calling them, could be activated instantly through the use of a specific command phrase. And because the triggers could be far more complex, I created a pack for each of my teammates and tweaked the trigger so their cards would only activate when they said the proper phrase.

  On top of my standard spell cards, I also spent some time experimenting with the Stamina based Relics, using Croc as a willing guinea pig. It wasn’t hard to convince the mimic. Turned out, the Kannibal Kids of the 24th floor weren’t the only ones who like meat-flavored ice cream. A bucket of Neapolitan Swirl—now in skin, liver, and bone flavor!—covered a multitude of sins. Watching the dog slurp the rancid stuff down was understandably disgusting, though I wasn’t surprised Croc enjoyed it so much.

  Froyo and dry-aged corpses were arguably Croc’s two favorite food groups, and the meat-flavored ice cream was the best of both worlds. At least for a mimic.

  After the better part of a day, I’d finally come up with two different variations for physical reinforcements.

  For the first—dubbed Fortification Field—I stacked Echoed Aura in Group Love Mode with Thick Fat and Escalation of Force to create a team-wide buff. It boosted both Athleticism and Toughness by 15% and increased melee damage by 25% for ten minutes.

  The second was a Trap Card I affectionately called The Hurt Locker. It was a nasty little single-target debuff that lowered armor resistance, slowed the enemy by 15%, and made them 20% more vulnerable to elemental spell damage for five full minutes.

  Together, the two cards made for a brutal one-two combo that could help turn the tide in just about any fight.

  On top of trap card fabrication, I’d also spent countless hours leveling up my core abilities.

  With the sudden influx of Delvers from Kringlegard came a hoard of new Relics.

  Some were legitimately awesome—Carol of the Damned, Tinsel Tempest, Violent Night—while others were outright useless or borderline cursed.

  Among some of the worst were Festive Anxiety, Hot Cocoa Mug, and Wrapping Paper Armor. The first made the user feel a surge of Holiday-related anxiety, while Hot Cocoa Mug simply summoned a cup of room-temperature hot chocolate. That’s it. No buffs. No healing. Just... cocoa. As for Wrapping Paper Armor, it swathed the caster in a layer of “protective” wrapping paper, slowing their movement speed by 15% while increasing their overall armor rating by a measly 1%.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Didn’t come more useless than that.

  Most of the Relics went straight to the storefront, but I held onto more than a few for personal use. Pushing my active Relics to max level was one of my top priorities, and luckily, the Soul Forge had just the thing to help: a Ponzi Scheme Essence Transference Circle, which optimized the essence bleed from one Relic into another.

  The arcane mechanics behind the Transference Circle were mind-numbingly complex, but the effect itself was surprisingly simple and straightforward—it cut the number of sacrificial Relics needed to level up another Relic by 50%. The total cost to level a single Relic from level 1 to level 15 dropped from a staggering 145 all the way down to a much more manageable 72. Hands down, it was the best thing I’d found in the Soul Forge.

  Nothing else even came close.

  It also explained why all of Nikoli’s Relics had been maxed out at level 15.

  Outside of the Compass of the Catacomber, the Transference Circle was probably the single biggest edge I had in the war against the Monarch. With it, I’d be able to max out my own Relics twice as fast for half the price and, just as importantly, it would supercharge the store’s profits. High-level Relics always commanded a hefty premium, and with this trick, I could upgrade them dirt cheap and flip them for triple or quadruple the usual price.

  The possibilities were endless.

  Between the Transference Circle and my growing back catalog of available supplies, I managed to push both Hydrokinesis and Neural Slipstream up to level 12.

  At level 5 the Mana cost for Hydrokinesis decreased, and at level 10 it gained a new passive ability, Cold Snap, which increased how quickly ice constructs formed and allowed me to shatter those same frosty constructs with explosive force, essentially creating improvised ice bombs.

  Neural Slipstream also hit a major milestone at level 10, gaining a game-changing ability called Poltergeist. It let me inflict physical damage and cast offensive spells while in Thought Specter form, giving the skill an entirely new level of flexibility and lethality. It also increased the duration of the spell to ten seconds, instead of five.

  I also brought Frostfang Spire up to level 5, unlocking the secondary Frost Javelin ability, which let me hurl spears of ice instead of just summoning them from the ground.

  Although I could’ve pushed some of those even higher with my new stock, I decided to spend my remaining supplies to increase levels on Sleepwalker, Will of Iron, Form FleshTron, Go!, Collective Consciousness, Swarm Tactics, Voodoo Dopplebanger, and Drone Zone, bringing each up to level 10 in preparation to craft the Tome of the Swarm Herald Emblem.

