Dungeon Crawler Carl

The audience disappears, and Odette tells Lexis to give them the room because she wants to speak to Donut and Carl alone. Odette tells them about the last guest, Lucia Mar, and states “that little psychopath does not know how to work a crowd” (240). Odette removes her praying mantis head and reveals that she is a human woman who is around 60. The crab body also falls away, revealing that Odette is legless. Carl asks why she wears this costume, and she tells him that the entire getup was her armor when she was a crawler. She reached the stairwell of the 13th level, but she never went down the stairs because she struck a deal. She tells them that she was Mordecai’s trainer. She asks them to tell Mordecai to look her up after he is freed from servitude at the end of the season.

Odette tells Carl and Donut that their social numbers will rise in a few days, but Donut should not change her race because she will lose followers. She tells Carl to stop complaining about not having pants if he actually wants to find them, because the loot boxes are not random. Odette shares that on the 11th floor, she lost her legs but got a loot box and received a legendary item that allowed her to attach monster bodies to herself. Because her survival was good for the show, the showrunners ensured that she would live longer.

Odette tells them not to trust anyone. She tells them that Mordecai’s indentureship will not end this year unless one of his crawlers makes it to the fourth floor. Since Borant Corporation does not sponsor a season every year, Mordecai might be stuck in his situation for seven or eight more seasons of indentureship if Carl and Donut fail to reach this level. Carl asks Odette why she is telling him these things. She says that her audience loves them, and she loves money.

On the second floor, the Meadow Lark group has not appeared. There are two hours until the collapse. Carl has a bad feeling about getting famous from the interview, but he knows that their new popularity might keep them alive.

The second floor is set up similarly to the first floor. There is a third-level stairwell visible, and when Donut and Carl approach it, they encounter a brindle grub corpse with Level 2 brindle grubs. After they kill the two brindle grubs, they find out that Agatha killed the first one. The information box tells them that the brindle grubs become something much nastier, but no further information is provided.

Danger Dingoes suddenly attack. Donut hates dogs and uses her magic missiles to kill them, and then tears their corpses to shreds. Donut spots a safe room near the third-level stairwell, and they edge into another quadrant that has Mind Horrors: floating brains with tentacles. The monsters’ psionic attack causes Carl to get a terrible headache but does not impact Donut. Donut and Carl soon clear the path to the safe room, which is a storm shelter with bathrooms, sinks, and cots. It also has a mailbox, which is a new feature.

Carl and Donut open the boxes and review their newest achievements. Carl receives a cheat code potion that increases his pugilism skill to 10. He also receives a pedicure kit that increases his barefoot skills, so long as he uses the items on his feet once per day. Donut receives a membership to the Dungeon Book of the Floor Club that gives her one spell book per level. The new spell she receives is a necromancy spell that raises a monster from the dead that compels it to fight for them.

Brandon and crew are still bringing people to the safe room as the episode premieres. When the first level collapses, the number of remaining crawlers drops from 2 million to 1.2 million. The first level killed over 10 million people. Twenty-four of the 30 people from the first level safe room decided to stay, and they died when the level collapsed. Agatha is still missing.

Brandon tells Carl that he wants to go downstairs to the third floor early, even though there are six days until the level collapses. Brandon is concerned that the party will be separated. Carl is unsure of this idea because Brandon and the others cannot train their skills, but he agrees to clear the way for them. The group is unsure why there are only six days before this level collapse because they expected 10 days.

The premiere features Lucia Mar and her dogs, and a group of men named “Le Mouvement.” The episode shows Carl and Donut’s boss battle with the ball of swine for less than 15 seconds, then flashes all their mugshots except Agatha’s. The group infers that Agatha has died on the second level. However, Chris points out that something else must be happening because Agatha was edited out of the scene completely. No one know what that means.

When the show ends, the announcer tells them that too many crawlers died before Level 2, so they have decided to speed up the timeline. This makes no sense to the group, as it would be safer to have more time on the current level, not less. They can all now see their followers, views, and favorites. Donut gets excited as her first followers appear, and Carl reminds her to be calm.

Near the stairwell, there is a tutorial guild and another saferoom. Carl and Donut look for the boss room and try to determine what monsters are in the area. Carl and Donut find three monsters—Level 3 unvaccinated clurichauns, which are related to leprechauns. They have a toxic sneeze, so Donut kills them with a magic missile. They loot the bodies, and Carl takes a slingshot.

Donut and Carl focus on clearing out the neighborhood. After some scuffling with various foes, Carl makes an incendiary called “Carl’s Jug O’ Boom.” They ignite the other rooms containing clurichauns, and Carl practices with the slingshot. Near the outside of the boss room, there is a workshop filled with dozens of clurichauns and small, fat fairies that are Level 6. The clurichauns are filling bathtubs with bottles of moonshine. Carl cannot burn the room because they will lose all the loot, so he asks Donut to use her spell to jump over to the other side of the room.

Donut teleports into the room and immediately talks to the winged fairies. Because she can charm such creatures, she turns them to her side, but the remaining 40 clurichauns are still enemies. The winged fairies yell that Donut is a client and order the clurichauns to get back to work. Donut convinces the winged fairies to follow her out of the room and have the other hostile clurichauns follow. Donut lures the winged fairies to safety, and Carl throws two explosive devices into the room, incinerating 40 clurichauns. Donut catches and kills one winged fairy, but the other uses magic to shoot Carl in the chest. He takes a healing potion. When the fairy runs out of mana, Donut kills her.

