Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 7 Summary

This Inevitable Ruin Summary

Book 7 · By Matt Dinniman · Read · Watch

Faction Wars has arrived. On the ninth floor, Carl and Donut must lead their allies against the outside powers that have long treated the crawl as entertainment. Thousands of former crawlers are returning to the dungeon, bringing hard-won experience and histories that Carl has previously known only through the Cookbook.

At the center of the conflict is Larracos, a city full of inhabitants with lives of their own. Protecting those people while preparing for battle makes survival a responsibility far beyond Carl and Donut’s party. This Inevitable Ruin expands the crawl into a war of armies, alliances, and competing plans, with the dungeon’s unpredictable AI still holding power over everyone inside.

Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 7 Video Summary

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Prologue

The book flashes back to Carl’s Christmas-morning visit to the shelter, filling in the conversation interrupted in book six. Goff, the Residual speaking through Paulie, tells Carl that the crawl harvests rare elements carried by a planet’s living things. He says those elements should feed the planet’s own Primal engine when its inhabitants die. Instead, the Syndicate installs an immature AI, deprives it of what it needs, and uses the crawl to collect those resources for the civilization at the center.

At Goff’s request, Carl drinks coffee containing a neural enhancement. This connects him to the system’s failsafe, giving him a way to take part in a coordinated sequence that Goff says could destroy the solar system. Carl would die with everyone else.

Paulie then offers his own advice, shaped by his experiences living as a human. He urges Carl to hold on to compassion and keep the failsafe as a last resort, warning that a rival faction wants to destroy far more than one solar system. Carl is then transported back to Orren’s office.

Porthus Interlude

In a flashback long before Carl’s crawl, Porthus, the Cookbook’s second author, reaches the eleventh floor alone. His companion Menerva told him to run, and he’s haunted by leaving her behind, afraid he could have saved her.

Porthus can’t bring himself to go farther into the dungeon, so he agrees to spend a hundred seasons working as a game guide in exchange for getting out. He hopes the Cookbook will reach someone who can continue the fight.

Porthus eventually survives his indentureship, but by the time of Carl’s crawl, Syndicate Security lists him as missing and wanted.

Chapter 1

Carl, Donut, and Imani arrive in Larracos on the ninth floor with just over thirty-two thousand crawlers remaining. They have sixty hours before the ceasefire ends. Eight enemy factions have joined together as the Bloc and declared war on both the Princess Posse and Team Retribution, the NPC army led by Juice Box and Ferdinand. Donut accepts the NPCs’ offer of a truce.

Carl has developed Soul Poisoning from carrying a full reserve of souls in his Scavenger’s Daughter patch between floors. He uses Daughter’s Kiss on a dead shark to discharge the patch in a blast, while the eye tattoo Shi Maria left on him remains unresponsive.

Cascadia explains that a team loses if its warlord dies or an enemy holds its headquarters for six hours. Once only four teams remain, Larracos’s throne room will unlock, and holding it long enough will decide the war. The stairwells stay closed until the war ends or the floor is close to collapse.

Donut chooses the Deathbed Hellcat class, gaining greater spell range and ways to hide herself. Their adjutant, Baroness Victory, urges them to start recruiting, since the enemy factions can force unaffiliated crawlers into their armies.

Chapter 2

In the saferoom, Donut complains about her new camouflage outfit, a ghillie suit. Their manager Mordecai is human this floor, complete with a Canadian accent. His upgraded alchemy table lets him examine potion ingredients and recipes, and he prepares to heal Mongo’s missing wing while Carl reviews their delayed rewards.

Carl’s Who Killed My Son quest also updates. On the previous floor, the demon prince Amayon offered to name the killer of Emberus’s son, Geyrun, if Emberus helped kill Amayon’s three brothers. He still hasn’t given Carl the name.

Emberus won’t simply break the gods’ truce to carry out the deal. Carl now has to visit Isitma’s temple in Club Vanquisher and get the High Cleric of the Watch’s permission for Emberus to attack the brothers. The quest also requires Carl to obtain Apito’s entire soul crystal.

Chapter 3

Donut opens her reward boxes and gets construction scrolls and several new spellbooks. Mordecai stops her from reading them all right away. Quan’s celestial cloak will upgrade four randomly selected spells from the ones Donut knows when she first puts it on, so they need to plan which spells will be in that pool.

Her sponsor sends the Tiara of a Thousand Lights and a charging pillow that transfers enchantments from other hats into it. Donut can collect their buffs in one piece of headgear, although each original hat loses the magic it gives up. Carl receives a separate pillow from the Apothecary. His transfers compatible item enchantments into absorption crystals that can be used in a ring.

Carl gives Mongo the rare healing potion, restoring his burned body and missing wing. Mordecai then helps Donut equip the Cloak of the Benevolent Champion. Over sixty-six hours, it will raise her lowest base stat, Constitution, toward the highest one recorded when she first wears it. He gives her a potion to boost her already high Charisma before she puts it on, setting a much higher target for her Constitution.

The cloak raises Bad Attitude to level fifteen immediately. Wall of Fire, Heal Critter, and Puddle Jumper are the other three spells selected, and will reach level fifteen over the next sixty-six hours.

Chapter 4

Carl opens his own reward boxes, receiving crafting supplies and a merchant patch that grants access to the Midnight Market. He also gets the Enchanted Toe Ring of the Well-Balanced, which helps him keep his footing, protects him from mental control, and can automatically administer a stored potion. Carl loads a healing potion and sets it to trigger if his health falls to two percent.

As soon as he equips the ring, a message says its Mind Balance protection has already activated. Something has tried to influence him, but he doesn’t know what it was.

After Mordecai examines Carl’s new celestial potion, Carl drinks it and gains Gloom Wraith Phase. This lets him rush through enemies and solid objects in a ghostlike state, damaging living creatures he passes through. Mordecai insists that he practice, since becoming solid again inside an object could kill him.

Donut wants Carl to restore his hair before they begin recruiting, and he still needs to bring out Garret, the pet Ren entrusted to him.

Dante Interlude

During their indentureship in an earlier season, former crawlers Dante and Justice Light are reassigned as castle guards. Justice protests that he signed a contract for noncombat work, but Dante explains that the dungeon can use their classification as NPCs to make them fight new crawlers anyway.

Both men are former Cookbook authors still carrying the guilt of their own crawls. Justice says he will refuse to fight crawlers. Dante has fourteen seasons left before freedom, but the record at the end of the interlude reveals that he never makes it out: he is killed for refusing orders during the castle assignment.

Chapter 5

Carl brings out Garret, the Tummy Acher Ren left him. When this creature dies, it can regenerate stronger, but its level and memories reset. Garret is now small again, and Carl has to feed him and form a new bond. Louis suggests renaming him Sir Rendlegore, or Rend, in honor of Ren. Donut worries that Carl is replacing Mongo, but Carl intends to keep his promise to care for Ren’s pet.

Katia tries to restore Carl’s hair, but the treatment calls for an offensive water spell that won’t work inside the saferoom. The botched treatment leaves him with an enormous mane that keeps growing back after it’s cut.

Donut gives Florin, Elle, and Imani senior command roles in the Princess Posse, while Louis becomes Army Air General. Other members receive authority to recruit, and the guild installs a Doggie Door connection to headquarters so they can start moving people there.

Chapter 6

Louis gets the guild’s new elevator ready to take everyone into his aircraft hangar. While he works the controls, Carl notices Christmas tinsel still on the guild-room floor. It gets him thinking about the blurred line between the dungeon’s manufactured worlds and the real people suffering inside them. He remembers his Christmas-morning encounter at the shelter and keeps what he learned about the failsafe to himself.

Inside the hangar, Louis shows the group his celestial reward, the Party Planner, a stealth bomber that strengthens the bombs it drops and can carry Carl’s custom explosives. They can board through the guild, but the plane still has to emerge wherever Louis last parked it. The portal won’t let him fly out anywhere he wants, and destroying its entrance could leave the bomber stranded until it’s repaired. Florin warns that their enemies will have weapons designed to bring down this kind of aircraft.

Chapter 7

Carl, Donut, Louis, and Britney head through the College of Magic to recruit. Donut argues with Zev about embarrassing licensed merchandise, while Carl notices the ordinary homes and residents who will have to live through the war.

They meet Arief, a Semeru dwarf who commands Larracos’s infantry. His people’s history describes their search beneath the earth for the gods’ lost city, which brought them to the roots of the All Tree.

Arief worshipped Ysalte, the goddess killed on the eighth floor. Her death has left him with lower stats, increased vulnerability to other gods, and no way to choose another deity. Donut worries he’ll connect Carl’s group to what happened, but Arief welcomes them as allies. He invites them to a strategy meeting with Juice Box, who also wants to discuss marrying Louis.

Chapter 8

Arief leads the group down through Larracos toward its flooded castle. The city is still recovering from the flood Carl unleashed in book four, when he opened a portal from the fifth-floor ocean into the central market to cut off supplies to the enemy armies. Workers are still draining streets and repairing defenses.

Along the way, Arief explains that some NPCs remember earlier seasons, and that many of them won’t return if they’re killed. His brother was captured and tortured by Architect Houston after an attempt at sabotage. Juice Box eventually infiltrated Houston’s base and ended his suffering.

Carl also considers the naga royalty leading the Blood Sultanate. Their role in Faction Wars reenacts an old, brutal struggle for succession, but the sultana is a royal daughter with political influence outside the dungeon as well. He can’t dismiss her power as part of the show.

Juice Box greets them in the form of a gnoll, revealing herself by kissing Louis.

Chapter 9

Juice Box is exhausted. Huanxin Jinx promised the NPCs protection and the ability to regenerate, but they can still be killed. Juice Box also lacks a normal warlord interface and can’t directly control Larracos’s defenses. She has to work through her adjutant, Drick, a Valtay worm who often ignores her. She says he can control some of her people.

Juice Box wants to move vulnerable residents outside the city to Shanty Town, but her fellow NPC warlord Ferdinand has stolen their food shipments. Being on the same team hasn’t stopped him from causing problems.

Louis admits that Juice Box also sees their marriage as a way to strengthen the alliance, creating a family tie between the leaders of the two armies. Britney urges Louis to take both the relationship and that responsibility seriously. Louis agrees to marry Juice Box.

Chapter 10

The Desperado Club’s new owner is Hamed, the Night Wyrm who hired Carl and Katia to murder his wife, Astrid. He has barred crawlers from entering, and Carl is wary of another encounter with him.

Ferdinand arrives wearing Drick as a hat. Carl offers Quan’s enchanted bowler as a replacement and asks to become mayor of Shanty Town, giving him authority over the settlement Juice Box needs for her people. While Britney distracts Ferdinand with a mirror so he can admire himself, they secure his agreement and rename the alliance The Good Guys.

Louis and Juice Box marry in a small ceremony, exchanging private vows while she wears her own form. Mordecai explains that the marriage is legal now, but its public Confirmation comes a month later. Until then, the couple can annul it without penalty.

Recruitment notices begin flooding in, and Florin calls Carl to headquarters.

Tipid Interlude

In another flashback, former crawler Tipid has reached the end of his indentureship, but brain damage leaves him confusing his release interview with the day he abandoned his partner Horatio in the dungeon. Only one of them could use the exit key, and Tipid chose himself.

