Dungeon Crawler Carl

At about 2:23 AM PST on January 3, a sudden transformation crushes buildings, vehicles, and other enclosed structures, killing people caught inside or under roofs. Carl, a twenty-seven-year-old former Coast Guardsman who works as a marine technician in Seattle, happens to be outside in boxers, a leather jacket, and Beatrice's pink Crocs because he went after her show cat, Princess Donut. Carl had recently ended his relationship with Beatrice after discovering that she had gone to the Bahamas with her ex-boyfriend and had lied about it.

Donut had jumped from Carl's second-story apartment window while he was smoking. Carl goes outside to retrieve her, and his neighbor Mrs. Parsons opens her window to complain. Before she can finish speaking, the apartment building and the surrounding city structures are crushed away. Carl sees Mrs. Parsons's severed head and realizes that most people in the sleeping city must have died. Donut then jumps into his arms.

A robotic voice announces that Earth has been seized under Syndicate rules for resource extraction, with the Borant Corporation assigned as planetary regent. Survivors may attempt to reclaim lost matter through an 18-level World Dungeon, whose entrances will remain open for only one hour. The announcement explains the shrinking number of stairways on lower levels and warns that each level will eventually be reclaimed. Freezing and unable to find shelter, Carl sees nearby entrance spotlights appear and runs toward the warmth of the closest dungeon entrance.

Carl descends the newly appeared staircase into the first floor of the World Dungeon, warming up as he goes. The iron stairs and the enormous door at the bottom carry fishlike demon carvings. When Carl examines the door, a tooltip identifies the figure as a Kua-Tin, the dominant species of the Borant System and principal owners of the Borant Corporation. He enters a large torch-lit tunnel, and the entrance doors close behind him.

A new game-show-like voice welcomes Carl to the first floor and displays the countdown to level collapse. Carl and Donut are assigned crawler numbers, and Carl receives multiple achievements and loot boxes for entering early, bringing a cat, carrying no supplies or weapon, wearing no pants, and entering without human companions. He cannot yet access the inventory needed to open the boxes, so he follows a sign toward a tutorial guild.

A dark side passage proves to be a trap containing a Goblin Murder Dozer driven by three goblins. Carl flees and, at the next junction, rejects the very narrow left passage because it looks like an obvious trap, choosing the right-hand tunnel instead. He finds a Tutorial Guild door, where a rat-like guildmaster named Mordecai realizes the dungeon has opened earlier than he expected. Mordecai refuses to open the chained door while hostile mobs are directly outside.

Two goblins approach on foot while the Murder Dozer maneuvers toward Carl. Carl knocks one goblin unconscious, the other retreats, and Carl kills the downed goblin while the larger threat closes in. Donut slips through the partly opened guild door, forcing the increasingly alarmed Mordecai to deal with her unauthorized entry. Once the immediate doorway is clear, Mordecai opens the door fully, and Carl gets inside just before the Murder Dozer passes over the dead goblin.

Inside the Tutorial Guild Hall, Carl learns that the room is a safe zone, although the floor timer continues to run. Mordecai warns that after Carl killed one goblin, a survivor will likely return to its clan and bring reinforcements. Donut knocks over an urn containing Mordecai's mother's ashes, and while Mordecai is distracted, Carl decides he cannot leave the goblin threat outside the guild entrance.

Carl goes back into the corridor and attacks the two remaining goblins while their Murder Dozer is stuck against the wall. He climbs onto the machine, throws the ordinary goblin into its spinning blades, and fights the level-three Goblin Engineer. Carl knocks the engineer off the vehicle with the goblin's pot and kills him by jumping down onto him. The unmanned Murder Dozer then warns of an imminent boiler breach.

Carl races back into the guild hall before the machine explodes. The blast shakes even the heavily protected safe-zone door. Mordecai explains that a local shaman probably enchanted the machine so an explosion would focus its energy on the nearest non-goblin, meaning Carl survived because he reached the guild in time.

Once Carl presses for answers, Mordecai identifies himself as a non-combatant NPC and former dungeon crawler from another displaced world. He says he was originally a skyfowl, became a Changeling on the third floor of his own crawl, reached floor eleven, and eventually accepted an exit that made him a guildmaster. His assigned form changes when his guildhall moves. Mordecai also explains that each dungeon is built around its host world's culture and says Earth is the seventh or eighth human-seeded world. Carl, overwhelmed by the implication that humans have been planted on multiple worlds, sits down for Mordecai's promised explanation.

Mordecai explains the legal and commercial framework behind the crawl. The Syndicate uses several starter species, including humans, to seed compatible worlds and establishes legal first contact long before industrial development. Thousands of years later, a corporation can return to extract resources if the planet has not satisfied the Syndicate's sovereignty requirements. Mordecai says the Borant Corporation makes money from Earth's mining rights, but the much larger business is Dungeon Crawler World, a galactic entertainment program watched across billions of Syndicate star systems.

Mordecai grants Carl access to the Crawler Menu and teaches him how to use the map, health display, statistics, skills, magic, and party functions. Carl's starting statistics favor strength over intelligence, and he cannot distribute level-up points or choose a race and class until the third floor. The Ratings menu tracks views, followers, favorites, and patrons. The first floor is closed to live viewers, but Borant will release edited highlights, and Mordecai stresses that future viewership can attract patrons who send valuable loot. He also warns that disparaging the Syndicate or the crawl's organizer can cause a crawler's experience to be 'accelerated.'

Carl receives a basic healing spell and learns that there is no respawning. A system announcement then states that just under thirteen million humans entered the sealed dungeon and fewer than ten million remain alive. The second-floor entrances will appear after the introductory program in about thirty hours. Mordecai explains that floor-collapse time generally grows on lower levels, that the early floors are not all globally connected, and that from the fourth floor onward stairways are normally guarded by themed quests or bosses.

Because Carl and Donut entered together, they form a two-member party. Mordecai explains that biological creatures above a minimum weight receive crawler IDs, while an intelligence of at least two is required for training and inventory access; Donut qualifies for the tutorial process. Carl then asks about the people running the game. Mordecai says different corporations operate seasons with different formats, and that this is his final tour before he becomes a full citizen with a stipend. He also tells Carl that no crawler has ever completed all eighteen floors: the deepest known crawler, a human from another seeded world, reached floor thirteen and died within about half an hour.

Mordecai activates Carl's dimensional inventory, explaining that this season's system has effectively unlimited capacity. Carl can store an object if he can lift it off the ground by himself for about four seconds, regardless of its size. Living creatures cannot be safely stored, and stored items are time-locked so food does not spoil. Mordecai gives Carl a Standard Healing Potion and teaches him how inventory and hotlist items work.

Carl then reviews the achievements earned during his fights with the goblins. He has reached level two, increased several skills, and accumulated ten loot boxes, including a Legendary Pet Box. Mordecai explains that boxes can only be opened in safe areas, cannot be sold or transferred unopened, and should always be read carefully because even uncursed loot can be unsafe to use. Opening all ten boxes gives Carl healing supplies, weapons, crawler biscuits, dynamite, a lighter, a Goblin Pass, enchanted clothing, a toe ring, pet supplies, and an Enhanced Pet Biscuit. The Goblin Pass burns its symbol onto Carl's forearm and also appears through his jacket.

Mordecai says an Enhanced Pet Biscuit can cause more than a hundred possible effects, some beneficial and others neutral or harmful. If a harmful transformation occurs in a safe zone, the pet will be teleported outside rather than attack its owner there. Carl considers whether the biscuit might be more valuable if sold, since Donut is difficult to protect and he still lacks basic clothing and shoes.

Before Carl decides what to do, Donut leaps up and eats the biscuit directly from his hand. She immediately collapses into a wet, shaggy mass while a 'Waiting' message appears above her. Because she is not teleported away, Mordecai concludes the result is not classified as negative and says the transformation should finish within several minutes.

While Donut's transformation continues, Carl examines and equips his loot. He prefers the Toad Cudgel to the flimsy poker. The Goblin Pass is a tattoo on his forearm that remains visible through armor, removes automatic goblin hostility, and allows free passage through goblin-controlled territory, but fairy-class creatures will deal twenty percent more damage to him. Carl dislikes having the mark imposed on him without a choice.

Carl equips the Enchanted Nightgaunt Cloak of Stoutness, gaining four Constitution plus poison, ice, and anti-piercing resistance, and the Enchanted Trollskin Shirt of Pummeling, which adds seven levels of Regeneration and negates several melee-related debuffs. Mordecai calls the shirt unusually valuable for tanking. Carl also puts on the Enchanted Toe Ring of the Splatter Skunk, which adds three Strength and three levels of Powerful Strike. Combined with Carl's existing unarmed skills, Mordecai says the ring makes his punches and kicks especially effective and suggests that a monk class might suit him.

Exploring the skills menu, Carl discovers that his childhood mastery of the arcade game Frogger has become a level-eight skill. The result reminds him that the dungeon was built from matter taken from human civilization, meaning even such artifacts may now exist somewhere within it.

A new female voice interrupts him, criticizing his cloak, lack of pants, and Beatrice's decision to 'hire' him. Carl looks for the speaker and realizes the voice is coming from Donut, who is once again recognizable as the cat.

Donut emerges from the Enhanced Pet Biscuit transformation still physically a cat but able to speak. She insists on being addressed as Princess Donut and reveals that her memories now carry a much fuller understanding of the world around her. Carl checks her statistics and finds Strength 11, Intelligence 11, Constitution 2, Dexterity 8, and Charisma 25. Mordecai identifies an Enhanced Growth buff: after an initial boost to four statistics, future levels will automatically add one point each to Strength and Intelligence and two to Charisma, with no normal discretionary stat points. Her Constitution and Dexterity will not rise through ordinary level gains.

Mordecai activates Donut's crawler menus because she is no longer classified as a pet. Her loot includes a Tome of Magic Missile and a Legendary Quadruped Box containing the Enchanted Crown of the Sepsis Whore. Donut learns Magic Missile from the tome and immediately equips the crown before Mordecai can finish warning her about it.

The crown gives Donut additional Intelligence, improves her first impressions, and gives all her attacks a chance to inflict Sepsis. More importantly, putting it on permanently places her in the Blood Sultanate's royal line of succession on the ninth floor. Removing it would not erase that status. The crown is also Fleeting, meaning it would crumble if removed and another crown could appear elsewhere, potentially creating another royal rival. Mordecai explains that members of the royal family must kill the Sultan and the other royal members before descending to the tenth floor.

Because Donut now has the party's highest combined statistics, she becomes party leader. She renames the group the Royal Court of Princess Donut, gives Carl the title Royal Bodyguard, and calls herself Grand Champion Best in Dungeon. Mordecai tells Carl that Donut is currently much stronger than he is and that they should remain together, while warning that the ninth floor will present a serious problem because of the crown.

Carl and Donut leave the Tutorial Guild. Mordecai tells Carl that any later training guild will return them to him because he is now their registered guide, but they will lose access to him after reaching the fourth floor. Before shutting the door, Mordecai quietly warns Carl that whatever exit terms the dungeon may offer are "not worth it" before floor twelve and tells him to negotiate as much as possible. Carl does not know exactly what Mordecai means.

