Story so far
Caught outside in his boxers, leather jacket, and pink Crocs when Earth was transformed, Carl fled into the The World Dungeon to escape the freezing cold and was designated Crawler #4,122, a level 1 Human. He killed a Goblin bare-handed, partnered with the cat Donut (who renamed their party The Royal Court of Princess Donut and made him Royal Bodyguard), and leaned on Coast Guard hand-to-hand training plus looted gear to fight up the first floor's neighborhood and borough bosses.
He became a self-taught demolitions expert, inventing Carl's Jug O' Boom (added to the Dungeon Codex), assassinating the Goblin War Chieftain with a cart bomb, and destroying a level 93 Rage Elemental via a dungeon exploit. He repeatedly protected the elderly survivors alongside Brandon, defied production figures Zev and The Maestro, and freed the Danger Dingos and Mongo. Now level 12, he is about to descend to the third floor with no idea what class or race to choose.
Role
Donut's Royal Bodyguard and the party's frontline brawler and demolitions expert.
Relationships
Donut — His cat partner and party leader; he is her Royal Bodyguard and fiercely protective.
Zev — Production handler he openly defies, refusing to perform on Borant's schedule.
The Maestro — Rival prince he challenged to single combat.
Brandon — Leads the non-combatant residents Carl repeatedly clears paths for.
Maggie My — Hostile crawler he plans to confront rather than flee.
Mongo — Captive creature he freed and restrained for Donut to tame.
Sources — 156 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 1
- Carl is a 27-year-old former US Coast Guard member who works as a marine tech fixing electrical systems on boats in Seattle.
- He had recently broken up with his girlfriend Beatrice after seeing she brought her ex-boyfriend on a Bahamas trip.
- He was caught outside in below-freezing weather wearing only boxers, a leather jacket, and pink Crocs when the transformation hit, and survived because he was not under a roof.
- He runs toward a dungeon entrance to escape the cold, choosing to enter the World Dungeon.
Chapter 2
- He is designated Crawler Number 4,122 and assigned the Crawler Name 'Carl,' race Human, level 1.
- He served in the Coast Guard aboard a cutter as an MK (technician) and trained in hand-to-hand combat.
- He entered the dungeon with no pants, wearing ill-fitting pink Crocs and badly frostbitten legs and feet.
- He can open and close information boxes mentally by focusing on objects or clicking the X with his mind.
- He killed a goblin by smashing its head against the stones, learning crawlers are far stronger than the easily-hurt mobs.
Chapter 5
- He reaches level 2 and gains the Pugilism skill at level 4 through his achievements.
- He receives the Goblin Pass brand on his left inner forearm and on his leather jacket.
- He intends to sell the Enhanced Pet Biscuit for money to buy shoes and pants but Donut eats it first.
Chapter 6
- His Constitution rose from five to nine after equipping the cloak and shirt, and his Strength rose 50% from the toe ring, leaving him almost as strong as any human who ever lived.
- He has Unarmed Combat and Pugilism skills that make his fists deal more damage than the cudgel or poker he looted.
- As a child his mother often locked him in the basement with only an arcade Frogger machine, on which he scored a record 879,460.
- His father was covered in tattoos, which is part of why Carl never wanted any.
- He is exploring the dungeon wearing only a jacket, cloak, and boxers, with no pants or shoes.
Chapter 7
- He is partied with Donut and can view her stats, though he cannot examine items in her inventory unless she has equipped them.
- Donut renames the party The Royal Court of Princess Donut and changes his title to Royal Bodyguard.
- He is unsettled by the realization that he may have to fight and kill actual people in the dungeon.
Chapter 8
- Carl had been looking at Craigslist apartments that allowed cats, planning to catnap Donut rather than return her.
- His strength is now high enough that Donut feels much lighter when she lands on his shoulder.
- He carries a pack of Marlboro Reds, a Zippo, and a second lighter looted from a goblin box, and rations his cigarettes.
- His regeneration ability triages injuries and healed his broken left hand within about a minute, but does not cure the Fatigued status.
- He killed a Bad Llama bare-handed with punches to the face and throat, rupturing its lava-producing organ.
- He reached level three and gained the Foot Soldier and Smush skills.
Chapter 9
- Carl reached a Constitution stat of 10 after equipping a silver ring from the Adventurer Box.
- He proposes staying near the Safe Room a couple of days to clear out a nearby nest of Scatterer bugs for experience while waiting for the next level's entrances to appear.
- He carries a pack of cigarettes and reflects with grief that the world (Earth) is gone.
Chapter 10
- Carl slept 10 hours straight in a Safe Room bed, the longest unbroken sleep he'd had in at least five years.
- He has served on a Coast Guard cutter and references its cramped racks.
