A blue rubber sleigh with googly eyes and a tall pointed red cap on its prow glides through a pine forest strung with Christmas lights under a glass-dome sky lit by an aurora, a bearded man in a red bathrobe and paper crown steering it with outstretched arms while a horned, scaly man and a woman in a pink bunny suit ride behind him.
“My time has finally come”: Croc as a sleigh over the cursed snow globe of the 49th floor (chapter 15).

Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains · Book III · 2026

Kiosk Kingdom

Dan has a store, a crew and a price on his head. To strike back at the Monarch he goes down: through a Christmas snow globe, an alien laboratory and a haunted children’s wood, to the kiosk king of the 99th floor.

Kiosk Kingdom (2026) is the third book of James Hunter’s LitRPG horror-comedy Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains, and by some way the longest: sixty-two chapters, told as before by Dan Woodridge, an ex-Marine contractor who woke in the Backrooms in a knock-off bathrobe and now runs a store there that is a refuge for the lost. It opens three days after the HOA of book 2 and covers a few weeks.

Dan has a store, a rubber dog for a best friend and a price on his head. Now he has a plan. The Flayed Monarch moves his armies through the Kiosk Network, some three thousand kiosks from floor 1 to floor 355, and the network belongs to the Franchisor of the 99th floor. Kill the Franchisor and the kiosks are Dan’s. The road down runs through four themed floors, each its own pastiche: the last of suburbia, a Christmas snow globe with a Santa who keeps slaves, a pristine alien laboratory that finally explains the Backrooms, and a children’s wood where the toys have gone feral. Along the way the book asks what power costs, and how much of yourself you can trade away before nothing is left.

Shadow Alley Press published it for Kindle on 31 March 2026 (680 pages); Steve Campbell’s audiobook runs 22 hours 20 minutes.

Part 1

Search and Rescue

Three days after the HOA, Dan is paying for his victory. FleshTron, the mech he made of his Horrors, burned out his army and five Doorway Sentinels and stranded thirty-odd Delvers on hostile floors, and a Howler raiding party led by Fenrir is still missing. Dan tracks it across the 4th floor, Concourse Null, an endless, nearly empty airport whose gates open onto other gates. The trail ends in the Apex Reserve Lounge, a mimic hatchery where the sandwich platters and the chairs are hatchlings, and in the spa upstairs, whose still pool is the Brood Matriarch herself. Dan dives into her body to stab her core while acid from his own poison and his burning water flay him; Croc, failing to become a lightning elemental, becomes a giant sponge and soaks her up.

Two of her cocoons hold husks, Fenrir among them. Two hold survivors: Roy, a bear-headed Howler left catatonic, and Harper, an Iride Transmog with porcelain skin, pointed ears and dragonfly wings, a former pediatric nurse who helps run the Howler clinic. Dan annexes the lounge and spa and re-plans the store around a hotel floor and showers. Its job board, Ed Myrl’s idea, already pays in Croc-Coins, with a bounty on Aspirants proved by their cut-off brands, and its doors now banish any Aspirant within fifty feet. The derelict Loot Arcade becomes a bar and grill run by a sixth golem, Sinclair, a four-armed bartender with a refined accent and a TV for a head.

Dan sets the book’s goal: kill the Franchisor of floor 99 and take the Kiosk Network the Monarch uses to move his armies, by way of floor 24’s gateway to 49, and kiosks on to 75 and 99. Harper asks to come as the team’s healer. Her aura halves the damage she takes as long as she hurts no one.

“Do no harm, receive no harm.”

Dan hesitates; everyone else votes her in.

A bearded man in a red bathrobe and a paper crown walks an endless, empty airport concourse beside a blue rubber dog holding a magazine in an arm growing from its back, a thread of blue light leading ahead.

III · 1 Concourse Null Chapter 1. Three days after the HOA, Dan is paying for his victory: FleshTron burned out his Horrors and five Doorway Sentinels, stranding thirty-odd Delvers, and a Howler raiding party led by Fenrir is still missing. Unerring Arrow leads Dan across Concourse Null, an endless, nearly empty airport whose gates open onto other gates. Croc has found a magazine, Liminal Living Digest, and wants to start cooking corpses in Dan’s kitchen.

In a steamy marble spa, a whole swimming pool rises into a towering mass of watery tentacles around one great eye, and a bearded man in a red bathrobe dives headfirst toward it with a dagger.

III · 2 The Brood Matriarch Chapters 1–4. Croc knows the Apex Reserve Lounge for a mimic hatchery: its sandwich platters, chairs and tables are all hatchlings. Upstairs in the spa, the still pool is the Brood Matriarch herself, and bleach, fire and fists barely touch her. Dan freezes her with dread, poisons her, then goes intangible and dives into her body to stab her core while acid and his own burning water flay him. Croc, failing to become a lightning elemental, becomes a giant yellow sponge and soaks her up.

A grown woman with dragonfly wings and pointed ears, in grubby blue nurse scrubs, sits weeping on spa tiles among torn white silk while a blue rubber dog sits against her side and a crowned, bearded man in a red bathrobe crouches beside them holding out a small glowing bottle.

III · 3 Out of the Cocoon Chapter 5. Two of the five cocoons hold husks, Fenrir’s among them. Two hold survivors: Roy, a bear-headed Howler left catatonic, and Harper, an Iride Transmog with porcelain skin, pointed ears and dragonfly wings, a former pediatric nurse who helps run the Howler clinic. Her healing Relics were useless inside the silk, and she blames herself. Croc lies down against her, and she knows him at once: the Howler kids say he’s the best doggo.

A tall four-armed golem bartender with a television screen for a head, in a black suit jacket and white apron, mixes a gin and tonic for a tired bearded man in a red bathrobe at a brick-walled bar under chandeliers.

III · 4 Sinclair Chapters 6–8. On one of Jakob’s speed potions Dan re-plans the store: a hotel floor and thirty showers, while the job board, Ed Myrl’s idea, already pays in Croc-Coins. The dusty Loot Arcade grows brick walls and chandeliers, and its bartender is a sixth golem built from top-shelf bottles, chef’s knives, a mannequin and the dead lounge receptionist’s TV head and suit. Sinclair steps out with a refined accent, already knowing the perfect gin and tonic. A VRD research report wonders whether golems will one day break free.

