All Chapters of How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis : Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

I looked upwards, eyes searching the skies. Somewhere up there, giant fish swam through the clouds. If I could tempt them down, maybe they would fight my enemies. Who was I kidding? The first thing they’d do was eat me.The Kraken were a better bet with regards to being helpful (especially if we introduced them to Motown classics) but they had the slight disadvantage of not being able to walk on land. Or maybe they could, very slowly. Either way, as Socrates once said, you don’t bring a lobster to a shark fight. I think it was him. Might have been Plato.Cheng landed in the middle of the arena, both his opponents out cold. He lifted Comfort out of the pool of blue liquid he was lying in and tried to carry him. The difference in size was too great, and Cheng too exhausted, so he had to drag the body out of the arena, back to the palace. A trail of blue trickled behind them.Unscathed rose to his knees, collapsed, and tried again. After a couple more aborted attempts

“Was there anything in the manual that could help us defeat the Masters?” I asked 288. He’d read it back to front so if there was anything useful in there, he would know. And now that he had seen the light, maybe even tell me. Hallelujah!The mention of the manual made the imp’s beady little eyes gleam. He looked up at me as I leaned over the partitioning wall and said, “The Book is the answer to all questions.”He sounded like a newly baptised religious nut. Just what I needed, a Jehovah’s penis.“That’s great but was there anything in the Book—”  I thought it best to sound as reverential about his new Bible as him “—that could help us against the Masters?”“No,” said 288. “The Masters cannot be defeated.”Well, not with that attitude they couldn’t.“What if all the golems were to attack the Masters? Could they win?”“No,” said 288.“There’s only nine of them,” I pointed out.“All the war golems together wouldn’t be a

It’s tiring having to come up with ways not to die. Lying there with a girl playing with your hair might seem idyllic, but when monsters are waiting outside to eat you, it makes it hard to relax.Somehow I drifted off to sleep. Ideas can sometimes come to you when you stop trying so hard to think of them. Spend hours trying to figure something out and get nowhere. Go off to do something else and the answer pops into your head.Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.I woke up and still had nothing. What had woken me was a breeze in my face. 288 was hovering over me, his wings fanning cool air over me. It was quite nice, if you resisted thinking about what 288 was and where that tangy odour was coming from.“The final fight is about to begin,” he said.I sat up, waking Jenny in the process. She had dozed off leaning against the wall and was now all stiff and stretching. Girls are so obvious. They claim they hate guys eyeing them up, and then they wake

For someone who goes to such great lengths to avoid danger, committing honourable Subaru might seem a little out of character.Just as Claire had suggested, only losing one of our group was a more than reasonable price to pay for surviving a very unpromising situation. Count yourself lucky and move on with your life, would be my advice if someone had asked for it.And yet, I didn’t like it. Claire had almost known things were going to end up like this, she even gave me the long goodbye. It was like she was doing me a favour. It rankled.There’s something about getting an unwanted gift and then being expected to be thankful for it that has never sat right with me. Imagine if you left someone house-sitting while you went on holiday, and when you came back, they had redecorated as a surprise.They didn’t ask you, and the new look was their taste, not yours. Would you thank them?When they got upset at your lack of gratitude for what had taken them a grea

The first thing I thought was, Oh no, I’m going to have to do this shit all over again. A somewhat self-centered way of thinking when you’re watching someone about to be bitten in half, but in my defence, death loses some of its gravitas when you’re going to see the person again in a bit.Not that it didn’t upset me to see Claire die — murder isn’t a very pleasant thing to witness, especially when it involves chewing — but going through all that palaver only to find myself in exactly the same situation was infuriating.It’s like having a save point right before the final boss and realising you’re going to have to go back to the beginning of the level because you missed one item. Annoying.Even though there was no time to reach Claire from where I was standing, or even to shout a warning, every fibre in my body was screaming for her to get down. And she did.Claire’s eyes locked onto mine and she lunged towards the ground. Her body hit the deck and the Levrik