Dungeon Crawler Carl

For 10 hours, Carl sleeps soundly with Donut on his neck, and he “didn’t dream, wasn’t haunted by nightmares like most nights” (88). Upon awakening, he showers and eats. He wonders how people above ground fared, especially those in the winter storm. Carl and Donut leave the safe room to hunt scatterers, which are like large cockroaches. They encounter three bugs, and Carl squishes the two low-level scatterers. Donut uses a magic missile on the Level 4 scatterer, and Carl attacks it with his weapons. Neither option works well, so he kicks it. His kicks do a lot of damage and he is able to squish it. Consulting the map, they decide to go toward a large room and determine what is inside.

After encountering more scatterers, they figure out that using magic missile right before the opponent attacks has a stunning effect, after which Carl stomps the heads. Carl and Donut have achieved Level 5 in experience when they reach the door to the room. Donut is able to distribute her points, but Carl is not. When they open the door, the room is totally dark, but Donut sees many cockroaches and the air smells like socks. Offhandedly, she reveals that another man came over to the apartment when Carl went to the gym, and Carl realizes that Beatrice was cheating on him. His anger makes him feel reckless, so he takes out goblin dynamite and tells Donut to run. Carl lights the dynamite and throws it, praying that it won’t explode when it hits the ground.

The dynamite does explode when it hit the ground, and Carl is only a few steps from the door when it goes off. His health is low before he starts to heal. The room looks like the interior of a dumpster, and there are dozens of dead bug corpses. The door reforms and locks itself, and an announcement tells them that there is now a boss battle in progress.

A 15-foot, Spanish-speaking woman called “the hoarder” appears from beneath a pile of trash. She asks for their help and says that her stomach hurts, and Carl wants to help her. He believes that the dungeon stole her from her house and transformed her into a monster. Donut fires a magic missile at her, and the woman keeps vomiting scatterers. Carl goes behind the woman and wraps a metal leash around her throat. She falls, and more cockroaches attack Carl. One bites his leg. He tells Donut to use her claws, but she’s reluctant.

The chain around the woman’s neck breaks, and Carl kills one cockroach while Donut kills another with a magic missile. Meanwhile, the first two missiles hit the woman, who pleads in Spanish, voicing her hope that she will not go to Hell but will instead go to Jesus. Carl apologizes as he punches her repeatedly. She finally dies. Carl and Donut are the winners. Carl tries not to vomit.

The hoarder drops a neighborhood map as loot. The map reveals the area around the room and the creatures and people in it. There is a dead crawler that Donut wants to loot, but Carl wants to speak to Mordecai. Mordecai is asleep, after having gotten drunk, and he cradles the photo of his brother. Carl asks Mordecai about bosses.

Mordecai tells him that there are six main types. The neighborhood bosses—like the hoarder—are the most common and the easiest to find. Carl asks Mordecai if all bosses are human, and Mordecai says that some are, but not all. Carl now has a bronze star after his name because he killed a neighborhood boss.

Carl’s punching skill has increased to Level 3. He now has a tome called wisp armor, but he does not have enough mana to use it. He also gets spiked knee pads, which deflect some damage. When Donut sees him in his new gear, she asks, “Is there a worst-dressed award for the dungeon?” (108). Mordecai admits that the showrunners do interview crawlers sometimes, and Donut tells Carl to get her on the show. When Carl reminds her he is not her agent, Donut says that Beatrice is and relates her hope that she and Beatrice will be reunited by the fifth or sixth floor. Mordecai and Carl are silently skeptical that Beatrice is still alive.

Donut and Carl go on to loot the body of a dead crawler named Rebecca. Carl tells Donut that she needs to train her claws, but Donut is afraid that she will get hurt. They find Rebecca naked with no supplies. Carl that assumes Rebecca was killed by goblins, but when they approach, the info box tells him that she was shot in the chest by Frank, another crawler.

Carl is worried that Frank is hiding nearby. Donut suggests that Frank is a cocker spaniel, but Carl dismisses it. Carl is irrationally angry about what was done to Rebecca and wants to find Frank. They consult the map and decide to hunt down the remaining red dots, then watch the premiere of the show in the safe room. After the premiere, they will go hunting for the stairs and Frank. Donut asks Carl if he is afraid of Frank , but Carl denies this.

The premiere of “Dungeon Crawler World: Earth” is presented so that viewers are virtually placed in actual scenes. Carl watches the premiere with Tally and Donut in the safe room. There is a recap of the previous season, where the people were broken into groups and told that if they were to kill others, their loved ones would be safe. Carl asks if the loved ones are actually safe, and Tally says, “Is better dead. [The dungeon] saps the planet dry. It leaves planet, moves on. No more atmosphere. People live after the big fight, but they don’t live. Not really” (115). Tally shares that he was not a crawler. He says that sometimes planets are not mined for resources if people volunteer to work instead.