Donut wants to accomplish something spectacular before the first edited program airs, but Carl becomes frustrated by her new imperious behavior and tries to leave the party. Donut apologizes. She describes her new awareness as waking from a long dream while retaining all her old memories, admits she is frightened, and says she needs Carl. She also reveals that before the transformation she had seen Carl looking for apartments that allowed cats, correctly concluding that he had considered keeping her rather than returning her to Beatrice's family. Carl agrees that they should stay together.

While exploring eastward, Donut senses something in a dark side passage and fires Magic Missile before they identify the target. The creature is a level-three Bad Llama that can spit molten material. Donut hits it with three missiles but exhausts her mana. Her crown inflicts Sepsis, and Carl finishes the badly injured llama with punches, breaking his hand in the process. His regeneration rapidly repairs the injury. The system credits Donut with seventy-one percent of the damage, so she chooses loot first.

They leave the main corridor and continue through smaller tunnels. Carl confirms that apparently different restroom doors lead to the same crawler-specific facilities. They fight oversized rats and Scatterers, with Carl doing most of the close combat and Donut contributing Magic Missile. Carl reaches level three and gains Foot Soldier and Smush, both reinforcing his increasingly effective barefoot attacks. The AI's unusually suggestive descriptions of his foot-based achievements make Carl uncomfortable, while Donut argues they should exploit any system preference that helps them survive.

After numerous small fights, increasing fatigue, and signs that more Scatterers may be nearby, Carl and Donut locate a safe room and enter it rather than pursue a level-four Scatterer toward a cavern.

Carl and Donut enter a safe room built from an intact fast-food restaurant. A screen shows four days and seventeen hours until first-floor collapse, less than twenty-four hours until the premiere of Dungeon Crawler World: Earth, and only 4,322,395 crawlers remaining. Another screen explains that rental rooms are currently free and that personal spaces will become available on the fourth floor.

The safe-room caretaker is Tally, a level-sixty-three Bopca Protector and non-combatant NPC. Tally says he has spent years preparing food for human crawlers, offers Carl a rental room, and prepares yogurt for Donut. While they wait, Carl opens accumulated boxes and receives a ring that adds one Constitution. Donut opens a gold magic-item box containing mana potions and the Talisman of the Slate Butterfly. The charm raises her Light on Your Feet skill, adds one Intelligence, and removes automatic hostility from winged fairies. She immediately enjoys the increased jumping ability.

Tally serves Carl murgh vindaloo with rice and naan and gives Donut yogurt, promising fresh salmon after she wakes. Donut's high Charisma leads Tally to address her as royalty. When Carl asks about long-term safe-room use, Tally says that personal spaces, once purchased, transfer from floor to floor and between safe rooms. He also advises buying upgrades early because some equipment improves as it descends through later levels.

Carl decides the restaurant is a useful temporary base because he suspects a Scatterer nest is nearby. He proposes sleeping and eating there while clearing the nest for experience, then searching for stairs once the second-floor entrances appear. Donut agrees but remains focused on doing something memorable enough to appear in the first broadcast and gain followers.

Carl wakes after an unusually restorative ten hours of sleep, showers, shaves, and eats breakfast while Donut consumes several plates of salmon pâté. The safe-room display now shows 4,148,111 crawlers remaining. Tally refuses general dungeon questions but confirms that a purchased personal space will transfer among safe rooms and floors and warns that some upgrades become stronger only if bought early enough to descend through multiple levels.

Carl and Donut leave to hunt the nearby Scatterers. Their first group includes a level-four Scatterer Brood Guardian. Donut's Magic Missiles reduce its health, but Carl's dungeon weapons prove less effective than his kicks. He kills the guardian by jumping onto it. They continue toward the suspected nest and develop a reliable rhythm: Donut uses Magic Missile to stun or infect the larger bugs with Sepsis, and Carl follows with punches and stomps. Both reach level five, while Donut's Enhanced Growth continues increasing her Strength and other assigned statistics.

At the entrance to a large dark room, a Spanish warning sign says not to enter by order of a health authority. Donut can see many low-level Scatterers inside along with piles of unidentified material. When describing the smell, she casually compares it to Carl's gym bag on days when another man visited the apartment. Carl realizes she is implying that Beatrice had someone over while he was away, which makes him feel betrayed and reckless.

Rather than merely illuminating the room, Carl pulls out a stick of highly volatile Goblin Dynamite. He tells Donut to run, lights the long fuse with his Zippo, throws the dynamite into the crowded room, and runs after her. The chapter ends before the explosive detonates.

The Goblin Dynamite detonates as soon as it hits the floor, catching Carl only a few steps from the doorway. The blast throws him down the corridor, cuts his scalp, and briefly triggers a low-health warning. After his regeneration begins repairing the damage, Carl and Donut enter the burning trash-filled room. The explosion has killed roughly three dozen Scatterers and earns Carl explosive-handling skill increases, additional loot boxes, and enough experience to bring him close to level six.

A Boss Babe achievement reveals that the explosion also damaged a dungeon boss. The exit seals, boss music begins, and a Neighborhood Boss called the Hoarder emerges from the garbage. She appears as a fifteen-foot-tall injured woman whose health has already been reduced by the blast. She speaks frightened Spanish and begs for help. Carl suspects she may have been a person caught in the transformation, but neither he nor Donut knows what actually happened to her.

Donut attacks the Hoarder with Magic Missile. The boss vomits Scatterers that attack the pair, forcing them to fight even as the woman continues pleading. Carl finds a heavy chain leash in the trash, jumps onto the Hoarder's back, and tries to strangle her with it while Donut handles the emerging bugs. The chain eventually breaks, and Carl must kill several Scatterers at close range before returning to the nearly dead boss.

The Hoarder gives a final plea in Spanish, mentioning her daughter, saying she does not want to be in hell, and asking to be sent to Jesus. Carl apologizes and repeatedly punches her until she dies. The remaining Scatterers immediately die, the sealed door breaks open, the boss music stops, and the system declares the Royal Court of Princess Donut the winner. Carl leans against the Hoarder's body and tries not to vomit.

The Hoarder drops a Neighborhood Map that fills in roughly a square mile of Carl's minimap. It shows nearby tutorial guilds, few remaining hostile dots, and the marked corpse of a level-three crawler named Rebecca W near the main corridor. Donut wants to loot the corpse immediately, but Carl first takes them to a tutorial guild, where they find Mordecai asleep with empty bottles around him and the photograph of his brother in his arms.

Mordecai explains six main boss tiers: Neighborhood, Borough, City, Province, Country, and Floor, with additional special enemies called elites. Neighborhood bosses are the weakest and most common. He says some bosses use human stock and some recycle material from earlier crawls, but he does not establish exactly what the Hoarder had been. Bosses leave persistent public loot, while the crawlers who kill them also receive a tiered Boss Box and a star attached to their names. Mordecai warns that stronger early-floor bosses are intended for larger groups and that many boss fights cannot simply be abandoned.

Donut opens her Bronze Boss Box and immediately uses a spell tome, only to discover that she has learned Torch, a utility spell that creates a following light. Carl's new skills include Iron Punch, which can benefit from fist-protecting equipment. His better boxes contain a Tome of Wisp Armor, more Goblin Dynamite and gunpowder, Confusing Fog scrolls, Iron Skin potions, and enchanted spiked kneepads. Carl keeps the Wisp Armor tome because he cannot yet afford its mana cost and equips the kneepads, which reflect some damage and cancel momentum-based attacks.

Mordecai also describes a popular hosted program that discusses unusual events, profiles crawlers, and sometimes removes boss winners from the dungeon briefly for interviews. Donut becomes determined to be interviewed. She still expects to reunite with Beatrice once the dungeon shrinks enough for them to meet, guessing that might happen around the fifth or sixth floor. Carl does not tell her his own doubts about whether Beatrice survived, and he exchanges a look with Mordecai before they leave.

Carl and Donut go to the marked crawler corpse revealed by the Neighborhood Map. Mordecai has told them that a dead crawler drops everything except unopened loot boxes and that non-crawlers can take exposed gear but cannot access the crawler's inventory. They find Rebecca W, a naked level-three crawler, sitting dead against a wall near the main corridor. At first Carl assumes goblins may have stripped her equipment.

The corpse tooltip states that Rebecca W was killed by Crawler Frank Q. Apple Core. Carl then notices the gunshot wound through her chest and concludes that another crawler with a firearm killed her and apparently took her gear, leaving an apple core behind. The discovery makes Carl newly alert to the danger posed by other human crawlers. It also triggers an unwanted memory of his father telling him that he did not need Carl to like him, only to respect him.

Donut first dismisses Frank Q as an unimpressive threat and proposes bringing him to justice. Carl becomes angry that Rebecca survived the initial catastrophe only to be killed by another crawler and decides he does want to find her killer. When Donut realizes Carl is serious about pursuing an armed murderer, her bravado disappears and she calls the idea dangerous.

Carl settles on a more immediate plan. Because the Neighborhood Map shows the remaining hostile dots, he and Donut will clear the area for relatively safe experience, return to the safe room for the premiere, and then search for both the newly appearing staircase and Frank Q. A nearby group of red dots gives them their next target.

Carl, Donut, and Tally watch the premiere of Dungeon Crawler World: Earth on the safe-room television. The display shows 4,006,002 crawlers still alive. Tally explains that the normal audience can experience reconstructed scenes in immersive form or use a movable external viewpoint, while the crawlers only receive a conventional screen feed. The program first recaps the previous season, a Squim Conglomerate battle royale in which contestants were pushed to kill one another after being promised safety for loved ones.

Tally says the winners' loved ones technically survive, but the Squim extraction leaves their planet without a viable atmosphere. He also explains that he was not a crawler on his own world. His people were offered relocation in exchange for their planet not being mined, and he chose to leave. The Earth segment then presents human anatomy and a selectively ugly portrait of human civilization, mixing real suffering with movie footage. Carl recognizes the framing as propaganda intended to make the intervention appear beneficial.

The broadcast shows massive early losses, then focuses on crawlers who are succeeding. A group of ten defeats the first shown Borough Boss. A young crawler named Lucia Mar fights with two rottweilers, Cici and Gustavo 3; the dogs help kill a giant spider, and later footage shows Lucia better equipped, one dog armored and the other able to discharge lightning. Carl and Donut receive no coverage.

After the episode, a dungeon announcement reports fifteen Borough Bosses and more than fifteen hundred Neighborhood Bosses killed. It also announces patches: the hallway-bathroom sharing bug is fixed, toilet paper is now limited, living mobs can no longer be killed by placing them in inventory, and stored objects no longer preserve their prior momentum. The announcement says second-floor staircases are now being populated.

Descending early is irreversible and now places a crawler in stasis until first-floor collapse. To avoid disappearing from viewers for days, crawlers are advised to wait until the final six hours, when they can descend without stasis and gain a head start. Donut responds by wanting to find a City Boss for guaranteed attention. Carl refuses and focuses on the much harder practical problem of locating one of only seventy-five thousand staircases before the first floor collapses in roughly three and a half days.

With just over three days left on the first floor, Carl recognizes a large-scale pattern in the dungeon. Wide corridors divide the area into large squares, with smaller neighborhoods inside them. He identifies the Hoarder's neighborhood, the goblin territory where he entered, and the llama territory across the main passage. He also confirms that cleared neighborhoods do not immediately repopulate with their original mobs, although rats and creatures from adjacent areas can move in.

