Carl's Doomsday Scenario

Carl, Princess Donut, and Mongo arrive on the third floor, where the apparent night sky is only a ceiling illusion. Mordecai greets them in his new form as a Level 50 Incubus and tells them the training levels are over. Inside the private guildhall, Donut immediately keeps her cat race, gaining racial benefits without changing form, and then reviews her class choices with Carl and Mordecai.

The strongest options include Artist Alley Mogul, NecroBard, and Former Child Actor. Former Child Actor offers a floor-by-floor Character Actor specialty, poison and disease immunity, the Cockroach survival skill, extra Charisma, and the Manager benefit. Following advice Odette had given Carl, Carl and Donut deliberately make the Manager choice look accidental so Mordecai will not know Carl helped plan it. Donut pretends to choose Artist Alley Mogul, but actually selects Former Child Actor and uses Artist Alley Mogul as her third-floor specialty.

The Manager benefit changes Mordecai's role for the rest of Donut's run. He will teleport to any saferoom she enters, can use chat and his own remembered knowledge more freely, and can apply his alchemical expertise, but he loses his planned transfer to the magic guild along with tunnel and information-codex access. Mordecai is furious, while Carl privately recognizes both the strategic value and the risk to their trust. The chapter ends with Mordecai formally identifying Donut as a Level 13 Former Child Actor Cat and turning to Carl's race and class selection.

Carl reviews 398 race choices for the third floor. The AI recommends Hobgoblin, Human, and Sasquatch, but he rejects them and eventually finds Primal, a race that leaves his appearance unchanged, reduces every base stat by one, preserves his existing racial skills, and unlocks higher-tier skills so they can train to level 20. Mordecai explains that the vanished Primals are remembered as the earliest known species to conquer the universe, but their appearance and the circumstances of their disappearance remain unknown. Carl chooses Primal despite the immediate stat cost.

Carl then receives more than 650 class choices. After comparing Bomb Squad Tech, Prize Fighter, Compensated Anarchist, and other options, he chooses Compensated Anarchist, a Monk/Rogue hybrid built around traps, explosives, hand-to-hand combat, and media attention. Its Escape Plan skill can reveal concealed Dungeon Locator signs at major intersections, information Mordecai can now explain because of his Manager role. During the selection process the second floor collapses, leaving just over 700,000 crawlers and an eight-day timer for the third floor.

Carl allocates his 36 available stat points around the class minimums, including a base Charisma of 25 and Dexterity of 10. Donut's completed cat-race benefits are also revealed, including Night Vision, Slash Attack, Cat-like Reflexes, and 9 Lives, which halves the damage from her first nine physical attacks each day. Mordecai warns that Carl's long-term build will require substantial money as well as training. Because he is now Donut's manager, Mordecai can accompany them outside under limited conditions on an urban floor. The chapter ends when he presents Carl alone to the settlement as a Level 13 Compensated Anarchist Primal.

Mordecai explains that the third floor is the Over City, a vast urban level made of scattered villages surrounded by ruined city. Crawler entry locations are randomized, so Carl, Donut, and Mongo may be far from the Meadow Lark group. The villages and ruins are staged for the show, but the NPCs are living biological beings engineered and owned by Borant. Their memories are altered between productions, and the deeper tourist floors exploit similar created beings under different rules.

The Over City follows a six-layer volcano-city story. The third floor represents the upper city, while the sixth-floor Hunting Grounds continues the setting and allows wealthy tourists to hunt crawlers without protection. Mordecai also warns that village guards are overwhelmingly powerful and that breaking village law effectively carries a death sentence. Day and night matter on this floor: the ruins are always dangerous, nighttime monsters are worse, and even village alleys can become lethal after dark.

At the village gate, Carl uses his new Escape Plan benefit to reveal a concealed Dungeon Locator sign. It points toward stairs, saferooms, and a medium Skyfowl settlement thirty-four kilometers away, while the nearest stairs are six kilometers away. Mordecai tells them to grind toward the larger settlement, where shops and a tutorial guild will be more useful, and instructs Carl to train Fear and his punching skills while Donut continues training Magic Missile. Mordecai heads back into the village, and Carl, Donut, and Mongo leave its safety and enter the ruins.

As Carl, Donut, and Mongo cross the ruins, Zev checks in through chat. She reports that viewers generally approve of their race and class choices, that both Carl's and Donut's classes are currently unique, and that she is negotiating their next interview for around the fourth night. Soon afterward, knife-throwing Former Circus Lemurs attack from the ruined buildings.

The encounter triggers Carl and Donut's first quest, The Show Must Go On, which asks them to discover why the remnants of Grimaldi's Traveling Circus still exist and end the threat. When Carl asks Mordecai for advice, Mordecai is already drunk and unable to help. Carl uses a boom jug and smoke bombs to break away from the lemurs while Donut tries to keep an increasingly excitable Mongo under control.

Their escape route brings them face to face with Terror the Clown, a Level 10 transformed circus monster. Donut cripples it with Magic Missile, Carl finishes it with repeated punches, and Mongo attacks its ankle before the group races into a nearby saferoom called the Belly-Rubbed Pug. There they meet Gordo, the Bopca protector. The Manager benefit immediately teleports Mordecai into the room while he is drunk and partly undressed; he pulls up his pants, vomits, and passes out, confirming how abruptly Donut's new benefit can move him between locations.

With Mordecai still unconscious in the Belly-Rubbed Pug, Carl and Donut open their reward boxes while Mongo, now level three, continues growing into a larger and more colorful dinosaur. Donut's Silver Earth box contains a cat tree, a scented candle, and an Earth Hobby Potion; Carl's contains a cactus, a set of Louis L'Amour Sackett novels, and the same type of potion. The hobby potions give Donut level-three Scutelliphily and Carl level-three Cesta Punta, neither of which they understand yet. Donut's Gold Pet Box also gives Mongo a magical collar that keeps his orange map dot visible.