- He has nine cigarettes left after lighting one outside the safe room.
- His Pugilism, Unarmed Combat, Foot Soldier, and Smush skills all reached level 5 along with his character level.
- He receives three stat points per level but cannot distribute them yet.
- He realizes his girlfriend was cheating on him, recalling a man who visited the apartment while he was at the gym.
Chapter 11
- Carl threw dynamite into a trash-filled room and was thrown by the blast, taking enough damage to trigger a DANGER LOW HEALTH warning before his health regenerated.
- Carl notes his bare feet are becoming less sensitive to the ground, adapting much faster than they normally would.
- Carl strangled the Hoarder with a chain-linked dog leash before beating her to death with his fists when the leash broke.
- Carl reached nearly level six after the explosion kill bonus.
Chapter 13
- Carl can pop up info boxes on corpses and check his map for blue dots (other crawlers) and red dots (enemies/NPCs).
- He recalls the last day he saw his father, who never hit him but laughed and said "I don't need you to like me. But you will respect me."
- He had a partner named Bea (Miss Beatrice) and lived in an apartment where a neighbor's cocker spaniel named Angel would harass Donut.
Chapter 15
- Carl reaches level seven and realizes the dungeon's first floor is a condensed, organized grid version of his coastal city, each square containing four neighborhoods.
- His Damage Reflect ability kills a green slime that nearly eats his arm after he punches it, earning him an 'It burns, dunnit?' achievement.
- He wears a goblin free-passage tattoo on his left forearm and seeks goblin engineers to build him a vehicle to cover ground before the floor collapses.
Chapter 16
- He took three piles of 999 coal lumps from the goblins' coal heap for his chopper.
- He recalls having had to pummel a scared woman to death in a previous boss fight, still feeling her face crunch under his fists.
- He agreed to loot the abandoned goblin supplies and then go kill the chieftain despite the danger.
Chapter 17
- Carl loots the goblin workshop, taking nearly a ton of coarse old-school black powder and many tools and supplies.
- Carl rigs a cart with black powder, metal scraps, and explosives to assassinate the goblin war chieftain boss.
- Carl can store the chopper in his inventory but cannot lift the powder barrels until they are less than half full.
Chapter 18
- Carl reaches level eight after killing the goblin neighborhood boss.
- Carl feels sick and guilty about having killed goblin babies in the boss room.
- Carl plans to escape north into an unexplored quadrant to avoid the returning goblins and find a set of stairs.
Chapter 19
- His troll skin shirt negated the rot stickers' Take Down effect, and he survived a detonation on his inner thigh thanks to an Iron Skin potion and a missile blast from Donut.
- His Explosives Handling, Dangerous Explosives Handling, and Goblin Explosives skills rose to level 5, and he gained IED Skill level 3.
- Reaching Explosives Handling level 5 unlocked a Demolitions Workshop menu usable only at a Sapper's Table, and gave him extra info when examining bomb-type devices.
- He received a Desperado Pass tattoo on his neck, a +2 ring of constitution (raising his score to 12), and a Skill Potion granting Determine Value level 1.
- He reflects that the dungeon deliberately set up the workshop room so crawlers would kill the children mobs placed there, and resolves the aliens will not break him.
Chapter 20
- Carl has reached level 5 in Explosives Handling, which grants extra information when examining incendiary items.
- Carl devised a plan to lure Frank and Maggie into a trap by planting lit goblin smoke bombs and unstable dynamite into a dead rat's lootable inventory in a hallway they would likely follow.
Chapter 21
- Carl had never ridden a motorcycle before, owning only a bicycle, and his father was a weekend-warrior motorcycle enthusiast.
- Carl's father abandoned him over 12 years ago, and Carl has not spoken to or heard from the man since.
Chapter 22
- Carl's displayed title is Royal Bodyguard Carl, which startles strangers meeting him for the first time.
- He proposes building a self-triggering bomb to kill the borough boss and plans to grind skills before fighting it alongside the four eldercare workers.
Chapter 23
- He covers up or alters the spray-painted signs pointing toward the elderly encampment, fearing newcomers might slaughter the old people for experience.
- His strength is 9, and his bare feet have toughened so he barely feels the ground when he walks.
- He fights with chain-covered fists and his combat skills steadily raise his damage even though he cannot distribute stat points.
- He has only two cigarettes left and smokes his second-to-last one before entering the troglodyte boss room.
Chapter 24
- Carl fights through the boss room alongside Donut, taking out the support creatures while she focuses headshots on the boss.
- Carl's strength is now at nine, letting him easily lift a 250-pound-per-side barbell that he normally could not, as he typically benched 230 pounds.
