Chapter 33 of 35 · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Chapter 33 — Death Challenge

Book: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook · Previous: Chapter 32 — Prepotente · Next: Chapter 34 — Tizquick and Brandy · Floor: Floor 4 — The Iron Tangle · Series: the series

Opening

The idea, had it worked properly, would’ve played out something like this:

Summary

Carl tumbles into Trainyard E beside the glowing mantaur and the world freezes: Death Challenge! — 'Get your bets in now.' On the right, the Mimic Rex, level 90, a city boss with 23,000 crawler deaths. On the left, Grull, level 250, and the Dungeon Crawler World debut of his sponsor: Prince Maestro of the Skull Empire, alive — 'my brother had already brought me into the dungeon […] rest well, mom.' The god's portrait takes on the Maestro's face: the child of Taranis and Apito, invulnerable on this floor, 'he could raze this entire floor in a day.' Donut is galloping toward him across the yard and chat is blocked. The mantaur cracks like an egg; the mimic's tongue bats the forming god aside; Carl drinks the invisibility potion (thirty seconds — 'I should have put more points in that damn stat'). Grull rises four storeys, an axe like a passenger jet, 'Here piglet, piglet,' and the yard's walls are back, one-way. Carl tells Donut to leave him and finish the mission. An axe strike buckles the ground and hurls him into a dead portal; a Jabbering Jibber-Jabber (a splitter, the reanimated mouth of a buffet regular) eats a hob-lobber; Grull cleaves the mimic in half as if it were nothing; Mordecai's Special Brew carries Carl through being stepped on by a flaming horseshoe and rolled over by a train car, healing and shattering by turns.

Grull, in the Maestro's voice: 'Your planet was nothing […] every single one of you pathetic worms will be forgotten.' Then icicles off his head — Elle, flying higher and faster than she can, a scroll spent — a heat-ray breath that turns trains to slag, and on a derailed car by the gate a second Carl, both middle fingers up: Katia. The Maestro takes the bait. Li Na, Li Jun, Donut and Mongo come through the wall from the cart, with the second mantaur reduced to a chained head and torso, kept alive through every amputation ('similar concept with what you did with that gnoll'). Five punches, He is risen, and the vessel goes into Zhang's portal with one second left; Grull, mid-attack, 'whiffed away.' Tizquick leans from the Nightmare's window. 'Glurp, glurp, motherfucker.'

Characters

• Carl — The Death Challenge; stepped on by a god; 'Glurp, glurp, motherfucker.'
• Prince Maestro — Alive, and driving Grull; loses to Carl a third time.
• Katia Grim — Becomes Carl to draw the god off; 'What the fuck are you doing, Katia?'
• Elle McGibbons — Icicles at a god; a scroll's worth of flight.
• Li Jun and Zhang — Zhang drives the portal onto the vessel with a second to spare.
• Li Na — Through the wall with a mantaur kept alive in pieces as a second vessel; 'You best get punching.'
• Princess Donut — Rides through the wall; 'You're welcome'
• Tizquick — Brings the Nightmare down.

Locations

• The trainyards — Yard E: a one-way boss arena; the mimic split in half; trains melted to slag.

Motifs

• The gods — Grull's description; Taranis and Apito; a god ejected by a second summoning.
• The Skull Empire — The Maestro never died — 'People thought I was on that ship'; 'my cunt of a sister wasted' the bolt.
• The show — A Death Challenge, announced like a monster-truck rally: 'Get your bets in now.'
• Terminus — The Mimic Rex, 23,000 kills, dead by a god's axe.