Carl

Part 1 — the tutorial floor

Carl enters the dungeon as the least-prepared person in it: in boxers, a leather jacket and a pair of borrowed Crocs he loses in minutes, carrying a cat that hates him, ch. 1. The book's first move is to make him competent by accident — walking in without pants earns him a Gold Apparel Box in ch. 2 that holds the Nightgaunt Cloak and the Trollskin Shirt (ch. 5), and the tutorial in ch. 3–ch. 6 tells him that his Coast Guard fitness and his fists are worth more than any weapon on the floor. He is nearly out of the party by ch. 8, and stays because Donut says she needs him and because she knows, as he did not, that he had been planning to steal her.

What the floor teaches him is what the game costs. He beats a begging woman to death in ch. 11 and fights not to vomit afterwards; he goes after the goblin chieftain although it would be 'the ultimate dick move' after the goblins helped him (ch. 16), bombs a boss room that turns out to hold goblin babies in ch. 17–ch. 18, and the AI rewards him with You Monster! in ch. 19. That is where the mantra starts: 'You're not going to break me.' He also discovers his two real gifts. The first is reading people — the 9.8 experience points, the twitching finger, the apple core that tell him Frank is lying in ch. 20, which Donut contrasts with his failure to notice Bea's three boyfriends. The second is explosives: the dynamite, the funpowder cart, the IED skill, and eventually a Codex entry with his name on it.

The Meadow Lark encounter (ch. 22–ch. 27) is the floor's moral hinge. He covers the signs so no one will farm the elderly for experience, cannot answer Donut's 'So which one are we?' (ch. 23), builds the Speedbump with two maintenance men, kicks a confused courtesan to death 'maybe crying' (ch. 26), and chooses the residents over speed because 'what was the point of living, if I couldn't live with myself?'

Part 2 — the second floor, and the show

The second floor is where Carl learns the game is television. Odette tells him loot is not random (ch. 29); Zev tells him he is part of a machine and asks him to repeat a line without coughing (ch. 36, ch. 37); a focus group calls the residents dead weight. His response is a temper he rarely loses — at Zev in ch. 36, at the Maestro in ch. 42 — and a discovery about leverage: 'We were expensive.' The Death Watch episode is the first time he uses the show against itself, and the Pork Boy Snick that follows makes him a name across the tunnels for something he did not do.

His fights get smarter rather than stronger. Krakaren is beaten by a recipe card and a zombie with a jug (ch. 34); the Rage Elemental, seventy levels above him, is beaten by a rule about stairs that a goblin told him (ch. 39–ch. 41); Ralph is beaten by a pet biscuit (ch. 45). Mordecai's 'there will always be clues' (ch. 25) is his method by the end. The cost is still there: Yolanda's obituary is his (ch. 38), and he does not know whether keeping the residents alive was a kindness.

He ends the book with boots he will not wear, a raptor that bites him, a vow from Maggie My, a challenge to a prince, three Valtay items in his inventory history, and a look from Agatha that says stop now (ch. 47). The last thing said to him is that there is something hidden among Donut's class choices that will make someone very angry (epilogue).

The build

Book 2 is where Carl chooses who he will be for the rest of the crawl, and chooses the hard way. He refuses the AI's bait — a Sasquatch with sparkling size-24 feet — and takes Primal, a blank slate five levels behind everyone with every skill unlockable to 20, then Compensated Anarchist, a bomb-and-trap class that costs him seventeen points of charisma before he has spent one on strength (ch. 2). 'Was I an idiot? I knew some people would definitely think so.' The floor rewards the choice: Iron Punch to ten, strength to thirty (ch. 14), Freeballing boxers that double kicks and rule out trousers (ch. 13), a xistera that turns hob-lobbers into cannon fire (ch. 17), and the first entry in a playbook (ch. 12).

The circus

The floor's first half is Signet's story and Carl is the extra in it. He breaks his own finger to escape her charm (ch. 6), pulls a lion's heart out (ch. 7), wakes fifteen hours later with Donut hostage (ch. 8), fights a roller-skating bear alone (ch. 9), and walks into a city boss's tent with a ticket. The smell of the circus gives him back his mother and takes her away again in the same breath (ch. 10). What he does with the rage: not kill Grimaldi but poison him, sell his survival to the show's producers for a recurring role, eat the worms, and talk the vine and the girl it raised and banished into peace (ch. 11). 'The seeds were planted.'

The town

Then the quest he swore off. GumGum's murder makes it Donut's cause (ch. 17); Carl's method is the anarchist's: dynamite in the beanie-baby shelves (ch. 18, ch. 21), a bait-and-switch over a spy scroll, a Fireball that finally comes up Spicy, a level-75 guard punched to save a dwarf child (ch. 20), and a warehouse ringed with ten sticks while Katia holds the trigger against mind control (ch. 23). He becomes Magistrate Carl, and nobody acknowledges it. On live television he tells the Skull Empire's subjects to rise, and a singer dies in his place (ch. 19); in chat he decides Borant profited and says nothing out loud (ch. 20).

He ends the floor closing a glass case around a detonating soul crystal because he cannot leave Katia (ch. 24), running naked through the Over City with a city-killing bomb in his inventory (ch. 25), and hearing from Odette that the numbers on the leaderboard are bounties and that Donut will stay with him 'as long as you're still alive' (epilogue). 'This, I thought, this is my family' (ch. 12); the floor's last chapter puts a number next to each of their names.