Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1: Chapter-by-Chapter Recap

Here is our full chapter-by-chapter and video breakdown of Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 1.

So, whether you’ve already read it and want a refresher or just want a clear run-through of the story, this recap is designed to give you everything you need.

Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1 Recap [Video]

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Chapter 1

The book begins at 2:23 a.m., so you already know something bad is going to happen because nothing good happens after 2 a.m.

Here we meet our two protagonists: Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s tortoiseshell Persian show cat, Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk.

It’s winter in Seattle, so it’s freezing, but Carl is out there in his boxers, a leather jacket, and his ex’s pink Crocs, trying to get Princess Donut down from a tree she jumped into from the window.

Good thing they are outside because everything in the world with a roof suddenly collapses.
Cars. Houses. Anything that counts as “indoors” instantly gets crushed, and anyone inside is immediately killed.

Then a robotic voice addresses the survivors, including Carl, letting them know that Earth has been seized for resource extraction because humanity evidently failed to file an appeal for its own mineral and elemental rights.
And so every interior on Earth has been crushed and its raw materials mined.

But don’t worry. They offer survivors the opportunity to reclaim their lost matter by completing an 18-level World Dungeon run by the Borant Corporation. The pitch is basically:

• You have one hour to enter.
• Each floor has specific rules, a set number of staircases leading to the next floor, and a time limit before it collapses.
• It’s recommended that you find a tutorial guild as soon as possible.

So Carl, carrying Donut in his whitey-tighties, doesn’t have much of a choice unless he wants to freeze to death. He heads down an ornate staircase to enter Floor 1 of the World Dungeon, where he and Princess Donut officially become designated crawlers and learn they have five days to find another staircase leading down before the entire level collapses.

Carl also starts seeing floating interface boxes that respond to his thoughts and realizes Princess Donut can see them too. He receives a variety of achievements and rewards he can’t yet open for entering the dungeon.

Chapter 2

Almost immediately, they fall for an obvious trap (which, by the way, is also an achievement) and get chased by a goblin-built steam machine called a Goblin Murder Dozer.

While running, Carl spots a door labeled Tutorial Guild, and through the door, which is locked by a chain, he talks to an NPC and key character named Mordecai.

As the goblins close in, Donut slips through the partially opened door, and Mordecai opens it fully to let Carl in at the last moment before he is run down by the Murder Dozer.

Chapter 3

Once inside the Tutorial Guild, which is also designated as a safe zone, Carl learns that Mordecai is a Level 50 Rat Hooligan and a guildmaster.

Princess Donut then knocks over a vase containing Mordecai’s mother’s ashes. While Mordecai is busy sneezing and complaining about his allergies, Carl realizes he needs to take care of the two remaining goblins outside with the Murder Dozer before they can leave and get help.

So Carl, still in his boxers and pink Crocs, heads back out, tosses one goblin directly into the Murder Dozer’s spinning blades, and jumps from the top of the machine onto the final goblin, splattering it.

Just as he finishes, the Murder Dozer enters a “Boiler Breach Imminent” state, and Carl barely dives back into the Guildhall before the whole thing explodes.

Mordecai then reveals he was once a crawler himself who made it to Floor 11 and that his actual form is a Changeling, meaning his physical form randomly changes on each floor to match one of the mobs also featured on that floor.

He also explains that Earth is one of many “human-seeded worlds,” and we’re basically a crop that’s been left to grow until it’s ready for “resource reclamation.”

Chapter 4

Carl then gets access to his Crawler Menu, where he gets his first look at his stats. Mordecai explains that the Borant Corporation, which is taking Earth’s resources and running this dungeon, makes almost all its money through the “Dungeon,” a reality show that trillions of citizens across the Syndicate are currently obsessed with.

Carl also learns about the importance of getting a high number of viewers and followers so that he can eventually get good Patrons and Benefactors who might send him Benefactor Boxes containing high-level gear later in the dungeon.

Carl also learns that the dungeon is run by a “Syndicate-neutral observer AI” that monitors everything. Mordecai tells him not to disparage the showrunners on camera, as they have the power to make his experience through the dungeon even more dangerous than it normally is.
A voice then announces that the dungeon is officially sealed. Out of the billions of people on Earth, only 13 million crawlers made it inside, and that number is already down to under 10 million.

Mordecai also lets Carl know that only a handful of people have ever made it past Floor 10. And the deepest anyone has ever delved in history? Floor 13.

Chapter 5

Mordecai then activates Carl’s Inventory, which for this season has been upgraded to an unlimited storage system, mostly because the showrunners realized that watching crawlers slowly die of disease and starvation didn’t make for compelling reality TV. Carl finally gets to see his massive backlog of achievements, including rewards for killing mobs with his bare hands and bare feet. He also finds out he’s officially reached Level 2 and has gained a Level 4 Pugilism skill, which increases his bare-knuckle damage by 100%.

Carl opens his loot boxes in hopes of finding a pair of pants. Of course, he doesn’t get any, but he does get quite a bit of decent loot, including a “Goblin Pass” that brands his arm.
Carl also receives an “Enhanced Pet Biscuit,” which Donut snatches. She immediately melts into a “wet mess of flesh” as her body begins to rebuild itself into something new.