Carl and Donut, both now level seven, encounter a corrosive green slime. Carl's kick burns his foot, and when he punches the creature his arm sinks into it, dissolving a glove and part of his jacket. The slime eventually kills itself against Carl's Damage Reflect effect, but the encounter proves that some enemies cannot safely be handled with his normal unarmed tactics.

To cover more ground, Carl decides to obtain transportation from the goblins. His Goblin Pass turns a group of initially hostile goblins neutral. Donut uses her very high Charisma to dominate the conversation, assigning three unnamed goblins the names B.A., Face, and Murdock and persuading B.A. to lead them to the engineers. At the workshop, a level-seven Goblin Shamanka objects to Carl's presence. Donut's Charisma rapidly softens her hostility, and Donut names the pierced shamanka Rory and a second shamanka Lorelai.

Carl asks for a vehicle that can help them search for stairs. Rory refuses to give up a Murder Dozer but offers to have the engineers build a human-sized steam chopper with a sidecar if Carl trades something useful. Ordinary supplies are rejected, but the shamankas eagerly accept the meth Carl looted from a Bad Llama. Carl offers to reveal where they can get more in exchange for the vehicle, fuel, and explosives, and Rory accepts.

Rory then explains what she understands about being a dungeon mob. Smart mobs such as the goblins know the floor will collapse, but she says the goblins themselves do not die with it. Instead they go to sleep and awaken when another dungeon opens. They have been told that repeated success at killing crawlers may eventually move them to a deeper floor where crawlers will rarely reach them, allowing their clan to live with less danger. She also says a mob that tries to descend a crawler staircase dissolves before reaching the lower floor.

The goblin engineers finish Carl's human-sized Copper Chopper with a detachable sidecar for Donut. The steam-powered machine uses a long-lasting water permacube and burns coal, but it has no gauges. An engineer warns Carl that he must distinguish overheating from excessive pressure by sound and use the correct relief valve or risk making the problem worse. Carl confirms that he can lift the chopper long enough to store it and quietly takes nearly three thousand lumps of coal from the workshop supply.

Rory and Lorelai return after using the meth Carl traded them. Rory gives Carl a bag containing dynamite, bombs, and grenades. In return, Donut tells them that the drugs came from the llama neighborhood across the road. The goblins immediately mobilize Murder Dozers, choppers, Bomb Bards, engineers, and ordinary goblins for an attack on the llamas. After the workshop empties, Donut says the resulting meth war went according to her plan, but the chapter does not independently establish that she engineered the outcome in advance.

Carl and Donut are left alone with large quantities of engineering materials, explosives, gunpowder, machinery, and transport equipment. Carl decides they should take everything they can. Donut then proposes using the opportunity to attack the neighborhood boss behind the workshop door.

Carl remembers the Hoarder and recognizes that attacking the goblin chieftain would be both dangerous and a betrayal of goblins who just helped them. He also notes that the workshop's support mobs were significantly stronger than those around the Hoarder. Despite those reservations, he agrees to loot the workshop and then attack the chieftain, while Donut anticipates the television attention a second boss fight might bring.

Carl and Donut strip the abandoned goblin workshop of tools, engineering supplies, coal, alchemical liquids, explosives, tire material, tables, and nearly a ton of loose black powder. Carl leaves four partly filled powder barrels on a cart in front of the chieftain's boss-room door and packs metal scraps over the powder to serve as shrapnel.

For the detonation, Carl uses a small supply of Hobgoblin Pus, a powerful C4-like explosive, and a magical remote trigger. He learns that each trigger can control multiple charges over a long range with a five-second delay. Carl distributes the explosive among the powder barrels and places a conspicuous trigger component on top, hoping the chieftain will focus on it rather than the hidden charges.

Their plan is to open the boss door, shove the loaded cart deep into the room, close the door, run behind several intervening walls, and detonate. If the blast fails to kill the boss, they intend to flee on the chopper rather than enter a locked boss fight. Donut opens the door remotely, confirms the path, and Carl sends the cart rolling inside.

After they reach the planned detonation point, Donut tells Carl that she saw a huge goblin sitting and reading a book. Carl presses the trigger. Only after he has activated it, in the last moment before the explosion, Donut casually adds that the room also contained many goblin babies. The chapter ends before the blast occurs.

The improvised bomb explodes with enough force to knock Carl and Donut down, though neither is injured. Achievement notifications confirm that they killed the neighborhood boss, and both reach level eight. Donut then confirms that there really were goblin babies in the room, along with elderly and pregnant goblins, and says she thinks the cart struck one of the babies before the blast.

Carl is horrified. He had been willing to kill hostile goblins, but killing infants and noncombatants makes him feel culpable rather than triumphant. Donut tries to rationalize the deaths by arguing that the goblins were part of the enemy group and that Carl never asked to be placed in the dungeon.

They return toward the workshop intending to retrieve the boss's Neighborhood Map before the other goblins come back. The explosion has obliterated the workshop. Burning coal creates a wall of fire across the north side, water from the destroyed steam system covers the floor, and heat prevents them from reaching the boss chamber. Carl is secretly relieved because recovering the map would require seeing the bodies inside.

A line of white NPC dots approaches on the minimap, representing goblins who do not yet know what Carl and Donut have done. Carl assumes they will become hostile once they see the destruction. Unable to recover the map, he plots an escape north through unexplored territory, hoping to find another safe room before using the chopper to search for stairs. Donut remarks that she enjoys Carl's explosions.

With two days and eighteen hours left before first-floor collapse, Carl and Donut reach another safe room after crossing a neighborhood filled with Rot Stickers, small explosive mobs that attach themselves to a target before detonating. Carl's Trollskin shirt prevents their usual knockdown effect, and Iron Skin potions reduce the danger while Donut destroys groups with Magic Missile. The safe-room display shows 3,594,517 crawlers remaining.

The dungeon issues Carl the You Monster and War Criminal achievements for killing an infant and more than twenty noncombatants in the goblin boss-room explosion. The first message briefly claims that dead child mobs are safely transferred away, then reveals that this reassurance is a deliberate lie. Carl receives Asshole Boxes, new explosive skills, and IED level three. Reaching level five in Explosives Handling also exposes additional bomb-condition information and unlocks a Demolitions Workshop menu that can only be used at a Sapper's Table.

This safe room offers one small experience cookie per crawler per day. Carl and Donut use the room to review their new loot before sleeping ahead of the next episode. Donut receives a Desperado Pass branded onto her back, which grants access to the Desperado Club but permanently prevents her from obtaining a Vanquisher Pass. She also receives Fae Scale quadruped armor and a Minion Army tome. The spell costs fifty mana, so with only twenty-four spell points she cannot learn it yet.

Carl receives the same Desperado Pass, branded onto his neck, plus additional equipment and a second Constitution ring. A Skill Potion raises his Determine Value skill to level one, allowing him to sort inventory items by relative value. His most valuable unequipped item is the Tome of Wisp Armor, followed by the chopper and his remaining Hobgoblin Detonator.

As Carl tries to sleep, he works through his guilt over the goblin children. He recognizes that the dungeon deliberately arranged the encounter to pressure crawlers into killing them, but he refuses to let that manipulation erase his sense of responsibility or break him. He tells the unseen dungeon operators that they may hurt or kill him but will not break him, then falls asleep with Donut curled against him.

Carl wakes during the second broadcast and Donut discovers level-eight crawler Frank Q. hiding in the women's bathroom. Frank carries three Crawler Killer skulls. He claims that he and his partner Maggie were federal immigration-enforcement officers conducting surveillance when the collapse began, that a firefight with Rebecca Wong's group carried into the dungeon, and that Maggie died. He says Rebecca shot him before he killed her and that he later looted the bodies.

Carl notices several contradictions. Rebecca had reached level three and had an apple core in her inventory, showing that she had survived long enough to complete a tutorial rather than dying in an immediate entrance firefight. When Frank eats an experience cookie, he receives 9.8 experience rather than ten, indicating that experience is being shared with a living party member. Carl also sees Frank moving a finger as if typing in party chat. He privately warns Donut that Frank is lying and that another crawler may be hidden nearby.

Carl deliberately turns his back while pretending to try on bloodstained pants Frank offers him. A second crawler, Maggie My, suddenly emerges with a pistol aimed at Carl while Frank pulls a gun and fires at Donut. The safe-room rules freeze both attackers before their bullets leave the weapons, marking them Naughty. Carl recalls Mordecai's explanation that crawler violence and theft are forbidden in safe rooms: a first offense freezes the offender for about one hundred seconds, a second for an hour, and a third strips their gear and teleports them into a mob nest.

Maggie is level nine and has five Crawler Killer skulls, bringing the pair's combined human kills to eight. Carl does not know exactly how they tracked him or what their original plan was, and he treats his theories about stealth and ambush as speculation. He and Donut flee before the freeze expires. Carl refuses an immediate fight because both opponents have guns and because he does not want a Crawler Killer marker that would make future cooperation harder.

When Donut points out that Frank and Maggie may kill more people, Carl improvises a trap. After Donut kills rats, he confirms that a corpse inventory can hold lit explosives while their fuses continue burning. He leaves unstable dynamite and a smoke bomb inside a rat corpse, hoping the known looters will take the bait if they follow.

While running, Carl explains the clues that exposed Frank's story. Donut also reveals additional information about Beatrice's relationships, including another man and Angel's female owner. A dungeon update announces language-translation fixes, several mob and debuff changes, and another warning against descending too early. Carl and Donut reach a main artery, start the Copper Chopper for the first time, and ride away to put distance between themselves and Frank and Maggie.

With forty-seven hours left before first-floor collapse, Carl and Donut ride east on the Copper Chopper. They receive a Bitchmeat achievement because the safe-room system had to protect them from Frank and Maggie, but there is no notification indicating that Carl's corpse-inventory explosive trap killed either attacker. Carl takes the lack of a Crawler Killer reward as encouraging because he wants to avoid that marker.

The chopper travels roughly twenty miles per hour and consumes little coal. As Carl's Chopper Pilot skill rises, he learns to increase its speed, but a restroom stop teaches him that moving quickly also compresses the useful fog-of-war range around them. Nearby Scat Thugs are invisible on the minimap until Carl and Donut slow down and enter their side passage. Carl concludes that high-speed travel leaves them dangerously blind to nearby threats.

After hours of mostly empty corridors, they find fresh spray-painted directions reading "Stairs + People." Nearby Chilly Goat corpses have been killed by numerous crawlers. One corpse identifies Crawler Brandon An as the killer with an assist from Crawler Chris Andrews 2, proving that an organized group passed through recently. Additional signs guide Carl and Donut toward the gathering.

The mapped corridors curve around a huge circular structure, and Donut spots a marked Stairwell to Floor Two near its center. Graffiti warns that the road around the structure is safe, that crawlers are gathered farther along it, and that entering the inner spiral will activate a Borough Boss.

Carl and Donut inspect one of the partly raised inner gates. A gigantic pink, fleshy creature rolls through the inner passage at extreme speed, filling the corridor and shaking the walls. They cannot identify it before it passes. Rather than enter the boss area, Carl decides they should first find the crawlers responsible for the signs.