Donut receives Clockwork Triplicate from her Book of the Floor spellbook. The spell creates two temporary clockwork copies of Mongo that act independently for about a minute before collapsing into mechanical parts and vanishing. Carl has her practice it while he experiments with his new Bomb Surgeon skill and realizes he needs better materials and tools before he can build the explosives he has in mind.

Rather than immediately travel to the larger settlement, Carl decides to scout the circus while there is still daylight. Outside, they find three crawler death markers near the earlier lemur attack, but they have not yet examined the bodies and do not know the crawlers' identities. A stealthy skull-masked lemur watches the area from a rooftop. Donut climbs up and attacks it at close range, and Mongo finishes the wounded creature. From the roof Donut spots the circus tents, more lemurs, and giraffes nearby.

Carl criticizes Donut for risking herself for Mongo and calls him a pet rather than her child, which visibly hurts her. After Mongo feeds and Donut reports the circus layout, Carl changes his language and proposes that they kill another nearby lemur, inspect the dead crawlers, and scout the circus together. The chapter ends when Donut accepts the plan after Carl calls her his partner.

After Donut kills a second sentinel lemur, Carl, Donut, and Mongo inspect the nearby crawler remains. They identify three level-eight women, Grace Bautista 3, Nica, and Lea, all sharing the same last name and all killed by Former Circus Lemurs. The bodies were hastily looted by surviving companions. Carl takes two +2 Strength rings from Nica, while Donut equips the Enchanted Anklet of the Fallen Oak, which raises Dexterity and Constitution and grants Double Tap.

The group moves closer to Grimaldi's circus and watches its inhabitants fortify the encampment. A defaced poster identifies Tsarina Signet as a wanted traitor, while clowns erect barriers, barbed defenses, and cages in preparation for a fight. A now-sober Mordecai contacts them and orders them back to the saferoom before night falls. As the circus sentries return and the sky darkens, Carl decides they have stayed too long.

While the party retreats, the circus fires magical mortar rounds from cauldrons. One blast collapses a building around them and drops them into a hidden basement. Donut enlarges the exit with Puddle Jumper and discovers Tsarina Signet waiting outside. Signet is a Level 60 Elite, a half-Naiad and half-High-Elf Summoner covered in living tattoos. Her extreme Charisma affects Carl through a weak attraction effect; on Mordecai's advice, Carl fractures his own finger and breaks the influence.

Signet says the circus was once her family and claims she came to see whether they survived the attack. Donut refuses involvement in the conflict. Signet then steps back and spreads her arms; at the circus, the beast cages open, and hostile dots appear all around Carl, Donut, and Mongo. The source establishes the sequence but does not yet explain who ordered the release or what Signet ultimately wants.

Surrounded by six Level 15 Mold Lions, Carl, Donut, and Mongo are told by Signet to hold them off while she prepares her battle squad. Carl combines Protective Shell with Donut's last Confusing Fog scroll, trapping one lion against a wall. Carl tears out its heart, and Donut uses Second Chance to raise it as an undead minion. She raises a second lion and casts Clockwork Triplicate on it, creating temporary copies that help turn the remaining lions against one another. The party kills all six; Mongo reaches level six, and Carl and Donut reach level fourteen.

Signet's Blood Magic does not produce her squad because its chosen sacrifice, Carl, never receives the life-ending wound required to release his blood into the spell. She admits that she expected the lions to kill him and explains that her summons depend on the quality of a sacrifice she is not allowed to kill herself. She also explains that the mold on the lions returns to the circus vine and can regenerate them by the next day. Carl and Donut refuse to follow her home but agree to meet her the next night after she has already summoned her squad, hoping to learn why she attacks the circus.

Back at the Belly-Rubbed Pug, Mordecai apologizes for getting drunk but warns them that they should have skipped the quest. He explains that elites are deliberately printed characters in secondary productions: their storylines continue independently of crawlers, writers and producers can nudge or hot-patch their memories, and important elites can move between urban floors as their stories continue toward the sixth floor. He warns that these storylines have substantial production protection and that crawlers who interfere can be treated as expendable guest stars.

The recap then shows race and class selections, including Hekla becoming an Amazonian Shieldmaiden and Lucia Mar becoming a Lajabless Black Inquisitor General. The floor announcement says just under 700,000 crawlers have made selections, early sponsorship bidding has begun, and noncombatant NPCs now award zero experience while city guards have been strengthened. Mordecai again tells Carl and Donut to abandon the elite storyline and spend the next day following his instructions.

The morning after the first circus encounter, Mordecai secretly drugs Gordo so he can enter the Bopca kitchen, read the regional newsletter, and collect herbs for potions. As Donut's manager he is barred from direct combat but otherwise has broad freedom. The newsletter warns of a major battle event in the area that day or night, so Mordecai orders Carl, Donut, and Mongo to leave for the Skyfowl settlement immediately. Brandon also messages Carl about the Meadow Lark group's difficult race selections and their Legendary Pacifist Boxes. Carl chooses not to mention Agatha in writing.

Soon after the party leaves the saferoom, an unseen attacker stuns, paralyzes, and knocks Carl unconscious. He wakes fifteen hours later in Signet's building, having earned the Lazarus achievement for surviving an offensive spell above level fifteen. Signet admits she followed them because they broke their promise to return. Donut is held unconscious by Signet's Water Lily spell: she cannot wake until Signet releases it, Signet says Donut will die if Signet dies, and moving Donut from the chair immediately drains Donut's health. Mongo is caged but awake.

Carl releases Mongo, builds a makeshift shelter around Donut, and orders Mongo to stay and protect her while he follows Signet. He keeps Mordecai informed and asks Zev for help with a plan he does not explain aloud. On the way to the circus, Signet says Grimaldi rescued her as a child and eventually became the man she loved. During Scolopendra's Nine Tier poison-cloud cataclysm, Grimaldi transformed into the vine, and the transformed circus members became infected with his mold and subject to his control, with spores allowing them to return after death.