A grown woman with dragonfly wings, in blue scrubs and motocross pads, with costume wolf ears and a bushy tail and a bundle of checkered flags on her back, holds out a tub of muffins across a store’s checkout counter to a man in a red bathrobe.

III · 5 Do No Harm Chapters 9–10. Dan lays out the plan: the Flayed Monarch moves his armies through the Kiosk Network, three thousand kiosks owned by the Franchisor of floor 99, so the Franchisor has to die. Harper, who asked the night before to come as the team’s healer, is at the checkout next morning with blueberry muffins, in scrubs, motocross pads and Howler wolf ears. Her aura halves the damage she takes while she harms no one: “Do no harm, receive no harm.” Everyone but Dan votes her in.

Part 2

Fireworks and Farewells

On floor 24 the team power-levels Harper on unmasked Kevins and Kathys. The gateway to 49 is a fireworks tent, and its Kiosk Merchant of Death is Uncle Sam, under orders from his “Corporate sponsors” to let no one through. He fights with cybernetic Dogs of War and laser drones; Harper drags a battered Dan into the Pog shield, and Temperance runs across the air to take Uncle Sam’s head. Dan guesses no kiosk can be annexed while the Franchisor lives, so they strip it of fireworks and explosives.

Then a night off on a Sunnyside driveway: steaks, badminton on lawns that have turned back into real grass, Ed’s battered guitar. Jakob admits he never had friends before; Temperance remembers Salem and will not sing. The last firework, Cosmic Hemorrhage, opens the sky on a winged, tendril-crowned shape. Then Ed Myrl says he is staying, to help the Howlers resettle floor 24 and chase BEACON, which may know a way out. Dan raises a toast, and Ed echoes it: “To new friends, new ventures, and fond farewells.”

Inside a huge striped fireworks tent, a towering, stilt-thin figure in a stars-and-stripes suit and a starred top hat, with a long wispy white beard and burning eyes, hurls fire while a huge spiked blue rubber wolf charges armoured robot hounds.

III · 6 Uncle Sam Chapters 11–13. The gateway to floor 49 is the Pyro Emporium, a fireworks tent on floor 24, and its Kiosk Merchant of Death is Uncle Sam, under orders from his “Corporate sponsors” to let no one through. He brings cybernetic Dogs of War and laser drones. Croc becomes a spiked, tusked war-wolf (“You’re all bad dogs”), Harper drags Dan into the Pog shield and numbs his wounds, and Temperance runs across the air to take Uncle Sam’s head. Dan guesses no kiosk can be annexed while the Franchisor lives.

At night on a suburban lawn under a dark red moon, a horned scaly man, a woman in a pink bunny suit, a long-haired man in an orange cap and a crowned man in a red bathrobe stand before empty folding chairs by a bonfire, three of them holding beer bottles, looking up as a firework blooms into a vast winged shape crowned with tendrils, while a gray parrot stands in the grass.

III · 7 Fireworks and Farewells Chapter 14. A night off: Ed’s steaks on the grill, badminton on lawns that have turned back into real grass, beer and Ed’s battered guitar. Jakob admits he never had friends before; Temperance remembers Salem and will not sing. Woodstock lights the fuses, and the last firework, Cosmic Hemorrhage, opens the sky on a winged, tendril-crowned shape. Then Ed says he is staying, to help the Howlers resettle floor 24 and chase BEACON. Dan’s toast: “To new friends, new ventures, and fond farewells.”

Part 3

Winter Wonderland

Floor 49 is a giant snow globe: a glass dome over pine forest hung with lights and cracked ornaments. Croc, who has grown a pointed red gnome cap, turns himself into a sleigh, Dan flies it, and the aurora turns out to be a Dweller, Polaris Vora, miles across, with a herd of skeletal hell-reindeer driving them toward it. Dan crash-lands with a pine branch through his belly, and Harper restarts his heart. Snowmaw Yetis come out of the trees behind a frail Hag; armoured in spiked ice, she nicks Dan’s hand with Black Rot Frostbite before he kills her. He reaches level 50, but the hand is black, and nothing heals it.

A hunting horn brings Wulfgar, a bear of a man from Nuremberg, whose wolf-drawn sleighs carry them, Dan’s robe and crown hidden, to Kringlegard: a Safe Harbor of Viking longhouses walled in gingerbread behind a stockade of sharpened pines. Its Jarl, Nikoli Volkov, a huge tattooed Russian smith forging a candy-cane broadsword, unmasks Dan and burns his wanted poster. When he refused the Monarch’s emissary, he says, the Monarch put a level-58 monster in his real forge beside the kiosk down; help him kill it and Dan gets shelter, use of his forge, and passage through the kiosk. Wulfgar whispers its name, Krampus, and crosses himself.

At the store Jakob cuts off the rotting hand with the edge of his plasma shield. A slow regrowth begins; Dan, who watched friends in rural Ohio lose themselves to painkillers, won’t lean on Harper’s painkiller spell. Sleepless, he rebuilds his army from the dead: the Hag, the lead reindeer Rudolpho, and Uncle Sam rise as Horrors. In the morning Ajax leads a Howler protest outside the Arcade, and Dan answers it by hiring him to run the place.

Under a glass-dome sky lit by an aurora, a woman in a pink bunny suit clings to the back of a skeletal black reindeer with a glowing red nose, a rope from her waist running back to a flying blue rubber sleigh.

III · 8 Rudolpho the Grippledip Chapters 15–16. Floor 49 is a giant snow globe, and its aurora is a Dweller, Polaris Vora, miles across. A herd of skeletal hell-reindeer drives the sleigh toward it, led by Rudolpho the Grippledip, whose red nose pulses out a sickening Gamma Blight and whose antlers fly like javelins. Temperance, who is afraid of heights, leaps onto his back roped to Jakob, hacks at his neck, is thrown, and is reeled back in cackling. Dan blasts a way out with dynamite and a firework called Uncle Larry’s Divorce Finale.

In a snowy clearing at night, a winged woman in blue scrubs kneels over a fallen bearded man in a red bathrobe with blue-white sparks crackling from her hands, while many pairs of red eyes glow among the pines.