Chapter 6

As they wait for Donut to emerge from her transformation, Carl starts digging into the rest of his loot. He equips a Toad Cudgel and realizes the Goblin Pass he pulled isn’t a physical item but a permanent tattoo branded onto his arm. This brand allows him safe passage through goblin-controlled territory, though fairy-class creatures will now deal 20% more damage against him.

Carl also puts on the Enchanted Nightgaunt Cloak of Stoutness, which increases his Constitution and his resistance to poison, ice attacks, and piercing damage. He also puts on an Enchanted Trollskin Shirt that provides a massive buff to his Regeneration skill, allowing Carl to heal back to full health in as little as two minutes. He also reluctantly puts on the Enchanted Toe Ring of the Splatter Skunk, which boosts his Strength and his Powerful Strike skill, where each level multiplies his damage when he’s not wielding a weapon.

Carl also discovers that the dungeon’s AI tracks every obscure proficiency from his entire life, including a Level 8 skill in the 1981 arcade version of Frogger. Then, for the first time, he hears Donut’s voice.

Chapter 7

Donut eventually emerges from her transformation looking mostly the same as before, though slightly bigger. Of course, she can now speak perfect English and insists on being addressed by her full, formal title, GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk.

Donut is now an official crawler with an extremely high Charisma stat of 25 and an Enhanced Growth buff that grants her an automatic +1 to Strength and Intelligence and +2 to Charisma every time she levels.

Donut opens her own loot boxes, where she gets the Magic Missile spell and the Enchanted Crown of the Sepsis Whore, which Donut puts on before reading what it does. It gives her attacks a chance to inflict the sepsis debuff on enemies, though it also permanently places the wearer in the royal line of succession for the Blood Sultanate on the ninth floor. This means that if they ever make it that deep, she will need to kill the sultan and all other members of the royal family before descending to the 10th floor.

Because Donut now possesses the highest combined stat total in their group, the system officially designates her as the Party Leader. She renames their party “The Royal Court of Princess Donut,” changes Carl’s title to “Royal Bodyguard,” and changes her own title to “Grand Champion, Best in Dungeon.”

Chapter 8

Carl and Donut leave the safety of the tutorial guild and encounter a Level 3 Bad Llama that spits baseball-sized balls of lava. Donut starts blasting it with magic missiles from her eyes while Carl lands the killing blow with a series of punches to its glowing throat.

Carl’s hand is shattered in the process, but thanks to his high Regeneration skill, he’s healed and back to full health within a minute. They loot the corpse and find some llama steaks and a baggie of “trailer-park-grade meth.”

They continue through the floor, fighting off swarms of giant rats and cockroaches. After reaching Level 3, the system grants Carl two new skills: Foot Soldier, which increases his damage when kicking, and Smush, which increases the amount of pressure Carl can apply with his bare foot by 10% per level.

Chapter 9

Upon entering their first safe room, Carl and Donut meet Tally, a Level 63 Bopca Protector. Bopcas are gnome-like creatures that handle everything in safe rooms, from cleaning toilets to preparing food. While inside, Carl notices a horrifying update to the global crawler count on the room’s screens: in just a few hours, the number of survivors has plummeted from 10 million to just 4.3 million.

Donut opens a gold magic item box and receives the Talisman of the Slate Butterfly, a charm that boosts her Intelligence, makes winged fairies no longer automatically hostile toward her, and adds +4 to a new Light on Your Feet skill, which allows her to pounce ridiculously high.

Chapter 10

After a 10-hour rest in the safe room, they head back into the tunnels to farm experience by killing Scatterer Brood Guardians, which are essentially giant cockroaches. Carl reaches Level 5 and sees his Pugilism and Smush skills hit Level 5 as well.

Carl and Donut discover a door labeled Do Not Enter in Spanish, and Carl decides to open it and toss in his recently acquired Goblin Dynamite to hopefully kill whatever’s hiding inside.

Chapter 11

The dynamite works, killing most of the bugs instantly and earning Carl several skill upgrades, including Explosive Handling and a Gold Crowd Control Box for killing more than 10 mobs at once. It also nearly kills Carl, who gets blown back into the hall and hits Danger Low Health before his Regeneration kicks in.

Inside the nest, the door magically seals behind them, and boss battle music starts playing. They’ve accidentally triggered a Neighborhood Boss fight: the Hoarder, a Level 7 boss. She is a 15-foot-tall woman who was clearly just a regular person when the collapse happened, now fused with the dungeon’s garbage and driven insane.

She’s terrified. She speaks in Spanish, begs them not to hurt her, says she didn’t want her daughter to get sick, and asks them to send a message to Jesus.

Carl has to kill her anyway. He loops a metal chain leash he finds in the garbage around her throat and strangles her while Donut runs interference with magic missiles and Carl fights off waves of Scatterers with his bare hands. He apologizes to her right before he finishes it.

The remaining cockroaches drop dead. The door explodes open. The winner is announced as The Royal Court of Princess Donut.

Chapter 12

After looting a Neighborhood Map from the Hoarder’s corpse, which allows them to see everything in the area on their minimap, Carl and Donut notice an X representing a dead crawler nearby named Rebecca W.

