Gate of the Feral Gods: Dungeon Crawler Carl 4

“If they can’t even manage to kill one human who doesn’t wear pants, how can anyone expect them to control an intergalactic empire?”

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REVIEW

Would I read this again? Yes No Maybe

Trigger Warnings: Death, Violence, Apocalyptic Events

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SUMMARY

Characters

New Characters

Gwen - Race of Boring Ol’ Fighter. Currently in Carl and Donut's area and they have to work together.

Louis - Race of Pest Exterminator. Carl finds him and his friend, Firas (race: Hammersmith), drunk. Moredaci gives them a potion that makes it so they can't drink anymore so they stay sober and can help get off this floor.

Langley - Race of Archer. He has a group of other Archers and they all join up to help.

Vadim Zbar - Race of Gut Rearranger - A doctor from Ukraine, ends up dying in an underwater mission with Carl

Britney - Race of Pit Fighter from Ukraine, came in with Vadim and stays with Firas after Vadim dies.

Florin - Crocodilian Race. Was in a relationship with Ifechi. Got into a fight with Lucia Mar at the end of the fourth floor. Lucia Mar used a very powerful spell (Rubber - reduces a high percentage of incoming damage and reflects it onto a target of your choosing) and Florin accidentally killed Ifechi.

Juice Box - changeling that ends up in love with Louis.

Not So New Characters

Elle McGibbons - Frost Maiden - one of the residents of Meadow Lark

Imani - Obsidian Butterfly - one of the caretakers from Meadow Lark

Brandon - One of the caretakers from Meadow Lark who died as the last floor was collapsing.

Chris - Igneous rock guy - Brandon’s brother, also from Meadow Lark. He left Brandon’s party shortly after getting their new races and no one has heard from him.

Li Jun - Monk Class - Travels with his sister, Li Na, and his friend, Zhang.

Ifechi - Human, Healer. Travels with Florin (Crocodilian)

Miriam Dom - Human Shepherd/Goat lady

Prepotente - Goat creature called Caprid - travels with Miriam Dom

Lucia Mar - psycho Crawler; 13 year old girl with a pair of Rottweilers.

Bautista - Crawler that helped Carl in Book 3.

Quan Ch - The crawler who managed to keep the Celestial box from the last floor.

Eva - Half Nagini, Half Orc, Nimblefoot Enforcer - was part of Helka’s gang.

Frank Q and Maggie My - Carl and Donut first meet them in a safe room on the first floor where they try to attack them. Carl and Donut get away and set a trap for them. They find out later that Maggie’s daughter got injured by Carl’s bomb, and Maggie killed her. Maggie gets gifted a tracking spell from Maestro and implies she will hunt Carl down and kill him and Donut.

Odette - Host of “Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette”. Used to be a crawler, was human-ish until she lost her legs in a battle. Now she uses crab legs to get around on her show or a little moving platform. Wears a weird get up for her show, Carl describes her as a “naked crab-taur wearing a bug mask”. Was Mordecai’s trainer when he was in the Dungeon. Appears to be on Carl and Donut’s side.

Zev - Was Carl and Donut’s PR agent, becomes their social medial manager. Works for the Borant corp but is on Carl and Donut’s side. Donut and her bond over Gossip Girl and other TV shows.

Lotia - Carl and Donut's new PR agent after Zev got in trouble.

Borant Corporation - Led by the Kua-Tin species. They are in charge of this season of Dungeon Crawler and they are currently in massive debt and hoping to get out of it with this season.