III · 9 Clear! Chapter 16. Dan crash-lands the sleigh in a clearing and, still under Harper’s painkiller spell, finishes the crippled Rudolpho with his hammer. Then the spell lapses: a pine branch through his belly, a broken ankle and wrist, frostbitten fingers. He blacks out in the snow. Harper pulls out the branch and shocks his heart back into rhythm (“Clear!”). Dozens of red eyes are waiting in the trees. Out of the frying pan, Dan says, and into the fire.

A hulking, white-furred figure in jagged armour of ice raises a crystal sword at a crowned bearded man in a red bathrobe floating above the snow, while a woman in a pink bunny suit with a cleaver faces a pack of shaggy yetis between them.

III · 10 The Snowmaw Hag Chapter 17. Snowmaw Yetis, pale blue muscle under tangled white fur, charge out of the pines, buffed by a frail Hag with a candy-cane staff. Jakob’s car-alarm Relic pulls them in, Temperance and Croc carve, and one yeti is flung into the hungry aurora. The Hag clads herself in spiked ice and a crystal sword; Dan melts a pinhole in her helmet and drills her through it. He reaches level 50, but her Black Rot Frostbite has turned his left hand black, and no elixir touches it.

Two longboat sleighs drawn by huge wolves halt at a rune-lit gate in a stockade of sharpened pine logs, where a one-legged woman guard with a sleek prosthetic waits; beyond, gingerbread longhouses glow under strings of Christmas lights.

III · 11 Kringlegard Chapters 18–19. A hunting horn brings Wulfgar, a bear of a man from Nuremberg, with sleighs pulled by wolves the size of draft horses. Dan hides his robe and crown, Croc becomes a backpack, and they ride to Kringlegard, a Safe Harbor of Viking longhouses walled in gingerbread with frosting mortar and peppermint-bark roofs, its gate kept by one-legged Rebecka. The night market is like the Christmas markets of Jakob’s Berlin childhood (it “feels like home”), and its almond fritters taste of it.

In a cluttered forge, a huge tattooed smith in a white tank top, red fur-trimmed trousers and black suspenders, welding goggles pushed up on his brow, hammers a red-and-white striped broadsword on an anvil.

III · 12 The Jarl Chapter 19. In his workshop Nikoli Volkov, Jarl of Kringlegard, a huge, tattooed Russian smith, is forging a candy-cane broadsword. (“And Santa, I suppose. On Tuesdays.”) He knows exactly who Dan is, and burns his wanted poster. His offer: having refused the Monarch’s emissary, he lost his real forge beside the kiosk down to a level-58 monster; help kill it, and Dan gets shelter, forge access, trade and use of the kiosk. Dan is sure he is holding something back.

Outside a brick-fronted bar inside a store, a man in a shaggy crimson fox costume shouts through a megaphone, while a winged woman in blue scrubs holds back a furious woman in a pink bunny suit.

III · 13 Under New Management Chapters 20–22. At the store Harper numbs Dan and Jakob cuts off the rotting hand with the edge of his plasma shield. A painful regrowth begins, and Dan, who watched friends in rural Ohio go down that road, won’t lean on Harper’s painkiller spell. Sleepless, he raises the Hag, Rudolpho and Uncle Sam as Horrors. In the morning Ajax leads a protest outside the Arcade (“Your Happy Hour is killing the Hold!”) while Harper restrains Temperance. Dan makes him the Arcade’s general manager, at fifteen percent.

Part 4

The Jarl’s Forge

Nikoli teaches fabrication: a Relic’s look is only a vessel for its rune pattern, which a fabrication table can pour Shards into again and again; blank Sigil Stones take the same patterns; and a crystal infusion table makes any Backrooms-made object an Artifact if you feed it a memory, which is gone for good. Dan, one-handed, mass-produces Relics in a trance, reverse-engineers two parts of his own water spell, vomiting blood for it, and fuses them into Hydrokinesis, command of water in every form.

For Croc, who has no Artifact of his own to hold a Sigil Stone, he lays a red dog collar on the infusion table and gives up the last day with his childhood dog, Macaroni, a black pug who died with his head in Dan’s lap. Afterwards he finds tears on his face and doesn’t know why. Temperance and Croc, back from a day of bribes and mead, report that five years ago Wulfgar and his wife Hannah led a revolt against Nikoli; the night before it their son Eirik vanished, and a gift-wrapped box on the doorstep ended it. Two dozen people have disappeared in Nikoli’s ten years. Dan decides to play along, kill Krampus, then get into the Jarl’s Soul Forge. That night he gives Croc the collar, its tag engraved “Dan’s Best Friend”. Croc asks if he means it. “With all my heart.”

At a rune-inlaid worktable in a firelit forge, a crowned bearded man in a red bathrobe, one forearm in a white bandage, carves a glowing symbol with an awl into a stone held in a vise, while a huge tattooed smith in red fur-trimmed trousers watches him with folded arms.

III · 14 Fabrication Theory Chapters 23–25. Nikoli teaches fabrication: a Relic’s look is only a vessel for its rune pattern, which a Runescribed Fabrication Table can pour Shards into again and again, and blank Sigil Stones take the same patterns. Dan carves cold-immunity and scan-blocking sigils one-handed with an awl. “You are natural,” says Nikoli, who, Temperance notices, never blinks. In a twelve-hour trance Dan reverse-engineers parts of his own spell, vomiting blood, and fuses them into Hydrokinesis, command of water in every form.

In a dim forge, a bearded man in a red bathrobe presses his palm to a glowing crystal table beside a bright red dog collar, tears running down his face.

III · 15 The Price of a Collar Chapter 25. A crystal Mana Infusion Table can make any Backrooms-made object an Artifact, if you feed it a memory. For Croc, who has no Artifact of his own, Dan lays a red dog collar on it and gives up the last day with his childhood dog, Macaroni, a black pug who died with his head in Dan’s lap. The memory is gone for good. Dan finds tears on his face and doesn’t know why. The collar will let Croc take most of a killing blow for him.

In a firelit inn room with heavy wooden beds, a blue rubber dog with googly eyes and a pointed red cap sits proudly upright in a new bright red collar while a bearded man in a red bathrobe and paper crown, sitting on a bed, rests one hand on its head.

