The path ahead swerved. I turned, but the maze of boxes had all broken and shattered. A dozen of the action figures were on the hood of the truck, holding on, occasionally flying off. They all army-crawled toward the windshield. The entrance to the next room loomed, but it appeared that it was just a balcony with a drop. We were on the third floor, and this next, big room, which just seemed to go on and on, dropped all the way to the first. It glowed red within, and I knew the entirety of this room was just molten metal. I activated the spider legs as we approached.

“We’re gonna have to go sideways before we turn upside down,” I called.

“This interior is not conducive to proper procedure,” Grigori was saying in between coughs. Donut was not in her chair, but sitting atop the oven burner. Both the tall half-mantaurs were standing, both rapidly pulling at the zippers to their suits. Both were taller than the interior, and they were half hunched over, each with a single arm on the ceiling, bracing themselves. “We’ll have to do it while standing, and only once we are inverted.”

“Will that work?” Donut asked as we took a sharp turn to avoid another hole in the floor. From within, dozens of the female dolls were climbing out, screaming as they melted.

“It should, but we must do it. Blahhhh.” Grigori turned and dry-vomited. “My gods, this is horrible. We must do it fast.”

“Dong, are you unwell?” Corky, who’d finally caught up to what was happening, asked. “Dong, you’re sick!”

“Do not worry about me, my love,” Dong called. He had a roll of plastic wrap in his hands. We’d gotten it from Dekoki the kappa, and he was wrapping it around Corky’s head. He turned to Porky, whose half-head was now also exposed and started to do the same. The fleshmancer had said it was fine if the guts spilled out a little, but the brain needed to remain sealed. “We must do this quickly. Let me help you with this zipper after I do this.”

“Oh gods,” Porky said, reaching up to touch the plastic wrap on his head. He started to pull down the same zipper I’d earlier helped him fix.

“Ew, ew, ew,” Donut cried as Porky’s suit popped open and the guts slopped everywhere, like a jack-in-the-box filled with noodles.

Grigori cast something, and the guts, dangling from Porky’s exposed double torsos, floated by his side. The mess of guts was only on his lower torso, though strange and foreign organs and tubes also bulged from his upper side. He had beating half-hearts in both the top and bottom torsos. Both hearts glowed, kept working by a spell from either Donut or Grigori.

I finally saw both of their faces and half-mullets. They looked just like any other mantaur, only just cut in half. Their plastic-wrapped half brains sat firmly in their skulls, pulsing, their exposed sinuses nausea-inducing.

I had to slow and ease over, allowing the spider legs to grab purchase along the wall of the next room.

“Turning sideways! Brace!” I called as I tightened my seat belt. “We’ll be sideways for a minute. Then we’ll be completely upside down! Donut, be careful!”

We entered the next room, scrambling on the wall. This wall was flat, but I knew once we got to the ceiling, we’d only be able to travel along the designated track.

Everyone cried out and yowled as it all turned sideways. Donut clattered heavily as she fell over, crashing into Grigori, who suddenly found himself on his side in the crowded back of the truck. Dong, Corky, and Porky were all jumbled, guts and blood sloshing everywhere as spells desperately tried to keep them all together.

I didn’t want to turn the truck again, so I moved laterally up the wall, keeping the passenger’s side of the truck facing down.

“Be careful of the window!” I yelled. “We’ll be at the ceiling in a second, and we’ll be fully upside down!”

As everyone scrambled to find footing, now standing on the overturned counter, waiting for us to turn completely upside down, I finally took a look about the giant room.

“Holy fucking shit,” I muttered, taking in the chaotic scene just as we fully inverted, the spider legs carefully shuffling to the side and lowering so our wheels attached to the track.

The room just went on and on and on.

There were multiple paths on the walls and ceiling that we had to use. The rest of the ceiling and walls was crisscrossed with spikes and bumps, all for the purpose of not allowing us to drive upon them.

The channels were wide, flat conduits, not unlike the tracks I once used for my Hot Wheels cars as a kid. The tracks were not straight, crossing over each other, moving back and forth as they followed the ceiling and the wall. Most were on the ceiling, and this was where most of the vehicles, far ahead of us, were racing, but both sides had a pair of tracks on each wall.

I tentatively hit the accelerator. The Roller Limbo upgrade held true, and we stuck firmly to the ceiling. We didn’t have time to waste.

Below us, the river of molten metal just went on and on.

Far ahead, I spied Prepotente’s Sweety turned sideward, making their way along the wall track. Sweety moved as if going sideways was no big deal at all, and the square litter that held Prepotente and Jurgen had rotated on its own, keeping them both vertical. The tapir’s feet flamed, leaving a trail on the wall.

Despite this, it was clear they were not moving as fast as normal. I could now see several of the vehicles dotting the ceiling were moving much more slowly than usual, all of us with different types of upgrades to facilitate this part of the track.

And then I saw the monsters deeper in the room. These were large, gorilla-like beasts made of molten metal, jumping from the river below, landing on the walls and ceilings, facing down the racers. They hurled globs of metal at the passing vehicles.

Oh shit, I thought. If these were like the action figures, would they be able to get through the shield?

I hit the accelerator. Behind me, Grigori was yelling instructions to Dong and Donut. They were all now standing on the ceiling of the truck.

