Chapter 8 of 35 · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Chapter 8 — The Cookbook's first page

Book: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook · Previous: Chapter 7 — The Prize Carousel · Next: Chapter 9 — The wheel of fortune · Floor: Floor 4 — The Iron Tangle · Series: the series

Opening

Potions, Explosives, Traps, Secret Societies, Dungeon Shortcuts, and more.

Summary

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, 24th edition: potions, explosives, traps, secret societies, dungeon shortcuts — generated in the fifteenth season, awarded to Porthus the Rogue on the ninth floor as a blank sketchbook, passed from crawl to crawl, invisible to the showrunners and the viewers but not to the current System AI. The price: a second page in the scratchpad, and whatever Carl writes there goes into the 25th. The rule: tell no one, and act as if every recipe is your own discovery; if the season's operator suspects, the text erases. A note from the 22nd edition, under the Naga, passes on the rats' word that the saferoom toilet stalls are unwatched: 'Dunno if it’s true.' Carl reads in the bathroom: a level-three sapper's table can infuse a smoke curtain with healing potion and it mass-kills undead.

Recap in silence; a new sponsor tab coming in fifteen hours; some lines down for maintenance. Katia has no club pass and stays to buy a craft table. At the Desperado Club — a dive bar this floor, Clarabelle at the door with a private-security offer (500 gold; Lucia Mar is banned for life) — two level-35 rock cretins, Bomo and The Sledge, follow Carl and Donut in. Elle McGibbons is at the bar, four and a half feet of light-blue Frost Maiden floating a foot off the ground in her Meadow Lark socks, shouting for Knockout shots: the manager benefit came with the race, and her guide Mistress Tiatha cried. Imani arrives an Obsidian Butterfly, skull-painted, with twelve feet of ethereal wings that buff whoever they pass. Twenty of Meadow Lark are left. Chris took an igneous rock race, it changed him, he wanted to hunt and to find Carl; the fight, the Shade Gremlins with Henry's face, Brandon's last stand. 'He's looking for you.' Then a commotion: Bomo and The Sledge are on their backs, Donut stands in the deep red with her Cockroach skill triggered, and a human crawler bleeds out from a slash across his neck. A skull appears after her name.

Characters

• Carl — Reads the Cookbook in a toilet stall; buys security; sees Donut's first skull.
• Princess Donut — Dances on The Sledge's shoulders; three cherries drunk; kills a crawler on the dance floor.
• Elle McGibbons — A Frost Maiden with a mouth; 'Whose dick do I gotta suck'; the manager benefit came with her race.
• Imani — Obsidian Butterfly Fire Spiritualist, level 24; tells Chris's story; twenty left.
• Chris — An igneous; changed; hunting; looking for Carl.
• Katia Grim — No pass; stays home to buy a craft table.
• Clarabelle — Sells security at 500; Mordecai gets one warning, she thinks.
• The Sledge — Two level-35 cretins in tuxedos; on their backs when it counts.
• Bomo — The other tuxedoed cretin, also down.
• Ji-Hoon — The human crawler dead on the dance floor; named in the next chapter.

Locations

• The Desperado Club — A dive bar on the fourth floor; the casino now open.
• Safe rooms — A Cookbook note: the toilet stalls are unwatched, the rats say.

Motifs

• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Its rules, its editions, its price; the first recipe.
• The leaderboard — The first attempt on a bounty; Lucia Mar banned from the club.
• Meadow Lark (party) — Elle and Imani transformed; twenty left; Brandon's death told twice.
• Staying human — Donut's first human kill, on the dance floor.