III · 16 Dan’s Best Friend Chapters 26–27. Temperance and Croc come back from a day of bribes, flirting and mead with a story: five years ago Wulfgar and his wife led a revolt against Nikoli, and the night before it their son Eirik vanished; a gift-wrapped box on the doorstep ended it. Dan decides to play along, kill Krampus, then get into the Soul Forge. At the inn he gives Croc the collar, engraved “Dan’s Best Friend”. “Do... do you really mean that, Dan?” “With all my heart.”

Part 5

Naughty List

Nikoli comes for them dressed as Santa, his gut swollen overnight, in a steel-plated flying longboat. Below lies a ‘90s mall Christmas village where Krampus lounges on the mall Santa’s throne beside a sack that spawns goblin elves without end, and beyond it the domed Soul Forge. Krampus’s chains drag Dan into the Naughty List: he relives the IED in Iraq that killed Sergeant Martin twenty feet out of his reach. Temperance has bound Dan in her own chains to stop Krampus reeling him in, and the magic crosses, so he also sees her worst day: Salem, her fiancé calling her a liar, her father renouncing her at the pyre, and young Temperance breaking free and fleeing into the woods. They break the demon, and Dan finishes him with a ball of burning water.

Then Dan insists on a tour of the Soul Forge. Inside, twenty gaunt Delvers, some of them children, work in collars spiked on the inside, and Nikoli offers partnership. Dan is tempted for one second.

“And all it would cost me was all the human decency I had left.”

He refuses, and Nikoli answers with a speech about sweatshops. Nikoli draws his sword, which is Croc, and Croc bites his arm off. Burned and one-armed, the Jarl climbs into steam-powered armour and turns his thralls on them; Dan, one-handed, breaks the forge’s suppression field, slips behind the suit, slices a hydraulic tube and fills the armour with water. Nikoli drowns in it. “It’s okay if you’re not okay, Dan,” Croc tells him.

Dan frees the forge’s slaves and annexes it. Over beers Temperance makes him talk about Martin, then tells him how she froze at the pyre. Neither will let the other claim cowardice:

“The word coward is reserved for people who don’t show up”

and Dan always shows up. He gives her the Dark Solstice Cleaver, peppermint-striped steel that drinks the light. At the Holly Hearth inn Hannah vaults the bar for Eirik, now eleven or twelve; Wulfgar lifts his son in a weeping bear hug, then kneels and lays his axe at Dan’s feet. Dan floats it back: Wulfgar should be jarl. He asks only for a trade alliance and a door to the store. At the feast Harper kisses him.

Ghostly green parachutes drift down over a toy-like mall Christmas village with a candy-striped arch and a miniature train, toward a towering horned, black-furred giant rising from a red velvet throne amid swarming goblins.

III · 17 The Christmas Kiosk Chapters 28–29. Nikoli comes for them dressed as Santa, his gut swollen overnight, in a steel-plated flying longboat drawn by reindeer in collars spiked on the inside. Below lies the Drillhaven North Pole Christmas Kiosk Experience, a ‘90s mall Christmas village where Krampus, the Yuletide Devourer, lounges on the mall Santa’s throne beside a sack that spawns goblin elves without end. Nikoli proposes an airdrop: “We win or we die. Is simple.” Dan sends his Horrors down first.

At dusk on the edge of an autumn forest, a young woman in a black Puritan dress and white apron runs for the trees past an unlit pyre while a crowd with torches and lanterns stands frozen behind her.

III · 18 Naughty List Chapters 29–30. Krampus’s chains drag Dan into the Naughty List. He relives the IED in Iraq that killed Sergeant Martin, twenty feet away and out of reach. Temperance has bound him in her own chains to stop Krampus reeling him in, and the magic crosses: he sees her worst day: Salem at dusk, her fiancé Jonathan calling her pleas “Lies”, her father renouncing her, her mother silent. Young Temperance breaks free, threatens to curse the village, and runs into the woods. She, he will learn, saw his.

In a rune-lit stone forge hall, a huge white-bearded man dressed as a fur-trimmed Santa draws a red-and-white striped sword that is swelling into a blue rubber mouth full of teeth, while gaunt workers in iron collars stare from their benches.

III · 19 Let’s Make a Deal Chapter 31. With Krampus dead, Dan insists on a tour of the Soul Forge. Twenty gaunt Delvers, some of them children, work there in collars spiked on the inside. Nikoli offers partnership, and Dan is tempted for one second, the cost being “all the human decency I had left”. He refuses; Nikoli answers with sweatshops and cheap phones: “Freedom is illusion.” Nikoli draws his sword, which is Croc, and Croc bites his arm off at the elbow.

Under strobing red alarm light, a crowned bearded man in a red bathrobe, one forearm in a white bandage, wrenches at a bolted copper panel while a huge blue rubber bear-like monster in a red cap and collar guards his back and a steam-powered armoured giant faces a horned shield-bearer behind them.

III · 20 Hostile Takeover Chapters 32–33. Burned and one-armed, Nikoli drops a Mana suppression field, climbs into steam-powered armour and turns his collared thralls on the team. While Jakob holds him and Croc guards his back, Dan wrenches open the control panel one-handed and cuts its power rune with his awl. When magic returns, he has Harper lock the thralls down with Krampus’s own Naughty List, slips behind the suit, slices a hydraulic tube and fills the armour with water. Nikoli drowns inside it.

On a sofa in a lamplit room, a woman in a pink bunny suit turns a great sword of red, white and pale-green striped steel in her hands, while a crowned bearded man in a red bathrobe, his hands in white bandages, sits in an armchair across from her with a beer can.

III · 21 Beers and Confessions Chapters 33–35. The collars come off. Sven, once captain of the guard and Rebecka’s husband, asks whether they will be chained again; Dan annexes the whole forge into the store and shows them pizza and showers. Over beers Temperance makes him talk about Sergeant Martin, then tells him how she froze at the pyre. Neither will let the other claim cowardice: “The word coward is reserved for people who don’t show up”. He gives her the Dark Solstice Cleaver.

In a crowded firelit tavern, a big bearded man in furs and a dark-haired woman with silver in her hair kneel with their arms flung wide, weeping with joy, while a thin boy seen from behind hurries in through the door toward them and a man in a red bathrobe and paper crown watches from the side.

