Tales from Pops

As they traveled, Athena would always ask Pops questions whenever it was safe. This is something that both she and Vain had agreed on. Pops was originally hoping that she would ask a question at a bad time so that he could have an excuse not to answer it.

Finally, after three hours in their journey, Pops couldn't take it anymore, "Athena since you are so curious how about I tell you stories about what I had experienced on different levels that not only be beneficial to know for the future but will satisfy your curiosity."

Pops no longer sounded so joyful as he usually does, presumably because of all the questions Athena had asked. Vain couldn't help but feel bad for the nice old man. Putting his hand on Pops' shoulder, Vain spoke, "I know how you feel. I myself spent several hours answering her questions when we first met. How about we check one more room and then you can tell her a story from your past. I do hope it will be enough."

Seeing the look of pain and understanding on Vain's face, Pops knew he really couldn't do anything about it now. With a tired sigh, they checked the next room and killed the Skin Stealer inside before taking a water and food break while Pops got his story ready for Athena.

"Alright let us begin with a simple story about level 2." Both little girl and adult man sat down and looked at Pops in anticipation. Looking at the pair, Pops realized that Vain might have been able to stop Athena, but wanted to hear his stories as well.

*sigh*

"Alright let's start with the first time I entered level 2. I had just gotten the authority to enter it and I was a naive young man who directly entered the level almost immediately after. I went with the small group that I had just made before. They had stayed there only a little longer than I had, with the person who had stayed the longest had only been in the backrooms for two months. So young all of them.

The first thing we saw was that there were no rooms there like in level 1. All around there were several pipes that looked almost... random. All around the temperature was warm almost everywhere unlike the other levels that the others that were cool. It added a false sense of comfort that this level shouldn't have. I let my guard down and had my group moving around loosely which is smart for new people, but it also leads to many more deaths if it is too loose and my group was too loose.

We didn't realize that the level was the first official meeting with entities. We had thought that level 2 had entities that would be similar to the way level 1 was like. We assumed this because we occasionally saw a door or two. These doors were locked and we didn't try to force our way through not caring much about it since we were taking a look around more than anything.

We were waiting for something to show up. We had only done the most basic research knowing that level 2 is only really useful for the fact that it is the main source of metal for smelteries that reside on level 1. Ten minutes. Ten minutes in. We saw a child crying. We let go of all our defenses, Carl came up to the child to comfort the child when the child suddenly turned and pushed a knife straight into his eye. Two other children appeared on the side and started stabbing again and again into Carl's screaming body.

Chen reacted the fastest and shot the child straight through the head. The other children got scared off and ran as soon as their friend fell. We had finally noticed that the child was a Faceling, we had seen faceling maybe once or twice, but all of them were adults. We tried to help Carl, but we were too late. The man was so caring. We all loved him, but just like that, he breathed his last breath.

We hadn't even reached 30 minutes! Not even half an hour and we had lost one of our team. Our team of five suddenly became four. It was now a group of me, Chen, Hannah, and Bard. We also learned that the girl in our group Hannah had recently started to date the man. Only Chen could sort of comfort her since he was the one who killed one of the children.

As the poor girl kept crying we took out our phones and looked up more information about this place. We found we must find a door to take us back to level 1, but they are rare, it was easier to make it to level 4 which was the only other safe level accessible from that level.

I clearly remember ignoring the words of MEG. I thought myself to be a great person who would do great things. I was right, but at that time I didn't understand how pricy such an ideal would be. We had all thought that level 2 was going to only be a little harder than level 1, like a video game that gets harder slowly as you go up. It turned out to be a little like a video game with the first level being easy, then the second being hard, and last the third level being at impossible difficulty.

We learned all we could, but Hannah's crying had attracted more entities. We got the main information, tunnels are bad, everything else is better than this unless it is past a ridiculously shaped door with too much color.

I only had a crossbow at the time and I shot a hound, but there was most definitely more than one. Only Carl had a bow, so there was no windup for the rest of us. The only problem with that was there was a Smiler with the group. This was our first encounter with one of them so we didn't know that any physical weapons were useless.

This time we were lucky since I had thrown my flashlight at the creature when I saw I couldn't do anything to it. I saw that it was attracted to the light and pounced at it destroying it, but I had a chance to shout run which we all did. Hannah also learned her lesson and didn't make a sound despite how sad she was.

We had thought we had just met the worst of it, but instead, we met something far worse than we could have originally thought. We had met another group of humans shortly after and after seeing that they weren't Skin Stealers both groups sighed in relief, but this time the other group didn't lower their weapons, instead, they laughed loudly at us.

They called out to us, 'Give us the girl if you don't want to die.' At the time we were shocked that they would want the girl, but Bard seemed to know what was happening and spoke up not for Hannah, but against her. He said, 'I know it might seem cruel, but you have to do it to survive.' he pulled a screaming Hannah along. What the other group didn't know was that he had also given us a look that both I and Chen understood as he had a plan.

With our weapons aimed at each other Bard whispered something into Hannah's ear and shoved her to the other group to which she immediately struggled and made sure to get most people's attention except my group's attention since we were waiting for the Bards signal. His signal was an arrow to the only person in the other group who had a gun. We also shot, but we couldn't save Bard who got shot by someone's crossbow.

That day I learned why MEG had told us to have a melee weapon as well as a ranged weapon. I found out that killing with such a weapon is far too personal. I only learned it as I shoved my sword into another's heart giving Hannah enough room to pull out her melee weapon and shove it into the skull of another. Chen also used his hatchet to heavily injure the last two enemies, but it cost him a huge gash in his shoulder, making his left arm unusable.

I have to say we were still lucky since we had minimal casualties.