They head to a nearby tutorial guild, where Mordecai explains more about the dungeon. He reveals there are six tiers of bosses: Neighborhood, Borough, City, Province, Country, and Floor. Some of them, like the Hoarder, are actually “recycled” humans from previous dungeon seasons.

Carl and Donut open their loot boxes, with Donut learning a new Torch spell that allows her to make a ball of light follow them around.

Carl gets a Level 3 Iron Punch skill, which allows him to wear gauntlets to protect his hands without losing his bare-knuckle bonus.

He also receives the Enchanted Spiked Knee Pads of the Shade Gnoll Riot Forces, which add 10% damage reflection and cancel momentum-based attacks.

Finally, he gets a Tome of Wisp Armor, which Carl holds on to for possible use in the future when he has more mana. The spell temporarily negates 75% of incoming damage from magic-based attacks and grants immunity to mind-control effects.

Before they head back out, Mordecai mentions that the Syndicate sometimes pulls crawlers out of the game for special on-camera interviews. 

Chapter 13

Carl and Donut head back out to check the corpse of Rebecca W they saw on the minimap. They find her naked with only an apple core left in her inventory and discover that she had been shot in the chest and killed by a crawler named Frank Q.

Chapter 14

They head back to the safe room to watch the premiere of Dungeon Crawler World: Earth. The show is presented in a VR format for most viewers, but they watch it on the restaurant screens with Tally.

The crawler count is down to 4 million.

The premiere is mostly propaganda, with cherry-picked footage making Earth look like a hellhole to justify the mining, followed by 40 minutes of crawlers dying. They do show a group of 10 crawlers who took down a Borough Boss, the first one defeated, and a 13-year-old girl named Lucia Mar who cleared mobs with two Rottweilers named Cici and Gustavo 3.

Carl and Donut get zero screen time despite killing the Hoarder, which Donut takes as a personal affront.

The announcement that follows patches several game rules: bathrooms can no longer be shared, you can’t kill mobs by pulling them into your inventory, and going down the stairs early puts you in stasis with no viewer access until the floor above collapses.

The staircases to Floor 2 are now open. With 3.5 days left and 75,000 staircases distributed randomly across a floor the size of Earth’s landmass, Carl realizes finding one is going to be extremely hard. They need to cover a lot of ground.

Chapter 15

Carl and Donut head into the goblin neighborhood to cover more ground. Carl uses his Goblin Pass tattoo to get through without a fight, but they run into a new mob type, slimes, which nearly dissolve Carl’s arm and right fingerless glove when he tries to punch one. They give slimes a wide berth from now on.

They spot another neighborhood boss lair: a massive goblin workshop filled with about 25 engineers, two Level 7 Goblin Shamankas, and six parked Murder Dozers. The boss is a heavily pierced Level 7 Goblin Shamanka named Rory, who has a pineapple-topped wooden staff and specializes in Anguish Magic.

Instead of fighting, Donut uses her 25 Charisma to charm Rory, literally sitting in her lap and purring until the goblin breaks down crying. Carl negotiates: they trade the two baggies of trailer-park-grade meth they looted from the Bad Llama for a Goblin Chopper Chopper, a steam-powered two-wheeler with a sidecar, plus some of the Bomb Bards’ grenade weapons and coal to run it.

Rory also explains that the goblins on Floor 1 know the floor collapses, but they just go to sleep and wake up on the next floor down. They keep going deeper, hoping the crawlers will eventually stop coming so they can finally live in peace.

Chapter 16

Carl gets the Goblin Chopper Chopper loaded up with coal and stuffed with as much dynamite, grenades, and goblin “funpowder” from the workshop as he can carry.

Then Donut reveals she’d told the goblins the meth came from the llamas in the next neighborhood over, which immediately triggers a full-scale meth war between the goblin Bomb Bards and the llamas. Four copper choppers and several Murder Dozers roll out screaming.

With the workshop now empty, Carl wants to loot everything and then go through the door at the back to fight the goblin chieftain for another boss box.

Chapter 17

Carl loads the workshop cart with black powder, nuts, bolts, and a Hobgoblin Detonator, a remotely triggered C4-like explosive. He tops it with shrapnel and shoves it into the boss room.

Donut opens the door, Carl kicks the cart in, and detonates it from a safe distance.
Just as Carl hits the trigger, Donut mentions there were also a lot of babies in there.

Chapter 18

The shockwave knocks them both over, but they’re unhurt. The workshop is obliterated, and the coal has ignited, blocking the boss chamber with a wall of fire. There will be no looting the boss room. Carl feels sick about the babies but can’t bring himself to open his achievement notifications. Both hit Level 8. They flee north before the other goblins return, with Donut cheerfully noting that she likes it when Carl blows stuff up.

Chapter 19

They find a new safe room, a dingy, DMV-style waiting area, where the crawler count is down to 3.5 million. The only amenity is one free experience cookie per crawler per day. Donut eats hers instantly and tries to steal Carl’s.

They open their loot. Carl gets a War Criminal achievement and a You Monster achievement for the babies, plus Asshole’s Boxes from both. His combat skills all hit Level 5, and he unlocks IED Skill Level 3, which increases improvised explosive damage by 10% per level. He also gets a new Demolitions Workshop menu, which is only accessible at a Sapper’s Table in a safe room store.

