In seconds, the driverless truck was past the hidden trapdoor, and we continued forward along the wall as Donut shrieked for the camel to grab the wheel. But before he could, we reached a turn in the wall, and the truck ran off the edge. We dropped, then hit the ground hard, crunching loudly and sliding before we bobbed up and righted ourselves like a boat. Two of the spider legs were suddenly smoking and broken, but we continued on our way, moving at an angle toward the entrance to the lazy river, occasionally mowing over wide-eyed gingers standing there on the concrete ground as they queued up to enter the water.

We’d done it. We’d moved past the hidden entrance to the basement. But we still weren’t in the lead. We had one trick left.

“Hurry!” Donut shrieked at the camel, whose hoof slammed painfully into my crotch as he attempted to move into the driver’s seat. He drooled black-and-green slime as he shoved himself into the seat, the steering wheel tight against his chest. The engine revved as his hoof scrambled for the proper pedals.

“He’s too big!” Donut cried.

Praying this didn’t count as driving, I reached down and grabbed the slider control at the bottom of his seat, and I pressed against the camel’s chest, pushing him back as far as the seat would go. I pressed too hard, and my hand went all the way into his chest, and I felt organs squish under my palm.

Joel the camel gasped as I pulled back.

“Gah,” I cried, shaking my hand. It was covered in black goo.

“Why did you do that?” Donut yelled as I wiped my hand on the seat. Dorota started to loudly complain.

The seven-foot-tall undead camel didn’t seem affected by the new hole in his chest. He was still too big for the seat, but at least he could now move with the chair back. He slammed the brakes, causing us all to crash forward against the dash before settling.

Donut started shouting instructions on how to disengage the spider legs and inflate the tires. We had mobs coming at us from all angles.

Florin: Approaching the loop. I was wrong. The Lady Dominators are behind me, and they’re trading blows with the unicorn team. The gnu is also trying to do the loop, but we just passed them. I’m going to . . . Fuck!

Carl: What?

Florin answered, but before I could read it, the second clockwork Olga, who was still in the back of the truck near the pile of weapons, timed out, exploding in clockwork parts. The detonation blew the back door open, causing loose pots and pans to spill out onto the path. I took a small amount of damage.

The massive pile of weapons, all connected via chains, rattled ominously, but they remained where I’d tied them up.

The camel groaned as he finally figured out the controls and angled us toward the river. There was a large blinking sign that read “Enter Here.” It featured artwork of a red-eyed sloth taking a rip from a bong.

The river was full of gingers floating along in inner tubes. Somewhere in that mess would be Maurice the boss. We didn’t have time to find him, so we were going to try to kill them all at once.

I read Florin’s set of messages.

Florin: Lucia cast a spell that left a brick wall on the track, which pretty much stopped the gnu and the womantaur team. The unicorn went right over it.

There were more messages, including one from Tran, but I waved them away. We needed to focus on this race. I moved to the next one from Florin.

Florin: Speeding up now to do the loop. That damn bush thing is fast as a horny cheetah. They’re right on our tail.

I turned to look at the giant loop that dominated the lower half of the park. Satan, too, had turned his giant dark eyes on the attraction. His nose seemed to quiver in anticipation.

Ahead, the onboarding area of the River of Sloth loomed. There was a raft sitting there, waiting for us. Supposedly we’d drive onto the raft, and it would float down the river, making it so we didn’t have to drive. The distance wasn’t far, especially since we only had to traverse a moderately short part of the river, but the implication was that the rafts crawled along the river at an excruciatingly slow pace.

It was relatively safe, minus the extra-violent gingers floating in the river, or their base camp just around the corner.

Imani: We just killed our version of Maurice in the slums. He wasn’t a human, but an orangutan. So be careful. The prize was an engineer! He had him tied up, and we got him! Almost to the exit.

Louis: We’re almost out, too! Bodi is the best driver ever!

“Carl!” Donut called as we rolled toward the raft.

I’d already eaten Mehmet’s page from Carl’s Book of Boom, and I prepared the Gutter Bumper spell.

“Casting now!” I yelled.

I cast the spell, and a large blinking set of lines appeared. I mentally clicked on the river in front of us, received a warning that the spell wouldn’t cover the entire river, and hit deploy.

“Bumpers away!”

“Here we go!” Donut said as she leaned forward, focusing on the wide river. She cast Ice Slick.

In seconds, the entire river froze, cracking and splitting and occasionally exploding as the frozen water spread out in a winding pattern following the bumpers. The spell normally cast in a cone, but because of the Bumper spell, the ice followed the river and was extended by an additional 50%.

The Gutter Bumper spell wasn’t quite what I was tirelessly seeking for explosions, but in this case, it was perfect. I’d never met Mehmet, the Turkish man who’d given me the spell, but I’d heard of him before. He’d focused on support spells and skills, always making sure the other members of his party were as buffed up as they could be. He’d saved countless lives during the pitched battles of Faction Wars. He reminded me of Imani in that way.

People like him were the true heroes of this dungeon.

Screams rose as the hundreds of inner tube gingers suddenly became stuck in place.

We bumped as we drove right over the dock, over the now-frozen raft, and onto the ice.

“Follow the river!” Donut called. “Carl!”

The back doors were already open. I pulled the tie holding them down, and I kicked the hastily fashioned brush hog out the back.