For the night's assault, Signet has captured Heather, a transformed black bear under the same Water Lily spell. She intends to cast her Blood Magic and make Carl kill Heather so Heather's blood will animate Signet's squad. Carl agrees to enter the fight because Donut remains Signet's hostage, but the chapter ends before Heather wakes or Carl attacks her, as the system announces that this quest-linked fight will be treated as a boss battle.

Carl begins the quest-linked boss fight against Heather the Bear, a Level 19 Neighborhood Boss whose roller skates and parasite-filled worm claws make her far more dangerous than an ordinary black bear. The worms wrap around Carl, penetrate his exposed skin, and speak directly into his mind before he uses Protective Shell to sever them. He then burns Heather with moonshine and tries a Fireball or Custard scratcher ticket, hoping for a powerful fire attack.

The ticket lands on Custard rather than Fireball. The magical custard heals Heather's body, but in doing so it destroys the worms and removes the circus mutations: her skates and hat vanish, normal fur and skin return, and the elderly bear is left free of the parasites. Her health begins falling on its own. Heather does not verbally ask Carl to kill her; Carl reads exhaustion and resignation in her expression and decides to end her suffering with repeated blows to the head. The kill makes him level fifteen, and Heather's blood then flows to Signet's waiting spell.

While Signet's summoning develops, Mordecai consults his old game-guide acquaintance Eklund and learns that the secondary production is called Vengeance of the Daughter. Signet emerges with a large retinue of Blood and Ink Elementals created by her Ink Marauder spell from Heather's blood and the tattoos that normally live on her body. The two-dimensional-looking summons are nevertheless powerful enough to overwhelm the circus's outer defenses.

Mordecai later learns that Water Lily can be broken with Satch Toad extract mixed into a standard healing potion, but the needed ingredient is unavailable in the current town. Zev also reports that the production team will not help Carl directly and that the Syndicate referee will only allow his request under strict conditions. Signet's army reaches the magically protected big top but cannot breach it. She tells Carl that a Big Top Ticket grants safe passage through public areas and that he must enter alone and break the three tent poles, each located inside one of the rings. Carl already has a ticket, and the chapter ends before he enters the tent.

Carl approaches Grimaldi's big top holding a Big Top Ticket, which guarantees safe passage through public areas. A Level 9 Clammy the Clown sniffs the ticket and allows him inside. The smell of the circus triggers a vivid childhood memory of visiting a small circus with his mother while she had temporarily fled his father. The memory briefly overwhelms Carl before he refocuses on Donut and repeats his determination not to let the dungeon break him.

Inside, the transformed performers continue their acts while ignoring Carl as long as he displays the ticket. He discovers that Ringmaster Grimaldi has become an enormous Pestiferous Vine and is both an Elite and a Level 85 City Boss. He also encounters Apollon the Mighty, another Elite and former circus strongman, now visibly linked to the vine. Carl realizes that Grimaldi's roots spread through the tent and that killing the vine could end the parasitic control over the circus.

Carl recalls Mordecai's explanation of the Pestiferous Vine's specific vulnerability. Poisoned blood fed directly to the vine breaks its connection to its symbionts after roughly fifteen to twenty minutes; if the vine realizes what happened, blood from the same person after that person takes an antidote can cure it. Because Carl's cloak grants poison resistance, he removes it, deliberately poisons himself by taking incompatible potion doses too quickly, cuts his palm, and drips his poisoned blood onto one of Grimaldi's roots.

Carl then heals himself, takes a poison antidote, replaces his cloak, and waits while the circus continues around him. The vine absorbs almost all of the blood, but there is no immediate visible reaction. The chapter ends with Carl uncertain whether the poisoning worked.

Carl confirms that Grimaldi shows no immediate sign of poisoning and uses the threat of reversing or preserving the poison to negotiate with the producers of Vengeance of the Daughter. He offers Carl and Donut as future regular participants in the production's elite quests on the sixth floor if they both survive, while threatening to feed Grimaldi antidote-treated blood and ruin the episode if the producers refuse. The producers accept through Zev, who confirms she has authority to formalize the agreement. Carl then deliberately gives Grimaldi healthy, antidote-treated blood, reversing the poison rather than killing the city boss.

Carl learns Wisp Armor from his saved spellbook, gaining temporary resistance to magic and mind control. He then accepts a parasite-filled ice cream cone from Apollon and allows Grimaldi's worms to infest him. The worms and Grimaldi can read Carl's memories and speak in his mind, but Wisp Armor lets Carl retain control long enough to leave the tent and act as an unwilling communication channel between Grimaldi and Signet.

Carl argues that both Grimaldi and Signet are trying to protect the same circus family in incompatible ways. Signet says the transformed family is suffering, while Grimaldi initially insists that she has turned against them. As Wisp Armor nears expiration, Grimaldi relents and forces Carl to say, "I have un-banished you, my love." Carl immediately drinks Mordecai's anti-parasite healing mixture and expels the worms. Signet says Donut will awaken at sunrise and enters the big top, now permitted to return.

The quest The Show Must Go On completes, raising Carl from level fifteen to eighteen. Carl realizes that Zev had described two dramas playing simultaneously and begins wondering what the second one is. The chapter ends at the moment Mordecai reports that Donut's health has just fallen below twenty percent and orders Carl to go. The source does not yet show Carl reaching or rescuing her.

Carl races back to Signet's building after Mordecai reports that Donut's Cockroach skill has triggered at zero health and left her at five percent. He finds Mongo, badly wounded and now much larger, defending the unconscious Donut from Level 8 Street Urchins. The creatures are the Over City's janitor mobs and are attacking because Carl's makeshift barricade is refuse they are trying to remove. Carl uses a Heal scroll on Donut, removes the debris so the Street Urchins lose interest, and follows Mordecai's instructions to mix a pet-healing potion from a healing potion, cinnamon, and thistle rot for Mongo.