Donut gets her first piece of armor, an Enchanted Fae Scale Quadruped Crupper of the Fleet, a scale armor skirt covering her back half that grants +2 Dexterity, and a Desperado Pass tattoo on her back that she is absolutely furious about. She also gets a Tome of Minion Army that she can’t cast yet.

Carl gets a Constitution ring and a Skill Potion that gives him the Determine Value skill.
Carl tries to sleep but can’t stop thinking about the goblin babies, placed there on purpose, existing only to die. Donut curls up on his neck and purrs until he falls asleep.

Chapter 20

Carl wakes up to the show starting and immediately spots Frank Q’s blue dot on the minimap, in the women’s bathroom of their safe room. They confront him in the hall. Frank is Level 8, armed with a battle axe and throwing knives, and has three Crawler Killer skulls next to his name.

Frank explains he didn’t have a choice but to kill Rebecca W. She was the boss of a human trafficking operation he and his partner had been investigating for ICE. He’s now out of ammo. Carl doesn’t fully believe his story but trades him bloodstained women’s pants for information about the area.

Then Frank’s partner, Level 9 Maggie My, with five Crawler Killer skulls, ambushes them from behind. Carl slips a lit smoke bomb into a nearby rat’s inventory as a trap for when they loot it, and he and Donut run away.

Chapter 21

Carl and Donut ride the Goblin Chopper Chopper east for hours, seeing almost nothing. They stop once to fight off a group of Scat Thugs, bipedal, raccoon-headed monsters, and Carl’s kneepads skewer one on their spikes.

After hours of riding, they spot fresh graffiti on a wall: “Two crossroads east, three south. Stairs + People.” They follow it and find a stairwell to Floor 2 on their minimap, sitting at the center of a massive circular structure. A warning on the ground tells them not to go deeper into the spiral or they’ll activate the Borough Boss.

Before they can decide what to do, something enormous rushes past them through the inner hallway. It’s pink, fleshy, the size of the entire corridor, and rolling like a ball. Whatever it is, it’s very, very big.

Chapter 22

They follow the graffiti to a large encampment of about 38 people, mostly elderly residents from a care facility in Wenatchee, led by two brothers, Brandon and Chris Andrews, both Level 6. Brandon had evacuated 250 residents when the collapse hit, herding them into the dungeon entrance. Most didn’t make it. A homeless woman named Agatha was the first to voluntarily go down, cackling the whole way, and the staircase transformed into a ramp for her.

The group also includes Yolanda Martinez, a Level 5 CNA with a bow, and Imani C, a Level 10 crawler with 12 Crawler Killer skulls next to her name, the highest level they’ve seen so far. Carl notes that her kill count was likely a direct result of having to kill 12 of her former patients.

They’ve found the staircase but can’t get to it. A massive Borough Boss is circling the spiral maze between them and it, and the entry gate closes and traps anyone who goes in. Carl proposes teaming up to kill the boss and get everyone down the stairs. He’ll spend the remaining time grinding and leveling up. Imani speaks for the first time to ask how they’re going to do that. Carl grins and says he has an idea.

Chapter 23

Carl’s “idea” is not to tell the group his plan and instead cover up the signs pointing to the encampment to protect them from other crawlers, potentially including Frank and Maggie.

They spend the next couple of hours grinding through a new neighborhood, fighting Troglodyte Pygmies, fast, venomous, three-foot lizard creatures. Level 3s are called Bashers, and Level 4s are Virtuosos that can shoot their tongues like a whip to inflict poison, though Carl’s cloak cancels it. Donut’s Magic Missile is now Level 5, letting her choose how many mana points to put into each cast.

They find the Troglodyte neighborhood boss room, a glass-doored, 24-hour gym, and step inside.

Chapter 24

The boss is the Juicer, a Level 9 Neighborhood Boss, a troglodyte fused with a roided-out bodybuilder wielding flaming free weights. Carl uses his Confusing Fog scrolls to blind the room, takes out the Virtuosos while Donut peppers the boss with missiles, and beats the Juicer to death with a 250-pound barbell.

Just as the boss is about to finish Carl off, Donut launches herself onto its back and bites through a vein in its neck, killing it. But she takes a glancing blow that sends her flying into the wall and leaves her in a bloody heap with a broken leg and barely a sliver of health remaining.
Carl tries to use his Heal Critter scroll on her but gets an error: No Valid Target Available.

Apparently, it doesn’t work on crawlers. He can’t give her a healing potion either without risking poisoning her. He waits, watching her health bar crawl upward on its own.
Donut dramatically announces she is dying and asks Carl to tell Beatrice she fought bravely. Then she takes one of her own health potions and immediately perks up.

Chapter 25

They head back to the tutorial guild to debrief with Mordecai. He reviews the fight and gives Carl two key pieces of advice: have the party member with the highest Intelligence read scrolls to maximize their duration, and always look for a boss’s vulnerability because there are always clues.

Mordecai also warns that facing a Borough Boss with only six crawlers is madness, and suggests finding another set of stairs instead. He confirms he can’t tell them what the boss is ahead of time without it counting as cheating, but hints its weakness is similar to the llama and the Juicer, something about the throat.

