Chapter 21 of 48 · Book 1, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Chapter 21 — Bitchmeat!

Book: Dungeon Crawler Carl · Part: The First Floor · Previous: Chapter 20 — Frank Q · Next: Chapter 22 — The encampment · Floor: Floor 1 — The Tutorial · Series: the series

Opening

If Frank and Maggie found my trap, I didn’t receive a notification.

Summary

'Bitchmeat!' — the achievement for being saved by the system — and Carl laughs at the AI for the first time. The chopper works: twenty miles an hour, a lump of coal every few miles, Chopper Pilot rising, hours of empty grid: a wall below Lake Washington, a detour south down the I-5 corridor, then east again. His father, the weekend biker who left twelve years ago, comes to mind on the bike.

A spray-painted sign in fresh red paint — 'Two crossroads east, three south. Stairs + People' — and a field of Chilly Goat corpses killed by fifteen named crawlers. At the edge of a giant circle something huge rolls past behind the wall, stinking of sewage. 'This is going to be unpleasant.'

Characters

• Carl — First laugh; thoughts of his father; reads the sign.
• Princess Donut — Sidecar passenger, map on full screen.
• Brandon — Named on a goat corpse before he is met.
• Chris — Likewise: 'with an assist by Crawler Chris Andrews 2.'

Locations

• The First Floor — The long drive east; the fog of war at speed.
• The spiral — First glimpse of the borough boss's loop.

Motifs

• Achievements — Bitchmeat: 'Bitches don't get rewards.'