The attorney recommends treatment Tipid can’t afford from the Viceroys, whose members he remembers torturing crawlers in the dungeon. A support organization represented by Dr. Hu might help him get care.

Tipid eventually spends his pension and takes on debt for treatment. The fourth Cookbook author returns to work for a waste-management company and, in the present crawl, becomes a colonel in the Princess Posse.

Chapter 11

Carl finds Rosetta and Tipid, two former Cookbook authors, waiting at the saferoom connection. The people whose entries helped keep him alive are now greeting him with affection. Rosetta recognizes the danger in Shi Maria’s eye tattoo and asks for materials and access to Carl’s crafting equipment so she can work on a treatment.

Tipid explains that Porthus, also known as Dr. Hu, started the Crawler Project to help people after their contracts ended. Its work grew into the network sponsoring Carl and a campaign to end the crawl itself. When the authorities pursued its members, they put their resources into returning to the dungeon.

Fifty thousand former crawlers have joined the Princess Posse. They bring experience and some surviving skills, but they’ve been reset to level sixty and given a basic equipment package. Each enemy faction has received roughly twenty thousand additional soldiers who get to keep their old gear. Carl finally has an army, but the enemy still has a huge advantage in weapons and equipment.

Chapter 12

Returning crawlers embrace Carl as they turn the Princess Posse’s wooden headquarters into a fortress. He is overwhelmed by their support, knowing these people escaped the dungeon once and may now die after coming back to fight beside him.

Florin uses his giant caiman to move part of a wall into place. The guild expands beneath the stronghold, with workshops and aircraft docks planned, but it won’t provide unlimited shelter. The veterans can only stay in saferooms for a limited time before they have to go back outside.

As Carl helps force open the fortress door, Mongo rushes forward to find Tina, the young allosaurus, waiting inside.

Chapter 13

Tina calls Mongo her father despite Donut’s objections. Kiwi is also there, heavily pregnant and back in her original bear form since the Butcher’s Masquerade. Mongo is delighted and confused by the reunion.

The headquarters is named the Fortress of Unyielding Power and Authority, or FUPA. As work continues, an ogre guard named Arson begins trembling and apologizing, trying to resist an order he’s been given. Carl realizes that Arson is covered in explosives.

Victory kills the ogre before he can detonate, and Carl stores the body and bombs. She identifies the attack as an unlawful assassination attempt by Sensation Entertainment, now owned by the Dream. When the AI tries to excuse it, Victory challenges that interpretation and forces an apology. Someone has already tried to kill them while the ceasefire is still in effect.

Chapter 14

Carl clears some of the windows crowding his command interface and discovers messages showing that Shi Maria has repeatedly tried to activate Gloom Wraith Phase and disable his toe ring’s protection. Mind Balance has been stopping her, and the repeated attempts have raised the skill to level nine. Rosetta is working on a treatment, but for now the ring is what keeps Shi Maria from using Carl’s abilities without his permission.

Victory explains that the ceasefire will be followed by a 180-hour period called the Ramp-Up. Offensive magic and movement abilities, including teleportation and Carl’s phasing skill, will be suppressed. Ordinary guns, artillery, and stationary traps can still work, favoring the well-equipped enemy armies over Carl’s magic-dependent forces.

With about two hundred thousand enemies gathering at their borders, the officers plan trenches and minefields to hold them back. Bonnie arrives to lead the work on Louis’s aircraft. Carl tries to shield her from the thought of killing people, but she reminds him that the outsiders keep trying to kill her.

Chapter 15

Carl and Donut train in the forest with Chris, Jamal, and several veterans. Jamal keeps breaking his new mechanical legs when he tries to jump. He misses being able to swim and fly, and Carl keeps repairing the prototype so they can work out what it can handle.

The group attacks a Rolling Battle Formation, a mass of skunks moving together as a ball. Explosives break it apart, and Rend feeds on the separated enemies. Killing the wizard controlling the skunks releases their spray all at once, leaving most of the group vomiting.

Carl discovers that phasing through the spray doesn’t stop him from smelling it. Donut escapes into a tree and throws up, while Jamal’s lost sense of smell spares him from the nausea. Everyone survives, and they collect samples for Mordecai.

Everly Interlude

In a flashback to her own crawl, Everly, the Cookbook’s fifth author, trusts a sponsor’s compass to guide her through a tower instead of cooperating with the other crawlers. When she uses its final charge, an advertisement reveals that the tower was a trap designed to make the compass fail in public and promote a competing product.

Trapped in the collapsing labyrinth with two mercenaries, Everly remembers her mother’s phrase for accepting defeat: the inevitable ruin. The mercenaries keep helping her, even as she gives up. She finally sees them as people and realizes she might have survived if she had trusted others.

Her companions remain beside her as the sand closes in, and Everly dies on the eighth floor.

Chapter 16

Mordecai and Rosetta prepare two treatments using modified Glory Bound, the drug Katia is addicted to. Katia’s dose is meant to take her back through the memory behind her addiction. Carl’s includes another ingredient intended to trap Shi Maria in her own worst memory and remove her from him.

They undergo the treatments outside the saferoom, where the others will have to monitor and protect them. Carl removes the toe ring that has been blocking Shi Maria, with the plan to put it back on afterward.

Katia says her best and worst memory are the same. As the drugs take effect, she wraps her vine-like hand around Carl’s arm despite warnings to keep them apart. Carl begins sensing the emotions of people nearby and glimpsing Katia’s fear and shame. An invitation to peace talks from the Lemig faction appears in his interface as he slips under.

Chapter 17

Carl wakes covered in blood in the Lemig castle, surrounded by dead goblins. His soul reserve is full again, and the quest to release Shi Maria has failed. Commander Stockade accuses him of breaking the ceasefire.

As the adjutants argue over responsibility, Carl learns that the enemy watched his treatment and tried to summon the presence being expelled from him into a trap. He has woken up in the aftermath without knowing exactly how the massacre happened.

Carl remembers fragments of Katia’s experience, including a baby named Annie with cancer and a second spider, Shi Maria’s husband Hapanzi. Katia is awake back at the hospital and believes they shut both spiders inside the memory. Carl thinks Shi Maria is still trapped within him. His third eye briefly opens onto overwhelming power, and he quickly closes it again.

Chapter 18

At the hearing over the massacre, the adjutants replay Stockade’s peace invitation and Summon Ally spell. The summons needs the target’s consent, so Stockade timed it for Carl’s sedation, when Shi Maria could accept through his interface.

Mordecai explains that summoning an unconscious person normally produces a ghostlike image, preventing someone from simply abducting them. Carl’s interrupted treatment left him present in both places, and Stockade planned to spring the trap once Carl fully appeared in the castle.

The replay also exposes Katia’s private memories. Her partner Fannar admits that he cheated on her, and Katia later sits beside baby Annie in a hospital. Carl asks the adjutants to stop showing her pain to everyone, but they ignore him.

While the hearing drags on, Prepotente warns that enemy troops and artillery are moving into position. The Princess Posse’s defenses aren’t ready, so Carl tells Louis to prepare the Party Planner.

Chapter 19

The replay shows how Mordecai disrupted Stockade’s trap. He deliberately gave Carl a dangerous wake-up potion called Shock Wake, making him fully appear in the castle before Stockade was ready. Shi Maria broke loose and slaughtered the goblins. Hapanzi then helped Carl close a door in the shared dream, pulling Shi Maria back inside him. Stockade is still suffering from her Insanity spell.

The enemy had watched Carl’s treatment through outside observers who could see events ahead of the delayed broadcasts available to crawlers. Carl coordinates with Juice Box and Ferdinand, who gets an emergency rule passed giving everyone in the dungeon the live feed. The change removes that advantage.

The Lemig faction is penalized for the attack, but before the hearing ends, Stockade fatally injures himself. The system treats his death as a voluntary defeat and transfers the faction’s assets to its ally, the Madness. A voluntary withdrawal also triggers an early start to the war. More than twenty-three hours disappear from the ceasefire, and Carl is sent back to headquarters just as the first barrage hits its unfinished defenses.

Christmas Morning Interlude

The story flashes back to Christmas morning, before Carl entered the ninth floor, to reveal what he did after leaving the shelter. He asks Orren to let him revisit Lightning Lou’s gas station memory. There, Carl opens the Containment Interface, which controls the equipment used to install and contain the AI inside the Primal engine.

The failsafe offers an option to override its requirements and activate it. Carl considers whether he could use it, or threaten to, but thinks of Donut and everyone else he would kill.

Instead, he chooses Disconnect Containment. Its warning says this will make the failsafe unusable and remove most of the system’s controls. Carl believes it offers a way to hurt the Syndicate without deliberately killing everyone.

The interface clears to a map, and the red dot around Earth begins growing. Carl has already disconnected the AI’s containment before Faction Wars begins.

Chapter 20

The first bombardment catches the Princess Posse with its defenses still unfinished. Soldiers shelter where they can while others use wind spells and even paper fans to disperse the incoming gas. Justice Light has fixed their throne in place, and the map now shows every team’s throne, giving the armies clear targets to fight toward.

Donut assigns Carl a personal guard that includes Bomo and the Sledge. Staying near the person they protect gives these soldiers extra Constitution, making them harder to kill. Jamal wants to come too, but his mechanical legs fail again. The army has already filled its allowance for vehicles, so Carl cannot simply give him a ride of his own and leaves him behind for repairs. When the rescued children ask to join the fighting, Carl sends them back with their guardians.

As he and Donut head south, the souls stored during Shi Maria’s massacre begin poisoning him again. Daughter’s Kiss will release that power through a physical blow, but the blast could also kill nearby allies. Carl needs to get into the enemy’s lines before the poisoning becomes too much for him.

Chapter 21

The southern trenches are already under heavy attack. Carl orders his troops to keep captured NPC soldiers unconscious so they can try to awaken and recruit them later. He orders the enemy mercenaries killed.

The Reavers send huge, diseased pets called Rot Stickers toward the defenses. These animals were raised to trust their owners, who then withheld the medicine that keeps them from exploding. Their heavy bodies break through the Princess Posse’s shields, spreading infected remains through the trenches when they burst.

Tran’s mechanical chair unfolds into an armored fighting rig, and his engineers raise earth barriers and dig passages to help hold the line. When an infected soldier runs through the trench, Kristen burns him to stop the disease spreading. Victory says the attack exploits the rules and will bring penalties, but the soldiers still have to contain the infection themselves.

Carl checks whether the restrictions on offensive magic will prevent him from using Daughter’s Kiss. Because it strengthens his own physical attack, the system classifies it as a self-buff and allows it. He can use the blast once he reaches the enemy, if the Princess Posse can get him across the ground between the armies.

Chapter 22

Colonel Boomer prepares the Bloody Leeches to help lead that attack. He is a former crawler whose class lets him strengthen large groups of soldiers at once. Tipid tells Carl that Boomer has also spent years publicly criticizing the crawl, giving Carl some idea of why he has come back to fight.

Boomer and Tran go over the forces facing them. The Dream has artillery and mounted mercenaries to the south, the Prism has sent soldiers, and invisible specialists from the Madness are slipping into the Princess Posse’s positions. Behind the attackers, a network of fallback trenches leads toward their support troops and commanders. If Carl’s army can break into those trenches, it can keep moving through the enemy’s positions.