III · 22 Holiday Reunion Chapter 36. Dan leads the freed thralls, in store T-shirts and jeans, into the Holly Hearth. Hannah vaults the bar for her son Eirik, five years gone; the bells ring; Wulfgar arrives running and lifts the boy in a weeping bear hug. Then he kneels and lays his axe at Dan’s feet. Dan floats it back: Wulfgar should be jarl. He asks only for a trade alliance and a door to the store. At the feast Harper kisses Dan, and the whole tavern sings “Sweet Caroline”.

Part 6

Welcome to the VRD

A door in a plywood Santa’s Workshop unmakes them and rebuilds them on the 75th floor, a white, endless research wing of the Variant Research Division. Among six grown Helix Splicer pods Dan reads the VRD’s report on humans. Earth is a world without Mana, the floors are habitats rebuilt to about the year 2000, conflicts are staged, and the dead go to dissection.

“They are dangerous. They are innovative. They are unfinished.”

Dan is a lab animal, and coldly angry. A red-flagged file says a hive species called the Drekhnaar, carriers of the Blight, has broken containment. A MedSynth heals Jakob’s skinless arm to white scales and regrows Dan’s hand, and Dan steals the room bare. A level-79 Drekhnaar Sentinel chases them through an overgrown containment vault, and Dan holds it off by slipping his mind into his Horrors one at a time, dying seven times in borrowed bodies and feeling each one’s despair at existing at all.

In an abandoned control room a recording plays: the Researcher himself, a tentacled figure with one lidless gold-ringed eye, Head Researcher of the Progenitor Ship KAIROS Carrier NIC-001V. The Blight is loose on several floors and the ship’s own core no longer obeys; the ship is moored on Earth, and no Delver or Dweller may leave until it is purged. Harper sees no rescue coming. Temperance, who believed the Backrooms a divine crucible, breaks: “It’s all just a mistake.” Dan answers that the Monarch is still hunting their people, and that they are his family now.

In a white laboratory, a crowned, bearded man in a red bathrobe, both forearms wrapped in white bandages, sits in a glassy chair before a towering white computer terminal, ringed by tall amber pods veined with violet light and racks of coloured fluid.

III · 23 Inquiry Report Chapters 37–39. The way down is a door in a peeling plywood Santa’s Workshop, which unmakes them and rebuilds them on floor 75: an endless white research wing of catwalks over glowing pipes. In the Replication Bay, among six grown Helix Splicer pods, Dan reads the Variant Research Division’s report on humans. Earth is a world without Mana, the floors are habitats rebuilt to about 2000 CE, and the dead go to dissection. “They are dangerous. They are innovative. They are unfinished.”

A horned man covered in white scales, his leather glove off on a steel table, holds up a whole scaled arm with wet eyes, while a blue rubber dog in a red cap looks on and a crowned bearded man in a red bathrobe sits gritting his teeth with one hand inside a glowing glass cylinder.

III · 24 The MedSynth Chapter 40. Jakob finds a lunchbox-sized MedSynth. It has already turned his skinless arm, hidden under a glove since they met, into whole white scales, and his eyes are wet. Then it regrows Dan’s hand in a minute of silver nanite fire. The research floor can’t be annexed, so Dan steals the room bare, Splicers, canisters, terminal and all. Alarms sound, and an eight-foot, many-legged security golem arrives: “VRD thanks you for your compliance.”

Down a white catwalk corridor, a hulking three-headed green hive monster with cannons on its shoulders smashes through a wall of ice, chasing a crowned bearded man riding a skeletal black reindeer, with a blue rubber elk-like dog in a red collar running alongside.

III · 25 Die, Spawn, Repeat Chapters 41–43. Temperance rides the security golem and beheads it; being no Dweller, it gives no loot or experience. In an overgrown Pathogen Containment Vault waits a level-79 Drekhnaar Sentinel, a three-headed hive behemoth with salvaged plasma cannons, and they run. Riding Rudolpho, Dan holds it off by slipping into his Horrors one at a time, and dies seven times in borrowed bodies. A gaudy “Researcher Approved!” medallion, a Loot Token prize from book 1, gets them past the golems at the last door.

In a deserted control room strewn with papers, a large screen shows a tentacled figure in a white lab smock with one enormous lidless gold-ringed eye, while three stricken companions stand frozen before it.

III · 26 Dire News Chapter 44. In an abandoned control room a recording loops: the Researcher himself, Head Researcher of the Progenitor Ship KAIROS Carrier NIC-001V. The Blight, “a vector for entropy disguised as biology”, is loose on several floors, and the ship’s core no longer obeys. The ship is moored on Earth, and no Delver or Dweller may leave until it is purged. Harper sees no rescue coming, and Temperance’s faith breaks: “It’s all just a mistake.” Dan says they are his family now. “Then let’s kill something,” she answers.

Part 7

The 10,000 Acre Wood

Dan crawls out of a fireplace into a honey-coloured house carved inside a giant tree on floor 99. Outside, Aspirants led by Ashely Greene, a franchisee whose cheeks have been flayed, are torturing a caged, three-foot, sun-faded teddy bear who keeps asking for Christopher Robin. It is Winnie-the-Pooh, and Dan’s mother gave him one when he was eight. Dan’s Horrors and Temperance’s new sword break the Aspirants, and Ashely slips away. Dan burns the dead rather than raise them: having lived inside his Horrors, he knows something of them lingers. Pooh has been looking for his boy for maybe thirty years, his old friends aren’t the way they used to be, and the Franchisor’s Steamboat Studios lies at the heart of the wood. He offers to guide them.

For five days he rides Croc’s back past punji pits and bear traps, a mangy striped Tigger in the jungle and a shaggy, eyeless Eeyore, whose kind’s grief makes lost Delvers give up. Dan, re-equipping a title that doubles experience for killing Delvers, sets the team hunting Aspirants; Jakob, who objects to hunting people, tries to drag a burning man out of an exploding bog. Dan raises Krampus as a Horror on golem spider legs, Croc evolves, and Dan reaches level 61.