They open their loot. Carl gets an Enchanted War Gauntlet of the Exalted Grull, a wrist bracer that transforms into a spiked orcish steel gauntlet when he makes a fist. It gives him +3 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +2 levels to Iron Punch, and a 2% stun chance. He also gets 100 Enchanted Shuriken of Bloodlust, throwing stars that deal 8% compounding damage against a specific monster type. Donut gets a bracelet adding +2 Dexterity and a dozen Heal scrolls rewarded for ending a boss battle with less than 5% health.

Mordecai also explains that there are no real gods in the dungeon, only entities that pay for the privilege of being worshipped. Carl files that away.

Chapter 26

With 6.5 hours left on the clock, Carl leads the group into the Borough Boss spiral. The boss is the Ball of Swine, a Level 15 Borough Boss: a massive rolling ball of compressed Tuskling aristocrats, flesh, sequined fabric, and tusks that crushes everything in its path.

Carl’s plan, which he’d spent hours practicing with Brandon and the others, is to build a portable modular fortress called the Speedbump out of goblin workshop tables, weight equipment, and barbell braces, wedging it between the floor and ceiling to trap the Ball of Swine. They also spike the wooden ramp with ninja shurikens to deal compounding damage each time the ball rolls over it. Agatha, the crazy lady who always walks with her shopping cart, sits in the middle of the structure, holding the center pole in place.

The plan pretty much works. The ball gets wedged, and they stab through the lattice ceiling into the Tusklings inside. When the ball pops, it releases dozens of dazed, weaponless Tuskling Knights into the now-open arena, and Carl, Donut, Brandon, Chris, and Imani slaughter them all while they’re disoriented.

The internal walls retract, revealing the staircase at the center surrounded by a forcefield. 

Chapter 27

Everyone survives relatively unscathed. Both Carl and Donut hit Level 10. The boss drops a Borough Field Guide, which populates the surrounding area on the minimap with mob types.
Agatha has already headed down the ramp on her own. Carl decides to help get Brandon’s group safely to Floor 2, carve them a path to the nearest safe room, and then continue on separately. Brandon agrees and thanks him.

Carl smokes his last cigarette, heads down the ramp with Donut, and they descend to Floor 2, where they find themselves in a massive, velvet-lined room on what appears to be a boat.
Before they can process anything, a door opens and a non-Earth human woman named Lexis introduces herself as an associate producer for Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette.

They’ve been selected for an on-air interview. Donut squeals with pleasure.

Chapter 28

Carl and Donut are prepped for their interview on Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette, the most popular private program in the galaxy.

The host, Odette, turns out to be a naked crab-taur wearing a bug mask. She has the lower body of a king crab, the upper body of a heavily surgically enhanced human woman, and a triangular bug head with football-sized compound eyes.

Donut immediately takes over, introducing herself to the audience, dropping her full title, and telling them GC stands for Grand Champion. Carl watches in horror as Donut completely steals the show, charming the entire alien audience while Carl just sits there covered in blood with no pants.

Odette reveals clips featuring Carl’s famous catchphrase “Goddamnit, Donut!” 

Donut ends the interview by promising the audience they’re going to kill everything they face, but with style. The crowd is still screaming as they’re ushered offstage.

Chapter 29

Once the audience disappears, Odette drops the act entirely, removing her bug mask helmet, fake boobs, and crab body to reveal she’s a legless human woman in a magical wheelchair who lost her legs  on Floor 11 during her own crawl. She reveals she was Mordecai’s trainer, which is how she found Carl and Donut.

She gives them several key pieces of advice: don’t call the Kua-Tin “Borant” on camera; Donut should not change her race on Floor 3 because they want to keep their audience happy; and, most importantly, Mordecai is on his last crawl and won’t be freed from his indentureship contract unless one of his crawlers makes it to at least Floor 4.

Carl is annoyed and believes Odette’s motivation is straightforward: the longer they stay alive, the more money she makes.

Chapter 30

Carl and Donut finally arrive on Floor 2. The stairwell to Floor 3 is already visible on the minimap in the northeast corner. Floor 2 looks similar to Floor 1 but with cinderblock walls and white lichen.

They immediately find a corpse, a Level 2 Brindle Grub killed by Agatha, confirming she made it down ahead of them. The new dominant mob on Floor 2 is the Brindle Grub, large fat worms that replace rats as the janitor class. They also run into Level 5 Danger Dingoes, giant mastiff-sized dogs with heavy metal corpse paint and kobold riders, before finding a safe room and opening their loot.

Carl gets a Cheat Code Potion with a 17-minute timer that permanently increases a random combat skill by 3. He drinks it immediately, and his Pugilism hits Level 10. He also gets an Enchanted Pedicure Kit of the Sylph, which gives +15% barefoot damage, +3 Smush, unbreakable feet, and a five-second warning before triggering traps.

Donut gets a spell book from her boss box, Second Chance, a necromancy spell that raises a dead monster to fight for her for one minute per spell level. Donut is immediately obsessed with the idea of raising zombie dingoes.

Chapter 31

The Floor 1 collapse happens as the episode premieres.