- Carl is the only one of the pair with anti-poison resistance, and his potion cooldown is a short 15 seconds compared to Donut's much longer roughly two-minute cooldown.
- Carl kills the Juicer by bludgeoning it with a barbell and weights, then crushing its head underfoot after the system released its protection on the dead creature's bones.
Chapter 25
- He decides to stick with being human rather than choosing a different race when the opportunity arises.
- His bare knuckle and other fighting skills, including Smush, reached level six, and his Iron Punch reached level five.
- His intelligence stat is only three, which caused his Confusing Fog scrolls to last only fifteen seconds.
- He hoards everything not bolted down into his inventory, storing over ten tons of items.
Chapter 26
- He devised the off-the-cuff plan to defeat the borough boss using a modular fortress and spike strips.
- His kneepads have an attribute that cancels out momentum-based attacks.
- He recalls a childhood memory of a Penske box truck being sheared off under a bridge, which inspired his speedbump plan.
- His spiked gauntlet let him punch through a tuskling's face without feeling the impact in his hand.
Chapter 27
- Carl reaches level 10, halfway to 11, after the boss fight.
- Carl smokes his last cigarette, finding it tastes like ash, then grinds it out unfinished.
- Carl decides to help the elderly survivors by clearing a safe path down while still keeping his own party with Donut.
- Carl can summon a gauntlet weapon instinctively by making a fist.
Chapter 28
- Carl distrusts the production crew, reminding Donut that these people are not their friends.
- His recurring exasperated catchphrase 'Goddamnit, Donut' has become a fan-favorite running joke, shown at least fifteen times in a highlight reel.
- He is still pantsless during the interview and was mockingly labeled WORST DRESSED on screen.
- He can form a gauntlet and briefly considered punching the trailer's porthole to escape.
Chapter 29
- Carl suspects the loot boxes are not truly random and gets confirmation from Odette that they are not.
Chapter 30
- Carl's Pugilism skill reached level 10 after drinking a Cheat Code Potion.
- Carl's combined unarmed bonuses (Iron Punch, Powerful Strike, unarmed combat bonus, and Pugilism) make his fists hit about as hard as Brandon's lightning maul.
- Carl is immune to nothing psionic and suffers debilitating headaches from Mind Horrors' psionic attacks, unlike Donut.
- Carl can barely feel the bottoms of his soles but the sides of his feet remain sensitive.
- Carl decides that from now on they will destroy corpses to leave as little behind as possible, after learning grubs grow stronger by feeding on the dead.
Chapter 31
- Carl helps push residents into the safe room and resolves to scout and clear the third floor for Brandon's group of non-combatant residents.
- Carl warns Donut to stop obsessing over the show, fearing her playing to the camera will get them killed.
- Carl received a silver star next to his name in the interface after the floor boss, like the rest of his group.
- Carl has a catchphrase he restrains himself from saying aloud.
Chapter 32
- He gave himself a pedicure for the buff, which made his foot bones unbreakable (still painful, but they won't splinter).
- He raised his Slingshot skill to three but couldn't push it higher, and also gained the Aiming and Steady Hand skills.
- He recalls a sour childhood memory of his father breaking his slingshot's band and never replacing it.
- He was infected with the Taint after punching a clurichaun and getting its green oily residue on his bare knuckles.
- His gauntlet takes about two seconds to form, a dangerous delay in close combat.
- He invented Carl's Jug O' Boom, which jumped his Incendiary Device Handling skill to five.
Chapter 33
- He has extra fairy aggro, so he stayed hidden during the initial charm phase of the assault.
- He reached level 11 after killing about 40 monsters at once with boom jugs.
- His Slingshot skill is at three and his Aiming skill rose to four.
- He uses 'You're not going to break me' as a personal mantra.
- He survived a damage-enhanced magic missile to the chest that broke his bones, healing with a potion.
Chapter 34
- Carl crafts a Rev-Up Immunity Smoothie mid-battle by blending moonshine with a laminak fairy corpse on a bicycle-powered blender to gain disease immunity.
- He privately knows that Bea was planning to give Donut up and trade her in for a younger model, and that Bea is now dead, but chooses not to tell Donut.
- He shields himself and Donut under an alchemy table before detonating a boom jug, expecting to die while believing Donut would survive.
- His goblin tattoo enhances the damage he takes from slingshot rocks.
Chapter 35
- He survived the boss battle deaf, blind, and with broken legs at 6% health, saved when Donut dragged him out and used a healing scroll.
- His feet were spared amputation because the enchanted pedicure kit made his toes indestructible, deflecting the table that should have severed his ankles.
- He invented Carl's Jug O'Boom, raising his explosives skills to level seven and earning the Dungeonpreneur achievement.
