Decay and Deception

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

One day you can be relaxing, the next you can be somewhere beyond reality struggling to survive. This is one such story, a story of pain, fear, and triumph.

Join the main character as he conquers an alternate reality full of humanity's worst fears. Wandering through floor after floor of things from our worst nightmares, he continues downwards endlessly in search of escape.

[A story heavily inspired by the backrooms, all but one of the floors are my own ideas pulling basic inspiration from various sources. A huge shoutout to my friends who helped me with a few of the floors and the motivation to write this.]

Warning: this story will cover heavy themes of loneliness and horror. If you are adverse to gore, psychological horror, or general dark tones, continue at your own discretion.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2022
Author: ArchTemperedHunter

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.7/ 5.0
Followers: 137
Views: 58,616

Chapters(52 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(5)

Imperial HypocriteRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I liked this story, but I didn't read book two as book two was dropped and book one ends off at a satisfying end point. Overall a very fun and interesting take on the backrooms. I read this over the course of two days and there were quite a few times in which it was genuinely unnerving and made me look out of windows and stuff for monsters. I felt it was at it's best when it was using more realistic settings and focusing on monsters you couldn't fight, only survive from. The twists make sense and despite being fully thought out by the author only later on don't make the mystery or earlier parts of the story any worse in retrospect.
KroopTroopRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Currently finished with Book 1 (Chapter 40 on Patreon)
By far the best story I've come across on Royal Road up to this point bar none. This is a professionally written novel thats been well thought out and realistically portrayed up to every detail and word put to paper.
SYNOPSIS: This story follows the the main character's desent into an amalgamation of realities set to test him on every aspect of his being; one wrong move and he's either dead or horribly injured. A mixture of horror, grimdark, paranormal, fantasy and survival is what you'd find as you follow him progress through the hurdles presented in the nightmarish hellscape he now calls home.
STYLE: Honestly a pretty hard category to rate as its all subjective, but its a 5/5 from me a the Author presents a near perfect blend of description, action and dialog (whether internal or external)
STORY: Much of the story has already been explained but I would like to point out how realistic and fleshed out everything is while having an insanely good pace compared to what you'd find on other web serials (1 chapter equals 1 floor or progress essentially) so you'd be hard pressed to find any areas where the author is dragging something on or just trying to meet word count. The story is a bit on the darker side though so if you're more into Young Adult novels it may not be to your liking.
GRAMMAR: Easy 5/5. Hardly any mistakes are made if ever and the authors diction is far reaching but well applied and easy to understand.
CHARACTER: The main character is easy to love. He goes through so many diffrent events and reacts in ways that you can understand. He's written like a real person and grows like one too, going from being absolutely terrified, to still terrified but resolute with his motivation to survive. Its a grind that he exhibits from the first day on his journey to the last, but completely polished and with direction.
All in all, a very good story and one that you should read. Book one is complete on his Patreon a
NickXenixRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm excited for what's problably the first backrooms story on royalroad (don't quote me on that), the plot is surprisingly sophisticated for this subgenre. Really sent shivers down my spine, it's just really good. Though there are some problems that bothered me, such as how there's little to no interaction with the other survivors, but that can be attributed to his mindset.
Saher AssiRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Damn wasn't expecting it to be this good couldn't be happier to have stumbled across this one. A well written story, the plot advances with some twists and turns. No grammer problems and the writing style is entertaining it has been a super fun read for me 5 stars all the way one for the best stories I ever read most-certainly deserves them.
Thanks for this novel.
Void_CrafterRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I picked this up originally because I was intrigued by the concept, and wanted to see how the author used 'the backrooms' in a story. I expected some incomprehensible monsters, a bland MC, and maybe a bit of existential dread.
I was however not expecting what it turned out to be, a great story across the board, one that managed to keep me transfixed on it for the better part of a day upon first reading it. I highly recommend it.
Style:
The style is easily the best part about it. For the most part the story follows a 'one floor one chapter' approach, which often makes it feel like each floor is a smaller story, each one building on the last to flesh out the MC and the world he finds himself in. Each floor is some new twist that both the MC and the reader must puzzle out.
And that's to say nothing about the descriptions and imagery. They are some of the best I've seen on this site. they easily drag you into each new floor and the horrors that dwell within, without ever feeling frivolous or like an infodump.
Story:
The story is rather simple, man goes deeper down the levels, hoping to escape the hell he finds himself in. However, the story slowly evolves into something more, and to tell you any more would be spoilers. 😉
Grammar:
The grammar is quite good, I found about one minor mistake every two or three chapters. I think the most egregious one I noticed was that the author used the wrong of/off.
Characters:
Characters is probably the weakest section because, well, there is only really one for most of it. Yeah he interacts with others, but for the most part they come in two categories, something trying to kill him, or a sheet of paper. However this begins to change as of later chapters... But that's, ya know, spoilers.
The one character you do have from the get go, the MC himself, is well done. With thiis story being first person we get a lot of him and his thoughts, something the author uses to great effect to make him feel interesting, unique, but most of all, human