  All that was left to do after that was spend some time in the corpse cooler, resembling my army of Horrors after the bloody battle with Krampus.

  My Necromarshalls—Drumbo, Synthia, Uncle Sam, Rudolpho, and Meemaw the Snow Hag—all got some replacement body parts and a fresh coat of metaphorical paint, while I fleshed out the remainder of my army with mashed up Sunnysiders and a handful of Yetis. I briefly considered reanimating Krampus, but finally decided to hold off for the time being. The Dweller was powerful, but I couldn’t promote him to the Necromarshall role without more troops, and I didn’t have the resources for that.

  Not yet.

  And I didn’t want to waste him. He would be a great trump card down the road.

  By the time I was done, I had two War Dogs remaining, fifteen malformed Kevins, three Kannibal Kids, and five Yetis, all armed to the teeth with Relics and ready for war.

  I wasn’t the only one putting our new facilities to full use, either.

  Although I’d spent almost every waking moment in either the Soul Forge or the Corpse Cooler, so had Jakob. I’d give him the two alchemy Relic’s I’d looted off Nikoli’s corpse—Elemental Distillation and Suspension of Volatility—and overnight he’d become a one-man brewing machine, using Nikoli’s lab and stash of rare ingredients and reagents to craft a wide variety of truly inspired, and potentially insane, concoctions.

  Needlessly to say, some turned out much better than others, though none of them were outright useless.

  Some were close, though.

  After chugging Can’t Touch This, the drinker would be teleported three meters away from their current location when struck by a blow in combat.

  Problem was, the teleportation direction was totally random—it didn’t account for environmental hazards or nearby enemies. You might dodge one attack only to reappear over a bottomless pit or in the middle of a pack of gibbering, bloodthirsty ape men. There was every chance it could hurt as much as it helped. Still, for someone like Temp, it had serious potential as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Get in close, land a critical hit, then blink out before the enemy could retaliate.

  Focus Pocus boosted accuracy for mana-based Relics and cut casting speed and spell cost in half for five minutes. The drawback was that the user could only speak in rhyming couplets for the duration of the effect. Goblin Ballsweat increased Athletic Agility, the effectiveness of all Stealth-based Relics, and boosted looting speed by 500% for three minutes, but you also smelled exactly like the name suggested.

  Invisibility but Loud rendered the drinker perfectly invisible but caused circus music to play whenever the user took a step. Still good, so long as you weren’t planning on moving. At all. For any reason.

  Among my favorites was an elixir called Unbottle me, Daddy. After consuming it, all spells dealt double damage for 1 minute, but the catch was you had to scream “Harder Daddy” before casting any spell. A real double edge sword. Not only would you be obnoxiously loud, but the emotional embarrassment of screaming the necessary command phrase over and over again would be devastating. The kind of cringe that would haunt my dreams for decades to come.

  And those were just a handful of dozens.

  Shrinkle Juice, Feral Gatorade, and Wizard’s Hot Sauce were all just as good, though equally deranged. Jakob had a full-on arsenal of questionable elixirs and potions for just about any situation. He’d even acquired a leather bandolier from the shop, and had potions strung across his chest like an off-brand Rambo.

  Nothing was going to catch the Cendral unprepared.

  Three days of prep, potion-brewing, rune-etching, and corpse-gluing later, we were finally ready. I’d stocked up, geared out, and triple-checked my inventory until my brain felt like a soggy dish towel. All that was left now was to step through the next portal and descend to the 75th floor.

  We found the spatial doorway tucked away inside of a colorful plywood house in the Christmas village, labeled with a sign that read Santa’s Workshop! Elves Welcome. All Others Will Be Put on the Naughty List. The paint was chipping in some places and peeling in others, and the roof was missing several shingles.

  The tiny house had boxes filled with Christmas decorations—colorful garland, strands of Christmas lights, and a variety of broken ornaments—along with a single squat door at the rear of the shack, which definitely didn’t connect to the outside. When I cast Unerring Arrow, the blue beam pointed straight at the door like an accusatory finger.

  That was our way down.

  “We ready to do this?” I asked, eyeing the door.

  “Anywhere is better than here,” Croc said with a shiver. “I’m ninety percent sure this is lead paint, Dan. That and asbestos.”

  I squinted and stole a sidelong glance at the dog.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “We mimics have an exceptional sense of smell. Plus, I licked one of the walls, just to see. It definitely has that dusty flavor you get with asbestos.”