Mongo recovers and has risen from level six to level ten after protecting Donut. Carl waits with both of them until dawn and explicitly recognizes Donut and Mongo as the family he has left. At sunrise Donut awakens as Signet promised and is now level fifteen from shared quest experience. The circus tents and corpses are gone, and a previously hidden stairway to the fourth floor is visible in the former circus grounds. Mordecai explains that some future stairs only become visible after quests. Carl does not know whether Grimaldi died and does not treat the vanished circus as proof of his death.

As they head toward the Skyfowl settlement, Carl and Donut privately weigh the Vengeance of the Daughter deal. Carl sees the production company as another party with an interest in their survival, while Donut warns that being unusually popular guest stars could also make them a threat to the show's main character. Zev later books them for Danger Zone with Ripper Wonton and identifies the company behind Vengeance of the Daughter as Sensation Entertainment, Incorporated, a private company from a center system.

During the journey Carl and Donut formalize their first combat play, Panic: Carl casts Fear and Donut immediately follows with Magic Missile. Carl trains Fear to level three, Donut raises Clockwork Triplicate to level three, and Mongo's level-ten growth and training make him much more controllable and dangerous. They finally reach the larger Skyfowl settlement, where Carl is level eighteen and Donut level fifteen. Just before entering the tutorial guild they spot a Desperado Club location, which immediately captures Donut's interest.

Exhausted after reaching the medium Skyfowl settlement, Carl, Donut, and Mongo enter Mordecai's guild room. Because Mordecai is now Donut's manager, the outside location available to him follows the most recent settlement Donut has entered rather than being freely selectable. Mordecai also reveals that he was a mycologist on his home world and studied alchemy alongside fire magic. He says Odette made him study the heavily vegetated sixth floor when they reached it together, a detail Carl and Donut notice but do not press.

Carl and Donut open the rewards from the circus quest and their recent achievements. Both earn One Quadrillion and receive Gold Fan Boxes whose contents will be chosen by follower voting after a thirty-hour wait. Their Hadji achievements upgrade the quest rewards to Platinum Quest Boxes. Donut receives five thousand gold, a level-three Acute Ears skill potion that improves minimap information, and Enchanted Fang Caps that she plans to give Mongo. Carl receives additional explosives and trap supplies, including hobgoblin dynamite and remote detonators from Heather's boss box.

Carl's Platinum Quest Box contains a short-lived Scroll of Upgrade. It upgrades his Enchanted BigBoi Boxers with additional Dexterity, Intelligence, and Constitution plus the Freeballing benefit, which doubles damage from attacks originating below the waist and speeds those skills' growth but prevents him from wearing another layer of clothing over his crotch. The upgrade therefore blocks the pants he had planned to buy. Mordecai privately explains that established crawler brands begin receiving gear that reinforces their recognizable equipment and appearance.

Carl's Lucky Bastard Box contains a nontransferable 100,000 Gold Coin Casino Chip. It cannot be redeemed directly and must be wagered at the Desperado Club's High Roller's Roulette Table or Wheel of Fortune. Mordecai tells Carl and Donut to sleep and promises to take them to the club the next night. The chapter ends with Mordecai grinning when Donut asks whether he can get inside: "They know me there."

Carl chooses the nearly empty One-Eyed Narwhal for the night so the group can avoid attention from other crawlers. The human proprietor, Fitz, rents them rooms while the recap shows other crawlers, including an alligator-headed gunman and a woman whose surviving goats include an armored sapient goat and a hellspawn familiar. It also shows Mongo's defense of Donut, though the main recap cannot show much of Carl's Vengeance of the Daughter footage because that material belongs to the secondary production.

An older orc named GumGum approaches and asks for help. Mordecai refuses and warns Carl that the dungeon will keep baiting his impulse to help people, so the best way to help others in the long run is to become stronger and survive deeper floors. Carl later returns hoping to ask GumGum what she needs, but she has already left. The next morning Mordecai sets a strict plan: shop, grind, kill a neighborhood boss, return before dark, and only then visit the Desperado Club with an escort.

At Lucky's General Goods, the Skyfowl merchant Edge Dancer demonstrates a new shopping rule: shop descriptions come from merchants, who may exaggerate but may not lie. Donut's high Charisma lets her negotiate favorable prices. The group sells excess gear through several stores, including one run by Talon Strong, and builds a pool of about fifty thousand gold. They spend ten thousand on alchemical supplies and fifteen thousand on a magical pet carrier so Mongo can rest properly and avoid the Desperado Club's unsecured familiar playroom.

Outside town they grind Brain Boilers and then defeat the neighborhood boss called the Dispenser. Donut's Acute Ears warns them about its ambush, and a clockwork Mongo carrying dynamite helps kill it. They add the tactic to their playbook as The Boomy Boy. Donut reaches level sixteen and Mongo level eleven.

On the way back, they find GumGum piling roughly fifteen mutilated female NPC corpses outside the town. She says unknown women are found dead in the settlement every morning, usually drained of most of their blood, while the Skyfowl authorities show little interest. The system assigns The Sex Workers Who Fell from the Heavens, a Silver Quest Box investigation. Carl notices similar shoulder wounds on multiple bodies and tells GumGum they will see what they can do, although he insists to Donut that the new quest will not derail their progress. Donut answers that he said the same thing last time.

Carl, Donut, and Mordecai enter the Desperado Club while Mongo remains inside his pet carrier. The public front room is local to the settlement, but members with the Desperado pass can enter a shared main room that connects club locations across the entire floor without functioning as normal fast travel. Clarabelle, a Level 40 Crocodilian employee who knows Mordecai from earlier seasons, admits them and warns that the pet room is closed after a recent incident. Inside, privacy bubbles suppress the music for conversation, and Mordecai explains that much of the apparent crowd consists of temporary bot NPCs.