Brandon’s group made it down, though  24 of the original residents elected to stay behind and die on their own terms as the floor collapsed. Chris speaks for only the second time so far to note that Agatha was edited out of the Borough Boss fight footage, which is very strange. 

The dungeon announces the new patronage system: crawlers are now limited to three patrons, spots go to auction at the start of each floor, and the better your social numbers, the better your loot. It also warns that any crawler caught urinating outside a bathroom will have a Rage Elemental from Floor 13 summoned to kill them and their entire party.

Carl convinces Brandon to head to Floor 3 early while he scouts ahead and clears the path. Brandon agrees. Carl promises to find them a safe route.

Chapter 32

Their follower count has exploded to hundreds of millions after Odette’s show airs. Carl tries not to think about it.

The dominant mob in this quadrant is the Clurichaun, a troll-like fairy cousin of the leprechaun armed with a slingshot. As a fairy-class mob, it deals 20% more damage to Carl because of his Goblin Pass. Clurichauns also inflict the Taint debuff, which prevents any healing while active. Carl gets hit with it once, and it scares him.

The Clurichauns are running a moonshine pyramid scheme called Rev-Up, and they’re hoarding jugs of the stuff. Carl figures out that the 180-proof, highly flammable moonshine makes perfect Molotov cocktails. He mixes a jug with goblin oil and a torch to create what the game names Carl’s Jug O’ Boom, an incendiary device that burns for 15 seconds per level of his Incendiary Device Handling skill. They make ten of them.

Donut uses Second Chance to raise dead Clurichauns as zombies while Carl practices with a slingshot. The zombie minions now last three minutes.

They reach the boss room, a large workshop filled with a higher tier of the pyramid scheme hierarchy called Laminak Rev-Up Consultant Elites, who are immune to most health-seeping attacks. The room also has two small fat fairies guarding a doorway, but Carl thinks up a plan.

Chapter 33

The plan: Donut uses Puddle Jumper to teleport near and charm the two fairy guards, then uses Pied Piper to lead the entire mob of Clurichauns into the hallway, where Carl firebombs them with the Jugs O’ Boom. It mostly works. Carl torches 40 monsters at once, but one fairy escapes to the ceiling and starts shooting magic missiles at him. He takes serious damage before Donut leaps up and snaps her neck.

Carl decides to skip the boss room for now, as the Taint debuff makes a direct fight too risky without immunity. Instead, Carl discovers bicycle-powered blenders in the filling room and a Rev-Up Immunity Smoothie Recipe that would grant Taint immunity.

Before he can finish making the immunity smoothies, the boss room door blasts open, and pink tentacles, at least 15 feet long and covered in screaming, human-mouthed faces, reach into the room.

Chapter 34

The boss is a Krakaren Clone, a Level 10 Neighborhood Boss.

Carl manages to blend a Rev-Up Immunity Smoothie mid-fight using the bicycle blender and a dead laminak fairy corpse. It tastes like drinking from a diseased skunk but grants immunity to the Taint and all communicable diseases, though it also inflicts the Buzzed debuff, leaving both Carl and Donut drunk mid-combat.

The fight gets increasingly desperate as more tentacles break through the walls and more clurichauns flood in. Carl sends a zombie clurichaun holding a lit jug of moonshine and a stick of dynamite shoved down his overalls into the boss chamber, then shelters behind the metal alchemy table pulled from his inventory and wraps himself around Donut as the explosion goes off.

Chapter 35

Carl survives, barely. His health was at 6% and still dropping when Donut dragged him out by his cloak and used a healing scroll on him.

They loot the boss room. The Krakaren was a massive, immobile octopus creature. Carl grabs the neighborhood map, and they head to the tutorial guild to find Mordecai, who has now shapeshifted on the second floor into a Bugaboo, a seven-foot hairless creature with owlish eyes and comically skinny legs.

Carl’s IED and explosives skills hit Level 7 from creating the Jug O’ Boom, earning him a Dungeonpreneur achievement and a gold coin every time another crawler kills something with his invention. From the boss box he gets Enchanted BigBoi Boxers, self-sizing underwear with +2 Constitution and a Protective Shell spell that creates a 4.5 meter radius physical shield for 20 seconds every 30 hours. 

Then a Kua-Tin appears in the room.

Chapter 36

The Kua-Tin is named Zev. She is a Borant Corporation Dungeon Admin who has been assigned as Carl and Donut’s PR agent because of their exploding popularity. She informs them they’re now locked into Odette’s show for one interview per floor, plus additional appearances she’ll arrange. Carl pushes back hard, telling her they’re not willing participants and won’t perform on a schedule. Zev drops her corporate act and admits she’s just as much a pawn as they are. She’s terrified of her own government and wants them to survive because the better they do, the better she does.

Mordecai pulls Carl aside to inform him that Borant is being forced by an ultra-nationalist political party called the Bloom to end the game as quickly as possible. The kua-tin government is bankrupt and needs the money fast. This means the dungeon is being deliberately accelerated and made more dangerous. So Carl should try to be careful not to upset the Bloom.

Zev leaves, and the door opens to dump a waist-high pile of grubs into the room.