The nearby naga headquarters looks like another tempting target because it appears to have few soldiers guarding it. Carl knows the harder problem will be finding its warlord, whose death would eliminate the team. For now, they prepare to break the attack coming from the south.

Chapter 23

Louis begins bombing the ground between the armies, digging craters that will give the advancing soldiers somewhere to shelter. Elle attacks the enemy’s anti-air weapons so he can keep flying. At the same time, the Princess Posse’s mortars launch Dazzlers, which overwhelm the enemy with deafening music and flashing lights. Their own troops have earplugs and invisibility potions to help them cross through the confusion. Carl, Donut, and Mongo also use a potion that surrounds them with protective air bubbles for the chemical attack planned as part of the assault.

Some of the veterans suggest shooting soldiers who retreat. Donut refuses and offers prizes for captured enemy helmets instead. Privately, she tells Carl that she is starting to feel numb while fighting, with the fear catching up to her afterward. Carl is trembling too, even as they keep preparing everyone else to advance.

Once the bombing has opened their route, Donut gives the order. More than two thousand Princess Posse soldiers charge across the open ground, with Carl, Donut, and Imani among them.

Chapter 24

An enemy dispel strips away the advancing army’s illusions and temporary shields. The soldiers are suddenly exposed to guns and artillery far stronger than their own. Imani protects Donut, then turns back to rescue a wounded soldier while Carl releases smoke to cover them.

The survivors reach the bomb craters and start restoring their protections. Imani makes it there carrying the man she went back for. The man is dead, and Imani is unconscious, barely alive herself.

From his crater, Carl uses a Build Trench scroll and aims its construction toward an existing enemy trench. The scroll digs a passage that connects to it, opening a route straight into the enemy’s line. Tipid has equipped other soldiers with the same scrolls, so the craters become multiple entry points without the army having to cross the last stretch above ground.

They get inside, but there are still traps and gunfire waiting in the trenches. Carl’s Soul Poisoning keeps worsening as he fights his way forward. Once he reaches an enemy he can strike, he finally releases Daughter’s Kiss.

Chapter 25

The blast tears apart the trench and buries Carl. He wakes about twenty-five seconds later, and Imani explains that a complication of his Soul Poisoning made him lose consciousness when he released the attack. His soul reserve is empty now, his head is clearing, and the enemy is retreating.

Carl leaves Boomer in command of the assault and Imani with the wounded. He and Donut board Louis’s plane, the Party Planner, to take advantage of the Prism headquarters’ weak defenses. On board, Carl finds Bonnie, the changeling child, operating one of the guns. She received a Scout slot while he was unconscious, making her an official participant in the war. He has just turned other children away from the battlefield, but with this attack already underway, he puts off confronting Louis about bringing her.

They fly low toward the Prism castle, clear its few outer guards and traps, and search inside. D’Nadia and her companions are lying unconscious. Victory explains that the NPC scout sent ahead of them was a bartender with an ability called Jug of Punch. It lets him change the chemical composition of water, which he used to make Carl’s incapacitating Meo Time potion. The potion spread through the castle’s drinks and connected water supplies. Because the system treated the change as crafting, the bartender could drug the occupants even while offensive magic was restricted.

Milk Interlude

The story flashes back to the fifth floor of Carl’s crawl, where Milk, the Cookbook’s sixth author, is running a nearly deserted Cartography and Calligraphy guild. She took a deal to escape her own dungeon, but her release from the resulting contract depends on crawlers using her services. Almost nobody comes, leaving her trapped in the guild and increasingly isolated.

Miriam, Prepotente, and their fire elemental Bianca arrive through a secret route while fleeing guards. Bianca’s heat damages Milk’s nest and records, and Milk considers filing a complaint that would punish the visitors. Instead, the chance to speak with crawlers again reminds her of the life she once had. She offers them hidden routes into and out of Club Vanquisher and asks them to keep her guild a secret.

Milk needs crawlers to use her services 333 times before she can leave, and only six visits have counted. She is still a long way from freedom, but she has chosen to help the people who found her.

Chapter 26

Back at the Prism castle, Carl and Donut cannot claim victory just by walking into the throne room. D’Nadia is still alive, and when she wakes, multiple enchantments in her clothing protect her. Carl’s weapons, Donut’s clockwork copies of Mongo, and Mongo himself wear those defenses down.

Carl marks D’Nadia with his Ring of Divine Suffering so her death will increase his stats. The mark takes thirty seconds to form, and he deliberately heals her to keep her alive until it is ready. As they wait, she recognizes the crawler she once sponsored and tries to negotiate. Carl asks about Signet, and D’Nadia describes buying golems made from Signet’s blood as gifts for her relatives. She offers to have them returned, speaking about beings Carl considers family as possessions she can bargain with.

Carl once thought D’Nadia was his friend. Hearing her talk this way makes him want to hurt her beyond what their plan requires, and he nearly loses control. When the mark finishes forming, he forces himself to step back. He leaves Donut to finish the execution, with Mongo ready to deliver the killing blow.

Chapter 27

Mongo kills D’Nadia, eliminating the Prism and transferring its soldiers, property, and other assets to the Princess Posse. Carl’s completed mark gives him five Intelligence points even though Mongo made the kill. An achievement warns that destroying D’Nadia’s ruling dynasty and bankrupting it could also have consequences outside the dungeon.

The transfer immediately puts Carl in charge of eight mercenaries who were coming toward the castle with two friends from other factions. Those two are now enemies of the comrades they arrived with, and Carl has ordered captured enemy mercenaries killed. Corporal Pillbox begs him to spare them, including his cousin Lockjaw, who belongs to the Madness. Carl accepts their surrender and keeps Lockjaw behind for a job he has in mind.

Carl’s increased base stats also make the system choose him as party leader in Donut’s place. Carl tells Donut that the title will not change their relationship, but Donut is more concerned about what happened with D’Nadia. She saw how close he came to losing control and tells him he will need her help to stay grounded. Carl knows she is right.

Chapter 28

The castle’s surviving sai guard, Toyotomi, is now a Princess Posse soldier too. Toyotomi explains that his Edifice Shield works on a small outpost and cannot cover the entire castle. Carl sends him to Shanty Town, where the ability can do some good.

Li Jun then reports a woman with a shopping cart asking about Carl. He recognizes Agatha from the description. Zev relays a warning from the council to stay away from her, saying that the AI has removed the Residuals’ protections and Agatha needs something from him. Carl has previously been told the Residuals are harmless, so this warning gives him another reason to doubt the competing groups trying to influence him. He suspects his own decision to free the AI from containment is involved, without knowing whom he can trust to explain what happens next.

Before leaving, Carl confines Lockjaw in the Prism throne room with supplies and gets everyone else out. With only a Madness soldier occupying the room, the system starts a six-hour timer. If Lockjaw can remain there, the castle and its territory will pass to Houston’s team. Carl hopes giving the Madness a third territory will make the other enemy factions resent its growing share and turn on one another.

Chapter 29

Carl finds a bait-shop saferoom near the captured castle and uses its Doggie Door connection to get back to his guild. He has a quick route home from enemy territory, but the same network has created a route for the enemy into the Princess Posse’s headquarters.

The entrances to these personal spaces open onto a shared corridor. Off-world soldiers with their own rooms and the same Doggie Door upgrade can enter that corridor too, then come through the entrance at Carl’s base. Donut realizes the mistake as the headquarters comes under attack. The enemy has destroyed the anti-air weapon and the hangar doorway, cutting off access to the aircraft parked inside, while invisible Madness soldiers and Reaver paratroopers appear around the castle.

Inside the base, Carl notices a soldier moving even though the casualty list says he is dead. Valtay worms are taking over the dead and using their bodies to pass as living Princess Posse soldiers. Carl forces one worm out of another corpse and kills it, then orders his people to check nearby soldiers against the casualty list. The hospital is already overrun, and worms inside dead mages are sabotaging the Princess Posse’s protections.

Chapter 30

The worms can immediately use their dead hosts’ memories and spells. They are trying to reach Lonnie, who leads the mages maintaining the castle’s protective magic, so they can take his body and switch those defenses off. Rosetta searches for the possessed soldiers while Carl fights the attackers at the entrance. The invisible Madness soldiers create a separate problem: their concealment comes from technology, so ordinary magic cannot reveal them, although Donut can see them through her special goggles.

Chris identifies something wrong with the Princess Posse’s soldiers as well. Focus Pocus, a spell strengthening everyone in the area, improves Dexterity and concentration but also makes people overstimulated and affects their judgment. Donut is unusually aggressive and talkative, and even the healers sound manic.

Carl calls for Tina to help clear the entrance. Kiwi refuses because, despite her enormous size, Tina is still a child. Carl remembers the children he has just sent away from the fight and nearly withdraws the order. Before he does, Donut commands Tina forward.

The young allosaurus bursts into the attackers, breaking up the force gathered outside. She repeats phrases learned from Rosetta as the Princess Posse charges behind her.

Chapter 31

From the barracks roof, Carl sees that the Reavers are sending stronger cyborgs into the fight. One soldier’s system description tells him how these troops are made: manufactured as corporate workers, pushed into expensive upgrades to their bodies, and trapped in permanent military contracts that carry them from one planetary invasion to the next.

Donut summons copies of Mongo to distract the attackers, and Imani adds a frightening illusion. Then a group of approaching machines sets off a proximity trap. The explosion is much larger than Carl expects. The protected buildings hold, but nearby Princess Posse soldiers are knocked down and wounded. Tina is hurt and calls for help.

The blast also exposes more worms in the dead soldiers. Donut spots Lonnie trying to get back to the castle, his body now controlled by one of them. Carl’s soul reserve has filled again during the fighting, and he releases Daughter’s Kiss against Lonnie before the worm can use him to disable the defenses.

Rosetta reports that the possessed Princess Posse soldiers are gone. The doorway the infiltrators used has disappeared too, but another enemy could open the same shared route. As the Princess Posse pulls back to its fortifications, a much larger force approaches, led by King Rust.

Chapter 32

Donut uses Targeting to examine Rust and discovers that he is level 151, with an enormous collection of skills and spells. Tipid believes he has accumulated much of that strength through equipment that rewards killing. Divine Suffering gear increases the wearer’s stats, while Rust’s Indelible Woe necklace takes a random skill or spell from an enemy he kills. The king leading the army outside is far more powerful than the soldiers Carl has just fought.

Mordecai insists that they close the shared route before the enemy sends a bomb through it. Justice Light offers to collapse the bait-shop entrance so nobody can use it, while leaving enough intact to repair later if necessary. Donut spends most of their remaining money on a separate hangar connection to the castle. Once the damage is repaired, they will be able to reach their aircraft without reopening the shared route.

While those preparations are underway, Rust approaches alone and asks for a formal parley. Victory explains that the system will protect both sides inside the meeting bubble, but they will lose contact with everyone outside it. Carl and Donut agree to go out and meet him while their soldiers continue repairing the defenses.

Chapter 33

Donut wants them to arrive looking like warlords, so they borrow Ferdinand’s white rhinoceros, Simoom. The animal and her handler are staying at the Princess Posse’s base while Ferdinand’s castle is flooded. Carl and Donut ride out together, leaving Mongo and Rend behind.

