Chapter 18

Carl hatches a desperate plan to board the Nightmare Express by jumping onto its front while it's in motion. The plan goes catastrophically wrong when he's struck by the train's cow catcher, but he survives and finds himself trapped on the speeding locomotive. He must navigate the engine cab and learn to control the runaway train from a demon fire-stoker named Fire Brandy before the boiler explodes.

After briefly visiting the Desperado Club where Donut trains with the Dodge guild and Carl networks with other crawlers, the party waits for the Nightmare Express to return. Carl realizes they cannot traverse the train's roofs as initially planned due to the dangerous monsters and chain-link fencing. Instead, he devises a risky alternative: Donut will use her Puddle Jumper spell to teleport them partway down the tunnel, then they'll run alongside the incoming train to board it. The plan backfires when they teleport too far from the platform and must sprint for their lives. Carl fails to reach the platform and is struck by the train's cow catcher, suffering severe injuries but clinging to life through his enhanced constitution and healing magic. He crashes onto the front of the engine and climbs aboard. Inside the cab, Carl discovers two dead engineers and a boiler on the verge of exploding from overpressurized steam. He finds Fire Brandy, a Lesser Demon MILF stoking the furnace from within, who instructs him on how to operate the train's controls. After learning to manage the throttle, brakes, and pressure valves, Carl stabilizes the locomotive and gains three levels from killing all the monsters that were launched backward by his Protective Shell spell. Fire Brandy explains he can hit a track switch near the next station to route to a repair facility. Carl collects the dead engineers' items, including a Steam Engineer's Key and a box of Sheol Bricks, then sends Donut back out to scout and retrieve a route map from a boss corpse.