Inside a cosy tree house of honey-coloured wood with teacups on the shelves, a crowned bearded man in an ash-smeared red bathrobe crouches at a low peephole in the door; through a big round window beside him, a battered teddy bear stands in a wooden cage in a forest clearing while a tall pale-haired woman in dark leathers with a knife stands beside it, seen in profile.

III · 27 Through the Peephole Chapters 45–47. Dan crawls out of a fireplace into a cosy house carved inside a giant tree on floor 99. Through the peephole, eight Aspirants led by Ashely Greene, a Celestari with her cheeks flayed, are torturing a caged teddy bear who won’t help them find “Dan” and keeps asking for Christopher Robin. It is Winnie-the-Pooh, and Dan’s mother gave him one when he was eight. Dan walks out inside a Horror disguised as himself; Temperance guts the plate-armoured Skylar, and Ashely slips away.

In a steaming jungle at twilight, a striped tiger-like beast springs off a coiled ring of tail with scythe-like claws spread, and a winged woman in blue scrubs braces a candy-striped staff across her body to block it.

III · 28 Tigger Country Chapter 48. Pooh guides them through a floor that grinds whole quadrants into new places, past punji pits, bear traps and swinging logs. In the steaming jungle lives the Tigger: no cartoon, but a mangy, striped ambush predator that bounces on a tail as thick as Dan’s thigh and lands on claws like scythe blades. A lone one drops on them at twilight on the first day and nearly takes Harper’s head off. After that they keep to the old-growth forest.

In a misty bog lit by tall glowing mushrooms, a battered teddy bear rides on the back of a big blue rubber dog, while a huge shaggy, eyeless donkey-like creature lumbers through the mist nearby.

III · 29 A Grim Little General Chapters 47–48. Pooh rides Croc’s back “like some grim little general”, and in the bogs they pass an Eeyore, one of the shaggy, eyeless creatures whose grief makes lost Delvers lie down and give up. Dan, re-equipping a title that doubles experience for killing Delvers, sets the team hunting Aspirants: Harper plays bait into a bog sown with balloon bombs, and the whole bog goes up. Jakob tries to drag a burning man out: “Killing is one thing,” … “but I didn’t agree to torture.”

Part 8

Steamboat Studios

On the sixth day the trees give way to the quartz walls of Steamboat Studios, a rotting fairy-tale castle smothered in neon billboards, with pirate ships hung from blimps of stitched, waxy hide. In a forgotten room off a service tunnel they find the journals of Captain James Graham, a Korean War veteran who noclipped into the wood and lived there with the bear; his last entry, 28 June 1956, describes a way into the castle. When Pooh began calling him Christopher, he let him.

“If he wants me to be Christopher Robin, then that’s who I’ll be.”

Pooh holds their Polaroid and remembers none of it. Croc tells him about Gertrude Evans, his own first friend: the hole softens if you fill it with people who care.

Beyond lie the Gluttonarium, a neon boulevard of nightmare fast food whose smell drives Croc into a cannibal rage, and the Play Palace, an arcade whose games raise stats and whose prizes include a pair of Artifact blue jeans that finally retire Dan’s jorts. Back at the store, sleepless, Dan forges his second Emblem; it comes out as a laminated diner menu.

The arcade’s service door opens on the Franchisor’s throne room, where a giant metal face juts from the wall. Oz the Terrible is weary, not gloating; the Monarch’s power keeps him alive. Then he tells Pooh he has missed him, and Dan understands: Oz is James Graham, who went after the Franchisor in 1956 and became him.

“It just... keeps asking what you’re willing to trade away.”

There is no deal to be made, he says. The Franchise Code Enforcer climbs out of the floor, a winged, yellow-scaled serpent with the black-and-white cartoon head of Steamboat Willie, and every stained-glass phylactery they break grows it a head: Snow White, the Burger Baron, a laser-eyed hero who cuts Jakob in half (a revive puts him back together), the Starbies Harpy. Dan duct-tapes six bombs, sends everyone behind his Pog shield and, armoured in ice and accelerating, flies like a missile through the dwarf pillars. The dome comes down on the hydra.

Willie’s head pushes up through the rubble and fires its erasing beam at Dan, and Croc blinks in front of it, unmade to a smoking puddle of goo but alive. When the hydra turns on him, Pooh steps over the rubble holding the Polaroid up like a shield.

“I’ll never let it take the good inside of me.”

“Then let me do the same for you,” says Oz, and his own flying monkeys tear the hydra apart. The mask splits on what is left of James Graham, more machine than flesh. Pooh climbs into his arms; the old man asks Dan to look after the bear and, past healing, to finish him. Dan, who can picture himself in that mask within a year, fires: “Goodbye, Christopher.” The System’s reward praises the mercy, not the kill, and its Platinum totem makes the whole Kiosk Network a subsidiary of Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains.

They burn James Graham on a pyre of scrap wood, and Temperance, who has not sung since the night her town tried to burn her, sings “Abide with Me”. At the store Harper asks Dan on a date and he takes a rain check. He has thought about how Oz forgot what surviving was for, and he has a promise to keep: Froyo, and the Play Palace slides, with Croc. “Friends don’t lie to friends.”

From a dark treeline, a bearded man with a brass spyglass and a teddy bear riding a blue rubber dog look across at towering white stone walls patrolled by armoured dwarves, a leaning fairy-tale castle drowned in garish neon beyond, and pirate ships hanging in the sky from pale stitched blimps.

III · 30 Steamboat Studios Chapter 49. On the sixth day the forest gives way to the quartz walls of Steamboat Studios: a rotting fairy-tale castle smothered in neon billboards for Pizza Slut, Walt’s-Mart and Cash4Kidneys, rust-bearded dwarves on the ramparts, and pirate ships hung from blimps of stitched, waxy hide. Pan and the Lost Boys took those ships when they killed Hook. “What do you think the blimps are made out of?” asks Pooh, who half-remembers a service tunnel under the walls.

In a dusty concrete bunker room hung with childlike paintings, a battered teddy bear sits on an army cot holding a faded photograph, while a blue rubber dog rests one paw on his shoulder.

III · 31 The Captain’s Room Chapter 49. Down the trapped tunnel waits a long-abandoned room: two cots, a camp stove, journals, and childlike paintings of a bear beside a soldier. The journals belong to Captain James Graham, a Korean War veteran who noclipped into the wood; the last entry, 28 June 1956, describes a way into the castle. When Pooh began calling him Christopher, he let him: “If he wants me to be Christopher Robin, then that’s who I’ll be.” Pooh remembers none of it. Croc tells him about Gertrude.