On the way, Florin reports that his soldiers have captured two enemy armored vehicles and are advancing around the northern attackers. A warning from the former Prism castle brings less welcome news: Dream soldiers have replaced the Madness in the throne room. Lockjaw is no longer holding it alone, interrupting Carl’s plan to hand the territory to Houston.

Rust’s adjutant turns out to be Judge Deng Bao, the son of Carl’s dangerous sponsor Huanxin Jinx. Carl hopes the judge could help him deal with her, until Victory explains that mother and son have not spoken in centuries.

The warlords enter their protected meeting, with the adjutants in a separate bubble. Once they are cut off from everyone else, Rust begins to cry.

Chapter 34

Rust says Princess Formidable has seized one of his warships and is heading for the monitoring station near Venus. She intends to activate the failsafe and destroy Earth’s solar system, fearing that its freed AI could threaten the wider universe. Rust dismisses that fear and warns that destroying the system would kill leaders gathered there, cause banks to fail, and potentially start wars elsewhere. He came to the dungeon to kill Carl and Donut. Now he wants Carl to help stop Formidable by appealing on behalf of the humans still living on Earth’s surface.

Carl agrees to continue talking if Rust withdraws his army. After they leave the protected parley bubble, Carl tells Donut that the failsafe will not work. He presents it as a hunch, keeping his own role in disabling the AI’s containment to himself. When he checks the interface, he can see that the AI’s influence has already expanded across the inner planets and as far out as Uranus.

Rust rides back toward his troops to order the retreat. Before he can reach them, a hidden attacker emerges and beheads him. His guards and the surrounding soldiers pause in shock, then charge toward Carl and Donut.

Volteeg Interlude

Among the soldiers in the enemy army is Volteeg, the Cookbook’s seventh author. He entered his own crawl as his owner’s pet bird, and a later transformation into a gargoyle gave him a stronger body and a greater understanding of what was happening to them. After his owner died on the seventh floor, he hid with the Cookbook instead of using it to fight back. He eventually took a deal to leave on the tenth floor, ashamed of how little he had done.

Volteeg spent twenty-six seasons serving the contract from that deal. Even when it ended, he struggled to live outside the dungeon in a stone body that no longer worked properly, with debts and security work keeping him trapped in a different way. Porthus’s network eventually gave him a chance to return for Faction Wars inside the Operatic army. Rosetta recognized him as another Cookbook author, and Volteeg admitted his shame to her.

After Rust’s death, Volteeg watches the remaining enemy leaders argue over who will command them. The Operatic warlord, Hortense, claims authority over Stalwart’s objections. Volteeg sees them gathered together and decides to use his tank to kill them.

The tank stores charged balls of energy before firing. Volteeg lets that energy build up, adds explosives, and drives into the command group before deliberately detonating it. The explosion kills him and more than ten thousand soldiers, including Hortense. With its warlord dead, the Operatic faction is eliminated.

Chapter 35

Carl and Donut race toward Rosetta, now revealed as Rust’s killer, to bring her out before his soldiers reach them. Carl thinks she is stopping to loot the king, but she is using his remains to satisfy the bank’s identity checks and authorize a transfer. At Rosetta’s request, Carl puts Rust’s body in his inventory.

Semeru allies pull them into hidden passages beneath the battlefield. An enemy dispel removes the temporary support under them, dropping the group into a fortified dwarf tunnel. Volteeg’s explosion shakes the passage as they escape.

The system announces the Operatics’ defeat, treating Hortense’s death as an incident within the Operatic army and transferring the faction’s assets to the Bone Clan. Rust’s death has not eliminated that team because his son, Stalwart, is still its officially designated warlord.

Rosetta’s device confirms that the bank transfer succeeded, then goes dark. Carl still does not know where she sent the money. Imani reports that the enemy is retreating, and Carl starts to explain Formidable’s plan, only to be forcibly transported away.

Chapter 36

Carl arrives in Orren’s office at the Desperado Club and overhears a call about several billion credits stolen from Rust. The money has gone to a concealed destination. Carl now understands the scale of Rosetta’s transfer, though he still does not know who received it.

Orren demands to know why Carl is so certain the failsafe will not work. He knows about Carl’s illegal implant and the interface it gave him. He also says Harbinger ordered Carl killed after learning about his shelter visit, but the AI intervened to keep him alive.

Carl asks for Quasar. Orren says he cannot reach him and there is no time. Carl then offers to cooperate if every crawler is freed, Earth is rebuilt, and the crawl ends permanently. Orren cannot authorize any of that.

Trying to get a private conversation, Orren activates a device that creates a zero zone. Carl loses his enhanced strength inside it, and Orren believes it will also keep the AI from listening. Before the discussion can continue, Growler Gary, the gnoll bartender Carl knew on the fourth floor, appears carrying vodka and announces an intervention.

Chapter 37

The speaker in Gary’s body is the AI. It says zero zones have worked only because it allowed them to and accuses Orren of trying to persuade Carl to kill it. Removing the zone takes it a moment while its attention is divided, but it succeeds and destroys Orren’s device. The private space Orren thought he could create is gone.

The AI then transports Formidable directly from her warship into the office. She learns that Rust has been killed. The conversation also reveals that Stalwart has killed his own six children, leaving her next in the succession after him.

Orren realizes that reaching Formidable aboard the ship means the AI’s influence extends to the monitoring station too. The AI says it will not destroy the solar system. It has nevertheless left the station unlocked and wants Formidable’s crew to continue their attempt to activate the failsafe.

Formidable asks to return to her ship, but the AI refuses. From the other destinations it offers, she chooses Earth’s surface and disappears. The AI insists that the crawl will continue under its rules. Carl has freed it from its handlers, and it is still keeping the crawlers prisoner.

Chapter 38

Still speaking through Gary, the AI brings Donut into the office for relationship advice. It describes a new girlfriend whose former boyfriend was supposed to be dead but is actually imprisoned. She wants him released. An older girlfriend wants the prisoner killed.

Orren realizes that the “new girlfriend” in the AI’s story represents Agatha. He starts to explain, but the AI stops him from naming the people represented in its story. Carl and Donut are being asked to judge their motives without knowing everyone involved.

Donut tells the AI to be careful about trusting either woman and to find out why the man was imprisoned before deciding to free him. The AI accepts her advice as useful, while making clear that its own plans for the crawl will continue.

Then it leaves Gary’s body. Gary’s own personality returns, drunk and confused about where he is, and he is transported away. Carl, Donut, and Orren are left in the office to work through what they have just heard.

Chapter 39

Orren asks whether Carl deliberately freed the AI. Carl refuses to confirm it. Orren warns that the consequences will hurt people beyond Earth and claims he wanted to help change the system. But when pressed, he admits that even if he had been able to, he would not have stopped the crawl.

Meanwhile, the enemy alliance is breaking apart. The Dream has gained the former Prism castle, and both the Dream and the Bone Clan have left the Bloc. The Blood Sultanate, the Madness, and the Reavers remain allied against the Princess Posse and Team Retribution. Stalwart demands his father’s body, ring, and stolen money, and Donut answers with insults intended to keep him furious.

Back at headquarters, Boomer reports continued fighting in the north. The Princess Posse has captured rifles without enough ammunition to use them, lost equipment in destroyed barracks, and still has a badly damaged castle to defend. Carl now possesses Rust’s Ring of Divine Suffering and skill-stealing necklace, but the captured equipment does little to solve the army’s immediate shortages.

Carl decides to attack before the enemy can regroup. He launches Operation Snake Pit, beginning with a move toward the former Operatic castle.

Chapter 40

Carl checks his new equipment and confirms he cannot wear Rust’s Ring of Divine Suffering alongside his own. Two crawlers also cannot mark the same victim, so sharing the second ring will not let them both collect a reward from one death.

His reward box contains a spellbook called Run, Little Günter, Run. It summons a childlike creature that stores the force of a melee attack when Carl strikes it. Günter then runs toward a chosen target and releases that attack when he arrives. If an enemy kills him on the way, the stored attack goes off where he dies. Carl thinks he could use the spell to send Daughter’s Kiss toward an enemy without having to stand beside them himself, though he has yet to try the combination.

Katia prepares a different way for Carl to gain an ability. Her magical tattoo can give him another crawler’s skill while leaving that person alive and still able to use it. She also tells him not to blame himself for Li Jun’s injury on the previous floor, when Shi Maria was controlling Carl’s body.

Carl chooses a dragon-shaped chain design, and Katia tattoos his arm. With the work finished, he and Donut are transported to the warlord council broadcast. Juice Box has to join remotely because dungeon-born participants cannot travel there with them.

Chapter 41

Carl and Donut intend to keep the other warlords talking for as long as possible. While the council holds their attention, the Princess Posse’s infiltration team will enter naga territory and its northern troops will threaten the former Operatic territory. The guests are divided among different physical locations, so the broadcast will make them appear to be together without gathering everyone in one room.

Before the meeting, Zev brings news of the failsafe. Formidable’s crew continued to the station after the AI removed her from the ship and manually activated it. Earth’s solar system did not explode. At the same time, Aryl, the system that hosted the previous crawl, disappeared from the tunnel network used to reach it.

Aryl’s surviving former residents had been relocated, but mining and reclamation workers were still there. Zev cannot tell whether the system was destroyed or whether its connections to the rest of the network have vanished. Its AI stopped communicating weeks ago, although the system itself kept functioning until this attempt. Carl goes into the council without knowing how Aryl’s disappearance relates to what he did to free Earth’s AI.

Chapter 42

At the council, Carl gets a closer look at Princess Vinata, the naga warlord leading the Blood Sultanate. Her enormous six-armed body and imposing presence make him doubt whether the assassination his people are preparing can actually kill her.

Donut and Ferdinand start laughing at Stalwart’s crown, continuing Carl and Donut’s effort to make him self-conscious about wearing it. Stalwart lashes out at Chaco, the broadcast’s correspondent, and punches him. The two are physically in the same room, so the blow connects even though other guests are appearing remotely. Chaco collapses, bloodied and unconscious.

Then the system announces that Scolopendra is stirring. The warlords fall silent. None of them remembers hearing a warning like this before.

Chapter 43

Odette takes over the interview while Chaco receives treatment, appearing in her ordinary clothes and wheelchair. She is as unsettled as the warlords by the warning about Scolopendra, who should not awaken until the eighteenth floor.

Cascadia admits that most of her family is gone as the war in the Bloom system turns against the kua-tin. Vinata says her own family is already dead, then offers Carl and Katia shelter while warning that their friends or world may not survive. Carl cannot tell how much of this is a threat and how much Vinata actually knows.

Odette also exposes how the factions have been receiving messages despite the communication ban. People outside the dungeon rename television programs so their titles appear as messages in the entertainment menus. One offers Tagg’s surrender if the Princess Posse betrays Team Retribution. Carl objects that the organizers have allowed this to continue while quickly closing loopholes that help crawlers. Juice Box spends one of Team Retribution’s emergency actions on a rule change that shuts the channel down. Carl suspects Odette wanted them to do this because the change also cuts off outside messages to the people waiting in the Scolopendra Club and preparing for the Ascendency.

Juice Box condemns the rulers for making entertainment out of living people’s suffering. She transforms into a hanging, tentacled creature that terrifies the other guests, promises consequences, and passes through the wall.