New Rewards/Purchased

Carl	Donut
Healing scrolls Magical shirt Scroll of Water Breathing Invisibility Potion	Astral Paw - spellbook - Grow claws, stronger swipe, manipulate things at a distance like she was actually touching it.
Surefire crafting item - Adds guided status to any projectile	Scroll of Water Breathing - exactly what it sounds like
Enchanted Toe Ring of the Leprous Bandit - Sticky Feet Benefit (once every 6 hours he may walk on a wall/ceiling) and Super Spreader Benefit (Pass any active debuffs onto a target of your choice once an hour)	Wall of Fire spell - wall of fire that lasts longer the higher your skill level is.
Extinction Sigil Tattoo - Removes automatic hostility for any natural enemies of lizard-class citizens. Causes lizard-class enemies to deal 20% damage to him and wall monitors will deal 150% more damage. It's on his face, under his eye, but tiny.	Veriluxx RealPet Dungeon Crawl Special Edition Exclusive - A robot Donut toy.
Pawna’s Tears - Potion adds five to any spell or skill of your choosing. Valtay second Benefactor box - Valtay Corp Neural Enhancer - installs an upgrade to his brain that shows current elevation and airspeed. First box from his new sponsor - Toraline Root Vegetable - Looks like a yam, very rare. Carl is unsure for a long time what he is supposed to do with it. Jellyfish Salve (5 applications) - Removes the pain portion of the Kill Me Now It Hurts debuff. Enchanted Roll of Never Ending Duct Tape Platinum Sharpening Stone - Adds 2% damage to all spiked weapons.	Fang Caps for Mongo that added speed and strength. Potion to increase her Animal Wrangling skill. Belt of Buoyancy - wraps around Donut’s stomach to prevent her from sinking. Skill potion that increased Dodge skill by 1 and now she has Deflection buff - causes magical and physical missiles to be less accurate when aimed at her. Twinkle Toes tome - Minion run really fast for as many seconds as her intelligence level.
Gold Makeup Sex Is The Best Sex box - Coffee Shop Author Kit - Magical sheet of paper. There is a second tab on the notepad in his interface. If he writes something on the paper, it appears in his interface and vice versa.	Katia
Potion of Bloodlust - Increased all stats except Charisma for however many seconds your Constitution stat is. Also includes “Where the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you?” debuff - which makes it you don’t know where you are or why you’re fighting. Basically makes you really strong and really dangerous. Enchanted Anarchist’s Battle Rattle - Black, sleeveless jacket for upgrade patches to be sewn onto it. +1 to all base stats. 50% range and accuracy for all thrown bombs.	Scroll of Water Breathing Antidote Potions Skill potion to raise her Catcher skill Hanzo spell - Draws mobs closer to her Single Crossbow Bolt - Adds armor piercing and adds damage based on her level. Emergency box from Princess Formidable - Set of ten bolts of Petrify Rock Class
Patch depicting Earth - Increases strength by 5%, immunity from cloud-based attacks Sewing kit Rockard’s Ring of Sniping - Ripe benefit (shows all creatures with less than half a health bar left on the map) and Loaded benefit (Shows all non-hidden creatures wearing magical gear on the map). Gold ring stolen from Quan Ch’s hand that says “For Daddy” Enchanted Handcuffs - No key, have to have a Strength level of 200 to break. Or a safe word. Ping spell - Audible ping that gives the distance and location of all non-crawlers on the map. Emergency Platinum Benefactor Box from Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network - Curved piece of wicker that slides onto the xistera and looks like a scoop….basically a thing to throw Samantha’s head. Her head will magically come back to the scoop like a boomerang. Frogger video game in his fan box.	Extra tidbits about this floor: The funnel city of Larracos has actual stores and the faction leaders on the ninth floor have to go there to purchase items. When the third floor opens, nine factions arrive on the ninth floor and set up their base camp. When the sixth floor opens, they are allowed to go into the market and buy armor, magical supplies, and whatever else they need to prepare for the Crawlers. They’re allowed to bring in some things but not enough, so everything else needs to be bought or stolen. Larracos is where a bunch of NPCs live. There’s also museums, theaters, colleges, and galleries. Hunting Grounds is what they call the sixth floor. Sometimes the factions send people here to collect gear but if they die on this floor, they die. Unlike the ninth floor - they respawn until the Crawlers get there. If they die there, they just get kicked out. Hunters can sign up for the “game” on the ninth floor until the opening of the sixth floor.
Potion of Dinosaur Repellent - Says this potion will last 30 hours to keep a pack of dinosaurs from eating him.	Valtay are a type of creature called a Gondii (brain worm). They reactivate dead bodies. They can read old memories and keep bodies running for centuries.
Stock Certificate - Seven of these. Each equals one share. Each one looks different and they are pictures of different mobs. They are all the mothers of the plaintiffs that tried to sue Carl and the AI.	Women can’t get pregnant in the dungeon. Their periods stop, and they are told they can’t get pregnant until after the crawl is over.
Ring of Water Breathing - Able to breathe underwater and still able to breathe on land. Drakea’s Enchanted Kerchief of Disorder - Looks like a standard black bandana. +5 to Detect Traps skill. Able to cast Tripper (automatically triggers all traps within a certain area). Remote detonator - able to magically remote-detonate a bomb.

Crawler count at start of 5th floor: Approximately 178,887

Crawler count at the end of the book, along with Carl and Donut's stats, are at the end of the summary.

Floor 5 is not as confusing as the Iron Tangle but there’s a lot going on here too. There are 1172 “bubbles”. Each bubble has 4 quadrants - Air, Tomb, Land, and Sea. Each quadrant has its own castle. There will be crawlers in each quadrant and once they overtake their castle, then they can move into other quadrants and help overthrow those castles. Once all 4 castles are taken, the bubble “pops” and the stairwell to the next floor opens. Once this happens, you can leave your bubble and go to other popped bubbles but you can’t enter unpopped bubbles.

Carl, Donut, and Katia (aka Princess Posse) are in a bubble with only 150 other crawlers - about 3 dozen of those in their quadrant. None of which are their friends, but luckily they can still communicate with them via chat and see them if they both go to a Desperado Club.

