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Spoilers for Books 1–8
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World Dungeon · Floor 3
Floor 3
The Over City is Floor Three, where the crawl leaves its training corridors for villages built among ruins beneath an artificial sky. The inhabitants have laws and ongoing stories of their own, forcing crawlers to do more than fight their way to the next staircase.[1]
Choose Book 2 or later above to read this section.
The Over City and its history
Mordecai describes an area of about three hundred thousand square kilometers, with villages connected through abandoned ruins. It represents a city above a volcano. Carl notices heat, sulfur and a crimson opening overhead. Although stars and a nebula fill the artificial sky, his test shot hits a ceiling only about twenty-five feet above him.
Mordecai says a demon from the lowest layer poisoned the Over City and turned ninety percent of its population into monsters. The survivors’ descendants occupy its villages. Parts of this history continue into later floors.
Arrival points are randomized. Even allies descending from the same general area cannot assume they will start nearby, leaving Carl unsure where Meadow Lark has arrived.[1]
Choose Book 2 or later above to read this section.
Race and class selection
Crawlers meet their guides to choose a race, then a class and attribute allocation. Keeping an unchanged race still provides racial benefits. Class options depend on achievements, skills, race and other qualifications, with some reserved for especially popular crawlers.
Carl chooses Primal and Compensated Anarchist, trading immediate strength for higher skill limits and an explosives-focused class. Donut remains a cat and becomes a Former Child Actor. Her Manager Benefit brings Mordecai with her through safe-room teleports, making his advice and crafting help much more accessible.
The floor lasts eight days. More than seven hundred thousand crawlers remain at its opening, with limited time to adjust to their new races and classes.[2]
Choose Book 2 or later above to read this section.
Village laws, roads and exits
Level-seventy-five Village Guard Swordsmen enforce local laws. Attacking residents, stealing or drunkenness can bring a death sentence, while fleeing can earn a permanent village ban. Later announcements clarify that witnessed crimes provoke the guards and killing citizens gives no experience.
Villages are safer by day and main roads usually safer at night. Alleys and ruins remain dangerous. Medium-sized villages have tutorial guilds, with safe rooms scattered farther afield. Navigation skills help reveal destinations and distances.
Some stairs lie along ordinary routes, while others appear after quests. Completing the circus storyline removes its structures and reveals a way down to Floor Four.[3]
Choose Book 2 or later above to read this section.
Elites and the people behind the scenery
Important elite NPCs have their own writers and productions. Their plots can advance without crawlers and continue across connected urban floors. By joining Signet’s story, Carl becomes involved in a production with interests beyond his party’s survival.
Mordecai explains that most NPCs are engineered biological people whose memories can be rewritten for a season. Carl begins seeing the suffering behind the enemies, merchants and quest-givers presented by the interface.[4]
Choose Book 2 or later above to read this section.
Creatures and the Desperado Club
Signet’s circus includes Mold Lions infected with Scolopendra’s spores. She says a surviving spore can return to the controlling vine and regrow a lion. At night, Street Urchins clear corpses and debris, making Carl’s improvised rubbish shelter a target.
The Desperado Club has local public foyers but shared inner rooms across the floor. Crawlers leave through the town where they entered. Membership opens access to businesses, games and guild services. Its bouncers provide security rather than safe-room immunity, and side rooms may offer less protection than the main hall.[5]
Choose Book 2 or later above to read this section.
History
Book 2
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario
A new party arrangement
Donut chooses the class benefit that makes Mordecai her manager, costing him the independent room and equipment he expected. He is angry to discover that Carl and Donut learned about the benefit from Odette and concealed their plans. They gain a valuable adviser while badly damaging his trust.
After Carl chooses his race and class, the party enters the Over City. Its shops, laws and distances make money and navigation as important as winning fights.[1]
Signet’s circus
Signet plans to use Carl as a blood sacrifice during his fight with the Mold Lions. The summoning fails because he remains uncut, and she admits what she intended. By staying involved, he draws the party into a storyline shaped by outside producers.
When Carl tries to leave, Signet incapacitates him and traps Donut with Water Lily. Heather’s death fuels Signet’s tattoo army, but she still cannot pass the big top’s defenses. Carl poisons Grimaldi’s root and bargains with the producers over a cure. Wisp Armor lets him enter the parasite link without losing control, and he helps persuade Grimaldi to admit Signet. She promises Donut will wake at sunrise, but Carl learns that Donut is still losing health.
While Mongo protects the unconscious Donut, Street Urchins attack Carl’s shelter because he built it from rubbish. He clears the debris and draws them away with meat, then helps treat Mongo’s wounds. At dawn, the circus disappears and reveals stairs to Floor Four.[6]
The guard depot and Remex
Beneath the guard depot, the party finds Remex, a captive Soul Leech Capacitor connected to a Soul Crystal and Amplifier. Miss Quill has exploited him in a scheme involving stolen souls, transformed women and control of the guards.
Disrupting her scheme triggers a deadly event across forty-five square kilometers. Carl and Donut might escape through the Desperado Club, but Katia has no pass. They stay to help, and Carl seals the crystal inside the Sheol Glass Reaper Case before its countdown ends.[7]
The Doomsday Scenario and the escape
The case contains the explosion, becoming Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. He puts it into inventory, freezing the detonation until he removes it. Remex then begins a series of pulses that will end in another magical explosion after twenty minutes.
The pulses strip equipment bonuses, activate magical weapons, destroy worn armor and trigger abilities and hotlist items. Mordecai tells everyone to store their magical gear. Donut finally takes off the Crown of the Sepsis Whore. It disintegrates, but she remains bound to the Blood Sultanate.
The club shuts its doors, leaving the stairs as their only escape. Carl, Donut and Katia help other crawlers reach them and descend shortly before the explosion. The floor still has two days and eighteen hours left; the disaster has forced them out early.[8]
Choose Book 2 or later above to read this section.
Sources
References are to Matt Dinniman’s novels. Book links open our recap guides.
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Chapters 1–3.
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Chapters 1–2.
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Chapters 3, 7, 12.
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Chapters 3, 7.
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Chapters 7, 12, 15.
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Chapters 7–12.
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Chapter 24.
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Chapter 25.