Carl and Donut follow the signs to an encampment of thirty-eight crawlers gathered outside the circular boss maze. Most are very elderly residents of a Wenatchee eldercare facility and many use wheelchairs or walkers. The active caregivers are Brandon An, his brother Chris Andrews 2, Yolanda Martinez 13, and Imani C. A homeless woman named Agatha is also with them. Imani is level ten and carries twelve Crawler Killer marks.

Brandon explains that Agatha accidentally started a fire outside their facility on the night of the collapse, forcing about 250 residents and staff outdoors. A dungeon entrance then appeared among them. When Agatha pushed her shopping cart onto the stairs, the entrance transformed into a ramp, allowing wheelchairs and the cart to descend. Brandon says the entrance eventually trapped him and Chris when they tried to keep residents near the warmth, leaving the group little choice but to continue downward before the entrance closed.

Only thirty-eight remain at the encampment. Some residents are housed in a nearby Waffle House safe room with a thirty-person capacity. Brandon says a larger group of police, firefighters, staff, and other able-bodied crawlers originally accompanied them, but most who entered the circular maze vanished after its gate closed. Other search parties went looking for alternate stairs and were killed one by one by an unknown threat. Carl considers Frank and Maggie as one possibility but explicitly recognizes that the timing and location do not prove it.

Brandon describes Imani's twelve crawler kills only indirectly. After an early attack, he says she had a sword and that allowing some residents to be burned by the attackers would have been worse. Carl infers that Imani's high level and kill count probably came from mercy-killing patients during that event; the source does not establish every detail as fact. The dungeon's accelerated healing has cured many illnesses among the surviving residents but has not restored age-related frailty or lost cognitive function.

The stairwell sits inside the Borough Boss maze. Smaller openings are protected by a barrier that repels attacks and physical probing, while the main gate appears to lock crawlers inside and cut off party communication once they enter. Carl sees no safe way to bomb the boss from outside. Brandon still refuses to abandon the residents and hopes that reaching the third floor might let them choose classes that improve their chances.

Carl tells the group about his own boss fights and the danger from hostile crawlers. Learning that unexplored lizard mobs and tutorial guilds lie near a Taco Bell safe room, he proposes spending the remaining day grinding levels and skills. He plans to watch the next episode, sleep, and return. Then Carl, Donut, Brandon, Chris, Yolanda, and Imani will enter the maze together, kill the Borough Boss, and get the elderly residents to the stairs. Imani speaks for the first time to ask how they will do it; Carl says he has an idea.

As Carl and Donut leave the eldercare group, Carl admits that he does not yet know how they will kill the Borough Boss. He wants the caregivers to spend the remaining time training because this is the only confirmed stairwell they have found. Worried that hostile crawlers might exploit the frail residents for experience, Carl begins covering or falsifying the spray-painted signs that lead to the encampment, while recognizing that doing so could also keep potential allies away.

On the way toward the Taco Bell safe room, Carl follows Brandon's directions to where some elderly residents died soon after entering the dungeon. Rats have reduced the bodies to bones and shredded clothing, leaving nothing useful for Carl to wear. The discovery intensifies his disgust with Frank and Maggie for having stripped Rebecca W's corpse.

Carl and Donut enter a neighborhood of Troglodyte Pygmies, Bashers, and Virtuosos. The mobs are fast and venomous, but Carl's Nightgaunt cloak cancels the poison. Donut's Magic Missile has reached level five and can now be cast at variable mana strengths. Over the next several hours, Carl and Donut become increasingly coordinated: Donut attacks from Carl's shoulder or behind his cloak while Carl follows with punches and kicks.

Carl again urges Donut to train with her claws because her Strength is now about twice his. She refuses, calling claw fighting inelegant and preferring Magic Missile because it keeps her clean. Neither reaches level nine, but their combat skills continue increasing.

Eventually they locate the neighborhood boss room, built from a twenty-four-hour fitness center. Its antechamber prevents Carl from using his usual remote-bomb tactic. Reasoning that they need to be capable of defeating a first-floor Neighborhood Boss directly before attempting the Borough Boss guarding the stairs, Carl and Donut decide to enter. Carl lights his second-to-last cigarette, and they step through the gym doors.

Inside the gym, the boss fight begins with six Troglodyte Bashers, three Virtuosos, and a level-nine Neighborhood Boss called the Juicer. The Juicer resembles an enormously muscular troglodyte and attacks by hurling heavy gym weights that ignite in flight and explode on impact.

Carl uses his three Confusing Fog scrolls in succession. While each short-lived cloud blinds the mobs, he attacks the support creatures and Donut repeatedly hits the Juicer with high-powered Magic Missiles. Carl kills the Bashers and Virtuosos but suffers severe cuts, bites, and shrapnel injuries. Donut must avoid the Virtuosos' poison because she lacks Carl's poison resistance.

With the support mobs dead and the Juicer badly injured, Carl uses the final fog to approach from behind. He strips weight plates from a barbell and beats the boss with the improvised weapon and a hundred-pound plate. Just before dying, the Juicer suddenly grabs Carl's wrist and throat and begins crushing him, dropping Carl's health into critical range.

Donut, nearly out of mana, abandons her reluctance to fight physically. She leaps onto the Juicer, bites into his neck, and tears at his back with her claws until she opens a major blood vessel. The boss knocks her across the room into a wall, leaving her with a broken leg and almost no health. Freed from the choke, Carl lands one last weak punch that drops the Juicer and then crushes the dead boss's head under his foot.

Carl rushes to Donut. Because the Enhanced Pet Biscuit reclassified her as a crawler, his old Heal Critter scroll returns "No Valid Target Available" and is wasted. He considers manually forcing a healing potion into her before her potion cooldown ends, so he tests the rule on himself. Drinking a second potion during cooldown poisons him, though his poison protection nullifies the effect.

Donut's leg begins setting itself as her health slowly regenerates. She then takes one of her own healing potions once her cooldown permits it, causing her health to jump upward. Now safe, she theatrically pretends she is dying and complains that using her claws led to her grievous injury, while Carl tells her to get up and help loot the room.

After defeating the Juicer, Carl loots the gym extensively, taking weights, benches, tools, office equipment, files, and anything else he can lift. The Neighborhood Map and accumulated experience bring both Carl and Donut to level nine. They then visit Mordecai so he can review the fight and their new loot.

Mordecai tells Carl that his Bare Knuckle skill is now as effective as an ordinary unenchanted weapon, making the improvised gym weights largely unnecessary. He also explains that Carl wasted the potential of the Confusing Fog scrolls: Carl's Intelligence of three made each cloud last about fifteen seconds, while Donut's much higher Intelligence would have produced roughly two minutes of fog. Donut's long potion cooldown is caused by her low Constitution. Mordecai says her claw attack is powerful but too dangerous to rely on until she has more health and armor.

Donut receives a Dexterity bracelet, twelve Heal scrolls, and the Puddle Jumper spell. Puddle Jumper can teleport Donut and up to three others to a visible destination after a ten-second delay; it costs twenty mana and has a five-hour cooldown. Mordecai says it can become extremely useful at higher levels. He also notes that Heal scrolls can be used on other crawlers without the potion cooldown problem. Donut refuses the idea of changing species on the third floor, insisting she was born a cat and will remain one. Carl likewise says he intends to remain human.

Carl asks Mordecai about the Borough Boss guarding their only known stairwell. Mordecai recommends finding another staircase and says facing a Borough Boss with six crawlers is madness. His guide rules prevent him from revealing the boss's identity or abilities in advance. He can only offer a general lesson from previous fights: dungeon bosses usually have exploitable vulnerabilities. He points to the Bad Llama's throat, the Juicer's high-pressure vein, and the Hoarder's emerging bugs, then tells Carl that there will always be clues.

Carl's loot includes additional Heal scrolls, one hundred fragile Enchanted Shuriken of Bloodlust whose damage against a monster type compounds by eight percent with successive hits, another Determine Value potion, and an Enchanted War Gauntlet of the Exalted Grull. The gauntlet preserves Carl's bare-knuckle bonus while adding Strength, Dexterity, Iron Punch, Powerful Strike, and a small stun chance. It also carries a risk of transforming an adherent of the war god Grull into Grull when struck.

When Carl asks how to identify such worshippers, Mordecai says equine-type creatures may follow Grull and then makes a more serious point: Grull is not a real god, and there are no real gods in the game, only entities that pay for the privilege. He warns Carl that later dungeon inhabitants will not all be unwilling victims like some of the people and mobs he has encountered so far. Carl equips the gauntlet and confirms that it transforms over his fist after he keeps the proper grip for two seconds.

With six and a half hours remaining before first-floor collapse, Carl, Donut, Brandon, Chris, Yolanda, and Imani prepare to enter the Borough Boss maze. Earlier, Carl and Donut watched the third broadcast at a Taco Bell safe room run by a Bopca Protector named Sebastian. The crawler count had fallen to 2,552,085. Other featured groups had already found stairwells and were waiting for the final six-hour window before descending. Carl and Donut were again omitted from the show.

Agatha unexpectedly follows the six planned fighters into the boss area with her shopping cart. The gate locks behind all seven, the arena shifts into a neon-lit maze, and the system identifies the level-fifteen Borough Boss as the Ball of Swine. The system describes it as a battle formation of at least thirty Tuskling aristocrats magically fused into a rolling sphere and taken directly from a Tuskling High Caucus for the dungeon.

The moving walls immediately disrupt Carl's plan. He lays Bloodlust shuriken spike strips as the group advances toward the center and locates a flat fifteen-foot-square section large enough for their prepared defense. Over roughly five hours before the fight, Carl, Brandon, Chris, Yolanda, and Imani had built a modular low fortress from goblin tables, weight equipment, braces, and rack crossbars. Brandon calls it the Speedbump. Agatha's unplanned presence leaves too little room for the intended central roof support.

Carl's strategy comes from Mordecai's instruction to look for clues. The Ball of Swine fills the tunnel, moves at extreme speed, and loses almost no momentum at sharp turns. Carl therefore plans to use the angled fortress as a ramp that will wedge the rolling boss between the structure and the tunnel ceiling. Bloodlust shuriken embedded in the front and in spike strips are intended to increase damage with repeated contacts.

The Ball of Swine strikes the Speedbump. Its roof braces fly loose, Yolanda is hit by one, and the structure begins collapsing under the trapped sphere. The group stabs upward through the roof. Carl finally punctures the formation, causing the ball to burst apart and drop individual Tuskling Knights and Courtesans into the wreckage.

The separated Tusklings are confused, weaponless, and appear not to remember being part of the ball. Carl recognizes that they too have been taken from another world, but they remain hostile and time is nearly gone. Carl, Donut, Brandon, Chris, Yolanda, and Imani fight them at close range while Agatha stands injured nearby. The internal maze walls retract, exposing the central stairwell, but a red forcefield still surrounds it. The chapter ends while the disoriented Tusklings are being slaughtered; it does not yet state that the forcefield has fallen or that anyone can descend.

The final Tuskling to die is a level-eight Tuskling Dominatrix crushed by Brandon's hammer. The boss music stops, the system declares the crawlers winners, and everyone survives. Carl and Donut reach level ten, Imani reaches eleven, Brandon and Chris reach eight, Yolanda reaches six, and Agatha rises to level four despite not being part of Meadow Lark.