“Dong,” Grigori called, “I will remove the plastic wrapping and press the head together, and then you will wrap the whole thing! Quickly now!”

“What is that flapping around?” Donut called, her voice a shriek. “That looks like something that shouldn’t be flapping around! And my goodness, Grigori, make sure their lips line up! He’s going to end up looking like Mick Jagger!”

Ahead, I watched as Jurgen screamed and hurled one of his battle-axes toward a gorilla monster blocking their path. The axe went right into the metal and disappeared, not to return. But the beast fell off the wall and plummeted into the roiling metal. Jurgen held out his hand, trying to get his axe to return. It did not.

The ferret mount that had passed earlier was on the same track as us, just ahead, attached to the ceiling, weaving back and forth as it made its way across the inverted track. It was only moving at half the speed it had been going before. We would pass it soon.

One of the molten metal beasts dangling upside down from the ceiling spied us and started galloping in our direction. I hit the accelerator even harder, determined to outpace it. I examined it.

Slag Elemental.

Level 75 Neighborhood Boss.

Warning: This is an infused elemental.

Warning: This is a regenerator. This boss will regenerate if its corpse falls into the molten metal below.

The Coblyn Corporation, in their efforts to protect their burgeoning child drug empire from getting discovered and shut down, tried to put some protections in place.

They, however, tried to do it on the cheap, as new corporations often tend to do, and they got what they paid for.

So what we have now is wildly contagious, regenerating, infused, and very pissed-off elementals all over the place.

Note. It’s pretty much impossible to kill these things. You will not receive a boss box unless one is dead-dead. Good luck.

“Okay, hold them together!” Grigori yelled.

“I got you. I got you,” Dong said as we raced along the track.

The slag elemental hurled a ball of metal at us, and we rocked as it slammed into the side of the truck, threatening to overturn us. The heat sink gauge flashed, moving all the way up before settling down.

We rushed up right on the ass of the ferret. It appeared to have slime creatures pressed onto its back.

Containment Warning!

“I hope this works,” I growled as I pushed forward and slightly down with the steering wheel.

I felt us fold into the space under the ferret, going between its legs, only to pop up on the other side. The trans-dimensional upgrade had worked as advertised, though the moment we folded back to regular size, my stomach lurched.

“Oh gods,” Grigori called from the back. “I’m going to be ill again. Dong, hold them with all your strength!”

“I have you,” Dong shouted. I turned to see the old man, clinging tightly to the mantaur’s lower torso while both halves hugged him back. “I have you, and I will never let go again!”

I leaned forward so my waist was better secured in the seat as all the blood rushed to my head. We were now outpacing several of the other racers, many of whom were currently engaging directly with the elementals. We switched tracks at an intersection as Grigori started to chant. Ahead and across the room, I spied both Osvaldo—who was on the wall—and team Free Love’s van, which was right side up but still attached to the ceiling. They had some sort of device on their roof that allowed them to travel along the track. They weaved in and out of danger.

Prepotente: Everybody, I have discovered how to delay these elementals. It may sound counterintuitive, but if you add any non-molten metal to them, they will immediately collapse and return to the river and wait for it to melt before they can attack again!

“The initial casting is done!” Grigori called. “Now we wait for the parts to fuse. This is the important time! Hold them together, Dong! Hold them no matter what happens, or it will fail!”

“What about his dingle dangle?” Donut shouted from behind. “Shouldn’t that be, you know, matched up together? They’re flapping in different directions! It’s going to end up looking like a hot dog that exploded in the microwave!”

“We will fix any inconsistences after the race,” Grigori said, panting heavily. “It’s the brain that’s important. And both hearts, though if you wish to hold his extremities together while it works, you may.”

“I am not touching that thing!”

“Worry not about his lance,” Dong called, straining as he held the two men together, muscles bulging on his arms. “That is normal for the mantaur race. The windmill, it is called.”

“It’s normal for his penis to look like a hand after a fireworks accident?”

Wham! A glob of molten metal slammed into the hood of the truck. The heat sink gauge again topped out, but not before a giant hole appeared in the hood, exposing part of the engine, which started to whir.

The elementals were everywhere, but a single shot of anything seemed to be enough to knock them off the wall. They’d fall the three stories to the river of metal below, and it would be a few moments before they returned.

Warning: Race ends in 10 minutes.

“Okay, I am casting the final part of the spell now,” Grigori called. Up ahead, the exit to the room loomed.

“Dr. Metcalf! Does the track leave the ceiling in the next room? Will we flip again?”

I have no idea. I’m still freaked out about the mantaur-penis thing.

I turned to see Corky and Porky, naked, smashed together like a grilled cheese sandwich, all wrapped up with plastic wrap in various places, multiple hernias bulging out, Dong holding them together with all his might, eyes clenched closed, tears streaming.

“I got you,” he cried over and over. “I got you.”

Dong’s health was much farther into the red than I had realized.

The two halves, Corky and Porky, still had health bars over each half, also in the red, but as I watched, the health bars joined, and they became one.

Their names disappeared and a single name reappeared. Corcunda.

A massive notification materialized blocking my vision, and I waved it away.

But then something new emerged above the mantaur’s head.

It was a marked-for-death symbol by a god.

System Message: Grull has entered the realm.