Chapter 14

Carl enters Grimaldi's circus tent with a special ticket that allows him to pass the hostile transformed circus performers. After navigating past clowns and other creatures, he discovers the circus's true master: Ringmaster Grimaldi, now transformed into a massive Pestiferous Vine city boss at level 85. Following Mordecai's earlier advice about killing such vines with poisoned blood, Carl executes his plan by poisoning himself and dripping his blood onto the vine's root.

Carl approaches the circus tent entrance with a ticket granted by Signet, who warns him he has thirty minutes before her battle squad fades. He extracts a promise that Donut will be freed if he dies. Passing through the clown-mouth entrance, Carl encounters Clammy the Clown, a round, grotesque creature who allows him passage when shown the ticket. Inside the main arena, Carl is overwhelmed by the smell of the circus—triggering a vivid childhood memory of attending a small circus with his mother in southern Texas, a precious memory that angers him to experience now in this corrupted place. The arena is filled with transformed circus performers engaged in grotesque parodies of their original acts: acrobats colliding mid-air, lemurs juggling, clowns singing and devouring goblin flesh. Carl notices none of the performers acknowledge his presence despite having red dots on his minimap. The centerpiece is Ringmaster Grimaldi, revealed as an Elite level 85 city boss in the form of a massive Pestiferous Vine that fills the entire center ring and reaches the tent ceiling. Carl learns from the achievement notification that no crawler has ever survived facing a city boss. He passes through the arena past an elite ogre named Apollon the Mighty, who offers him worm-filled ice cream. Carl climbs into the empty bleachers next to the vine and executes Mordecai's plan: he removes his nightgaunt cloak (lowering poison resistance), poisons himself by drinking multiple potions, cuts his hand with a juggling knife, and drips his poisoned blood onto the vine's root. After using a poison antidote potion to save himself, he sits back and waits, uncertain whether the plan succeeded.