  “You really shouldn’t lick the walls, Croc,” I admonished. “Although I suppose lead paint and asbestos are the least of our concerns considering where we are.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” the dog said in all seriousness. “Dwellers are dangerous, but mesothelioma is a silent killer, Dan.” The mimic grimaced. “I learned that the hard way down on the second floor.”

  “The Devil’s Taint?” I asked, thinking back to the disgusting sewer system, which was still at the tippy-top of my most hated levels.

  Somehow, the place was even worse than Eternal Suburbia and the 49th floor combined. Less dangerous, but far more disgusting. Give me meat houses and voracious Eldritch light shows any day of the week over endless rivers of knee-high sewage, skin-melting Slimes, and the enormous cockroaches, more commonly referred to as Skitters.

  Croc nodded.

  “All those sewer pipes are lined with asbestos,” the mimic said. “I was helping a Delver named Tina—really nice lady from Syndney. We spent a month wandering around down there, looking for a way out. She ended up with hyper-aggressive Metastatic Mesothelioma. Her whole body became one giant cancer cell. Eventually she was more cancer than woman. A pack of Skitters eventually finished her off, but then in an ironic twist of fate, they also died of Mesothelioma.”

  “Inspiring stuff as always, Croc,” I said, my skin suddenly feeling itchy. “Since I don’t want super cancer, how’s about we get the fuck out of here, huh?”

  I squared my shoulders, adjusted the straps on my toolbelt, and stepped through the door.

  Usually, the kiosk doors connected to a series of passages that sliced through the floors like an express elevator. But not this time.

  The second I passed over the threshold, the world tilted and spun, reality stretching and distorting around me, a chaotic swirl of psychedelic colors flashing across my vision in rapid succession as the Backrooms pulled me apart, one atom at a time, before abruptly reassembling me… somewhere else.

  There was no other way to describe it.

  It felt like being unmade then crudely stitched back together.

  I staggered forward, boots scraping against a metallic grating, before finally catching myself on a wall that hadn’t been there a second ago. The temperature had abruptly risen twenty degrees, and suddenly I found myself going from shivering and half frozen, to sweating like a Lua pig. I groaned, my head spinning, my eyes momentarily blinded by the sudden, searing light. The air reeked of ozone, plastic, and that weird hospital smell that always made me think of dental work.

  “Sweet Baby Jesus,” I muttered, coughing and blinking against the migraine-inducing glow of sterile overhead fluorescents. “What in the hell just happened? Where in the hell are we?”

  My eyes adjusted slowly, revealing a corridor that stretched out endlessly in both directions—wide, cold, and aggressively industrial. The walls and ceiling were a clinical shade of white, broken only by hazard-orange warning stripes and clusters of embedded monitors that flashed warnings at me or flickered with complex diagnostic screens and technical readouts that were way above my pay grade.

  A metal catwalk ran beneath my boots, but through the slates in the grating I could see pipes the size of subway tunnels—some glowing faintly with blue-green light, others pulsing like arteries. Flexible tubing filled with a liquid red substance stretched across the facility like exposed nerves. A tangled mess of pipes, ventilation ducts, and rainbow-colored cables ran across the ceiling, coiled and crisscrossed, running from everywhere to everywhere else.

  The whole place felt like a mashup between a nuclear sub, something out of a sci-fi novel, and a dystopian day spa designed by Half-Life.

  Out of curiosity, I squinted and studied one of the wall monitors nearby, my brow furrowed in concentration. The letters seemed to swim in and out of focus the closer I looked. I was starting to think that stepping through the doorway had somehow given me a concussion, but then a notification popped up, courtesy of the Codex.

  Whoops! Looks like you’ve stumbled upon an encrypted VRD Research Terminal. Clearance level designation OBSERVE-ALPHA. You do not currently have the appropriate credentials to view this material, so the language has been temporarily rendered in Proto-Variant, Iteration 0.95. If this is an error, please seek out a credentialing administration at your soonest possible convenience. If this is not an error, please exit the research floor now before you are slated for permanent repurposing.

  What the hell did Clearance designation Observe-Alpha mean, I wondered? Also, slated for permanent repurposing didn’t sound like a good thing.

  I grimaced and turned to look behind me at the doorway I’d entered through.

  It was embedded in what looked like a cross between a security checkpoint and a very sad mall kiosk. Sleek metal counters gleamed under sterile lights, each one topped with a monitor and a built-in palm reader. Above them was a cheery neon sign that read WHICH MUTATION ARE YOU? SCAN YOURSELF TO FIND OUT NOW – ONLY 99 BIT-SCRIP!

  Just what in the fuck had we gotten ourselves into now?