Story so far

Across five floors of the alien-run World Dungeon, Carl — a barefoot ex-Coast Guardsman — and his charisma-drunk show cat Princess Donut have clawed to the top of the leaderboard, becoming galaxy-famous insurgents who flooded the market-city of Larracos and made themselves the Syndicate's biggest problem. Now, descending to the sixth floor, "The Hunting Grounds," that problem comes due. The instant Carl arrives he is pulled into the Desperado Club office of Orren, the grim-reaper liaison whose hood hides a fishbowl skull and a floating Valtay worm. Because the celestial Gate of the Feral Gods can depopulate an entire floor — it crashed the System AI when it was created — the panicked Syndicate can't legally seize it but demands Carl "voluntarily" surrender the winding box, dangling two lethal alternatives; Carl stalls by demanding a lawyer, the magic words. Meanwhile Donut, ushering a scared Mongo and Chris through the specialization line ahead of him, gleefully picks a brand-new floor class — the singing "Legendary Diva" — over Mordecai's cautions, while Katia, who had the Gate in her inventory, is dismissed after naming Carl its true owner, and takes a HAZMAT endorsement. In his own grimy booth Carl defies Mordecai's melee advice and locks in the Agent Provocateur specialty, craving the Advanced Bomb Maker's Workshop. The floor is a jungle-choked replica of floor three where 360-plus Hunters — bumped to level 50 — wait in the northern city of Zockau to be loosed in thirty hours. A melancholy Bush Elf janitor, Ian, once a crawler himself, breaks character to warn Carl off Zockau and its dirty-fighting aliens, and above all to fear the mantis Vrah, who wears her thousands of victims' heads. The grace period has begun. Run.