Mordecai introduces Carl and Donut to Quint, a Level 75 Half-Djinn, Half-Garbage Scowl pharmacist and former crawler. Donut becomes drunk after eating the cherries and sampling her Dirty Shirley. Mordecai trades three bottles of Rev-Up Moonshine to Quint for an extensive pharmaceutical starter kit plus a Hair of the Dog potion that immediately sobers Donut. Quint also describes the previous night's club incident: Lucia Mar's two dogs broke out of the pet room, killed attendants and another pet, and attacked dancers while Lucia froze the room, stole tequila, and killed an elite gnoll. Her Desperado membership has since been revoked.

Mordecai is assembling potion supplies for the fourth floor, when Carl and Donut can set him up with an alchemy table. He also explains manager protection. There is no such staff protection on the first three floors, but beginning on the fourth floor a protected manager can still be wounded, feel pain, and be killed; death transfers the manager out of the dungeon and ends that manager's season rather than truly killing them. If Donut reaches the fourth floor, Mordecai's obligation is already fulfilled, but his compensation increases the longer she survives, especially beyond the ninth floor.

Carl asks again why Mordecai was upset about becoming a manager. Mordecai says the reason has nothing to do with Carl or Donut but refuses to explain further. The chapter ends when he abruptly suggests visiting the Silk Road Market before the recap show attracts attention to Carl and Donut.

At the Desperado Club's Silk Road Market, Mordecai directs Carl and Donut to Hobgobs and Boom Sticks, an explosives stall run by the Level 30 hobgoblin Pustule. She explains the shortcomings of goblin smoke bombs and describes better hobgoblin smoke curtains, fused and impact-triggered Hob-lobbers, dynamite, mines, detonators, and other explosive supplies. Donut uses her high Charisma to negotiate two cases of goblin dynamite and a case of fused Hob-lobbers down from fifteen hundred to one thousand gold, and Pustule promises to stock smoke curtains when they return.

Carl asks Pustule to appraise one of his Boom Jugs. She estimates a retail value of about seventy-five hundred gold and offers half that, while also noting that Carl's current accelerant makes the design unnecessarily expensive. Carl keeps the jug but gains a useful value reference. Mordecai returns from another merchant with additional alchemical materials, and the group leaves the market as the recap show begins.

After leaving the club, Donut releases Mongo from his carrier. While they walk toward the One-Eyed Narwhal, Mongo suddenly screams and runs into a dark side street. Carl and Donut chase him and find GumGum dead with her chest torn open. Three Level 16 Krasue, ghost-class flying heads trailing their organs, flee from Donut's light. Their description establishes that killing the flying portion is not enough; their remaining bodies must also be destroyed before experience is awarded.

A tall elf with a burning hand remains beside GumGum's body. He claims he used dark magic to lure Mongo into a trap and calls Carl and Donut blasphemers, but the source gives him no name before he attacks. Carl kicks him in the groin at the same moment Donut's Magic Missile strikes his neck, decapitating him. Mongo picks up the severed head. The chapter ends immediately afterward with Carl asking Donut, "Who the hell was that?" The elf's identity and connection to GumGum's death remain unresolved.

Carl and Donut examine the elf they killed in the alley and learn his name only after death: Vincente, a Level 16 City Elf. His Meat Hooks scroll explains why Mongo charged into the alley, because the spell summons nearby carnivorous pets away from their owners. Vincente also wears a uniform patch for the 201st Security Group, Magical Ops, a militia-style organization whose role is not yet clear.

GumGum's corpse does not identify a killer. Carl suspects the three Krasue because her chest is torn open and her blood is gone, but this remains an inference rather than established fact. Her inventory contains a Gate Pass signed by Magistrate Featherfall and a blood-stained Mysterious Letter written in a script Carl cannot read. Back at the inn, Mordecai recognizes the writing as necroscript used by undead magic users and says the evidence might indicate a lich, but he does not claim that conclusion is certain.

Carl learns enough alchemy to make Hair of the Dog potions, then he and Donut open their Gold Fan Boxes. Donut receives a framed photograph of Beatrice with Brad, the image that once contributed to Carl ending their relationship; Carl realizes it no longer emotionally affects him. Carl receives a xistera, a mechanical jai-alai scoop that activates the Cesta Punta hobby knowledge from his earlier Earth Hobby Potion. It folds onto his forearm, works with his gauntlet, and lets him launch suitable projectiles at extreme speed. He recognizes Hob-lobbers as nearly ideal ammunition.

Mordecai identifies the 201st Security Group as a poorly organized city-elf militia and doomsday cult devoted to protecting Skyfowl, whom the cult treats as Apito's angels. Donut insists that GumGum's death means they must complete the quest, and Mordecai reluctantly accepts that they are already entangled. Fitz explains that GumGum had long watched over the unidentified dead women and feared the Krasue because her own mother had died alone after being stabbed.

The Gate Pass establishes Magistrate Featherfall's name and authority, while Mordecai's necroscript reading and Fitz's account point Carl and Donut toward the magistrate without proving he is responsible. That night Carl promises Donut they will identify whoever is behind the deaths. A body then strikes the inn roof. The source closes by revealing that the next morning they will find another naked, twisted woman beside the inn with the words "No, you won't" cut into her back.

Carl and Donut use Donut's improved Puddle Jumper to reach the elevated administrative district while Mongo remains in his carrier. On the way to Magistrate Featherfall's reception area they briefly meet Burgundy, a human clerk with mismatched eyes. Featherfall's elderly Skyfowl assistant, Miss Quill, refuses to disturb him because none of the known murder victims are Skyfowl and says the town's administration does not care about crimes against other races.

Carl deliberately places the newest dead woman on Miss Quill's desk. The Swordsman guards do not arrest him because he had already shown one of them Featherfall's Gate Pass while carrying that same corpse, and their collective enforcement therefore accepts his possession of it. Distressed over her collection of small stuffed figures, Miss Quill finally says Featherfall is not there and nowadays only comes out at night. Carl tests the door to Featherfall's chambers and finds it magically locked. He and Donut leave without seeing the magistrate, still treating his involvement as a working theory rather than a fact.