The Borough Boss drops a Borough Field Guide. When Carl takes it, his minimap gains broad information about monster types and level ranges in nearby quadrants even where the detailed corridors remain hidden by fog of war. The guide is geographically limited, but it gives useful information for the surrounding borough.

An elderly resident named Randall enters the now-open arena with his walker, confirming that the outer gate has disappeared. While the group recovers, Brandon relays something his guide, Mistress Tiatha, told him: seeded worlds can contain cultural material that resembles other worlds because the outside powers continue influencing civilizations over long periods. Brandon does not know why they do this and tells Carl that they probably only see what the operators choose to reveal.

Carl and Donut salvage equipment, valuables, surviving Bloodlust shuriken, and pieces of the destroyed Speedbump. When they approach the central stairwell, the red forcefield is gone and only about five hours remain. Carl asks Donut whether they should stay with the eldercare group or continue alone. Donut proposes keeping their own party while helping the others establish safe locations and returning for them whenever Carl and Donut find the next staircase. Carl accepts because he cannot abandon the vulnerable residents.

They then notice Agatha is missing and that the stairway has transformed into a long ramp, indicating she has already gone down. Carl and Brandon agree that Carl and Donut will descend first, locate a safe room, clear a safe route, and try to find Agatha while Meadow Lark prepares the residents. Brandon thanks both of them.

At the bottom of the ramp, Carl opens the floor-transition door. Instead of appearing on the second floor normally, he and Donut experience a flash, falling sensation, and sudden teleportation into a luxurious blue room that Carl recognizes as being aboard a large boat. Their status bars and menus are unavailable.

A thin human-like woman named Lexis enters and introduces herself as an associate producer for Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette. She congratulates Carl and Princess Donut on reaching the second floor and says Odette wants to interview them on air. Donut reacts with immediate excitement.

Lexis tells Carl and Donut that their interview will begin in about twenty minutes. The room is a production trailer located on Earth's surface. They are still technically inside the game, but their normal crawler menus are unavailable and the trailer has its own rules. Lexis says she and an engineer are physically present in the trailer, while the studio set, Odette, audience, and any other guests will be virtual projections from distant locations.

Lexis explains that Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette is a private program produced by the Titan Conglomerate with assistance from multiple independent systems. It airs after the official Dungeon Crawler World program and is, according to Lexis, the most widely tunneled private show. She instructs Carl and Donut to treat the interview as entertainment and warns them not to approach the projected audience because the apparent studio is larger than the actual room.

Carl remains wary. Looking through a small porthole confirms that the trailer is on a vessel at sea, and he reminds Donut that the production staff and audience are not their friends. Donut is confident that her cat-show experience prepares her for the interview and tells Carl to let her handle most of the talking.

On the virtual studio set, host Odette appears as a large crab-bodied, insect-headed humanoid figure before an audience containing many species. Donut immediately charms the crowd. When Odette asks whether Princess Donut is Earth royalty, Donut claims that cats have an elective monarchy based largely on beauty competitions and cites her show titles. Carl is visibly baffled by the explanation, but the source does not establish whether Donut invented it at that moment or considers it a legitimate description.

Odette then shows a montage of Carl repeatedly saying "Goddamnit, Donut," turning the phrase into a crowd-pleasing catchphrase. She replays moments from the Hoarder fight and other dungeon footage, asking Carl and Donut to comment. Donut handles most of the exchange and repeatedly wins the audience's approval.

When Odette asks about their future, Donut says their immediate association with Meadow Lark depends on what they find on the next floor. She then tells viewers to follow and favorite Carl and Donut because they will not merely kill their enemies, they will "kill them with style." The audience erupts.

As the interview ends, Carl watches Donut bask in the crowd's attention. He develops a strong concern that the attention and cheers are becoming something she craves and that this could become dangerous. He mutters "Goddamnit, Donut" again as the chapter closes.

After the interview ends, Odette dismisses the virtual audience and asks Lexis to prevent outside monitoring while she speaks privately with Carl and Donut. Odette then removes the insect head, enormous artificial torso, and crab body that form her on-camera appearance. Underneath, she is a legless human woman who moves on a floating disk. She explains that the elaborate body was based on the armor she wore during her own crawl.

Odette says she reached the stairwell to the thirteenth floor but never descended because she had already negotiated an exit. This does not contradict Mordecai's statement that the deepest crawler to enter the thirteenth floor was a man who quickly died. Odette also reveals that she was Mordecai's trainer during his crawl, long after her own season, and asks Carl and Donut to tell Mordecai to contact her when his final indentured season ends.

Odette warns them not to discuss the conversation in the dungeon. She uses "mud skippers" as an insulting term for the kua-tin and explicitly distinguishes dislike of the kua-tin political system from Borant itself, saying some Borant personnel simply want to produce a successful show. She predicts that Carl and Donut's social numbers will surge after the interview.

Because viewers are attached to Donut specifically as a small cat, Odette strongly advises Donut not to change species when race choices become available on the third floor. She says Carl has more flexibility. She also tells them to listen carefully to Mordecai during race and class selection because, although he cannot openly choose for them, he can help them interpret the options.

Odette confirms that loot is not truly random. She recounts losing her legs to a Fiend Scythe on the eleventh floor and receiving a high-tier item that let her attach monster body parts, giving her a reason to return to the crawl and kill a crab for replacement legs. Her larger lesson is that the dungeon is an entertainment business: loot and adversity can be shaped toward whatever outcome seems most profitable or dramatic. She warns Carl not to keep complaining about missing pants if the system finds his lack of pants entertaining.

Odette then explains one of Mordecai's incentives. His season only counts toward ending his indentureship if at least one of his assigned crawlers reaches the fourth floor. If Carl and Donut fail, Mordecai may have to wait until another Borant-sponsored season, potentially seven or eight seasons later, and Odette says possible Borant bankruptcy creates additional uncertainty.

Finally, Odette admits that Donut's interview treats contained a temporary enhancement that raised hidden wisdom and confidence-related attributes. She explains that many underlying attributes exist even when crawlers cannot see them and that visible statistics such as Intelligence combine narrower effects rather than measuring ordinary intelligence directly. When Carl asks Odette to state her own motive, she answers plainly: her audience likes them, their survival makes her money, and money is what she wants.

Carl and Donut finally arrive on the actual second floor. Their ratings still show zero views, followers, and favorites, which Carl expects to change after the first-floor recap and their Odette interview air. The floor resembles the first in broad layout but has white floors, orange-tinged wall growth, and magically reinforced cinderblock walls. Donut quickly spots a Stairwell to Floor Three already visible on their zoomed-out map, giving them a clear long-term destination.

They soon find the corpse of a level-two Brindle Grub. The tooltip explicitly states that Crawler Agatha killed it, confirming she came through this area before them. Brindle Grubs feed on corpses and become progressively more dangerous as they grow toward a pupa stage. Carl therefore decides they should destroy remains when practical rather than leave food that can strengthen the grubs.

A pair of level-five Danger Dingoes then approaches. Donut reacts violently to the dog-like mobs and spends nearly all her mana killing them with full-strength Magic Missiles. After Carl points out the need to destroy corpses, Donut tears the dead dingoes apart despite having objected to corpse desecration moments earlier.

While looking for a safe room, Carl and Donut enter the edge of another neighborhood populated by level-four Mind Horrors, floating brainlike creatures whose psionic presence gives Carl debilitating headaches. Donut appears unaffected. The Mind Horrors are physically fragile, and Carl clears enough of them to reach a large storm-shelter safe room.

The safe room contains a mailbox, cots, showers, and televisions but no food. Carl opens the rewards from the Borough Boss fight and associated achievements. A Silver Boss Box gives him an expiring Cheat Code Potion that randomly raises one recently used combat or magic skill by three levels. He drinks it before expiration and his Pugilism rises to level ten. A Silver Mechanic's Box gives him a Goo-Inator 3000 shaping tool that requires a workbench.

Carl's Platinum Shoe Box contains an Enchanted Pedicure Kit of the Sylph, not the Pugilism increase. If used nightly while he remains barefoot, the kit grants temporary bonuses to barefoot damage and Smush, makes his feet unbreakable, and causes foot-triggered traps to give a five-second warning before activation.

Donut's rewards include membership in the Dungeon Book of the Floor Club. The safe-room mailbox delivers one spellbook per floor, and her first book teaches Second Chance. The level-one necromancy spell costs ten mana and can temporarily raise a lower-level dead monster to fight for her for one minute. Donut initially finds the idea disgusting, then becomes enthusiastic when Carl suggests using resurrected dingoes like zombie versions of Lucia Mar's dogs.

As the first-floor timer expires, Carl helps move the remaining Meadow Lark residents into the second-floor storm shelter. The surviving-crawler count drops from just over two million to 1,292,526 in a moment, meaning more than seven hundred thousand crawlers fail to descend before collapse. Carl is pushing an elderly woman named Elle McGibbons in her wheelchair when the deaths occur.

Only six of the thirty residents who had stayed in the Waffle House safe room choose to descend. Twenty-four remain behind and die with the first floor; Brandon says they were singing when he last saw them. Carl interprets their choice as a final measure of control. Agatha is still missing.

The second-floor collapse timer resets to six days rather than the ten days Mordecai and Mistress Tiatha had expected. Brandon says Meadow Lark plans to send all of its elderly residents down to the third floor early because they cannot meaningfully train on floor two. Brandon, Chris, Yolanda, and Imani intend to descend with them rather than risk separation. Carl agrees to scout and clear the route first.

During the recap, the official program features several successful groups, including Le Mouvement, Lucia Mar and her dogs, and the woman with the Valkyrie helmet. Carl, Donut, and Meadow Lark receive only a short montage from the Ball of Swine fight. Agatha is absent from the displayed crawler portraits. Chris then notices something more specific: Agatha has been edited out of footage where he remembers her physically standing beside him under the Speedbump. The group does not know what that means and does not establish whether she is alive or dead.

Donut is thrilled by their television appearance, but Carl warns her that deliberately performing for the audience could make her less appealing and, more importantly, get them killed. The floor announcement then explains that the six-day timer was shortened to the minimum legally allowed because the surviving population is below projections.

The announcement activates follows and favorites and introduces a revised patronage system. Each crawler can have three patrons, with one spot auctioned when the crawler reaches each of floors four, five, and six. Higher auction bids reduce a patron's later Benefactor Box costs, while low bids increase them. The system explicitly links stronger social numbers to better chances at valuable patron loot.

A final rule threatens any Earth-born crawler who intentionally urinates or defecates outside a designated bathroom with a Rage Elemental taken from the thirteenth floor. As the announcement ends, Donut receives her first follower and first view. Carl again cautions her not to act differently merely because she knows viewers may be watching.

With five days and ten hours left on floor two, Carl and Donut approach the quadrant containing the known Stairwell to Floor Three. Their post-interview social numbers have surged to about 69 billion views, 635 million followers, and 149 million favorites. Imani has also shown Carl how to use the enchanted pedicure kit, activating the temporary protection, combat, and trap-warning buffs on his feet.

The first local mobs are level-three Unvaccinated Clurichaun Rev-Up Consultants, fairy-class creatures whose attacks deal Carl extra damage because of his Goblin Pass. Donut kills the first three at range. She then tests Second Chance, raising one corpse as a level-one undead minion for one minute. The zombie follows a delayed verbal command to tear apart another corpse. Donut finds the result revolting, but Carl recognizes the tactical and training value.