In a flooded stone arena carved with glyphs, a woman in a pink bunny suit rides a neon-blue armoured hippo with a peppermint-striped sword raised, while a giant blue rubber octopus tosses a glowing pearl to a winged woman.

III · 32 Hungry, Hungry Hippos Chapters 50–54. Past the Gluttonarium, a neon boulevard of nightmare fast food whose smell sends Croc into a cannibal rage, lies the Play Palace, an arcade whose games raise stats. Its priciest game is Hungry, Hungry Hippos, a flooded stone arena of neon, bone-plated hippos. Croc becomes a giant octopus, Temperance rides and beheads the blue hippo, and Harper’s two-pearl buzzer-beater sets a new high score. Dan’s tickets buy, among much else, a pair of Artifact blue jeans.

In a vast granite throne hall under a golden dome held up by pillars carved as straining dwarves, a giant metal face juts from the far wall with blazing white searchlight eyes, facing a bearded man in a red bathrobe and a teddy bear riding a blue rubber dog.

III · 33 Oz the Terrible Chapters 54–57. Ajax has hired a chef, the Brownies have turned their Sunday races into a Thunderdome, and Dan forges his second Emblem, which comes out as a laminated diner menu. Through the arcade’s service door lies the Franchisor’s throne room, where a giant metal face juts from the wall. Oz the Terrible is weary, not gloating. Then he tells Pooh he has missed him, and Dan understands: Oz is James Graham. “It just... keeps asking what you’re willing to trade away.”

In a collapsing throne hall, a crowned man in a red bathrobe and jeans, in plates of ice armour with dynamite at his side, thrusts a fist at a burst of fire that blasts a stone pillar carved as a straining dwarf, while a winged yellow serpent rears in the dust beside it and his friends shelter under a glowing golden birdcage by the far doors.

III · 34 Samson Chapters 57–60. The mosaic splits and the Franchise Code Enforcer climbs out, a winged yellow serpent with Steamboat Willie’s black-and-white head. Each stained-glass window they break grows it a head: Snow White, the Burger Baron, a laser-eyed hero whose beam cuts Jakob in half (his revive puts him back together), the Starbies Harpy. Dan microwaves Popeye the Centaur Man inside a cartoon reel. Then he tapes six bombs, sends everyone to the far doors, and flies through the pillars. The dome comes down.

On a heap of rubble between pillars carved as straining dwarves, a small battered teddy bear stands with both arms raised, holding up a faded photograph like a shield, while a puddle of blue goo dotted with small eyes and a red collar lies at his feet.

III · 35 The Bear’s Stand Chapters 60–61. Willie’s head pushes up through the rubble and fires its erasing beam at Dan, and Croc blinks in front of it, as the collar promised. He is unmade to a smoking puddle of blue goo, alive. When the hydra turns on him, Pooh steps over the rubble holding the Polaroid up like a shield: to kill his friend, it will have to kill him first. “I’ll never let it take the good inside of me.” “Then let me do the same for you,” says Oz.

High on a throne-room wall a giant metal face has split open like a shell; inside, in shadow, a frail old man threaded with cables cradles a small teddy bear, while a bearded man in a red bathrobe looks up from below.

III · 36 Goodbye, Christopher Chapter 61. Oz’s own flying monkeys tear the hydra apart. His mask splits open on what is left of James Graham, more machine than flesh, and Pooh climbs into his arms. The old man asks Dan to look after the bear and, past healing, to finish him. Dan sees where his own trades could lead, and fires: “Goodbye, Christopher.” The System’s reward praises the mercy, not the kill, and its Platinum totem makes the whole Kiosk Network a subsidiary of Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains.

Beside a scrap-wood funeral fire in a ruined stone hall, a woman in a torn pink bunny suit stands with her eyes closed after a hymn while a small battered teddy bear hugs her leg, a bearded man in a red bathrobe and a blue rubber dog standing in the firelight behind.

III · 37 Abide with Me Chapter 62. They burn James Graham on a pyre of scrap wood; Pooh remembers a friend who “made the world a little less dark”. Temperance, who has not sung since the night her town tried to burn her, says “The past can shape us without owning us”, and sings the hymn “Abide with Me”. Back at the store Harper asks Dan on a date; he takes a rain check. He has promised Croc the Play Palace slides, with Froyo. “Friends don’t lie to friends.”

Borrowed from the Backrooms legend

  • No screen adaptation of the books exists (October 2026). What Kiosk Kingdom borrows is the internet legend of the Backrooms and a stack of pop culture; no statement by Hunter about his sources has been found, so the links below are this companion’s reading.
  • Liminal space. The legend began in 2019 with a request for images that “just feel ‘off’” (Wikipedia). Book 3 opens in the series’ purest liminal set: Concourse Null, an endless, nearly empty airport whose gift shop sells T-shirts reading “Fly Never, Arrive Nowhere!”, where Croc reads Liminal Living Digest with an empty parking garage on its cover (ch.1). The too-perfect lounge, the empty neon Gluttonarium and the abandoned control room work the same unease.
  • Rooms that move. The Wikidot wiki’s Level 0 shifts when no one is watching (Backrooms Wiki, Level 0); Concourse Null has “Gate Changes” (ch.1), and floor 99’s quadrants grind into new places around a Steamboat Studios that never moves (ch.48).
  • Noclipping in, somewhere else. In the legend you “noclip out of reality” (Wikipedia). Most of Hunter’s Delvers land in the Lobby, but Captain James Graham noclipped from a Korean battlefield straight into the 10,000 Acre Wood (ch.49).
  • An institution, and the why. Kane Parsons’ web series added Async, an organisation that opened a portal into the Backrooms in the 1980s, and his 2026 film for A24 keeps its scientists (Wikipedia; Backrooms (film))). Book 3 finally walks inside Hunter’s equivalent, the Variant Research Division: specimen pods, terminals, an autopsy theatre, a containment breach and clinical “Research Inquiry” reports, in the manner of the fan wikis, which run like the SCP Foundation’s (ch.38–44). No borrowing is claimed either way.
  • Nostalgia, explained. Parsons has called the Backrooms a poorly remembered late 1990s and early 2000s (Wikipedia). The VRD’s report gives Hunter’s in-world reason: because human societies reshape themselves within a generation, its reconstructions stop at the “peak” of pre-cybernetic civilisation, ending about 2000 CE; separately, it admits that smartphones, social media and fast fashion evolve too quickly for the ship to keep up (ch.39).
  • Things that pass for things. The wikis’ entities include Facelings, which mimic human roles, and Skin-Stealers, which wear their victims’ skin (entity list; Entity 9, Entity 10); book 3’s hatchling mimics are sandwich platters and lounge chairs, and the Brood Matriarch is a whole spa pool, a dark turn on the fan-made Poolrooms of endless white-tiled water (Wikipedia).
  • Dead retail, and no way out. The legend’s photograph was taken in a former furniture store (Wikipedia), and the Fandom wiki’s Level 0 resembles “the back rooms of a dated retail outlet” (Fandom, Level 0); book 3 is about retail itself, kiosks, franchise fees and an auction house, and ends with Dan owning the biggest chain in the Backrooms (ch.61). The series tagline is “Noclip In, No Way Out...” (Goodreads), and the Researcher’s quarantine makes it literal (ch.44). Almond water, the legend’s drink (Fandom, Object 1), named once in book 1, is absent here; the only almonds are Jakob’s Christmas-market fritters (ch.19).
  • ”Questionably legal intellectual property.” The blurb’s phrase for the Franchisor’s empire, Steamboat Studios, three of whose residents come from works now in the US public domain: the honey-loving bear of A. A. Milne’s 1926 book Winnie-the-Pooh, whose Hundred Acre Wood Hunter grows to 10,000 acres (public domain since 1 January 2022; Wikipedia)); Steamboat Willie, the whistling mouse at the wheel in Disney’s 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie (since 1 January 2024; Wikipedia); and Popeye, the sailor who first appeared in the comic strip Thimble Theatre in 1929 (that debut since 1 January 2025; Wikipedia). Dan notes the bear is a replica of “the old version” (ch.45), and the Enforcer’s Codex entry jokes about lawsuits (ch.57). A feral, re-stitched Pooh also keeps company with the 2023 slasher film Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, which the same public-domain release made possible (Wikipedia)).
  • Older tales. Oz the Terrible is the Wizard of Oz as a giant talking head with flying monkeys, and his Codex entry borrows “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” (ch.57); Peter Pan and the Lost Boys have killed Hook and taken his ships (ch.49); Snow White becomes a hydra head spewing woodland animals, and the seven straining dwarf pillars look like her dwarfs (this page’s reading). Pooh’s lost boy gets a tragic stand-in in James Graham, while the arcade’s old high score, “CRM”, makes Dan think of the real Christopher Robin Milne (ch.52).
  • Fast food, Christmas and the rest. The Gluttonarium and the billboards parody the chains: Pizza Slut, Starbies and its siren turned harpy, Subjugate’s “Eat Flesh”, Diablo Bell, Chick-in-Chain, Krimson Kreme, Walt’s-Mart, and the Burger Baron, a paper-crowned clown king whose crown Dan has worn since book 2 (ch.49–50, 59). Christmas lore supplies Krampus, the Alpine demon who punishes naughty children, the Scandinavian Jultomten, Rudolph as Rudolpho, and a Santa (Saint Nicholas) turned Russian jarl named Nikoli. Add Uncle Sam, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Skee-Ball, Samson pulling down the temple, and Twilight throughout.

Continuity notes

  • Dan: level 42 (a ch.4 level-up is never counted) → 45 (ch.11) → 50 (ch.17) → 53 (ch.35) → 55 (ch.47) → 61 (ch.48) → 62 (ch.54) → 65 (ch.61). Left hand lost to Black Rot Frostbite and amputated by Jakob (ch.20), regrowing (ch.21–35), regrown by the MedSynth (ch.40). From ch.54 Artifact blue jeans replace the jorts; the robe and paper crown stay. A second Emblem, the Tome of the Swarm Herald, shaped like a laminated diner menu (ch.56). The memory of his dog Macaroni is gone (ch.25). Warning “brain voices” since his Grit passed 75 (ch.22).
  • Croc: a pointed red gnome cap from ch.15; the red collar Man’s Best Friend from ch.27; level 26 → 45, evolved into a Mature True-Transmorphic Mimic (ch.48); unmade to goo by the hydra’s beam and recovering (ch.61).
  • Jakob: skinless arm healed to white scales and the glove off (ch.40); cut in half and revived by Overdraft Protection, now on a month’s cooldown, with a scar where Harper reattached his arm (ch.59, ch.62).
  • Temperance: the Dark Solstice Cleaver from ch.35; level 58 by ch.48; her faith that the Backrooms is a crucible broken (ch.44); singing again (ch.62).
  • Harper: on the team from ch.10; kisses Dan (ch.36); her date on a rain check (ch.62).
  • The store: the Apex lounge and spa (ch.5), Nikoli’s Soul Forge (ch.33) and the kiosk chamber (ch.62) annexed; a door in Kringlegard’s Holly Hearth (ch.36); Sinclair (ch.8), Ajax as the Arcade’s general manager (ch.22), the chef Hugo and his wife Amanda (ch.55), and Pooh (ch.62). From ch.61 it owns the Kiosk Network and its auction house.
  • Gone: Ed Myrl and Woodstock stay on floor 24 (ch.14); Synthia and Uncle Sam are lost as Horrors in the hydra fight, though Dan could rebuild them (ch.59–60); Krampus serves as one (ch.48).
  • Carried forward: Ashely Greene escaped (ch.47); the banished Jackson is talking to Black Harbor Syndicate recruiters and the Lord of Coin may be mobilising (ch.55); the Monarch, weakened by Nikoli’s account, is fighting Riot Roy and the Sorority Queen of Kappa Nu Theta (ch.19); Ed’s hope of a way out runs into the Researcher’s quarantine (ch.14, ch.44). The back matter names the next book: Dan’s adventure continues in Disco Inferno.

The whole walk: · · · III · Kiosk Kingdom ·