Then the show introduces Earth. Carl realizes that the showrunners are attempting to make Earth look like a terrible place. The show spends 40 minutes showing many people dying in the dungeons. Eventually, people are shown surviving the encounters. The premiere ends without any mention of Donut or Carl, and Donut is outraged. An announcer speaks directly to the dungeon crawlers and tells them of patches that have fixed some glitches. The announcer suggests descending the stairs no sooner than six hours before the scheduled collapse.

Carl begins to see a pattern to the dungeon; it is really a condensed version of the city directly above it. Donut and Carl run into a new type of monster called slimes. Carl cannot fight these well, so they turn away.

Carl realizes that with only three and a half days to find the staircase, they need to cover an immense amount of ground. Carl decides to take them into a goblin neighborhood and uses his tattoo for safe passage. Donut’s high charisma score allows her to convince the goblins to do anything, and she tells a goblin to take them to an engineer.

They are taken to two goblin shamans who succumb to Donut’s charm. She names them Rory and Lorelai. When Donut asks for a vehicle, the two goblins agree but insist that the pair trade something for it. The goblins reject most of what Donut and Carl offer, but finally accept the trade for the meth that Carl has. Donut invites the goblins to join them, but they tell her that they will dissolve if they go down the stairs. They also reveal that the goblins do not die when the floor collapses; instead, they go to sleep. If the goblins improve at killing the crawlers, they get to go deeper into the dungeon, and eventually, they will get so deep that they will not see any crawlers at all.

The goblins complete the vehicle, which is a Goblin “copper chopper” with an attached sidecar for Donut. It runs on coal, so Carl fills his inventory with lots of coal. Lorelei and Rory return, both of them drunk, and Lorelei hits on Carl. Donut tells her that they’re on a schedule, and Lorelei tells Carl to look her up later.

Rory gives Carl a bag of small bombs and grenades, then asks Donut where the meth came from. Donut tells her it came from the llamas. This inspires the goblins to gear up and head out to attack the llamas. Donut tells Carl that the goblins’ response is just as she planned. She suggests that they steal as much as they can, then go to another room and kill the chieftain. Carl remembers that the last time they fought a boss, he had to kill a frightened woman. He knows that it is dangerous to go into the room, but he agrees.

Donut and Carl completely loot the room, then they fill barrels with gunpowder and place them on a cart. Carl puts the cart in front of the door leading to the chieftain. Donut opens the door, and Carl shoves the cart into the room. Then they run. When they get away, Carl asks Donut if there was a goblin in the room. She says yes, so he jams the button to detonate the bomb. Then she adds, “There sure were a lot of babies in there, too” (138). The bomb explodes a moment later.

There is a massive shockwave. An entire wall of notifications appears, and they get the achievement of killing a neighborhood boss. Carl asks Donut again if there were really babies, and she confirms that there were goblin babies, pregnant goblins, and elderly goblins. Then she tells him they are at Level 8 now.

Carl is appalled that he killed baby goblins, but Donut does not understand why he is so upset. They go into the destroyed workshop, but the pile of coal has ignited, and the only way to the boss chamber is blocked. Carl is relieved; he does not want to see the dead babies. On the map, Carl can see that more goblins are approaching, and they decide to leave before the goblins return and become hostile.

Carl has earned a new achievement: killing an infant. However, the information box tells him that the infants are not actually killed; instead, they are transferred to a holding area. Then the information box explains that it was joking, and the babies really are dead. He receives another achievement as a war criminal for killing 20 noncombatants in a single attack.

Donut and Carl find a safe room halfway through a neighborhood of monsters called rot stickers. This rest area is designed to resemble a DMV waiting area, and there is no attendant. Instead, there are experience cookies that give Donut and Carl 10 experience points. Carl has improved multiple skills and gained the IED skill for building a bomb. Donut receives a beguilers box for charming the goblins. She also receives a tattoo similar to the goblin pass, and she’s furious. It is called a desperado pass, which allows access to the Desperado Club, but no further details are provided. Donut also receives armor for the first time, along with a tome called Minion Army. However, she does not have enough spell points to cast this, so she cannot learn the spell yet.

Carl receives the same desperado tattoo as Donut, along with a ring that increases his constitution to 12 and a skill potion that allows him to see the value of items in his inventory. Carl lies down to sleep, but is haunted by the thought of the dead goblin babies. He tries to rationalize that the goblin babies existed only to die and were placed in the boss room for that purpose. Carl is determined that while the dungeon may kill him or hurt him, it will not break him.