With about two hours before their interview, Carl and Donut leave town to grind. Near the corpse of a previously killed neighborhood boss called the Divider, daylight abruptly turns to magical darkness. Two City Elves approach from opposite directions with a group of large slow mobs. One elf destroys Donut's magical Torch with an anti-magic attack. Carl uses pre-lit Hob-lobbers and dynamite; when both elves are killed, the artificial darkness ends.

Carl jumps into the empty pool containing the bloated Divider corpse just before the explosives detonate. The boss corpse bursts and catapults him unconscious onto a nearby roof. Donut later tells him the blasts killed most of the attackers and that she and Mongo finished the survivors. In normal light the enemies are revealed as Level 12 Shambling Berserkers made from stitched-together body parts; they are comparatively weak in light but become four times stronger in darkness and can enter a berserk state.

Carl wakes after Donut heals him. He has reached level nineteen, Mongo reaches level twelve while fighting additional Shambling Berserkers, and Donut expects to reach level seventeen. Donut has already collected the neighborhood map. The chapter ends while more of the creatures are still approaching: Donut proposes finishing them before cleaning up for the interview, and Carl insists on killing a few himself to test how far he can throw Hob-lobbers with the xistera. They have not yet returned to the inn.

Carl, Donut, and Mongo are transported to a rented production trailer for their live appearance on Danger Zone with Ripper Wonton. Because they arrive covered in gore, the production gives them a trailer with an advanced cleaning system; Manasa has switched out of that trailer to accommodate them. The robot D-0NAH, whom Donut calls Donna, cleans Donut, Carl's visible gear, and Mongo before Mongo is returned to his carrier for the program.

The director, Evo, briefs Carl and Donut on the panel. The host is Ripper Wonton, a Setonix commonly called a Quokka. Other guests include Princess D'nadia of the Prism, Valtay-controlled Naga singer Manasa, human comedian Tucker, and returning crawler Hekla. Hekla asks Carl and Donut to help a separated member of Brynhild's Daughters who is near their settlement, and they agree to meet her at the One-Eyed Narwhal.

During the live discussion, Donut repeatedly clashes with Tucker. When the subject turns to unrest in the Skull Empire after Maestro's disgrace, Ripper asks Carl for his view. Carl says that if King Rust treats his people as Maestro treated guests, they should rebel, using the boiling-frog story to argue that people can become accustomed to worsening oppression. He does not claim detailed knowledge of Skull Empire conditions.

The program is interrupted when Manasa's production trailer loses contact. During the audience-question segment, callers question Hekla, Carl, and Donut; Donut identifies the stray cat she calls Ferdinand as the love of her life, while Carl says the cat's actual name was Gravy Boat. Another caller, Chappy, asks whether Donut would leave Carl if Beatrice were alive, but Carl refuses to resolve that hypothetical on live television.

Ripper then confirms that a pulse attack destroyed Manasa's trailer and that she appears to have died. Prince Stalwart releases a statement saying the attack was intended to execute Carl and Donut and claiming Carl's statements justified it under Syndicate sovereignty rules. Princess D'nadia explains that Manasa had switched trailers with Carl and Donut so they could use the cleaner. The Valtay subsequently claim one of their dreadnaughts destroyed Stalwart's yacht. Stalwart was not aboard; Queen Consort Ugloo and former Prince Maestro are only rumored to have been aboard, so their survival is unresolved here.

The chapter ends while Ripper continues reporting the crisis. Hekla asks whether this level of destruction always follows Carl and Donut. Carl answers, "With a little bit of chaos thrown in."

Danger Zone closes with a recording of Manasa's final performance. Back in the production trailer, Carl privately tells Donut that Stalwart's prepared statement makes him suspect they were used as bait in a larger scheme, possibly one that benefits Borant by damaging the Valtay and Skull Empire alliance. He repeatedly treats this as speculation, and Donut points out that the attack and trailer switch may simply have produced a lucky accident for Borant.

Zev meets them in the saferoom and explains that rental-trailer booking schedules were public because nobody had previously tried to assassinate a crawler outside the dungeon. She reports that public reaction blames Stalwart and that the Valtay destroyed the royal yacht, with Queen Consort Ugloo and Maestro believed, but not confirmed, to have been aboard. Mordecai imposes a new rule against discussing outside political entities. He says his earlier goal had only been to keep the Skull Clan focused on the Blood Sultanate for the ninth-floor Faction Wars; after this escalation, he wants Carl and Donut silent about King Rust and Stalwart.

Carl and Donut then return to the unresolved murder quest. They assume, without proof, that Featherfall may be using the 201st Security Group and undead creatures, and decide to weaken the militia while there is still daylight. At the Apito Education Center, Wand Bearers Salvatore and Carmine identify Donut's Enchanted Anklet of the Fallen Oak as a blasphemous sign and declare her the Oak Fell. Salvatore admits that the group tortured GumGum for Carl and Donut's names and says Vincente had been their champion. Nine City Elves prepare to fight under Magical Fervor.

Before they attack, a pregnant Fathom Dwarf named Eunice charges in and beats Salvatore with a rolling pin for previously injuring one of her children. Her son Ricky Joe discovers that Mongo has swallowed his pet salamander Benjamin. An Icer elf freezes Eunice, and two Level 75 Swordsman guards move to attack her. Carl punches one guard to stop them and is immediately branded a troublemaker, causing the guards to attack him on sight.

Ricky Joe punches Mongo and loses his right forearm when Mongo bites it off. Donut stops Mongo from killing him. A guard accidentally cleaves the recently healed Salvatore in half while attacking Carl. Carl grabs Ricky Joe and calls the Mic Drop play: he throws a lit Boom Jug upward, and Donut uses Puddle Jumper to teleport Carl, Donut, Mongo, and Ricky Joe to a nearby roof just before the jug detonates. The blast kills the remaining eight City Elves and sets the education center and neighboring house on fire while barely damaging the guards.