Chapter 36
- Carl loses his temper at Zev, declaring he and Donut are unwilling participants fighting for their lives and refusing to fight or survive on Borant's schedule.
Chapter 37
- Carl set up a chat channel with Brandon's group and coordinates carving a path through the grubs to bring the residents to the stairwell.
- Carl tells Brandon that if people stop helping each other, that is when they stop being human, a line Zev praises as great content.
- Carl realizes keeping the elderly safe in saferooms may be no kindness, regretting that they didn't make them all stay behind.
Chapter 38
- He used a Protective Shell spell that blocked the Rage Elemental, a Heal spell, health potions, and threw a boom jug at the monster while protecting the residents.
- He carried the 99-year-old Mrs. McGibbons to safety despite gravity being reversed and slamming into the ceiling.
Chapter 39
- Carl planned to use his Protective Shell spell against the rage elemental but had to wait at least a full Syndicate standard day (28 hours) for its cooldown.
- His recipe for the Jug O' Boom was added to the Dungeon Codex, with his mugshot stamped on the screen during the recap.
- He received a Platinum Lucky Bastard Box containing a Fireball or Custard? scratch-off ticket.
- After recalling something Rory the shamanka had told them, he abandoned the wait-for-cooldown plan and began pulling items from his inventory for a new plan.
Chapter 40
- Carl devised and executed a plan to destroy a level 93 rage elemental by exploiting a dungeon rule rather than killing it directly.
- Carl kept the full plan in his head and hidden even from Donut because it relied on a dungeon exploit that Borant and the dungeon AI could observe through private chats.
- Carl recalled the rage elemental had unraveled a person named Yolanda.
Chapter 41
- Carl had once played Dungeons and Dragons aboard the USCGC Stratton.
- Carl's level is stuck at 11, near the edge of 12, having barely moved since the fight with Krakaren.
- Carl received the Grease Monkey and 'You call that a trap?' achievements, earning a Silver Mechanic's Box and a Gold Sapper's Box.
- Most of Carl's bomb-themed skills rose to level nine and he gained mechanic and construction-themed skills.
- Carl recalls his mother saying 'it's going to be okay' the day she left him, which he believes was a lie.
Chapter 42
- Carl refuses to participate in the cruel Death Watch game and stands up by climbing through the holo illusion off his chair.
- Carl reveals his constitution stat is 14 (one point lower than Zhang's 15).
- Carl reasons that he and Donut are too expensive and high-value for the production to actually endanger, and uses that leverage to defy the Maestro.
- Carl recalls a childhood memory of his dad and friends breaking his slingshot while cruelly firing rocks at squirrels.
- Carl secretly coaches Li Jun and Zhang to grab their companions and run through the troglodytes to escape, foiling the Maestro's deadly setup.
Chapter 44
- Carl receives a new ACCOUNTS interface tab showing a Creator's Fee royalty for his summoned weapon.
- Carl decides not to run from Maggie My and Frank Q, choosing instead to take out the local neighborhood boss to get its map and prepare to confront her.
- Carl is the subject of a viral explicit fan-made video depicting him and the Maestro, which he did not make.
Chapter 45
- Carl reaches level 12 while approaching the kobold boss chamber and chooses to investigate the boss room's puzzle rather than killing the caged dingoes for free experience.
- Carl frees the captive dingoes by tossing them pet biscuits, an act of kindness that breaks the kobolds' control spell and turns the dingoes white (allied).
- Carl reflects that a week in the dungeon has changed him, noting he now runs toward danger instead of hiding.
- Carl finally triggers his gauntlet's two-percent-chance Stun debuff for the first time when punching Ralph, then kills the boss by stepping on it with his bare foot.
Chapter 46
- Carl loots the kobold arena, frees and physically restrains Mongo while Donut feeds him, and preferred getting the brindle grub over the Mongoliensis.
Chapter 47
- He trains the slingshot skill up to level five, using it to ground brindled vespas so Donut can finish them with magic missiles.
- He earns the 'PETA Enthusiast' achievement for removing the hostility of the danger dingoes.
- He discovers via his History inventory tab that he had absorbed three Valtay Corporation tech items from Agatha's shopping cart during the Ball of Swine boss battle.
- He recalls he had planned to kidnap a prize-winning cat and sell everything to bribe his ex-girlfriend before the dungeon began.
Chapter 48
- Carl publicly insists the Pork Boy Snick video is fake and that he knows nothing about who made it.
- Carl challenged Prince Maestro to single combat and reaffirms the offer still stands.
- Carl is about to reach the all-important third floor and admits he has no idea what class or race he will choose.
- Carl suspects the system AI may have been involved in producing the Pork Boy video, though he has no proof.