Chapter 20 of 48 · Book 1, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Chapter 20 — Frank Q

Book: Dungeon Crawler Carl · Part: The First Floor · Previous: Chapter 19 — You Monster! · Next: Chapter 21 — Bitchmeat! · Floor: Floor 1 — The Tutorial · Series: the series

Opening

I was awakened by the start of the show on the television screen.

Summary

Frank Q steps out of the women's bathroom: forty, cop's bearing, enchanted shoulder pads, an axe, three skulls. His story — ICE agent, a warehouse of undocumented workers, a firefight, Rebecca the trafficker — is plausible and Donut believes every word. Carl watches him eat an experience cookie and receive 9.8 instead of 10, sees his finger twitching on a chat window, and remembers the apple core.

He fakes taking off his kneepads, Maggie My steps out of stealth with a pistol, both fire, and both freeze with Naughty over their heads: no violence in safe rooms. Carl leaves a lit stick of dynamite in a rat's inventory on the way out, and Donut asks how a man who can read a stranger this well missed Bea dating three people. The day's update adds every missing language with cross-translation, makes Feral Rabies curable, pulls the Blender Fiends after they kill 15,000 crawlers, makes the Street Preacher a borough boss, and warns that crawlers who descend early miss the recap.

Characters

• Frank Q and Maggie My — Both introduced in person; the safe-room ambush that freezes them.
• Carl — The deduction; the rat trap; Bitchmeat to come.
• Princess Donut — 'FRANK IS AN AMERICAN HERO.'
• Rebecca W — Retold as a trafficker; Carl does not buy it.

Locations

• Safe rooms — The rule Mordecai gave in chapter 5, used.

Motifs

• 'There will always be clues' — The 9.8 EXP, the twitching finger, the apple core.
• Explosives — The dynamite in the rat.
• Bea — Three at once, counting Angel's owner — another woman.