Carl and Donut repeatedly hunt Clurichauns around the outer ring. After each fight, Donut raises a corpse while Carl practices with a looted slingshot. Her Second Chance spell eventually reaches level three during this training and later level four, increasing the duration of the undead minions. Carl improves his Slingshot, Aiming, and Steady Hand skills.

A Rev-Up pamphlet identifies the Clurichauns as moonshine sales consultants and mentions a figure named Krakaren. Their jugs of toilet-grade Rev-Up moonshine are highly flammable and unusually valuable. The item description says drinking a swig can cause blindness, immediate death, or a permanent two-point increase to a random statistic, and that the product is sought by establishments on several deeper floors.

When Carl is forced into close combat with one Clurichaun, green residue on his hand infects him with the Taint. The five-minute debuff does not directly damage him, but it prevents all healing while active. Carl concludes that the Clurichauns are dangerous despite their low level because the Taint can combine with other damage.

Carl then experiments with the moonshine as an incendiary material. By partially emptying a jug, adding goblin oil, and sealing it with an activatable torch, he creates an item the system names Carl's Jug O' Boom. The device splashes intense fire over a wide area, and constructing it immediately raises his Incendiary Device Handling skill to level five. Carl and Donut make more but preserve some intact moonshine because the full jugs are more valuable and burning corpses destroys their loot.

Near the boss area, they discover a large filling room where many Clurichauns bottle moonshine. Two level-six Laminak Rev-Up Consultant Elites guard the far side. The Laminaks are flying fairy-class managers whose description says their essence is valuable against disease. Because Carl and Donut want to preserve the moonshine and loot the Laminak corpses, Carl rejects simply burning the room and begins planning a coordinated attack using Donut's Puddle Jumper.

Carl and Donut prepare to attack the Rev-Up filling room while preserving its moonshine and the valuable Laminak corpses. Donut's Puddle Jumper can only be used once every five hours and costs twenty of her twenty-six mana, so teleporting into the room leaves her with little combat magic and no immediate way to teleport back out. Carl stays hidden because his Goblin Pass causes extra hostility and damage from fairy-class creatures.

Donut teleports between the two winged Laminak elites. Her butterfly talisman and Charisma turn their dots neutral, and one orders the roughly forty hostile Clurichauns back to work. The Clurichauns themselves remain red, so the original charm plan fails. Donut shifts to the fallback she insists on calling Plan Pied Piper, persuading the two fairies to follow her and eventually ordering all the Clurichauns to accompany them as well.

Donut leads the group to a chamber containing dead Clurichauns. She then draws the two Laminaks into the next foyer while their workers remain clustered behind. She introduces the fairies as Caroline and Max. Carl ignites two Jug O' Boom devices and throws them into the packed room, burning the Clurichauns.

As the attack begins, Donut catches one fairy in midair, bites down, and breaks her neck. The other retreats to the ceiling and attacks Carl with Magic Missile, whose damage is enhanced against him because of the Goblin Pass. Carl repeatedly practices with his slingshot until he clips her wing; Donut then jumps up and kills her. Both Carl and Donut reach level eleven.

The two Laminak corpses are themselves the promised alchemy material, so Carl stores them. He remains uneasy about using Donut's charm to betray creatures after seeing their personalities and hearing one of the fairies cry that they were planning to move to the third floor. He reminds himself that the dungeon operators are the larger enemy and repeats his private promise that they will not break him.

Back in the filling room, Carl and Donut collect full and empty moonshine jugs and an Alchemy Workstation. They decide not to attack the neighborhood boss directly because they still lack protection from the Taint and because Carl fears another encounter involving noncombatants or a catastrophic still explosion.

In an abandoned corner they find bicycle-powered blenders and a recipe for a Rev-Up Immunity Smoothie. The recipe combines moonshine with a Laminak corpse and grants immunity to the Taint and Vigorous Measles, revealing the intended protection for the nearby boss encounter.

Before they can leave with the equipment, the boss-room door explodes open. Long pink tentacles covered in screaming human-shaped mouths reach into the filling room, and bars seal the outer exit. An achievement announces that bosses on floor two can leave their rooms.

The system identifies the attacker as a level-ten Krakaren Clone. It explicitly distinguishes the creature from Krakaren Prime: the clone is one member of a collective, and the system claims that Krakaren Prime births two more for every clone killed. The boss attacks through multiple blind, screaming tentacles that smash through walls and openings into the filling room.

Carl tells Donut not to attack the boss yet while he makes the immunity recipe. Donut kills Clurichauns emerging from the boss chamber, and Carl fills a blender container one-third with Rev-Up moonshine, stuffs an entire Laminak corpse inside, screws on the blade assembly, and pedals the bicycle blender until the mixture turns pink and sparkling.

Before Carl can drink it, boss secretions infect him with the Taint. The completed Rev-Up Immunity Smoothie provides temporary immunity to health-seeping effects and communicable diseases, but it does not remove a debuff that is already active. Each dose also inflicts Buzzed, adding Charisma while reducing Dexterity and adding Shaky Cam and Truth Serum effects. Carl drinks, then gives Donut a dose.

A different tentacle sprays green mist that would cause Vigorous Measles, but the smoothie blocks the infection. Carl's existing Taint still prevents him from healing, and damage from Clurichaun slingshots and the boss drives his health deep into the red. Both Carl and Donut become visibly intoxicated from the smoothie.

Under the Truth Serum effect, Donut tells Carl that she loves him but says she loves Beatrice and Ferdinand more. Carl is hurt by the comparison but keeps the argument to himself and concentrates on surviving. He asks Donut to reanimate a dead Clurichaun.

The undead minion carries a lit Jug O' Boom toward the boss chamber while Carl also hides a relatively stable stick of Goblin Dynamite in its clothing. The zombie reaches the doorway as more tentacles and Clurichauns emerge.

Carl and Donut retreat behind one section of the old redoubt. Carl adds the Alchemy Workstation over them to form a makeshift metal shell. He believes the coming blast may kill him and tells Donut to return to Brandon if that happens. Donut protests that she lied about being able to crawl alone and says she needs Carl. The chapter ends at the instant the explosion arrives, before its outcome is shown.

Carl survives the explosion with only six percent health, ruptured eardrums, severe facial burns, broken legs, internal bleeding, and the Taint still preventing healing for about another minute. Donut is unharmed enough to drag him out of the burning room by his cloak. Once the Taint expires, she uses a Heal scroll just before Carl loses consciousness, and Carl adds his own Heal spell as his body begins repairing itself.

Carl concludes that the pedicure kit's Unbreakable effect on his feet probably prevented the collapsed table from severing them at the ankles. When the fire dies, he also discovers that the Alchemy Workstation he used as overhead protection is completely undamaged despite the blast and heat. He suspects workstations may be indestructible inside the dungeon and silently marks the apparent bug as something he may be able to exploit.

The Krakaren Clone and its supporting mobs are dead. Carl retrieves the Neighborhood Map and sees dozens of Brindle Grubs converging on the battle area. Rather than remain among the scavengers, Carl and Donut head to the nearby Tutorial Guild to speak with Mordecai.

Mordecai's second-floor guild form is now a level-fifty Bugaboo rather than a Rat Hooligan. When Carl relays Odette's request that Mordecai contact her after his indentureship, Mordecai reacts with intense hostility and says he wants nothing to do with her. He nevertheless tells Carl that Odette's show is useful and that they should accept future appearances, while warning that Odette ultimately acts in her own interest.

Mordecai also explains that ordinary viewers can see and hear crawlers inside the guild hall but cannot see or hear him unless they have press credentials. He identifies Damien, whose name one Laminak called during the fight, as a location manager and his own manager's manager. He is more evasive about Agatha and the Krakaren Clone, and he confirms only in general terms that dungeon mobs may be original creatures, AI-created constructions, or writer-designed combinations of alien material and Earth references.

Donut's boss loot includes an Enchanted Fur Brush of the Ecclesiastic. Ten minutes of brushing each night gives her two additional Constitution for thirty hours, though even with the buff her Constitution remains only four.

Carl receives a Dungeonpreneur achievement because Carl's Jug O' Boom has been entered into the Dungeon Codex as a stackable invented device. The system says Carl will earn one gold coin whenever another crawler kills something with the device, including in future seasons if he survives. His boss loot also includes Enchanted BigBoi Boxers, which add two Constitution and grant a level-fifteen Protective Shell once every thirty hours. The spell creates a stationary sphere for about twenty seconds that blocks physical creatures and physical attacks but not magic or non-corporeal entities.

As Mordecai begins to explain another use for Protective Shell, an admin warning disables violence and announces that an administrator is arriving. A kua-tin materializes in a puddle directly in front of Carl. Mordecai has already named the expected visitor as Zev.

Zev is a female kua-tin and Borant Corporation Assistant Communications Representative classified by the system as a Dungeon Admin. She is only about two feet tall and wears a water-filled helmet and heavy protective suit because this is her first physical visit to a dungeon. Her arrival disables Carl's normal HUD and menus and triggers a rule that attempting violence against an admin would cause immediate execution.

Zev explains that Carl and Donut's rapid popularity has generated more than two dozen interview requests after the Krakaren fight. Borant has therefore enrolled them in the Crawler Assisted Outreach Program and assigned Zev as their public-relations liaison. She will filter requests and communicate through a private chat channel.

Odette already holds a contractual first right of refusal for interviews at floor openings, so Carl and Donut are effectively committed to those appearances as long as their popularity remains high. Zev expects to arrange one additional show during each floor and says there may be three interviews on lower floors. Carl and Donut can reject particular programs outside Odette's slot, but they will still be expected to choose an appearance. Zev has already selected a less serious round-table program for roughly forty hours later because it reaches a demographic where they are not yet strong and gives crawler guests a parting gift.

Carl becomes angry when Zev suggests timing major boss fights around the broadcast schedule. He tells her that he and Donut are involuntary participants fighting for their lives and will not organize survival around Borant's programming calendar. Zev responds that she understands the coercion. She says she too lives under threat: her supervisor belongs to the ruling political faction, and a serious mistake could endanger her entire family. Sapient dungeon mobs likewise live knowing crawlers are hunting them. Zev argues that all of them are trapped in different parts of the same system and that Carl and Donut's survival benefits her.

The confrontation eases when Donut and Zev discover a shared interest in Earth television. While they discuss Gossip Girl, Mordecai privately warns Carl that even a low-level admin can be dangerous and explains what he means by "the Party." The Bloom is the ruling ultra-nationalist political party of the kua-tin system government. Mordecai says it represented less than fifteen percent of votes when he signed his contract but now controls the government and requires kua-tin to display membership badges.

Mordecai further says Borant's financial crisis creates conflicting incentives. The company needs the season to be entertaining and profitable, but major revenues are not paid until the season ends, so the government is pressuring Borant to finish the crawl faster. A supervisory committee has already warned Borant about rule and balance problems. According to Mordecai, there is internal resistance, but the kua-tin government has a strong incentive to accelerate crawler deaths.

Carl decides to return to clearing the stairwell quadrant and escort Meadow Lark before the next recap. Zev says she will contact them about the next interview, then disappears. Carl's HUD and menus return. When he opens the guild door, he notices the minimap has changed and a waist-high pile of Brindle Grubs spills into the room.