Carl gives Ricky Joe a healing potion, stopping the bleeding but not restoring the arm. Ricky Joe demands that Mongo give the severed limb back. The chapter ends with Mongo obliging; nothing beyond that immediate moment belongs in this unit.

Carl and Donut wait until sunset on the roof with Ricky Joe. The Swordsman guards eventually return to their nighttime holding building. Ricky Joe describes a female Skyfowl who frequently visited the 201st temple and led groups of unfamiliar women away, a clue that links the militia to the missing women without yet identifying the Skyfowl. After Ricky Joe leaves to help with his mother's labor, Carl and Donut buy more Hob-lobbers and hobgoblin smoke curtains from Pustule.

At the One-Eyed Narwhal they meet Katia Grim, the nearby member of Brynhild's Daughters whom Hekla asked them to help. Katia is level nine and appears poorly formed because she is actually a Doppelganger trying to sculpt herself into a human appearance. Mordecai explains that her Monster Truck Driver class is a Juggernaut-style tank build whose Constitution increases with speed. Katia has exceptional Constitution and Dexterity but low Strength and other weaknesses. Carl gives her a piece of mirror to help practice shaping herself, and she joins Carl and Donut's party so she can share experience.

The recap turns Donut's drunken comments about returning Book 1 animals Cici and Gustavo 3 into a manufactured feud with Lucia Mar. Lucia says she will kill Donut and Carl in the dungeon, but Mordecai says the production will likely build the confrontation for a later floor rather than force it immediately. He also interprets a Borant newsletter as evidence that shortened floor timers are producing unusual pressure: the system AI is giving strong loot and more elaborate quests while Borant warns merchants not to provoke increasingly powerful crawlers.

Katia remains at the inn while Carl and Donut prepare to investigate Featherfall's building before sunrise. They kill Shadow Leaks while approaching, and Mongo reaches level thirteen. Carl then reveals that he hid three sticks of hobgoblin dynamite and a remote detonator inside Miss Quill's shelving during their earlier visit. Mordecai has identified GumGum's blood-stained necroscript as a used Suppurating Eye spell, allowing its caster to see and hear near the blood whenever the scroll is outside Carl's inventory.

Carl and Donut exploit the surveillance spell as misinformation. They pretend they plan to cross to the magistrate's roof, feed the scroll to a clockwork Mongo, send two clockwork Mongos onto the target roof, and use smoke curtains to draw four Krasue toward the decoys. Carl and Donut remain on the neighboring roof. The chapter ends when Carl remotely triggers the hidden hobgoblin dynamite, turning night into day. The source does not yet establish who the blast kills.

The hidden hobgoblin dynamite tears a large hole through the magistrate's building. Carl reaches level twenty-one and Donut level nineteen. System notices award Carl Assassin, Ultimate Extreme Power, and CockBlock achievements, rename him Magistrate Carl of Medium Skyfowl Settlement for the remainder of the floor, and specifically identify Miss Quill as the NPC whose death disrupted another crawler's quest. The murder quest itself remains active, so Carl realizes their assumptions about its responsible party were incomplete.

Carl and Donut cross into the damaged building and discover a hidden room filled with naked women hanging upside down. Some bodies are headless; others have detached but still connected heads and purple energy around them. At the center hangs the old, mummifying corpse of former Magistrate Featherfall, who has clearly been dead for some time. This overturns Carl's earlier belief that the blast had just killed Featherfall. The room is a Krasue nest, and its magic is muted so Donut cannot cast new spells inside it.

Mongo destroys several attached heads with his magical Fang Caps, which causes the other Krasue to begin waking. Donut leaves the muted area to cast Torch while Carl uses a smoke curtain and a regular torch to keep the creatures back. Carl scratches his Fireball or Custard ticket and this time receives a level-fifteen Fireball. It detonates against Featherfall's already dead body, burns the nest, and causes the building to begin collapsing.

Among the burned bodies, Burgundy briefly returns to her human state. She explains that she and other women were recruited from other settlements with promises of Desperado Club work, then brought through the city elves to Miss Quill's husband, Remex. Featherfall had already been dead, and his corpse served as a dark fetish protecting the Krasue bodies at night. Miss Quill had been the person actually running the city.

Burgundy says Remex is neither fully alive nor dead and is trying to restore himself. During the day the transformed women work in the mall and collect feathers from newly arriving Skyfowl and Chickadees for Miss Quill; at night they become Remex's Krasue army. Women who fail the transformation die, are fed upon, and are dropped into nearby alleys by Remex-controlled avatars. Burgundy identifies Remex's location as the floor above the Swordsman guards' nighttime building across the street.

Burgundy refuses healing because restoring her body would also restore the curse. As the building collapses, she asks to die while still mortal. Donut kills her with Magic Missile just before Burgundy slides away with the falling debris. The chapter ends there, before Carl and Donut confront Remex or learn the full purpose of his larger spell.

Carl and Donut escape the collapsing municipal building without recovering Miss Quill's buried corpse or neighborhood map. Carl does recover one intact glass display case containing a plush armored rider named Kimaris. The Sex Workers Who Fell from the Heavens quest remains incomplete because they now know how the women became Krasue and reached the alleys, but not the full reason behind the operation.

Outside they meet Daniel Bautista 2, a Level 18 Tigran Swashbuckler. He confirms that Miss Quill had been the target of his own quest for Desperado Club access and that he followed her to the Swordsman depot shortly before Carl's explosion killed her. Daniel also confirms the dead Bautistas Carl and Donut found near the circus were his sisters and cousin; five family members died in that attack, another cousin died the next day, and Daniel is now the only survivor of his family. Grateful that Carl and Donut killed the lemurs responsible, he exchanges chat access and offers to help them in the future.

Carl and Donut briefly discuss what they would have wanted from life outside the dungeon. Carl says he would have liked to work as a forester, while Donut imagines writing television with Zev and wonders whether better entertainment might reduce the public appetite for watching real people kill one another.

