Chapter 3 of 48 · Book 1, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Chapter 3 — Da Tutorial Guild

Book: Dungeon Crawler Carl · Part: The First Floor · Previous: Chapter 2 — The staircase · Next: Chapter 4 — The character sheet · Floor: Floor 1 — The Tutorial · Series: the series

Opening

The moment the door closed, a notification appeared.

Summary

Behind the plain door signed Tutorial Guild is Mordecai, a level-50 Rat Hooligan who was once a crawler and is now indentured to guide new ones. He is fussy, rule-bound and more candid than he is supposed to be: he was born a skyfowl, became a Changeling on floor three, changes form every time his guildhall moves, and reached floor 11; most crawlers, he says, don't make it past the tenth; and Earth is the seventh or eighth human-seeded world. Before any of it, Carl goes back out barefoot: he throws one goblin into the dozer's spinning blades, jumps on the engineer from the dozer's top, and is back behind the guild door when the boiler blows against it.

The chapter is the book's first lecture, and it sets Mordecai's role for the book — the one adult in the room, bound by rules about what he may say, saying it anyway when he can.

Characters

• Mordecai — Introduced as a level-50 rat guildmaster whose mother's ashes Donut knocks off a shelf; tells his own history.
• Carl — Goes back out barefoot to finish the dozer crew; comes back in asking what the hell is going on.

Locations

• Tutorial guilds — The first guild room: a safe zone with a fireplace, a bed, and his mother's ashes.

Motifs

• The show — Not yet named; Mordecai says only that each dungeon is built for its world.
• The Syndicate — Not yet explained; the seeding and the Syndicate come in the next chapter.