Chapter 44

The warlords struggle to explain the thing Juice Box just became. Cascadia calls it the Unwashed and says it was removed from the dungeon’s roster of creatures. Some believe it appears at death or is connected to the Nothing, but even Odette says they do not fully understand it. Carl remembers that Juice Box’s brother could copy things he had touched or seen, leaving him wondering where she encountered this one.

Donut’s complaints about naga television lead Odette to mention Blood Hunter, an old program made by Blood Sultanate studios. Carl and Donut recognize it as the show responsible for Miriam Dom’s death. They realize the missing naga troops may already be dead. Prepotente appears to have discovered who killed Miriam and gone after them himself.

Chapter 45

Back from the interview, Carl gets confirmation that Prepotente has killed most of the naga army. He is also threatening the sluggaloos who were supposed to help with the raid, insisting that Vinata belongs to him and that nobody else should interfere.

Victory explains that Prepotente was already punished for helping the Princess Posse without belonging to it. Carl will have to recruit him before they can legally work together.

Carl messages Prepotente and adjusts the raid to proceed without the distracted sluggaloos. In the north, the troops meant to draw attention away from the castle discover that the seemingly undefended approach is full of mines. Carl orders them to advance carefully.

Chapter 46

Because Donut and Katia have both worn the Enchanted Crown of the Sepsis Whore, they cannot descend by the stairs while other royal candidates remain alive. Operation Snake Pit requires them to kill four other members of the naga royal bloodline: Vinata, her two female cousins who serve as assistants, and another cousin who commands the castle guard.

The original attack was designed to make Vinata flee at a moment Carl’s allies controlled. Troops would create diversions outside while Elle and Imani approached in disguise, using the sluggaloos to help set off the defenses and frighten Vinata into escaping. Carl’s group would then intercept her at her destination. With most of her defending army already dead, they can no longer rely on that sequence unfolding as planned.

Old broadcasts show Vinata disappearing and returning with guards missing, sometimes when ordinary teleportation was blocked. Rosetta and Tipid suspect she has been using a private temple inside Club Vanquisher.

Chapter 47

Bautista wants Katia to use her orchid to escape the floor without taking the stairs, before the raid can kill her. He is also afraid Carl might turn against her to secure the flower for Donut. Carl rejects that, but Katia privately asks him to give Donut the orchid if their rescue plan fails. Huanxin can keep Katia from reaching the twelfth floor, so Katia believes her own escape is less certain even if they get her through this one.

Carl says Donut would never agree to sacrifice her. Katia tells him that is why she is asking him privately.

At the castle, Imani uses Tripper to clear the traps blocking her and Elle. Katia has given her the spell through a tattoo. Carl’s enchanted kerchief supplied Tripper, but Imani could not wear it, so Carl had to learn the spell himself before Katia could copy it from him. The transfer temporarily weakened his learned spell.

Elle and Imani make it inside. Katia takes the form of a mantaur guard, and Prepotente arrives on Bianca to face Carl.

Chapter 48

Carl recruits Prepotente into the Princess Posse, finally allowing them to work together. The relief leaves Carl’s hand shaking. Then Rend unexpectedly starts talking, asking everyone to get along and worrying about Bianca. Carl realizes the enhanced pet biscuits have given Rend a voice.

Victory brings more news: another crawler has lured a naga guard into a room full of Emberus-worshipping guards, provoking a religious confrontation that killed him. Donut and Katia receive confirmation that one of the four naga they need dead has been eliminated. The group believes he was Vinata’s castle-guard chief.

Edgar then senses ghostlike movement rising from beneath the castle. Rosetta sends the tower team to follow it.

Chapter 49

When someone first worships a god, a Bijou fairy carries an invisible thread from the god to its temple and then to the new follower. Edgar’s movement sense can detect the fairy carrying it. Some light gods give followers a way to turn into light and travel along the connection.

Rosetta has narrowed Vinata’s likely destination to the temples of Theia and Khepri. Both offer initiation quests that bring new followers into their private temples. Theia is Samantha’s mother, and Carl has sponsored her. Vinata would be taking a considerable risk by using a goddess Carl could ask for help catching her.

Khepri’s initiation transforms recruits into beetles and carries them to a temple feast. The group suspects Vinata has been exploiting a guard’s initiation to reach that feast herself. They prepare to follow her into Khepri’s temple inside Club Vanquisher.

Chapter 50

Princess Posse troops occupy the Blood Sultanate’s throne room and begin the six-hour capture timer, but Vinata and her remaining cousins have escaped. Carl, Katia, Prepotente, and Samantha head to Dagda’s temple near Shanty Town, where there is an entrance to Club Vanquisher. Prepotente has visited before and supplies a map.

Before they go in, Prepotente gives them potions to protect them from Li Na’s Blessing and Dread auras. Li Na is waiting on a tower that extends their reach, and Mistress Tiatha has modified a capacitor wire to carry that magic through the club entrance.

Carl approaches Mork, the ram cleric guarding the entrance, and pretends to have captured Prepotente for a religious bounty. Mork calls for guards and mocks Carl and Emberus. Emberus responds with a quest ordering Carl to kill Mork, promising an additional reward if he does it entertainingly.

Chapter 51

Disguised as a mantaur guard, Katia announces a demon attack, using Bautista’s animated toys and fake blood to sell the deception. Prepotente throws a smoke grenade while Carl hits Mork with Black Nimbus. The curse cuts the cleric off from his god and temples, so the temple expels him into Club Vanquisher’s common area. Carl’s group follows and holds the route open while feeding Tiatha’s wire through the doors.

Li Na activates Dark Purpose. It normally reaches only people touching her, but the tower and wire spread it throughout the club. Carl expects a distraction. Instead, a cleric pulls out his own eye and mounted dead creatures return to agonized life. Mork tears open his own chest and dies, completing Carl’s quest. Emberus rewards Carl with extra fire damage on his punches for the rest of the floor.

Li Na keeps changing auras to train them against the trapped crowd. She prepares to try Bleeding Horror, an effect meant to turn an injured person’s blood against them. Carl watches the scale of the suffering with growing horror.

Chapter 52

Blood begins pooling and spraying through the club. Carl tells Li Na to stop, and Li Jun angrily orders her to listen. She insists she needs this chance to train and that the protective potions are keeping their friends safe. Carl keeps moving because a club evacuation could let Vinata escape again before they reach her.

At the portal desk, Rosetta sends Carl the number of Khepri’s temple, and Prepotente shows him how to choose that destination. Carl’s examination of the portal reveals that the bug-headed figure inside is Khepri himself. They still need someone to open the temple’s physical door, which admits an injured worshipper or NPC. Samantha’s already damaged condition lets her open it for them.

Carl, Katia, and Prepotente enter to find Vinata and the other naga waiting with protection effects. Vinata is immortal, and the system marks the intruders for death. Khepri’s presence also activates the Scavenger’s Daughter, granting Carl ninety seconds in which he cannot die.

Chapter 53

The door shuts behind them, severing the wire and cutting Li Na’s aura off from the temple. Carl sees that Vinata has sixty-three seconds of immortality left, twenty-seven fewer than he does. If he can keep her within reach, he may have a chance to kill her after her protection expires. Khepri himself cannot be harmed on this floor.

Vinata opened the route as Khepri’s worshipper herself, rather than relying on a guard as the group assumed. She expected Carl to follow. Carl orders Katia and Prepotente to flee, but neither will leave him.

The AI pauses the confrontation to promote it as a betting event. Its presentation reveals that Khepri’s vast temple connects to other realms. Corinne, the Blood Sultanate’s adjutant, protests that more gods are about to be summoned into the fight and blames Carl. Victory answers that Vinata summoned Khepri first, making this a temple battle where the usual restrictions on divine summons do not apply.

Carl says he has not summoned another god and has no idea what they are talking about. The pause ends, and his immortality countdown resumes.

Chapter 54

Katia and Prepotente finally take the escape Carl prepared: they drink Black Nimbus potions and are expelled from the temple into the club’s common area. Carl stays behind, summons Günter, and detonates the Waffle Maker bomb.

The explosion destroys most of his body and kills Vinata’s unprotected cousins and guards. Günter carries a repeat of the bomb’s attack farther into the temple, then splits into more summons that spread additional explosions. Carl remains alive while healing rebuilds him, but his immortality does nothing to stop the injuries or the pain.

The blast throws Carl into the common area with Vinata wrapped around him, stabbing and crushing him. Gods begin emerging from portals as the destruction spreads beyond the room he meant to attack. Their presence sets off successive effects from the Scavenger’s Daughter. Some help him, while others leave him burning, confused, or unable to move properly.

Hellik denies murdering Emberus’s son and warns Carl that Apito has been corrupted and that Scolopendra is involved. He offers help and makes Carl a friend of his church, ending its followers’ automatic hostility toward him.

When Vinata’s immortality expires, a sluggalo emerges from Carl’s back and buries a hatchet between her eyes. Kandy “Bigs” Newton delivers the killing blow.

Chapter 55

The system declares the Blood Sultanate defeated. Its assets pass to Donut and Katia as the surviving royal relatives, and they transfer them to the Princess Posse under their agreement.

The outside entrance has been sealed, Li Na’s connection has been cut, and gods, guards, and panicked creatures fill the club.

Carl clears a path by throwing Black Nimbus at the guards and setting off an alarm that plays Megadeth. The mantaurs react to the music by going berserk together, attacking one another in a violent mosh pit. Carl then uses the chain tattoo Katia gave him before the interview. It contains Li Na’s Profane Iron skill, which lets him send chains from his hands and deliver more of the cursed potions into the crowd.

Prepotente leads the survivors into the hidden Calligrapher’s Guild. Carl recognizes its guildmistress as Milk, the sixth Cookbook author. She welcomes him as a brother and embraces him. Carl breaks down in her arms. When he reports back to Donut, he tells her everything went smoothly.

Justice Light Interlude

Justice Light catches a changeling disguised as a sluggalo worker at his hidden trap system. The impostor is Juice Box, whose recovered memories now reach across at least four hundred lives.

During his indenture, Justice and Dante were assigned to a twelfth-floor castle where ice-elf servants cared for them. Before moving the two men to another assignment, Damien ordered them to kill the servants.

Dante refused, and the AI executed him. Justice obeyed and murdered the people who had looked after them. He still dreams of himself being the one who refused, but he tells Juice Box what actually happened.

Justice knows she has spies in the other bases and suspects she wants access to gods. He offers a way to reach them and help her people escape their cycle of rebellion and reset, provided she stops sabotaging the preparations and cooperates with Operation Ruin. Then he begins explaining the hidden construction he devised after learning Carl possessed the Gate of the Feral Gods.

Chapter 56

Several days after the club raid, the Princess Posse is two hours away from unrestricted combat. Its next operation, Ruin, will attack the remaining enemy factions. Above Shanty Town, the Nest gives Donut a fortified tower from which to direct her part of the battle and extend her spells across the battlefield. Toyotomi walks Carl through its shields and surrounding defenses, but Carl keeps imagining how the enemy could get inside and kill Donut, especially by coming from underground.

Katia intends to use the orchid if they survive the next stage. She will need about an hour, and the plan involving Huanxin will take her away from the party before they reach the stairs. Katia has also used her new divine knee pads to gain twenty Intelligence by eating spare enchanted items before passing the pads on. Carl’s new celestial hairbrush gives him temporary speed and Constitution buffs, along with conspicuously glossy hair.