Chapter 37

The grubs are being spawned because so many mobs have been killed. Every one destroyed spawns up to 15 more grubs, and they’ve already hit the 5,000-per-quadrant cap, meaning 75,000 grubs are now converging on the entire neighborhood. Carl radios Brandon to get moving toward the stairs immediately.

Brandon’s group arrives pulling a 300-foot chain of wheelchair-and-board train cars they built using Tuskling courtesans’ chain, goblin tools, and wheelchair wheels. Thirty-nine residents ride in linked cars pulled by Imani and Chris.

They firebomb a path through the grub infestation and escort the train toward the stairs. Mid-escort Zev messages Carl through his interface, complimenting the elderly rescue storyline and telling him it’s playing great with viewers, right as one of the elderly residents named Jack stands up from his wheelchair, drops his pants, and starts urinating directly on the wall.

Chapter 38

Jack urinating on the wall summons a Level 93 Rage Elemental. It is nearly indestructible and will dissipate only after claiming 666 souls. It materializes in black and purple smoke with six legs, obsidian claws, a badger skull, and burning red eyes.

Donut activates Confusing Fog while Yolanda shoots at it, but her arrows do nothing. The elemental shreds through the fog and kills Yolanda and Randall instantly before Carl can react. He smashes down Protective Shell just in time, the force field bouncing the elemental back and holding long enough for everyone to try to get into the safe room.

The elemental uses an ability to reverse gravity  mid-escape, sending the last train car flying into the ceiling and slamming Mrs. McGibbons upside down into the hallway roof. Carl catches her,  gets everyone through the safe-room door, and throws a boom jug at the elemental before diving in himself, missing its claws by millimeters.

The door holds and the elemental screams and batters against it outside.

Chapter 39

Carl and Donut receive two achievements from the Rage Elemental fight: one for surviving a Reverse Gravity spell and a Platinum Lucky Bastard Box containing scratch tickets. Carl’s ticket is Fireball or Custard. Each scratch has a 50/50 chance of casting either a Level 15 fireball or dropping a strawberry custard on the nearest red dot.

A dungeon announcement adds a new rule: safe rooms will now close one hour before floor collapse, teleporting anyone inside to just outside the area.

Carl notices the Rage Elemental finally followed the grubs around the corner and disappeared, but the grubs it consumed have entered their pupa stage near the stairs, with a 10-hour counter ticking down. He remembers what Rory the shamanka told him: grubs level up by eating corpses.

Carl tells Donut the plan has changed. They can’t wait for his Protective Shell cooldown. He starts pulling free weights and tables out of his inventory. 

Chapter 40

Carl’s plan is the MOAB, a bomb launcher built from chopper parts that they can use to fire different types of explosives down the hallway. They use it to carpet bomb a path to the stairwell, using boom jugs, shredder bombs filled with gunpowder and shrapnel, and Imani’s unbreakable magical chain to tangle the elemental’s legs.

The run is chaotic. Grubs are everywhere, including newly hatched Cow-Tailed Brindle Grubs. They make it to the stairwell, remembering that Rory, the goblin shamanka, had told them that descending early kills NPCs.

With two seconds before the elemental hits them, Carl drops an oh-shit baby bomb into the stairwell hole. Donut casts Puddle Jumper to teleport them as the elemental falls inside the stairwell, killing it.

Carl immediately radios Brandon: the path is clear. Get everyone to the stairs now.

Chapter 41

Brandon’s group makes it to the stairs. Carl says goodbye to Mrs. McGibbons, Brandon, Chris, and Imani. It’s a hard farewell. Mrs. McGibbons thinks she’s still with Barry.
Carl and Donut head into the kobold quadrant, killing dingo-riding kobolds and clearing toward a safe room that turns out to be an industrial kitchen with a working freezer and some free mana toast!

Carl receives  a Gold Sapper’s Box containing a Sapper’s Table and ten Proximity Triggers, trap-building items that can be attached to any non-static trap with customizable activation conditions. 

Before they can rest, a new Admin named Mukta teleports them to a cramped rental trailer for a scheduled interview on a show called Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem, hosted by the Maestro.

Chapter 42

The Maestro is a massive, muscular orc who runs a cruel survival game show for a crowd of screaming pre-teen boys. The audience chants “Glurp, glurp!” at everything.

The other guests are Li Jun and Zhang, two warehouse workers from the same group as Rebecca W, who the Maestro has pulled from a deadly situation using a Time Freeze spell. The Maestro plays a game where the audience guesses if crawlers survive video clips, earning teleport points to save themselves or companions.

Carl immediately tries to leave. Admin Mukta forces him back into his seat under threat of acceleration.

The Maestro reveals Carl and Donut as surprise VIP guests, mocks them for getting no experience from helping the elderly group, then threatens to transfer Carl alone into Li Jun and Zhang’s deadly fight. Carl calls his bluff, pointing out the show runs on a shoestring budget and can’t afford to send their highest-value guests into danger. He’s right. The Maestro backs down and decides to send Li Jun and Zhang back instead.

Carl quickly gives them some advice to help them  make it out alive. 

Chapter 43

The Maestro reveals the two other mystery VIP guests as Frank Q and Maggie My. The video recap reveals Frank’s entire backstory was a lie. They were never ICE agents. They were part of Rebecca W’s trafficking operation, working with her until they turned on the group and shot everyone. Their daughter, Yvette, never participated in the killings, but when the dynamite Carl left in the rat’s inventory as a trap goes off, it injures Yvette, and her mom, Maggie, is shown killing her.