When Carl opens the Tutorial Guild door, Brindle Grubs pour inside. Mordecai first throws them back into the hallway, then closes the door and removes those trapped in the guild. Outside, thousands of grubs are converging on the area from unexplored corridors.

Mordecai checks the floor rules and explains that each floor has janitor mobs. On floor two, Brindle Grubs normally seek corpses and become stronger as they feed, but when no nearby corpses are available they can home in on crawlers. The system is spawning roughly one to fifteen grubs for each corpse created because the area lacks enough janitors. Destroying a corpse prevents grubs from feeding and leveling from it, but it does not stop the spawn event itself.

The Krakaren encounter killed hundreds of creatures, including roughly 750 grubs that had been caged in the boss room and scores of Clurichauns. The quadrant has therefore hit its hard limit of 5,000 Brindle Grubs. Mordecai tells Carl that the mechanic discourages crawlers from remaining in one area too long. The level-two grubs are nearly harmless individually and give no experience, but killing them simply generates replacements until the cap is satisfied.

Carl contacts Brandon through group chat and tells Meadow Lark to start moving immediately. Carl and Donut work toward the rendezvous, first using incendiaries and then realizing the firebombs waste valuable moonshine. Because grubs begin eating any fresh grub corpse almost immediately, Carl destroys bodies when he accidentally steps on them and only burns heavily clogged passages.

Meadow Lark arrives using a newly constructed transport train. Chris and Imani wear salvaged Pig Harnesses and pull ten connected platforms carrying thirty-nine people. A temporary magical chain from Imani links the train, and Brandon designed the wheeled platforms from salvaged material. The group has also trained: Brandon, Chris, and Yolanda killed a Mind Horror neighborhood boss while Imani remained with the residents.

Carl walks beside the convoy and reflects that helping the residents may slow his own progress but that refusing mutual aid would mean losing part of what makes them human. Zev immediately messages him that the statement plays well with viewers and asks him to repeat it without coughing. Carl refuses. Zev reports that most viewers approve of the rescue storyline, though some consider the residents dead weight.

Zev then begins suggesting that the sequence could use more excitement. She abruptly stops mid-message and tells Carl and Donut to run to the safe room immediately. Carl turns and sees Jack, an elderly resident who had already been warned about the new bathroom rule, standing with his pants down and urinating directly onto the dungeon wall. The chapter ends at that violation.

Donut reacts first to Jack's violation, launching toward him but pulling back before striking. Yolanda fires an arrow through Jack's head, killing him, but she is too late to prevent the punishment. The urine on the wall boils into black and purple smoke as the promised Rage Elemental begins materializing.

The level-ninety-three Rage Elemental is an almost indestructible smoke creature with corporeal obsidian claws. Its description says it normally dissipates only after claiming 666 souls. Ordinary attacks barely register and its health immediately regenerates. Confusing Fog does not stop it.

The convoy accelerates toward a nearby safe room. Randall falls from the last transport car as it lurches forward, and Yolanda stops to protect him. The Rage Elemental reaches them and kills both almost instantly. Carl describes Yolanda's death as the final act of someone who had spent her life caring for others and refused to abandon a patient even when facing an impossible threat.

Carl activates the Protective Shell from his BigBoi Boxers. The stationary barrier blocks the elemental's corporeal claws and repeatedly throws the charging monster backward, buying the group a few seconds to evacuate. The elemental then reverses gravity in part of the corridor. Carl, Donut, the final train car, and Elle McGibbons are thrown onto the ceiling while the safe-room entrance remains outside the affected zone.

Carl carries the badly injured Elle along the ceiling, gives her a healing potion, and crosses the gravity boundary while shielding her body from the fall. Donut lands safely and helps recover wheelchairs. Chris and Imani get the remaining residents through the door.

As the Protective Shell expires, the Rage Elemental charges again. Carl reaches the safe room by inches, then throws a lit Jug O' Boom at the creature before slamming the door. The elemental survives and repeatedly hammers the protected entrance from outside.

The safe room is a run-down Big Shot Chicken restaurant staffed by a Bopca Protector. Imani and the others treat the injured residents while grieving Yolanda and Randall. The display shows 1,033,992 crawlers remaining with four days and twenty hours until floor collapse. Elle thanks Carl for saving her and says Yolanda and Randall deserved better. The chapter ends with the Rage Elemental still pounding on the safe-room door.

Inside Big Shot Chicken, Carl and Donut's social numbers have climbed to 212 billion views, 4.4 billion followers, and 793 million favorites. The Rage Elemental continues pounding the safe-room door without pause while Meadow Lark watches the recap episode. The program opens by sensationalizing Jack's bathroom violation and Yolanda's attempt to stop it.

Carl and Donut receive achievements for surviving Reverse Gravity and damaging an enemy more than seventy-five levels above them. Their Platinum Lucky Bastard Boxes contain risky scratch-off tickets. Donut's Dungeon Gold Rush can modify her next attack with either beneficial or harmful effects. Carl's Fireball or Custard casts either a level-fifteen Fireball or healing strawberry custard at the nearest hostile mob. Carl makes Donut postpone using hers because the outcomes can also strengthen an enemy.

The Bopca Protector serving the restaurant is named Qwist. While Qwist continues brushing Donut with her enchanted fur brush, the recap profiles other crawlers. The Valkyrie-styled crossbow user is finally identified by name as Hekla, an Icelandic crawler whose growing all-woman group is called Brynhild's Daughters. Lucia Mar now carries four Crawler Killer marks, though the show does not explain how she received them.

The recap replays the Rage Elemental attack and shows Carl's Jug O' Boom reducing the level-ninety-three mob's health by almost one quarter before its regeneration repairs the damage. This gives Carl a concrete measure of how much the weapon can hurt it.

After the program, the system announces that bathroom penalties will end when floor two collapses, that the proliferation of Brindle Grubs is intentional, and that all safe areas will now close one hour before floor collapse. Any crawler still inside will be expelled outside at that time. The new rule destroys the possibility of simply sheltering the Meadow Lark residents until the last moment.

Thousands of Brindle Grubs then reach the Rage Elemental. The creature leaves the door and destroys them in under a minute, but the grubs do not satisfy the description's 666-soul condition. It immediately returns to Big Shot Chicken. The destruction also leaves more corpses for additional grubs to consume, and Carl notices nearby grubs already reaching the pupa stage.

Carl then connects two earlier facts. His Jug O' Boom can seriously damage the elemental, but killing it conventionally is still unrealistic. More importantly, Rory had told him on floor one that dungeon mobs attempting to descend crawler stairways dissolve before reaching the next floor. Mordecai had given the same general rule. Carl abandons the plan to wait another twenty-eight hours for Protective Shell to recharge and starts assembling a new strategy with Brandon.

Carl, Brandon, Chris, Imani, and Donut spend about five hours building a wheeled bomb launcher Carl labels the Mother of All Bombs, or MOAB. Brandon objects that the name is technically wrong and calls it the Bomb Chicken instead. While working, Carl confirms that explosives become inert inside a safe room even though their internal status timers continue.

Carl deliberately keeps the full plan out of chat because Borant and the dungeon AI can monitor private crawler messages. Imani supplies the first critical operational idea: open the safe-room door and let the anti-mob safe-zone rule teleport the Rage Elemental away. They test this several times. Each time the elemental lunges through the doorway, it is teleported to the main corridor and takes roughly seventy-five to 120 seconds to return. The tests establish a predictable escape window.

The Copper Chopper's sidecar is removed and replaced with a trailer carrying the MOAB launcher and a high rear-facing seat for Donut. The launcher drops several types of wheeled explosive "babies" behind the moving chopper. Carl and Brandon design the bombs to roll backward along the floor while Donut deploys them from inventory. Imani's temporary magical chain is converted into a weighted bola intended to entangle the elemental.

When the run begins, Imani opens the safe-room door, forcing the Rage Elemental to teleport away. Carl and Donut race into the hall and wait until the elemental sees them and commits to pursuit. Donut then launches Baby Uno, boom-jug bombs, the chain bola, and shrapnel "shredder" bombs as Carl drives at the chopper's limit. The explosives burn and batter the elemental, and some shredder charges rupture Brindle Grub pupae so newly emerging creatures momentarily distract it.

The chopper overheats and reports an imminent boiler breach as they reach the stairwell chamber. Carl does not intend to descend. Donut releases an oil slick, and both crawlers jump from the vehicle while the unmanned chopper continues into the stairwell and explodes below.

Carl has Donut begin Puddle Jumper's ten-second cast while they wait at the edge of the descent opening. He places one final high-powered bomb near them. The wounded Rage Elemental charges into the chamber, hits the oil, and slides toward Carl and Donut. At the last instant Puddle Jumper teleports them about five hundred feet away.

The Rage Elemental disappears from the minimap after entering the stairwell. Carl explains that neither the bombs nor the oil receives kill credit. The dungeon itself kills the creature because crawler stairways dissolve mobs that try to descend, exactly as Rory had described. Carl and Donut therefore receive no experience for the death.

With the Rage Elemental gone but the grub problem still worsening, Carl immediately messages Brandon to bring Meadow Lark to the stairs while the route remains usable.

With four days and six hours left on floor two, Carl and Donut spend about an hour burning nearby Brindle Grub pupae before accepting that they cannot clear the entire infestation. Roughly forty minutes after the Rage Elemental dies, the remaining Meadow Lark group arrives. Thirty-six residents are packed into three rough wheeled transports pushed by Chris, Imani, and Brandon.

Carl says goodbye to the caregivers and residents. Elle McGibbons is increasingly confused and mistakes Carl for her late husband Barry, which renews Carl's doubts about whether bringing the elderly deeper into the dungeon is merciful. Imani is the last Meadow Lark member to descend the ramp to floor three. Carl and Donut remain behind to train because they do not know whether they will see the group again.

They move into the adjacent kobold quadrant and encounter level-five Kobold Riders mounted on Danger Dingoes. Donut reacts especially strongly to the dog-like enemies and fights effectively with both Magic Missile and her claws. Afterward she reports that a temporary menu tab labeled Racial Benefits appeared and vanished, leading her to suspect she has a damage bonus against canine creatures. Carl cannot find an equivalent menu on himself.

Their next safe room is an unmanned industrial kitchen. A fixed toaster provides one piece of Mana Toast per crawler, and signs show that someone else recently used the showers and stripped supplies. Before Carl and Donut can rest, Administrator Mukta contacts them. Mukta says Zev has been placed in a "time out" and will return the next day.

Mukta overrides Zev's planned appearance on Dungeon Crawl Tactics and replaces it with a higher-paying program. When Carl reminds Mukta that Zev promised them some choice over interviews, Mukta says Carl does not have a say. Zev's chat channel then disappears.

While waiting for transport, Carl reviews rewards from the Rage Elemental escape. His explosive skills rise sharply. A Silver Mechanic's Box contains a Gorgon Marital Aid, a workbench tool that can harden or soften material without reducing its strength. A Gold Sapper's Box contains a Sapper's Table, which stabilizes explosives and traps built on it, plus ten valuable Proximity Triggers whose activation conditions can be configured at the table.

Mukta transfers Carl and Donut earlier than Zev had scheduled. They appear aboard a small rental production trailer owned by Senegal Production Systems, Unlimited. Their HUD vanishes. A floating system called Mexx-55 says the trailer has been leased for Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem and tells them to sit for the holographic broadcast.