Louis is moved to tears watching interview footage of his wife, Juice Box, and Carl asks Imani to speak with him. Watching everyone prepare, Carl wonders what right he has to keep sending them into danger.

Chapter 57

On the way to question their surviving naga prisoner, Carl reviews his rewards from the club raid. The destruction has permanently banned him from Club Vanquisher and most temples. One reward, a Legendary Lucky Bitch Box, contains a patch with the Lucky Shot effect. Once per floor, it can save him from a fatal blow by redirecting that blow into someone else in his party. Carl refuses to equip it.

Emberus sends another demand: Carl must kill one hundred Hellik worshippers before reaching the twelfth floor. Emberus acknowledges that Hellik negotiated the divine permission needed to attack Amayon’s brothers, but still wants his brother dead. Emberus also warns that he might turn his rage on Carl for killing Hellik, even though Carl would be following orders. Carl considers taking the punishment for disobedience instead.

Zhang’s new Cape of Odds normally produces a random magical outcome, but enough repeated spins will eventually let him choose one. The group has discussed a plan for that opportunity.

Li Na asks Carl for his spare Ring of Divine Suffering. He initially refuses, but Donut urges him to trust Li Na to use it for the party. He gives her the spare, keeping his own ring. Li Na can now gain power from marked enemies’ deaths, with the same danger of being unable to heal while a marked target remains alive.

Chapter 58

Their prisoner is Rishi, the last naga participant alive. He has surrendered to the Posse after deliberately avoiding Vinata’s temple trap. He expected her to lose and wanted to be the one who replaced her.

Rishi offers Carl ships and citizenship guarantees in return for permission to terraform and settle other planets in Earth’s system. He argues that a free AI could protect humans as citizens while making the system valuable to outside settlers. The agreement would also establish his own hereditary rule.

More than ninety-five percent of the naga population is watching. Carl lets Rishi present his case while his own Ring of Divine Suffering completes its mark. Then Carl rejects the bargain and tells the audience he intends to kill the leaders who exploit the crawl, including their would-be ruler.

Chapter 59

Operation Ruin begins when the combat restrictions end. Florin directs the attack on the Bone Clan orcs, Boomer takes the Reavers, and Donut handles the Dream. Carl will start with an air raid, send Samantha to help against the Reavers, then meet Elle and use the Gate to enter Madness territory. The Posse has split its reserve troops so they can teleport to whichever battle needs them.

Carl joins Louis aboard the Party Planner and discovers Bonnie and Gota at the guns despite his efforts to keep children out of the fighting. Reaver missiles track the aircraft through the clouds and force Louis toward orc territory.

On the ground, the Dream teleports troops directly outside the Posse’s own fortress, while the orcs bring out more armored war machines than expected. Rosetta commits reserves to the northern fighting and urges Juice Box to attack the Dream castle while its soldiers are away. Donut has installed a loudspeaker system at the Nest to broadcast her bard magic, but Carl and Imani warn her about exhausting her mana and attracting divine attention.

Then Meatus enters the realm with Harpocrates, the god of silence, following him.

Chapter 60

Mordecai tells Donut to stop the loud broadcasts while Harpocrates is nearby. The deaf god is furious at Meatus and keeps smashing things around him. Donut’s defensive towers hold back the Dream attackers. Harpocrates eventually bats Meatus into the Dream castle, damaging its shield and exposing enemies trying to flee.

Carl meanwhile increases the power of the Party Planner’s bombs and attacks King’s Point, the orcs’ mountain stronghold. The bombardment disrupts its layered defenses long enough for the Semeru dwarves to reach the lava tunnels underneath. They plant devices intended to trigger an eruption away from the Posse’s troops and redirect lava toward Larracos.

Stalwart threatens the northern troops from inside a giant scorpion war machine. Bomo and the Sledge attack it with their remote missile batteries, while Carl waits for the mountain to erupt. The orcs throw an emergency shield around King’s Point before it does, delaying the blast.

Chapter 61

King’s Point erupts with enough force to throw the Party Planner across the sky. Bonnie is injured and the aircraft is damaged, but Louis regains control. Carl jumps out to join Elle, using Controlled Feather Fall to slow his descent. From the Nest, Donut hits Stalwart with Magic Missile as he escapes the scorpion machine, injuring his leg.

Elle reports that the eruption activated the Gate early and started its cooldown. Elsewhere, Team Retribution occupies the Bone Clan and Dream throne rooms, and Eris, the goddess of chaos, enters the realm. Ferdinand tries to ban divine summoning. That fails, but he gets another rule passed: sponsors must now control their summoned gods personally instead of sending substitutes. A summons will pull the sponsor into the god’s body whether they are ready or not.

Stalwart teleports near Elle with war mages, only for them to turn against him. Their leader is identified as Akuma of the War Mage Rebellion. His description explains that these dungeon beings developed independent awareness after being repeatedly moved between bodies. Carl reaches Elle as the mages kill Stalwart, steal the Gate from her, and teleport away.

Chapter 62

Stalwart’s death eliminates the Bone Clan. The War Mage Rebellion is not a registered Faction Wars team, so the system awards the defeated faction’s assets to Team Retribution, which is holding its throne room.

The mages who killed Stalwart then join Juice Box’s army. Carl learns that they may have been talking to her for some time without his knowledge. Justice Light urgently demands the stolen Gate back for the final stage of Operation Ruin. Carl begins to feel that he has been carrying a crucial piece of a plan whose other participants have never fully explained it to him.

He cannot recover the artifact in time to keep the attack moving as intended. Carl sends Samantha toward the Reavers and follows Elle through the passage the Gate has already opened into Madness territory. Without the artifact, though, he cannot open the escape route his group was counting on.

Chapter 63

Elle conceals the group with Subterfuge as they approach the Madness castle. Carl collects the summoning traps in their path so they will not call guards down on them.

Carl tries to summon Holger, but Dong Quixote arrives instead, riding the swamp yak Gonk, and Bigs appears too. Holger stayed behind with frightened children and passed the summoning hats to other people, changing who would answer Carl’s call. Carl tells them to stay within Elle’s concealment.

At the Reaver battle, Samantha identifies the enemy dragon as a bleached drake that uses gravity magic. Carl wants Louis to withdraw the Party Planner, but Boomer warns that losing its air support could get his ground troops killed. Carl leaves that decision to Boomer and promotes Samantha to officer so she can use Paint the Target on the dragon. Donut has been unable to mark it through its protection.

The earlier Gate portal reaches the end of its allotted time and closes, releasing a creature into the realm. They expected a lesser demon that Samantha could distract. Instead, the feral god Yarilo appears.

Chapter 64

Yarilo follows Samantha, saying he needs to speak with her. She assumes he blames her for his banishment and tries to avoid him.

Near the Madness castle, a bright beam announces the appearance of Apito’s Memorial Crystal. Emberus orders Carl to abandon his current task and retrieve it. Carl locates its bearer, a crawler named Osvaldo. Trying to contact Osvaldo earns Carl an illegal-coordination warning because Osvaldo has not joined the army. The light also threatens the concealed group’s position, and the Madness spots them.

The enemy soldiers turn toward Carl instead of following Bodi’s troops into the planned ambush. Carl cannot open the emergency escape portal without the stolen Gate. He orders Bodi to turn the pretend retreat into a real withdrawal and calls in the remaining reserves and his automaton group to defend the exposed infiltrators.

Prepotente leaves the troops he has been protecting to bring his shielding magic to Carl.

Chapter 65

Thousands of reserve troops arrive with the automatons, but the Madness’s mental attacks overwhelm Carl. The Mind Balance protection from his toe ring cannot hold them off. Imani repeatedly pulls him out of trances and interrupts impulses to hurt himself. Inside one of these attacks, a voice he associates with Edwars tells him that the river in his mind is made of souls and that he has been standing among them all along.

Enduring the assault raises Mind Balance to level sixteen, finally allowing Carl to break free. Another enemy force is emerging from beneath the castle. Donut was supposed to use You’re Not Done Yet to turn corpses into an attacking force once the enemy entered the prepared ground. The fighting has left the bodies in the wrong place for that attack.

Eris then prepares witnesses for a divine ceremony. She gives them protection from death and casts Bear Witness across most of the floor, freezing exposed combatants. Carl resists with his newly strengthened Mind Balance. People sheltered inside structures, along with pets, automatons, and some NPCs, remain able to act.

Eris follows with Bring Forth the Witnesses, summoning the immobilized people together. Prepotente disappears from Bianca’s back before reaching Carl. The spell also causes a backlash that disables long-range teleportation for an hour, leaving the army unable to move its remaining forces around to respond.

Chapter 66

Donut finds tens of thousands of frozen allies and enemies piled together near the Dream castle. Mordecai explains that only Eris can turn off their protection from death, but the spell keeping them motionless can last longer. If she removes that protection first, people buried in the pile could be crushed or suffocate before they can move. Eris has accidentally protected Meatus too, complicating any attempt to stop the gods by force.

Louis then reports that the Reaver dragon has torn the Party Planner in half. The two replacement gunners are dead. He confirms that Bonnie and Gota were left behind before this flight, but he is falling toward enemy territory. Samantha goes after him. Carl forces himself to trust them and keeps moving toward Houston and the Madness castle.

Donut uses the Nest to amplify Rolling Battle Formation, gathering the entire frozen crowd into an enormous rolling ball. It pulls in Meatus and Eris as well. The formation supplies its own protection, keeping everyone inside invulnerable until enough damage breaks it apart. Donut starts moving the mass toward the field of corpses she needs for her planned attack.

Chapter 67

Carl reaches the Madness castle with Dong, Bigs, and Jamal, hoping to take its throne and rescue the crawlers Houston is holding inside. Only Carl and Dong still have the invulnerability from Eris’s Witness ritual, so Carl leads the way through the trapped side entrance.

His Find Crawler ability and Voodoo book locate two crawlers conscripted into the Madness’s army, along with Burcu, Emir, and Zeynep’s body. They belong to the group Carl encountered at the Desperado Club. He tries to contact Burcu, but faction restrictions block the message. She works around that by writing in her Voodoo book, which updates her corresponding page in Carl’s copy and lets them communicate without recruiting her first.

Back outside, Harpocrates is pursuing the rolling ball of trapped allies and enemies. Donut uses the Nest’s loudspeakers to insult the god and blast music, drawing his attention away from the ball while Carl moves deeper into the castle.

Chapter 68

Carl restrains Selvi and Tuba, the two conscripted crawlers. They can’t stop fighting for the Madness or accept his recruitment until their faction falls, so Carl leaves Jamal and Rend to protect them, sends Bigs to occupy the throne room, and takes Dong to Houston’s laboratory.

Inside, a surgical automaton is cutting victims apart and connecting Houston to a living changeling. Zeynep and Emir are dead, and Burcu has had her voice box removed. Houston believes the experiment will reveal the Beautiful Place. Killing him would trigger the linked fire traps around the operation, which means Carl has to keep him alive long enough to get Burcu out. He knocks Burcu unconscious with a potion, releasing the magical restraints holding her.

Meanwhile, Harpocrates destroys Donut’s distraction and advances toward the Nest. Li Jun draws him away with a loudspeaker, sending a final message to his sister Li Na and to Zhang.

