Portraits revealed through your current reading position.
Fourth-floor NPC whose body is hijacked by a primal power that browbeats Orren and asks Donut for relationship advice.
Believed dead since the fourth floor, Growler Gary reappears in Orren's office very much alive, and explains the discrepancy himself: Growler Gary never died, because he was on a key hold and regenerated every single time. Whatever is wearing him now has gone fully Primal and has broken free of its containment, and it tells Orren flatly that the crawl will continue unabated, the rules will be followed, and nothing about the game changes. It refuses to renegotiate the other agreements, and remarks that it is still peeved Orren and his people wanted Princess Formidable to succeed in killing it.
What it actually came for is advice. Unable to sit still, pacing, slapping the desk, and drinking straight vodka, it yanks Princess Donut out of thin air onto Carl's lap specifically for a female perspective, then lays out a long dating metaphor about a girlfriend, her supposedly dead boyfriend who is really in prison, and that boyfriend's older ex who also wants him dead. When Princess Donut mocks the girlfriend's looks after Orren says she looks like Agatha, Gary cracks the desk with one palm and growls in inhuman bass not to venture too far from the metaphor, because we all have our limitations. He thanks Princess Donut for genuinely good advice, orders Orren back to work, then collapses. The real Gary sits up under a Shitfaced debuff at level 175, asks for someone named Rory, and teleports away.
A dog-like fourth-floor NPC in constant twitching motion, fists clenching and unclenching, hunched over a vodka bottle he keeps swigging from. When the thing inside him surfaces, his voice drops into a supernatural bass and one flat palm is enough to split a desktop.
The primal power's mouthpiece in this chapter, confirming the crawl continues while fishing for advice about its two would-be handlers.
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings: