Level 458
rating: +33+x

SURVIVAL DIFFICULTY:

Class 3

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Level 458 is the 459th Level of the Backrooms. It takes the appearance of a non-Euclidean pizza parlor.

Description:

Pizza_35.jpg

A picture of a pizza taken from a menu found in the level.

Level 458 is a pizza parlor that is seemingly infinite in size. Upon first glance, it resembles a normal pizza parlor, with fresh pizzas out on display. However, writing on the walls and menus is incomprehensible, with random strings of letters, numbers and symbols from various different writing systems. These are displayed alongside images of pizza and similar foodstuffs, such as clam pies, stromboli and pizza bagels. The typography of the writing heavily varies, with some appearing typed while others appear to be handwritten. Other instances of both text and images look as though they were made via combining various different images together. In every room, there are at least four security cameras, all of which observe wanderers that enter the level.

In some areas, the walls, ceiling, and floor are visibly cracked and drip with a thick yellowish liquid reminiscent of grease. The fluid itself varies in temperature from -24°F1 to over 550°F2, but it is most commonly 99°F3. Samples taken of this fluid reveal it has a high carbon content. The liquid also contains chemical compounds completely foreign to Frontrooms chemistry. Rooms are separated by long corridors that tend to loop back on themselves and lead to dead ends. The deeper one goes into the level, the more cracks will appear. After a certain point, logos vanish, and menus become blank.

The architectural styles vary between rooms, though the most common types are Brutalism4 and Art Deco5. Many of the areas in the level are separated by doors. These doors range from standard wooden doors to glass revolving doors. Doors of the latter type don't always function properly, refusing to move unless pushed. There are four main types of rooms on Level 458, which are the Dining Areas, the Kitchens, the Restrooms, and the Closets.

Dining Areas

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A picture of a dining area found in the level.

The dining areas are the most common type of room in the level and typically consist of large spaces with ceilings at head height. Tables and chairs are laid out across these rooms. Works of art and photos of celebrities, historical figures, and other people who supposedly came to Level 458 hang from the walls in the dining areas. Works of art range from simple crayon drawings of children nailed to the walls to elaborate frescoes6 that line the entire length of a hallway.

Photos of people range from them posing with a pizza, simply eating at a table unaware of the photographer, them posing with a moundling, or being assimilated by an amoezza. These images tend to change to depict something different when one isn't looking directly at them. Sometimes, these images depict the final moments of a wanderer who recently died in the level. These specific photos often cause wanderers significant mental distress.

Kitchens

The kitchens are identical to ones seen within the frontrooms. While these areas are safer because living pizzas are rarely found here, moundlings will occasionally make dens in these rooms. An easy way to tell if a kitchen has a moundling den is how it smells. If the kitchen smells of melted cheese, leave the area immediately. In terms of architecture, the kitchens mostly resemble brutalist styles, causing the rooms to be cubic in shape and very sparse in terms of decoration.

While some kitchens are fully stocked with pots, pans, and the like, others are completely bereft of cooking utensils. Because some kitchens are fully stocked, they can be a good source of weapons or general culinary equipment. If any cooking utensil is taken out of Level 458, an exact duplicate reappears in its place two days later.

On occasion, the cooking utensils in kitchens might be rendered inoperable in some way, with some examples being eating utensils firmly embedded in the walls or floor, and pots either fused to or partially clipped into stovetops and counters. The pots that are fused to the surface they were found on cannot be removed by ordinary means, and all attempts to remove such a pot have been met with failure. Partially clipped pots and other supplies can be safely taken out of the walls they were found in without risking an accidental noclip.

Restrooms

Restaurant_bathroom_with_two-way_mirror%2C_Edmond%2C_OK.jpg

A picture of a restroom found in the level. This specific restroom was found only once, but has not yet been found again.

The restrooms are public bathrooms that usually have highly elaborate and ostentatious designs. However, more basic restrooms with stalls and graffiti have been found. The restrooms in this level are highly varied in appearance, and wanderers usually never come across the same restroom twice. The restrooms are typically very small, with one toilet stall, one sink, one soap dispenser, and one air dryer. However, larger restrooms have been found, with the largest restrooms on Level 458 playing host to thousands of individual stalls.

Restrooms usually do not have mirrors in them, but restrooms with mirrors serve as exits out of the level. Reflections in the mirror appear to lag behind wanderers' movements. Specifically, reflections are behind by a half-second. The toilets rarely work properly, with most of them being clogged, bereft of water or refuse to flush. Clogged toilets are typically clogged with large wads of dough. The sinks are similarly ineffective, with most sinks not supplying water at all or dispensing grease instead of water.

Closets

The closets are large, walk-in closets that are usually lit by flickering lights on the ceiling which automatically turn on when the door to the room is opened. Closets typically have shelves lining the walls stocked with cleaning supplies and maintenance tools. While the chemical bottles found in closets usually contain regular cleaning agents such as bleach or toilet cleaner, some of these bottles contain almond water, memory juice, Cashew Water, liquid silence, or any other kind of fluid7. There is no way of knowing what liquid the bottle contains until the bottle is opened. Closets that are completely unlit snuff out any light-producing objects inside them through unknown means, with any light-producing object such as a flashlight or a candle either breaking or going out the moment the wielder enters the closet.

Bases, Outposts and Communities:

There are no known bases, outposts, or communities on this level.

Entities

Living Pizzas

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A picture of a Living Pizza found in the level. It is unknown what happened to the photographer.

These entities heavily resemble a typical pizza found in the frontrooms, with a few key differences. They always appear as a fresh, heated pizza, emitting small amounts of steam. However, the cheese and toppings slightly pulsate like a severe muscle cramp. If a human attempts to touch or pick up a Living Pizza, or gets too close to one, it leaps at said person and latches on like a suction cup, usually on the face or hand area. This first attack alerts nearby Living Pizzas, which then spring into action and latch on as well. If enough are in the immediate vicinity, a single attacking Living Pizza can cause a target to be buried in large piles of other Living Pizzas.

The entities will begin to convert their target into pizza materials and create new Living Pizzas with the newfound mass. This process usually takes several hours to complete, and Living Pizzas are at their most vulnerable during this process. Once the target is completely repurposed, both the original Living Pizzas and the new Living Pizzas will scatter or go back to their original positions, creeping like slugs. If no humans come along for Living Pizzas to attack for an extended period, these entities will undergo a process to better spread out in search of targets. Over about three hours, a 'starved' Living Pizza will split into two identical individuals mirroring mitosis of cells. Once the Living Pizza is done dividing, the two new entities will slither away to find new areas to inhabit.

Moundlings

If a wanderer or other entity manages to subdue and kill a Living Pizza, it might appear to be a consistent food source. However, if a Living Pizza is slain and/or eaten, ingesting parts of a Living Pizza can prove deadly as their very matter is infectious to living tissue when consumed. Consumed parts of a Living Pizza react to the acid in a wanderer's stomach, embedding themselves in its lining. Small threads of cheese worm their way into the gastric glands, where they then find a capillary and stab into it. Once this happens, the threads of cheese release several unknown proteins that bind to a wanderer's DNA and start converting the wanderer into a moundling.

Over a month, a wanderer that has eaten a Living Pizza will transform into a moundling8, an amorphous mass of dough, melted cheese, tomato sauce, and various toppings. The toppings an individual moundling will have depends on the toppings the Living Pizza that unintentionally birthed the moundling originally had. For unknown reasons, if the mass of a moundling is consumed, it will not cause infection. Unlike Living Pizzas, which are ambush hunters, moundlings are very active entities and chase prey, taking on a humanoid shape when in pursuit. However, moundlings will not always attack other entities on sight, as they will stay in a low activity mode for long periods of time. During these periods of low activity, moundlings are placid and even tolerate handling, but will retaliate if attacked.

Like Living Pizzas, moundlings merge with their prey, but for different reasons. Whereas Living Pizzas do it to propagate themselves, moundlings add onto their mass, growing larger and heavier as they do. However, there is an upper limit to a moundling's size, which is usually around a ton9 As a result, moundlings that are reaching the upper limit in terms of weight can cover vast areas of Level 458 with their mass. Once this limit is reached, the moundling will split apart into numerous Living Pizzas, which disperse shortly after forming.

Amoezzas

While the process of a Living Pizza dividing usually proceeds as normal, there are occasions where this process is flawed in some way or interrupted by an outside force. Vomiting on a dividing Living Pizza is the fastest way to interrupt or ruin the process. When this process is ruined in such a way, crust bubbles and toppings placed in abnormal spots will form.

These aberrant individuals, despite their affliction, will continue their lives as normal, with their affliction being cured after consuming a wanderer. However, given enough time without feeding, the affliction culminates in an affected Living Pizza failing to divide properly. At first, this results in two individual Living Pizzas stuck together. The entity will continue to attempt dividing but only generates more individuals stuck to it. This results in the creation of a new entity entirely.

While Amoezzas10 only live for up to a month, they grow rapidly and can cover wide areas of Level 458. These creatures are indiscriminate and will attack whatever is in the immediate vicinity, assimilating the mass of entities they catch into their own. They also accumulate heat, and this property can cause amoezzas to heat up to boiling and even burning temperatures, with the largest amoezzas setting their surroundings on fire simply by touching them. This increase of heat is also correlated to an amoezza's lifespan, with individuals nearing the end of their lifespan setting paper on fire simply by going within five feet of it.

Other than that, amoezzas display no other signs of aging but die suddenly, signaled by a near-instantaneous stop in growth and movement. The dead amoezza's form peels off ceilings and walls and collapses in one big heap. Because of their large size and the accumulation of heat throughout their life, dead amoezzas will spontaneously catch fire in random areas, with these fires being more common at the center. The corpses of these entities will burn and decay into nothing after a period of six months.

Jumbo Slice

Very little is known about the Jumbo Slice11, but it is theorized to be spread throughout Level 458 inside its walls, ceilings and floors. Signs of activity from Jumbo Slice consists of the ground shaking, parts of the level unexpectedly swelling, and cracks in the floor, walls and ceiling that are covered in a thin layer of yellowish fluid.

If one stands near the aforementioned cracks for a long enough period of time, a tendril of boiling cheese, tomato sauce, plant matter and animal muscle tissue will emerge from the hole and attack. The tendril drips with the same yellow fluid that surrounds the cracks, boiling hot in temperature. If an attack is successful, the target is pulled into the crack. No wanderers who were pulled in the crack were ever seen again. Survivors of these attacks are left with severe burns and are typically found covered in the same fluid that lines the cracks. Washing this fluid off of one's body takes hours of constant effort and scrubbing, with the fluid slowly solidifying and peeling off on contact with water.

Entrances And Exits:

Entrances

Aside from noclipping here, there are three known direct ways to access this level.

  • If one finds a section of cave with oddly greasy walls in Level 8, go deeper. Eventually, one will find a door that leads to this level.
  • Entering a pizzeria in Level 11 with the sign "Papa Pedro's Pizza Palace of Pleasantries" above it will take one to this level.
  • Finding and taking a bite out of a fossilized pizza in Level 205 will teleport one here.

Exits

Aside from noclipping out of the level12, there are three known ways to exit Level 458.

  • Breaking into a locked bathroom stall with the word 'occupied' scratched into the door will take one to Level 189.
  • Clipping into a mirror in a restroom will take one to Level 696.
  • Walking deep enough into a completely dark closet will take one to Level 64.

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