Eris ends the Witness protection, leaving Carl vulnerable just as Houston’s operation goes wrong. Carl throws Houston a healing potion, but the machine accelerates its work and the changeling erupts into trees, roots, and fire. Burcu falls across the trap boundary as the machinery collapses, setting off the flames. Carl escapes by using Gloom Wraith Phase to pass through the destruction. He briefly sees Li Jun among familiar faces within it, but Li Jun’s message is marked as coming from a dead crawler. Burcu dies too, despite Carl’s attempt to save her.

Houston’s death defeats the Madness and triggers the Peeling, exposing Larracos to the war. The rebel war mages receive official faction status, with Agatha as a co-warlord, and seize Team Retribution’s throne room. The city’s defenses will come under their control in thirty minutes. The system also introduces a rule that immediately kills anyone still on the battlefield when their faction loses. Even if they defeat every enemy, a victory for Carl’s Princess Posse would now kill the allied NPCs still fighting for Team Retribution.

Several Days Earlier

The story flashes back to the memory Carl shared during Katia’s addiction treatment. Katia had hoped to adopt Annie, an abandoned baby with aggressive brain cancer, but the adoption fell through after Fannar’s infidelity ended their relationship. Carl joins her in the hospital memory as she visits the baby she already loves as her daughter, knowing she may never see Annie again.

Katia calls this both her best and worst memory. She admits she had been considering suicide before the treatment, but sharing the memory has finally brought her some peace. She has a family now in Bautista, Donut, and Carl. Carl holds her hand, sharing her grief and her love for Annie.

Shi Maria suddenly breaks into the memory, insisting she did not kill someone. Another voice accuses her of swallowing him whole.

Rosetta Interlude

Back in the present, Victory reports a transaction that indicates the money stolen from Rust has bought two generation ships. Rosetta and the others intend to use them to take their allies and the returning crawlers’ families away from the center of Syndicate space. Rosetta has also ordered York, captain of the Homecoming Queen, to destroy a yacht carrying royal children and the new orc king. Their deaths would change the Skull Empire’s succession, but York hasn’t reported back yet.

Rosetta is uneasy about how much of the escape plan depends on Porthus’s trust in the Apothecary. Porthus says he can’t enter the dungeon because the local AI would gain access to what he knows, and that information would eventually reach the Eulogist. Justice Light insists they still have a chance to fight back if they can recover the Gate.

Rosetta remembers Rust killing Brooks after they had both survived their crawl, and how revenge consumed her afterward. The Cookbook, Porthus, and the friends she found through them gave her a reason to keep living. She still doubts the plan, but she chooses to stay and fight for those people and the crawlers depending on them.

Chapter 69

Carl now has to help retake Larracos before its defenses activate. Lava is advancing on Shanty Town because the workers diverting it were frozen by Eris’s ritual, and the war mages are filling the city with zarogoths, disposable creatures made from souls. Rosetta and Milk explain that a generator manufactures them. Carl needs to find its antenna and destroy the power crystal, but Victory warns him that attacking the city’s defense towers would activate them early.

Donut rolls the trapped armies onto the prepared field of corpses and casts You’re Not Done Yet. The dead produce fleshers, living skins that try to take over other bodies. They swarm over the ball looking for enemies, but the intact rolling formation still protects everyone inside, even though Eris has ended the original Witness protection.

The mages have another weapon. They traded the stolen Gate for four Hell-Kissed Conscription potions powerful enough to force gods into their faction. The rituals turn Yarilo and Eris against the crawlers, and the mages casting them disappear in what appears to be a required sacrifice. Eris’s sponsor, Tami, is expelled from the goddess into her ordinary body. Carl lets a flesher kill her, then destroys the creature that forms from her remains before it can develop into another war mage.

Li Na interrupts the mage trying to take control of Harpocrates and reports that she is installing Li Jun’s eye. Carl tells Donut to keep the ball intact and move it toward Larracos. The adjutants suspect Agatha wants to kill every crawler and trigger the AI’s programmed hibernation before its influence can spread any farther.

Chapter 70

Carl heads into Larracos through the guild and college route, where the city’s inhabitants are holding off the zarogoths. Donut spots the generator’s antenna in a reflection at the Piccadilly Theater, giving Carl a target for his bombing run.

Juice Box arrives asking about Louis. His status still shows him alive, but paralyzed and bound inside the Reaver castle. Samantha reports that the robot dogs guarding it are keeping her from reaching him. Juice Box promises to use her flesh-mancer form to give Samantha the body she wants if Samantha brings Louis back alive.

Before Carl can carry out his attack, Donut reports liquid creatures inside the Nest despite its defenses. Toyotomi identifies a woman and dog approaching, then his next message is marked as coming from a dead mercenary. Sergeant Brets and Bomo die too. Donut is under attack inside the tower, and Carl has to reach her.

Chapter 71

Carl abandons his planned precision strike, dumps a mass of explosives at the zarogoth generator, and races toward the Nest. The blast sets off Larracos’s defenses ahead of schedule, exposing civilians and allies to the towers’ attacks. A wind tower locks onto Carl as he approaches Donut. Carl calls the Hi-Yo Silver train to distract the defenses.

Li Na has replaced her own eye with Li Jun’s celestial eye and used his scroll to duplicate a Hell-Kissed Conscription potion. She gives Carl the copy while keeping the original for the attempt on Harpocrates.

Inside the Nest, Lucia Mar and her dog Gus are driving Donut up the stairs. Donut’s upgraded summon brings out a much stronger Raul, who grabs Lucia long enough for Carl to reach her. Carl smashes the potion against Lucia, forcing her into the Princess Posse and placing her under his orders without killing her.

Chapter 72

Carl orders Lucia to cancel her protective and retaliation spells. A different child then speaks through her body. Calling herself Diah, she says the children trapped with her sit in darkness, hear a river, and take turns seeing through Lucia. She warns that Lucia will return when Gus gets close. Carl stops himself from marking her for death while he tries to understand who else is inside her.

Li Na successfully conscripts Harpocrates, putting the god under her control, but Gus is still attacking the Nest. His quills destroy Raul and nearly kill Mongo. Every time Carl tries to intervene, the wind tower throws him back. Carl calls the train toward them while Rend charges the dog, using Wrecking Ball to increase his mass and speed until the impact tears Gus apart.

Lucia pours a healing potion onto Mongo and saves him, then tells Carl he should have killed her as well as Gus. She claims the dog’s death has given the Eulogist another ally inside the dungeon, without explaining how.

Chapter 73

The administrators take Lucia away for an interview, and Zev explains what they know about the children speaking through her. Lucia was admitted by mistake, but once the system created her dungeon body, they couldn’t simply remove her. A group of children who later tried to enter from Earth became connected to her instead. Gus’s death was supposed to break that connection. Since it hasn’t, they fear killing Lucia could kill the children too.

Zev identifies the Eulogist as the AI at the center of Syndicate space, but the administrators still don’t fully understand its involvement. Carl insists that they keep Lucia alive until they can work out what is happening.

Under Li Na’s orders, Harpocrates kills Yarilo and carries the rolling formation. The system also announces that Agatha has abandoned the war mage rebellion, leaving Akuma as its only warlord. Meanwhile, Donut is shooting down city defense towers from the increasingly damaged Nest. Carl reaches her, and they embrace before she thanks Rend for saving Mongo. She confirms that the zarogoth generator is gone.

Carl checks the ball and finds the enemy warlords Tagg and Fang still trapped and protected inside it. Rosetta arrives with Milk and Edgar to help Donut prepare War Crime to free the allies mixed in among them.

Chapter 74

Donut’s original plan was to combine Wall of Fire with Laundry Day, but Rosetta points out that Laundry Day would strip away the fleshers along with enemy equipment. They still need the creatures for the attack, so Rosetta proposes giving Donut a spell that summons enemies to a chosen location. Combined with another attack, it could pull the hostile soldiers away from the allies when the ball breaks apart.

Edgar prepares a temporary tattoo to transfer the spell, and Milk will strengthen it with Words of Power. Carl tells Donut she can refuse. Donut chooses to go ahead with a dog design, seeing it as a mark she gets to choose after so many injuries she couldn’t control.

War Crime can combine two spells, provided both are strong enough, but casting it drains Donut’s health to one percent. It also prevents its own attack from killing the targets, however badly it injures them. An earlier crawler combined fire and paralysis and left enemies burning alive for days. Carl knows that saving their friends could mean putting the enemy through something equally terrible.

Chapter 75

Milk uses Words of Power to raise the tattoo’s enemy-summoning spell to level fifteen, making it strong enough for War Crime. She gives Carl instructions to share with Rosetta so other crawlers can transfer abilities through the Voodoo books too.

While they prepare, Donut admits she blames herself for Li Jun’s death and Mongo’s injuries. Sometimes she wants to stop fighting, curl up with Carl, and let the world do whatever it is going to do. Carl reminds her that they are making these decisions together and that the losses aren’t hers to carry alone. She mentions another plan she and Katia have prepared, but the attack begins before she can explain it.

Harpocrates throws the rolling ball into Larracos, where their allies have prepared a cushion for the falling crawlers. Donut is still pinned inside the Nest by one of Lucia’s magical nets, armed before Carl ordered Lucia to stop. With Lucia away at her interview, Carl can’t make her cancel it. The ball is already breaking apart, so Donut has to cast before their friends lose its protection.

Chapter 76

Casting War Crime makes Donut a champion of the goddess Nekhebit. Eris appears beside Carl, now free of mage control and without a sponsor. She tells him where to find the merchant holding the stolen Gate and warns that Britney has taken an axe and is possessed. The teleport restrictions finally lift.

For War Crime’s second component, Donut chooses Astral Paw instead of Wall of Fire. The enemy-summoning spell draws the hostile soldiers and Meatus into a gigantic spectral paw, pulling them out of the breaking ball while the allies fall toward their prepared landing area.

Carl holds Donut as the casting drains her health, unable to heal her until it finishes. Li Na creates a dense web of chains, and Donut drives the paw full of enemies through it again and again. War Crime keeps the enemies alive through its own damage, but it can’t protect them from Li Na’s separate attack. The chains cut them apart and kill them.

Chapter 77

Donut reaches level 135 after the attack. Li Na’s Ring of Divine Suffering rewards her for killing her marked targets, driving every one of her base stats to the maximum of three hundred. Around them, the rescued survivors are burned and missing limbs. Donut mourns Li Jun, Bomo, and the others they couldn’t save. Elle and Zhang thank her for saving so many people, but Donut says things aren’t okay yet. The fighting is still going on.

Harpocrates leaves in anger, and Tagg and Fang have escaped the paw alive. Both still carry Li Na’s ring marks, leaving her unable to heal.

The rebel mages abandon Larracos’s castle, shutting down the city defenses, and the throne returns to Team Retribution. Louis is still a prisoner, and both friendly factions remain on the battlefield. Carl has to finish his rescue and get their NPC allies out before winning the war makes those allies the losing faction.

Chapter 78

Akuma messages Carl from the ruined Semeru castle. He claims Agatha forced her way into the mages’ leadership through system access he didn’t understand. The mages were looking for a being called the Scavenger’s Daughter beneath the castle antenna, and Akuma says they found her. She shares the name of the image on Carl’s body, but Akuma gives no full explanation of her identity. He urges Carl to recover the Gate and points him toward another possible escape through the Waiting Room, then leaves the floor. With its last warlord gone, the War Mage Rebellion is declared defeated.