Because they killed 40 monsters at once, their level jumps to 11. They loot the bodies and obtain gold. The two corpses become alchemy material that Carl puts in his inventory. Carl feels guilty about killing monsters using Donut’s charm. Mordecai has told him the mobs in deeper levels are less sympathetic, and Carl hopes that this is true. Carl and Donut loot the workshop and obtain many more moonshine jugs and an alchemy workstation. The door to the boss chamber is like the entrance to a community center, and Carl suggests leaving the boss alone, concerned that there are more babies in the room. He finds a recipe to counteract the boss’s deadly taint, but it is disgusting and he does not want to fight the boss. Suddenly, the door to the boss room blasts open, and bars drop down to lock the exit. The monster has pink tentacles with dozens of mouths. Each mouth is the size of a Frisbee, and each mouth screams. A new achievement appears and notifies them that on the second level, bosses can leave their rooms. 

The boss is Krakaren Clone, a Level 10 monster. Donut kills the clurichauns that come into the room as Carl tries to make the recipe against the boss’s taint. The recipe calls for moonshine and the body of a fairy, both of which he pulls from his inventory. As he works, more tentacles break into the room and send debris down onto them.

Using the recipe, Carl and Donut fight in earnest. Carl is hit with a rock. When he and Donut are backed against a wall, Donut tells Carl she loves him, but not as much as Beatrice or Ferdinand. Carl tells Donut to focus, but internally he reflects that Beatrice was already planning to discard Donut for a younger show-cat. Carl and Donut continue to battle their foes. Carl’s health is low, but Donut is unharmed. Carl plans to cause an explosion; he says that even though doing so will probably kill him, Donut should live. Carl wraps his body around Donut’s. Donut tells him that she lied before; she really won’t be fine on her own. Carl has no time to respond before the explosion comes.

Carl survives but is blind and deaf. His health indicator is the lowest it has ever been. Donut is on his chest, pawing at him. He tells her that he cannot hear, and she sends a message that they killed the boss, but the room is on fire. Carl tells her that his legs are broken and he cannot move. Donut drags him from the room by his cloak, and he passes out.

When Carl wakes up, Donut has used a healing scroll and Carl uses a healing spell. Donut tells him that their views have increased dramatically. After Carl heals, they walk back into the boss room. His alchemy table is unharmed, and Carl suspects that its indestructibility is a bug in the system. He plans to exploit this bug until the showrunners create a patch to fix it. They loot the neighborhood map and see 50 slow-moving brindle grubs headed toward the remains of the battle, so they escape to the tutorial guild and visit Mordecai.

Carl passes along the message that Odette wants Mordecai to visit her, and Mordecai says, “That bitch really said that?” (302). Mordecai says not to trust Odette, who will exploit them until they’re no longer useful. Mordecai has shapeshifted into a bugaboo. He tells them that a kua-tin named Zev wants to speak to them; she will arrive in 10 to 15 minutes. Mordecai tells them that their lives depend on not upsetting Zev.

Carl asks him why the second floor time was shortened to six days, and Mordecai cannot answer. Mordecai asks why Agatha’s actions were edited from the fight, but Mordecai cannot tell him anything about this either. Carl gets new enchanted boxers that allow him to cast a protective shell every 30 hours. Suddenly, a loudspeaker announces that they cannot wield their weapons and warns that any attempted violence against an admin will result in execution. Then Zev appears.

The female kua-tin, Zev, is around two feet tall and works in the communications department of Borant Corporation. She wears a water suit that makes her look like a scuba diver. Zev is a liaison between Borant and other companies that might want to borrow crawlers for their shows. She is approaching crawlers who have gained early popularity. She explains that after the latest boss battle, Carl and Donut have received over two dozen interview requests and have been entered into the Crawler Assisted Outreach Program, which comes with a PR agent. Zev has been assigned as their PR agent. Carl asks if they can refuse interviews.

Zev says they can, but they are already contracted with Odette to have an interview for each floor opening. Zev says they also have an interview that appeals to a demographic that is not yet focused on them. Zev advises them to line up a boss battle right before the next level, and Carl loses his temper. He tells her that they are fighting for their lives, and her company has already taken everything from them. He refuses to fight on her schedule. Donut purrs and butts her head against Carl’s, which surprises Carl, but he is more surprised at Zev’s reaction to his rant.

Zev is understanding. She explains that if she performs her own role incorrectly, her entire family will be destroyed. She must later return to meet with her boss, who is a member of “the party.” She reveals that everyone is “part of the same, inexorable machine. All of us are afraid… but believe it or not, I am on your side” (314). Donut makes a pop culture reference that both Mordecai and Zev understand. Zev has been on the planet for 15 years and has had no one to talk to about the television show Gilmore Girls. While Zev and Donut discuss Gilmore Girls, Mordecai privately explains to Carl that “the party” is called the Bloom and is like “Axis Japan with a good splash of Nazi Germany thrown in” (315). Mordecai tells Carl that the Bloom has caused the government to lose money. The government, run by Bloom, is forcing Borant Corporation to end the game as quickly as possible so that so they can earn the money from advertising and the patron system.

Some of the glitches are purposeful and are designed to end the game early. When Zev looks at Carl, Mordecai stops talking. Carl suggests that he and Donut return to the dungeon. Donut promises Zev that they will talk more later. Zev asks if Donut has seen Riverdale. Carl pulls at the door and realizes that the mini-map has changed color. When he opens the door, a waist-high pile of grubs falls into the room.