Donut is offended by the lack of a green room or snacks. When she asks who hosts the program, Mexx-55 names the Maestro and expresses audible distaste before the holo begins.

The rental trailer's hologram stabilizes the motion of the small boat and creates the illusion of a much larger studio. Carl studies the audience and realizes it is composed almost entirely of preteen and early-teen boys from multiple species, all enthusiastically chanting for crawler deaths. The host, Maestro, appears as a young, muscular orc with a gold tusk who encourages the cruelty.

The show's first guests are two level-seven crawlers, Li Jun and Zhang. Their four-person party has been frozen in the dungeon between Troglodyte Bashers and newly hatched Brindled Vespas. Li Jun identifies the woman in the party as his sister Li Na, while the badly injured fourth crawler is their warehouse manager.

Maestro's Death Watch game forces Li Jun and Zhang to watch several crawler encounters and guess who survives. Correct answers earn teleport points that can send one party member to the nearest safe room. By the end they have only two points, forcing them toward a choice among four people.

Carl refuses to participate in what he considers sadistic entertainment. He climbs out of the holographic set, causing the studio illusion to vanish. A male production voice speaking through Mexx-55 orders him back to his chair and claims the production is authorized to dump Carl and Donut into the ocean if he refuses. Carl calls that threat a bluff because the speaker is neither Borant nor the Syndicate.

Mukta then intervenes separately and threatens to "accelerate" Carl if he refuses the contracted appearance. Carl agrees to participate only after confirming that the show itself cannot dictate what he says. He demands to be put on air immediately before the Death Watch segment ends and tells Donut that he will handle the talking.

Li Jun initially says the four companions should stand together rather than choose only two survivors. Carl interrupts Maestro's planned narrative by proposing that Li Jun and Zhang spend their two teleport points to send Carl and Donut into the lethal encounter instead. The bloodthirsty audience loves the idea. Maestro refuses because Carl and Donut are not participants in the game.

Carl keeps provoking Maestro and the crowd while privately recognizing that he does not actually want to sacrifice himself. He reasons that he and Donut's enormous audience value gives them leverage because the production likely paid heavily to obtain them. He then quietly tells Li Jun and Zhang what to do if Maestro sends them back: leave the dropped sword, grab Li Na and the injured manager, and run directly toward the Troglodytes because the newly hatched Vespas are likely to attack the lizards as well.

Angry at Carl's challenge, Maestro abruptly returns Li Jun and Zhang to the frozen scene and restarts time. They follow Carl's advice. Zhang grabs the injured manager, Li Jun pulls Li Na with him, and the four humans run through the Troglodytes. The Vespas attack the lizards, the two monster groups engage one another, and all four crawlers reach a safe room. Zhang administers a healing potion to their manager.

The audience reacts with uncertainty rather than the expected bloodlust. Carl smiles at the furious Maestro and ends the chapter by telling him, "Glurp on that, motherfucker."

The Death Watch interview continues with a replay of Carl and Donut's escape from the Rage Elemental. While the footage runs, Carl deliberately provokes the Maestro into talking about the ninth floor. The Maestro says his family belongs to the Skull Clan rather than the Blood Sultanate, boasts of the clan's repeated Faction War success, and says he will serve as its war leader this season. Carl is left with a renewed sense of danger about the crown that has placed Donut in the Blood Sultanate succession.

The Maestro then brings Frank Q. and Maggie My onto the show and plays a recap of their crawl. The footage reveals that their game guide encouraged them to kill other crawlers, that Frank and Maggie ambushed Rebecca W's group, and that their daughter Yvette refused to participate. Carl also learns that Yvette had been hidden in the safe room when Frank and Maggie attacked him and Donut. His rat-corpse dynamite trap badly injured Yvette and severed Frank's hand, but it did not kill Yvette. The recap makes clear that Maggie later strangled her injured daughter herself.

Carl confronts Maggie over Yvette's death, while Maggie insists he does not know the whole story and threatens to hunt down Carl and Donut. Frank remains withdrawn. When the interview stalls, the Maestro gives Carl a pair of tactical boots intended to mock his barefoot build and gives Frank and Maggie a Legendary Skill Potion that can raise Find Crawler to level 15. Carl refuses to give the Maestro the angry reaction he wants and instead taunts him about facing Carl on the ninth floor. As the show ends, Frank looks broken and Maggie clutches the potion, finally smiling at Carl.

Back in the safe room, Donut opens her remaining loot and receives Spike and Alarm Trap Modules. She talks through Yvette's death and admits relief that Carl's trap was not what ultimately killed the girl. Before sleeping, Donut also reveals that she heard Mordecai tell Carl he could leave her party when they reach the ninth floor, and Carl tells her they should focus on surviving to the third floor first.

The next recap episode shows the destruction of the Le Mouvement group by a city boss, Lucia Mar fighting Brindled Vespas, and Carl and Donut's Rage Elemental escape. The replay confirms that Carl's explosives drove the elemental's health almost to zero before the dungeon dissolved it and denied experience. Afterward Carl notices the crawler count has fallen to 990,303. A system announcement then closes the stairwell exploit by ending automatic disintegration for non-sapient mobs, halves the Brindled Vespa population, reduces their acid damage, and cuts each new Brindle Grub's chance of reaching the pupa stage to fifty percent. Carl also receives a new Accounts tab showing a one-gold-per-kill Creator's Fee for each Jug O' Boom kill, subject to withdrawal fees.

Rather than flee Frank and Maggie, Carl decides they should prepare for them by killing the local neighborhood boss and obtaining its map. Zev then arrives for the post-show debrief. She explains that her earlier censure for warning them about the Rage Elemental was overturned, identifies the Maestro as a prince of the Skull Empire, and says his older brother Crown Prince Stalwart owns the production. She also explains, within the limits of what she is allowed to reveal, that the third, sixth, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth, and eighteenth floors are linked settings that exist even before crawlers reach them.

Zev tells them that an explicit, extremely high-quality 'Pork Boy' snick depicting Carl and the Maestro has gone viral, but says nobody knows who created it and some viewers believe it is real. Carl's appearance fee has doubled to match Lucia Mar's. Zev advises Carl and Donut to spend the next days gaining levels and to avoid strange choices during race selection. She also states Borant's official position that insulting other governments will not itself bring Borant punishment so long as Carl and Donut do not disparage Borant, the Party, or the Syndicate. After Zev leaves, Donut heads into the corridor loudly teasing Carl about the video.

Carl and Donut follow painfully loud music to the kobold neighborhood-boss chamber, killing enough enemies on the way for both of them to reach level 12. The outer room resembles a municipal dog pound, with fourteen injured danger dingoes locked in cages. Instead of killing them for experience, Carl follows Mordecai's advice to look for the room's clue and tests a pet biscuit on one dingo. Its minimap dot turns from red to white, so Carl and Donut feed the rest and neutralize all fourteen.

When the inner doors open, about forty kobolds emerge with Ralph, a level 11 Frenzied Gerbil neighborhood boss, in a small carrier. Carl's Jug O' Boom destroys most of the kobolds and Ralph's handler while Ralph attacks at extreme speed. A surviving kobold opens the dingo cages, but the animals remain friendly. The one-eyed dingo Carl fed first swallows Ralph, and the released dingoes tear apart the remaining kobolds. Carl recognizes that befriending the abused animals was the intended solution to the encounter.

The boss music continues, showing that Ralph is still alive. The one-eyed dingo's head suddenly explodes and Ralph bursts out toward Carl's throat. Carl punches the gerbil with his gauntlet, reducing Ralph to critical health and triggering the gauntlet's rare Stun effect for the first time. The chapter ends before the kill is confirmed, with Carl placing his bare right foot on the stunned boss and saying, "Sorry, Ralph."

The chapter opens with Carl wiping blood from his foot as the dungeon groans and the Ralph boss fight officially ends. The surviving thirteen danger dingoes flee, killing newly generated Brindle Grubs as they go, and Carl loots the neighborhood map. While searching the kobold remains, he also finds a Master Pen Key that can open only one cage for a non-kobold user.

Inside the fighting arena, Carl and Donut discover a pet reward room with ten caged creatures. The system makes clear that their single-use key permits only one choice. Carl considers several options, including a Brindle Grub, but Donut immediately wants a small pink, feathered Mongoliensis. A forcefield prevents them from testing the creature with food while it is still caged, and a thirty-second countdown forces a decision.

Carl opens the Mongoliensis cage and restrains the attacking creature while Donut offers pet biscuits. The animal remains red-tagged rather than turning friendly. Donut learns it is male and names it Mongo. Mongo bites Donut on the nose and later attaches himself to her arm. His tooltip identifies him as a level 1 pet-class mob that has not yet bonded with a crawler, cannot truly be tamed, becomes powerful if he survives to level 15, and will attack mobs on sight and fight to the death.

Carl warns that they must get Mongo to bond with Donut before entering Mordecai's room or risk having the unbonded mob teleported away. Donut insists that she and Mongo are already practically best friends. The chapter ends with Mongo still hostile and unbonded, shrieking at her.

Carl and Donut spend the remainder of the second floor training, grinding Brindled Vespas, and trying to bond Mongo with Donut. Carl raises Slingshot to level five, Donut raises Magic Missile to level eight, and their audience numbers continue to rise. Mordecai explains that Mongo cannot bond while his hostility remains active and that pet-class mobs stay at level one until bonded. He also outlines the third-floor transition: crawlers choose race, then class, then distribute remaining stat points, while the system AI may recommend options based on existing skills. Because of Enhanced Growth, Donut will not distribute stat points normally and should look for a Constitution benefit.

Mordecai reveals that he was a Changeling Fire Mage Arcanist and that he once considered a special Storm Commander class before Odette talked him out of it. His brother chose that class instead, showing Carl that Mordecai's brother had also been a crawler, but Mordecai refuses to pursue the subject. After Mongo accidentally teleports out of the guild, Carl and Donut use a recap-show clue that Mongoliensis are pack hunters to train him alongside Donut. Mongo's minimap dot first changes from red to white, ending his automatic hostility, but he remains unbonded and level one.

With the floor timer running down, they train Mongo to respond to commands and move toward the stairwell while fighting Brindled Vespas. Carl and Donut reach level 13. When a wounded Vespa grabs Mongo and tries to eat him, Donut attacks with unusual speed and decapitates it. Mongo's dot turns orange, and the system officially adds him to the party as Donut's level-one pet with the title Royal Steed. The bond does not make him docile, and he immediately bites Donut on the nose again.

While waiting near the stairs, Carl uses his new inventory History sort and discovers three Valtay Corporation items that had once been in his possession: an inter-tunnel communications device, a personal shield, and a pulse pistol. He realizes they came from Agatha's shopping cart, which he had temporarily inventoried during the Ball of Swine battle. Agatha arrives soon afterward, still level four. Carl notices her guarded reaction when he mentions the cart, but he cannot determine what she knows or whom she might be connected to. A brief feed outage occurs while she descends, and Zev dismisses it as a common technical problem. Carl considers several possibilities but resolves none of them.

When the floor timer reaches six hours, Carl tells Donut it is time to see what the third floor is about. They are still at the stair chamber when the chapter ends. They have not yet descended.