It was all the excess non-magical weapons I had in my inventory hurriedly fastened together in a line of chains, all attached to the back of the truck. The loose weapons dragged, bouncing and cutting and slicing and clobbering everything behind the truck as we rushed over the ice.

As for the hundreds of gingers frozen and stuck in the river, the dragging weapons cut through them like weeds.

“It’s working!” I called as we started to slide sideways on the ice. “Gah!” I ducked as a chain broke, slicing past my head like a whip. “Keep it straight!”

Joel the undead camel groaned.

“Cast now!” I called to Donut.

We knew the chains wouldn’t get everyone, so we had a finisher on hand.

Donut cast Summon Ye, Vermin.

The spell would instantly draw every rodent in the area to Donut.

Most of the zipper shrews would have to traverse the frozen path, drilling through everything in their path, including any surviving gingers on the river. If the chains didn’t get them, this definitely would.

And within moments, a gray wave of rodents appeared, coming from all directions at once.

“Here they come!” I shouted.

Florin: Attempting the loop! They’re on our ass. They’re gonna try to bump us, so I’m shooting a missile now!

“There he is! Maurice! He’s not a monkey!” Donut called from the front of the truck. She was finally alone in the passenger’s seat, and Dorota had grown the special princess basket for her to sit upon. “He doesn’t even have hair!” She gasped. “He’s casting a spell!”

The Maurice that Imani had had to face might’ve been an orangutan, but this version looked a lot like that cartoon ogre Shrek, though still human. The large man had one arm free and was attempting to cast something. He never got a chance. A wave of the zipper shrews, coming from the direction we were driving, overwhelmed him, drilling through him. The man unpeeled before us, having had a dozen holes drilled in him all at once from behind. Little curls of skin and gore erupted in all directions, turning him into a flower made of flesh before it all collapsed on the red ice. A moment later, the blood-soaked shrews exploded against our shield.

There was a chime.

Quest Complete! Pasty Inferno.

So, this is where I’d tell you how to locate the engineer you just won, but that guy is now in a million pieces, spread all over the ice. . . . Aaaand you just ran over his corpse, splitting him into even more pieces with those chains you’re dragging. Like, holy shit, guys. Talk about overkill. You know you only had to kill that boss guy, right? This whole thing is really fucked-up. This is seriously bordering on ginger genocide.

The good news is, the quest is complete. I guess that means you can finish the track!

“There’s the exit!” Donut cried, pointing. “Wow, we did that fast! Turn there! Turn there!”

We bumped as we exited the river. Joel the camel groaned incoherently, his head on his broken neck flapping as we rocked up and down. Shrews by the thousands were coming from every direction, suiciding against our shield, which was moving into the red.

The finish line loomed.

“Geez,” I muttered, moving to the back of the truck, looking at the carnage. I started to cut all the chains loose. “The AI was right. We might’ve been overprepared for⁠—”

“Bah, this bores me” came Satan’s booming voice, followed by a mighty crash.

“Carl, Carl! The loop thing!”

I turned just in time to see the massive loop-de-loop tumbling in our direction, having been headbutted over by Satan. Florin’s tuk-tuk and team Sparkles’ vine had almost been done with their loop when they’d been swatted, and they both tumbled through the air, spinning in our direction.

The vine was on fire and covered with goo, having been hit by a Denial of Service missile. It splotched onto the ground just as the entire structure of the massive loop crashed around us, rock and metal exploding everywhere. We were peppered with chunks of metal, all of it sparking and burning.

Florin was hanging out the side of his tuk-tuk, shotgun in hand, firing over and over in the direction of the unicorn as they tumbled and hit the ground, like they were performing a stunt. Lucia, in her beautiful-woman form, appeared to be sobbing and crying and laughing all at the same time as they spun out on the ground. Still, they landed firmly on their tires like this had been their plan all along. The small engine revved, and they zoomed ahead of us, pushing past a piece of the fallen track and moving toward the finish line.

Behind us, the Lady Dominators and the gnu suddenly appeared, though they were still far behind us. They had to angle around the crashed pieces of the loop track.

The bush seemed to be floundering. It had the rocket accessory that gave them their incredible speed, but it was still smoldering, and it was just spinning in circles, with Dwight screaming. I didn’t see Lucienne, who I knew was supposed to be the one driving.

And then I did see Lucienne, but she wasn’t in the bush. She was on the hood of our truck. The bug-eyed rodent thing was standing there, smashing herself against the windshield. The finish line loomed.

Donut’s spell, I realized. Lucienne was a rodent, and she’d been summoned.

Holy shit. We’d had that spell this whole time. I had no idea when and how she’d gotten here.

“Let me in! Let me in! I’m coming to you, swine!” Lucienne shrieked as she pummeled the windshield with her helmeted head, choking and gasping for air. Her bug eyes were getting bigger and bigger by the moment, like they were about to explode. She’d been poisoned by the air, yet she was still charmed by Donut’s spell. “Let me in! Let me fucking in!”

We started to pass under the checkered finish-line arch.

“Get off,” Donut shouted at the weird rodent on our hood. “You can’t pass the finish line outside your⁠—”

Our windshield cratered as Lucienne, the driver for team Sparkles, was pushed through the glass by the invisible barrier of the finish line. The rodent exploded against my face as she was pressed into my mouth, into my teeth, and ultimately through the back of our truck.