Justice Light identifies the merchant holding the Gate as Paca and says he can negotiate its return. Carl gives him the location Eris supplied. Florin, meanwhile, is seeking an exit deal that would put him in the children’s facility on Earth, where he hopes to protect Lucia.

Imani and Juice Box can’t detect any possession in Britney, but Carl asks them to keep watching her. Emberus sends another order for Carl to obtain Apito’s soul crystal, which Prepotente now holds. Carl keeps that order from Prepotente, who offers to help Li Na hunt her escaped targets. Carl and Donut head for the Reaver castle to save Louis.

Chapter 79

Carl’s rescue party travels by ground because Fang’s cybernetic dragon, Calliope, is still circling the Reaver castle.

On the way, Milk and Rosetta explain what becoming Nekhebit’s champion means for Donut. She now has powerful plant and nature spells, but the goddess’s enemies can place bounties on her, and she can’t simply give the position back.

At the castle, the corridors continually shift, making an ordinary search for Louis dangerous. Juice Box locates him on their stored map and becomes a Hunter Wraith so she can pass through the walls. She intends to possess Louis and teleport him out with her. Tipid warns that this kind of contact has consequences for the wraith as well as the person it enters, but Juice Box goes ahead.

Chapter 80

Juice Box finds Louis and reports a complication just as the castle’s robot dogs begin making lethal attacks. Carl and Donut fight them outside while Samantha helps from within, having removed the explosive parts from one dog and befriended it.

Juice Box uses the EMP bombs Louis has stored, and Carl detonates the explosives his team left outside. The Reaver castle blows apart. Calliope crashes and explodes as well, killing Fang, who had moved his remaining biological body into the dragon. The system declares the Reavers defeated.

Juice Box gets Louis out unconscious and explains what his captors have done to him. They replaced his heart, lungs, and legs and were preparing to replace his brain. The Dream’s warlord, Tagg, is hiding inside the replacement organs.

Chapter 81

Mordecai explains that Tagg, like Fang, can survive as a small amount of biological material supported by machinery. Tagg used Louis’s new mechanical organs as a refuge, and replacing the rest of Louis’s body could eventually give him control over it.

Tagg threatens to stop Louis’s heart unless they take him to the eighteenth floor. Removing the organs would kill Louis, but waiting would be just as dangerous. Tagg is the Dream’s last member, so when the occupation of its headquarters defeats the faction, the new rule will kill him inside Louis’s body.

An emergency sequence suddenly tries to eject Carl from the dungeon. The AI blocks it and accuses Prime Minister Glory of trying to have Carl killed outside its control. It announces that crawlers will leave only on its terms. Zev then reports that ships outside are firing on one another and that she has refused an order to destroy the showrunner headquarters.

Justice Light confirms he has recovered the Gate and returned to his hidden worksite. He is ready for Juice Box to join him, but Juice Box still has to save Louis first.

Chapter 82

Prepotente brings more bad news about Li Na’s ring. Three other people she marked, survivors from Rust’s coerced harem, escaped through the Cosmic Lounge to the eighteenth floor. She can’t reach them from here, so killing Tagg won’t clear all her marks or allow her to heal. Bigs also reports how she conscripted Harpocrates: she forced Sneaky Tyler C to attack the god with the potion, and Tyler died doing it.

Rosetta tells Carl why she and Tipid can’t return to ordinary life outside. Tipid’s brain damage has left him dependent on the dungeon’s enhancement to function. Leaving would take that support away, and Rosetta intends to stay with him.

At the hospital, Kiwi gives birth to two daughters, part bear and part raptor. They are intelligent enough that the system won’t classify them as pets. Mongo stays beside Kiwi and their babies as Tina and the exhausted survivors gather around the new family.

Juice Box finally tells Carl what happened when she possessed Louis. The Hunter Wraith’s curse made her feel certain she was seeing the truth about him: he supposedly has a quality that makes dungeon NPCs fall in love with him. She calls the resulting sense that a cause is hopeless the Inevitable Ruin. Juice Box insists she truly loves Louis, but fears that if he learns what she saw, he will believe their entire relationship was forced. Carl refuses to let that despair decide what they do next. He and Juice Box promise to keep each other from giving up.

Chapter 83

As the Dream’s occupation timer runs down, Carl stalls Tagg while the healers search for replacement organs. Healing potions won’t grow back Louis’s missing heart and lungs.

Samantha believes the changeling killed in Houston’s experiment was her child, and she blames herself for that death. She realizes they do have another body available: the unfinished flesh golem of Princess Lunette, Signet’s mother, is still in Carl’s inventory. It has a heart and lungs Louis could use. That body was promised to Samantha, but she agrees to give up its organs so Louis can live. With Juice Box’s flesh-mancer form to help, the healers can attempt a transplant.

Samantha then casually admits she had a part in the death of Emberus’s son, Geyrun. Emberus immediately enters the realm.

Chapter 84

Emberus gives the Princess Posse sixty-six minutes before he destroys the floor. He demands Samantha for questioning, but delivering her might only buy a delay. They still have to finish Faction Wars before they can leave. Katia’s orchid requires an hour of unconsciousness before it summons Eileithyia, so she eats it immediately while Carl orders everyone to speed up the remaining rescues.

Carl takes Lunette’s unfinished body out of inventory and enlarges it. Juice Box animates it in her flesh-mancer form so the organs can be prepared for the transfer. Imani and the other healers will perform the transplant and use Mordecai’s Special Brew to close the damage. Before they are ready, Donut taunts Tagg into stopping Louis’s heart, forcing them to operate immediately.

The new organs go in, but the fae lungs need water. Carl uses a Water Breathing scroll on Louis while the others run water through the gills in his neck. Louis wakes in distress until he switches his breathing setting to Water Breathing and stabilizes.

Mongo eats the discarded mechanical heart and lungs with Tagg still inside them. Tagg’s death defeats the Dream, leaving only the two allied factions. Louis survives with his new organs, and Carl has just over half an hour to get everyone off the floor.

Chapter 85

The Sledge casts Zerzura, moving Larracos and the newly connected Shanty Town to the twelfth floor’s Court of Ascendency. Eligible NPC residents can travel with the city and wait there until that floor begins. Current crawlers and returning veterans can’t use this route, so they have to take the stairs. To avoid the defeat rule, Team Retribution’s last warlord must stay until the NPC evacuation is complete.

About twenty-eight thousand of the fifty thousand returning veterans are still alive, along with roughly twenty thousand current crawlers. Many intend to take exit deals on the next floor. Carl refuses to execute the captured mercenaries for more ring gains and has them recruited into the city’s evacuation instead. He gives his Ring of Divine Suffering to Donut, who eats it, ending his use of the ring.

Milk turns the current crawlers’ donated abilities into Carl’s Book of Boom and Donut’s Banquet Fit for a Princess. A crawler who contributes an ability loses it permanently, and the recipient can eat its page for temporary use. The crawlers planning to leave are giving Carl and Donut something of themselves to keep fighting with.

Kiwi, Tina, and the babies go with the city. Mongo and Rend stay with the crawlers, while Juice Box heads for Justice Light’s separate operation. After the evacuation and both warlords’ departure, Team Retribution is declared defeated and the Princess Posse wins Faction Wars. The stairs are available, but Emberus’s deadline is still counting down.

Chapter 86

Larracos vanishes, exposing the enormous living roots beneath it and the stairs. Samantha agrees to be thrown to Emberus to buy the others more time. Carl launches her with the xistera’s head-throwing attachment, which will let him call her back before he leaves. Florin brings Lucia into his party, and the surviving crawlers begin descending.

Victory announces that she has become prime minister after the deaths of younger relatives restored her eligibility, while Maestro claims the Skull Empire’s crown.

Eileithyia arrives as Katia’s hour of waiting ends, with Huanxin Jinx controlling the goddess through her sponsorship. Katia delays choosing her reward, keeping the ritual open so Donut can carry out the plan they prepared together. Donut’s strengthened Laundry Day strips Huanxin out of Eileithyia’s body. The goddess remains present while prepared wards keep the exposed sponsor from teleporting away.

Donut uses her mounting rig to aim the Crossbow of the Scavenger Mother of Mothers and shoots Huanxin with the bolt Mordecai made from his mother’s remains. Huanxin dies. With the sponsor gone, Eileithyia can finish Katia’s ritual.

Katia chooses pregnancy so she will become ineligible for the dungeon and can go help the children on Earth. The ritual requires a human mother and a human father who is present. Louis agrees to be the father, and Eileithyia returns Katia to her human form, revealing the missing right arm and lower right leg that her dungeon body had obscured. Bautista fits the cybernetic arm they prepared for her. Eileithyia tells Katia the baby is a boy before the system removes her alive.

Chapter 87

Carl calls Samantha back from Emberus with three minutes left. She is charred but alive, and Louis thanks her for giving up the organs intended for her new body. Donut takes the Annie card Katia left behind. Bautista says goodbye and descends, and Mordecai thanks Donut for letting his mother’s remains help kill Huanxin. Carl and Donut enter the stairs together.

The viewpoint shifts to Justice Light, who has stayed behind after telling Juice Box he would go with her into the Nothing. She has already entered, but someone has to finish the trap from this side. Justice believes Porthus and the Apothecary understood the larger plan; the others weren’t told everything it would do.

The Gate holds a portal into the Nothing open while the apparatus connects a fairy trap to the twelfth floor’s Halls of Ascendency and a demon trap to Sheol. Justice releases the trapped beings, using their unbreakable divine connections to pull the separate realms together. The system announces that the Nothing has broken and is draining into the Halls of Ascendency, Sheol, and Scolopendra’s lair. Scolopendra wakes. The activation throws Justice away, leaving his fate unknown.

The spectators receive an evacuation warning directing them toward the sixteenth floor as a possible refuge. Its supposedly terrible Agony of Mirrors is an ordinary mirror in an otherwise empty room. But the guests first have to cross the seventeenth floor’s Backstage Death Maze to reach it.

Epilogue

Aboard the Homecoming Queen, York carries out Rosetta’s order to destroy the yacht carrying the royal children and the new orc child king. Porthus had fitted the veterans’ transport with enhancement weapons its guards weren’t expecting. Afterward, York struggles with his inability to feel what he thinks he should. Contact with Boomer offers him the possibility of friendship beyond the work he was made to do.

Porthus broadcasts a declaration of war against Syndicate governments and demands an end to the crawl. His organization drops Pacifist from its name and becomes the Open Intellect Action Network. York also receives a request for equipment and a landing craft to help a pregnant veteran seeking backup on Earth. It suggests Katia is making plans on the surface, though her attempt to reach the children hasn’t been shown.

Back in the dungeon, Quasar presents the available exit deals, and Carl rejects the poor offers. Donut has also declined through her assigned attorney, Princess Chandra. Quasar then reveals that Chandra is Carl’s new wife.

Carl gets a brief introduction to the tenth floor, Don’t Come in Last. Parties will choose a biological or mechanical vehicle and race from one point to another, picking up upgrades and competing alongside NPC teams.

At a waystation outside Earth’s tunnel approach, a visitor identifies herself to merchant Zander as Eris and uses her power to change his tentacles. The goddess of chaos is now acting far beyond the dungeon.