They then prepare to confront Remex above the Swordsman depot. Hundreds of guards stand in nighttime stasis below, invulnerable while a soul crystal recharges them. Fitz has independently raised an alarm about a possible lich, drawing a crowd of ground-dwelling NPCs to the street. With sunrise approaching, Carl rigs the exterior of the building with ten sticks of goblin dynamite and gives Katia the remote detonator so someone outside any possible mind-control effect can destroy the structure if Carl and Donut die or give the order.

Carl and Donut climb into Remex's room while Mongo remains in his carrier. Donut senses a normal-sized creature retreating to the far corner. Carl sees it and immediately realizes their assumption was wrong. The chapter ends on his private message to Mordecai: "Not a lich, Mordecai. Not a fucking lich!"

Remex is not a lich or boss. He is a Level 1 Soul Leech Capacitor, an undead Bereft Minion of Miss Quill. A Soul Leech is created by pulling back the most-loved soul of a target, binding the returned spirit to that loved one, and using the resulting creature to store soul power. Remex is tethered to a C-grade Soul Crystal that gathers power from deaths in the area and recharges the Swordsman guards. With Quill dead, the accumulated power is no longer being siphoned away.

Remex explains that he was once the town magistrate and later died. Featherfall, his successor, asked Miss Quill to help resurrect Remex as a powerful capacitor so Featherfall could gain greater control over the Swordsmen. Quill deliberately allowed Featherfall to cast too close to the soul-power amplifier. The feedback killed Featherfall, created Remex, and left Quill free to conceal Featherfall's death with forgery magic while effectively running the settlement herself.

Quill then manipulated the 201st Security Group by creating the illusion of a legendary Skyfowl angel and used Remex-controlled avatars for intimidation and corpse removal. She recruited women from other towns with promises of work, transformed suitable victims into controllable Krasue, and used the transformation deaths to generate more soul power. The women collected feathers from Skyfowl and Chickadees so Quill could protect those individuals and their families from her larger plan.

That plan, The Final War, is a three-generation heirloom spell begun by Quill's grandfather, continued by her mother, and intended to be completed by Quill. Its final stage requires three nights of casting. Quill had completed the first night and was preparing the second. Once complete, summoned beasts would sweep the Over City and kill everyone except the protected Skyfowl, Chickadees, and their families. When Remex finishes explaining the purpose, The Sex Workers Who Fell from the Heavens quest completes.

The relief immediately gives way to a new group event, The Fools Who Broke the Glass. Quill's interrupted spell is going to release a magical explosion across a forty-five-square-kilometer radius in seven minutes. Carl, Donut, and Katia are designated quest hosts and cannot opt out through a saferoom. Roughly eighty crawlers are in the affected quest chat. Mordecai says the shared members-only section of the Desperado Club lies outside the blast radius, but Katia lacks access, and Carl and Donut reject abandoning her and the other crawlers.

Carl notices that the blast epicenter is the Soul Crystal rather than Remex. Against Mordecai's warning that breaking it may only trigger the blast early, Carl returns to the room and places the crystal inside Miss Quill's recovered Sheol Glass Reaper Case. The case is an artifact from the fifteenth floor that protects its contents from most forms of abuse, though not necessarily an explosion this powerful. Carl cannot move the enclosed crystal into his inventory. As the timer falls, cracks form in the Soul Crystal itself while the protective case remains intact.

Carl and Donut sit together beside the enclosed crystal. Remex fades and speaks about his son; Carl recognizes clues that Remex was once a crawler who called himself a "tenner," apparently someone who exited on the tenth floor. With fifteen seconds left, Donut tells Carl, "I'm not as dumb as I pretend to be. I know she's dead." Carl answers, "I know." He wraps himself around her, and the chapter ends with both of them closing their eyes and bracing for the explosion.

Carl and Donut survive the first attempted blast because the Soul Crystal and Sheol Glass Reaper Case transform into a new unstable explosive, Carl's Doomsday Scenario. The device is hot enough to burn Carl's hand, can now be placed in his inventory, and will explode almost immediately if removed. The event quest remains active. A first precursor burst temporarily strips the magical effects from equipped gear and deactivates the Swordsman guards into piles of armor. The system warns that three more precursor bursts will lead to a final wild-magic explosion in twenty minutes.

Carl tells the roughly eighty affected crawlers to remove magical equipment and run east. The Desperado Club is no longer an escape route because access to its shared back room disappears when saferooms close for the event. During the second precursor burst, magical weapons activate themselves; Level 12 Ranger Conrad E dies when his arrows explode. During the third, equipped magical armor is destroyed. Donut finally removes the Sepsis Crown, which crumbles away rather than transferring to another crawler.

The fourth precursor burst activates dangerous magic even from inventory and triggers abilities. Carl and Donut automatically consume a healing potion followed too quickly by a mana potion, giving Carl potion sickness while Donut's class immunity protects her from the poison effect. Katia's Rush activates and sends her through a wall, another crawler is struck by lightning, and one person teleports away. The group reaches the eastern stairwell Daniel Bautista had previously identified with about three minutes before the final blast. Daniel arrives with another group and descends first.

Everyone is sent down early because the stairwell is now their only reliable survival route. Carl confirms Mordecai is safe in his room and realizes that Donut reaching the fourth floor fulfills Mordecai's service obligation, though Mordecai must remain behind until the third floor's normal collapse. Before descending, Carl asks Katia to press the remote detonator for the dynamite around Remex's warehouse. He hopes the blast might still kill weakened guards and share experience, though the magical trigger may have been disabled by the precursor bursts.

Katia presses the detonator with about twenty seconds left. Carl, Donut, Mongo, and Katia begin the floor transition without knowing whether it worked or what happened to Remex. The chapter ends during their dissolution as Donut reminds Carl that he never put his pants back on and laughs while he answers, "Goddamnit, Donut."