Motif · Book 1, Dungeon Crawler Carl

The clock

The countdown in the corner of every crawler's vision: 'Time to Level Collapse', five days on the first floor, read out by the system at the head of chapters and by Carl whenever he has to choose. On the second floor a second timer appears beneath it, counting down to the closing of the safe rooms an hour before collapse, and Carl waits for the level timer to reach six hours before he takes the stairs.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 2 — The staircase
• Chapter 3 — Da Tutorial Guild
• Chapter 8 — Rats and Scatterers
• Chapter 10 — 4,148,111
• Chapter 15 — Mapping the first floor
• Chapter 19 — You Monster!
• Chapter 21 — Bitchmeat!
• Chapter 26 — Six and a half hours
• Chapter 31 — The first floor collapses
• Chapter 32 — The pedicure kit
• Chapter 38 — The Rage Elemental
• Chapter 39 — The recap
• Chapter 41 — People buckets
• Chapter 44 — What Donut overheard

Progression

'Time to Level Collapse: Five days' on the first screen (ch. 2), and Mordecai's rule that the clock only starts 'until the previous floor collapses' and grows by about five days a floor (ch. 4). The system reads it at the head of chapters — four days, 20 hours (ch. 8); 47 hours (ch. 21); 6 hours 30 minutes (ch. 26) — and 'the timer finally ran out' as the next recap premieres, 700,000 dead in the second the floor goes (ch. 31). The second floor gets six days, not the ten Mordecai predicted (ch. 31) — five days and ten hours on the next morning's screen (ch. 32); 'You said it'd probably be ten days, but it's six' (ch. 35); a second timer, Time to Safe Room Closure, appears an hour ahead of it (ch. 39); and the party carves toward the stairwell at ten hours and waits for six (ch. 47).