Carl confronts Maggie directly about killing her own daughter for experience points. Maggie lunges at him with a glowing dagger, which passes harmlessly through him since they aren’t really in the same room.

As parting gifts, the Maestro gives Carl a box containing Bates zip-up tactical boots with socks, a deliberate troll since Carl’s barefoot skills would be useless if he wore them. Carl smiles and thanks him sincerely, to the Maestro’s frustration. Maggie My receives a Legendary Skill Potion that upgrades their Find Crawler skill to Level 15, meaning they can now locate Carl and Donut wherever they go. 

Chapter 44

Back in the safe room, Zev returns, she’d been suspended by the system AI for warning Carl about the rage elemental, but her record was cleared when it was confirmed Carl had spotted Jack urinating at the same time.  She warns Carl she has to be extra careful from now on.

Zev gives them a debrief. The Maestro is a prince of the Skull Empire, one of the largest Syndicate governments, and his show is owned by his older brother Crown Prince Stalwart. Borant is not allowed to discriminate against Syndicate production companies so they had no choice but to allow the interview.

Zev also tells them that someone has created a high-quality explicit fan-fiction video featuring Carl and the Maestro, and it has gone massively viral. This both pisses off the Skull Empire and increases Carl’s appearance fee. Zev advises Carl to focus on leveling up, pick a normal race, take a boss or two, and not do anything weird during race selection on Floor 3.

Chapter 45

Carl and Donut follow heavy metal music to the kobold boss chamber, a giant kennel filled with caged Danger Dingoes whose dots are still red on the minimap. Carl remembers Mordecai’s advice and stops. He feeds all 14 dingoes biscuits from Donut’s inventory until their dots turn white.

The doors open before he’s ready. He throws his boom jug anyway, vaporizing most of the 40 kobolds. The boss is Ralph, a Level 11 Frenzied Gerbil. The intro explains that gerbils were the real culprit behind the Black Death, and Ralph wants to finish the job. Donut hits him twice, and a surviving kobold opens all the cages, but the now-friendly dingoes tear the kobolds apart.

The stunned gerbil boss, Ralph, is finally finished when Carl reluctantly crushes him under his bare foot, paying what Donut calls the “Daddy tax.”

Chapter 46

The dungeon groans after Ralph dies. The thirteen dingoes scatter into the hallways and wipe out the newly-spawned brindle grubs on their way through. Carl loots the kobolds and receives a Master Pen Key, which opens a cage of their choice in the pet reward room. 

There are 10 cages: a loud parrot called a Juvenile Riven Wing, a green slime, a rat, a meatball with a mohawk called a Tummy Acher, a white-dotted Brindle Grub, and others. Donut chooses the last cage, which is labeled as a Mongoliensis, a tiny chicken-dinosaur thing with pink feathers, a serpentine tail, and a mouth full of sharp teeth. Donut immediately names it Mongo.

Chapter 47

Mordecai explains the bonding rules: Mongo’s dot has to turn white before they can bring him to Floor 3, or he will teleport away the moment they descend. Pet-class mobs start at Level 1 and stay there until bonded. The trick they figure out is that Mongo is a pack hunter. He needs to be taught to kill alongside them, not by himself. They find lone Brindle Grubs and let him hunt with Donut, whom he eventually bonds with. Donut then changes his title to Royal Steed.

Mordecai briefs them on Floor 3, where they’ll be able to select a race, class, and stat distribution.

With six hours left, Carl opens his inventory history tab for the first time and finds three items he doesn’t recognize having ever picked up: a Trans Tunnel 7C Orator Relay, a Valtay Perso-Shield Platinum Edition, and a Mag 3040 Valtay Corp Pulse Pistol. All Valtay Corporation tech. All flagged illegal by the system AI. He realizes these must have been in Agatha’s cart during the Ball of Swine boss fight when he briefly added the entire thing to his inventory.

Then Donut spots Agatha. Still alive, still level four, still pushing her squeaking shopping cart. She shuffles in, calls Carl a cart thief,  and heads down the stairs.

Epilogue

The post-floor taping with Odette goes well, with Mongo chasing Donut around the studio, biting off Lexis’s bow tie, and generally being a terror. Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem announces it’s going on hiatus. King Rust of the Skull Empire has reportedly requested that people stop calling the Maestro Carl’s Naughty Little Piggie.

We learn something happened between Odette and Mordecai back when she was his trainer. She pushed him too hard, and he paid for it. Now she wants a chance to explain herself to him. She also tells Carl and Donut about a Poké Ball equivalent that will let them store Mongo in their inventory.

Carl asks about the Valtay Corporation. Odette tells him they’re a parasitic corporate lifeform. Carl thinks of Agatha and says nothing.

Then Odette tells him Mongo is a velociraptor. 

Her last piece of advice is that there’s something hidden in Donut’s class choices, only available to high-charisma crawlers, that will greatly increase their survival odds. She doesn’t know if it’s morally right to take it. But if they do, it’s going to make someone very angry.

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