Princess Posse is in the Air quadrant. Gwen and her team are in the Land quadrant.

Carl meets up with two Crawlers named Firas and Louis in a bar. They are both drunk and Louis is hanging out with a shapeshifter named Juice Box. They found another group of six Crawlers, all of them were Archers, and the leader was a dude named Langley.

After the recap episode the leaderboard populates.

1. Lucia Mar; 2. Carl; 3. Prepotente; 4. Donut; 5. Quan Ch; 6. Dmitri and Maxim Popov; 7. Miriam Dom; 8. Elle; 9. Bogdon Ro; 10. Florin.

Carl is a Level 41 - second highest in the dungeon behind Quan Ch.

Carl gets another sponsor - The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network, Intergalactic NFC (not for conquest). Donut got Veriluxx RealPet Companions. Katia got Squim Conglomerate.

Donut’s sponsor sends her a robot Donut toy. She is supposed to play with it and then her and Carl will go on an infomercial and talk about it.

Katia gets a bodyguard now that she has access to the Desperado Club. His name is Very Sullen.

The Water quadrant is the first one to get conquered and they find out that Chris (remember Brandon’s brother) is there.

On this floor, Carl starts feeling bad for certain (innocent and nice) NPCs. He takes a bunch of them, most of them children, into their safe room to keep them safe from the craziness of this floor. Mordecai is not so happy about it at first. Carl finds out that Mordecai had downloaded a bunch of Earth movies and TV shows so the kids get to watch them.

Zev comes back but just as their social media manager. Loita is still in charge of appearances. Zev acts differently, more professional and standoffish.

The AI gets mad at Carl because it didn’t like how he completed a quest. Said one of the mobs was killed by “Crawler Bitch Boy Carl”. It throws a tantrum and starts spawning mobs to attack the town they are in. Once Carl makes the AI happy by stomping the mobs to death, the attack stops. His new achievement says, “You have, for an unspecified reason, raised the ire of the System AI. You have corrected the issue and everything is back to normal … Good boy. Reward: You’ve received a Gold Makeup Sex is the Best Sex box.”

Donut receives her robot toy and Mongo destroys almost every single one they send her.

Chris shows up but is acting funny. Juice Box comes over and starts talking to Carl and Chris. She tells Carl that he should bring “these two guys” to come party with her. Juice Box grabs Carl and is trying to pull him back towards the safe room away from Chris. Chris starts talking about how he had two daughters, not just one. And Carl realizes that this isn’t Chris - this is somehow Maggie My. Katia shoots Chris with a bolt and it petrifies him. When this happens, Chris sends a message to Imani and tells her that he is being controlled by Maggie. While his body is petrified he was able to take control of the chat again. Juice Box tells Carl that Maggie is an Infiltrator (type of brain worm) and she is inside Chris. Mordecai tells Carl it's almost impossible to separate Maggie from Chris. Carl comes up with a few ideas and Mordecai shoots them all down. Chris sends a message through Elle telling Carl to kill him. Carl almost does but Donut uses her Hole spell, opens up the ground, and puts Chris in a room that he can’t get out of, easily anyways. They know they need to come up with a plan before he is able to or before the next floor.

Juice Box tells Carl about the Gate of the Feral Gods. It’s an artifact that has three parts. Two pocket watches and a winding box. Hendrik (her brother) has one of the watches, another Commander has the second, and the winding box is somewhere else with a mage. If they get all three pieces together, you can open a gate from one place to the next. But it comes at a cost - when the gate closes, a feral god comes into the world on the opening side.

Carl and Donut need to get up to this house that is floating in the sky in order to defeat their quadrant. When they get up there, they meet Bonnie. A child gnome who seems mentally unstable (she is actually under a spell). She is the only child of the Commander that supposedly has the other watch. She tells them her dad is already dead and that Denise killed him. She seems absolutely fine with this even though her dad’s dead body is just chilling in the kitchen where she is making lemonade. They end up in a Borough Boss battle with Denise - a feral goose. They eventually defeat her and conquer the Air quadrant. The house that was in the air, lands on the ground, and Carl loots everything he can out of it but then they end up keeping the house too. A flying house might come in handy (hint - it totally does).

Loita is a dick. Plain and simple. She thinks she’s better than the Crawlers (and Zev) and she’s just a giant dick. When Donut mouths off, she threatens to have Mongo taken from her and fed to mobs on the next floor. Zev tells them that she won’t be able to talk to them anymore. Carl and Donut had purchased a social media board to see what followers were saying and now Loita says they don’t need Zev anymore.

After recap episode - Carl remains at number 2 on the leaderboard, still second highest level at 44. Quan Ch is 45. Donut is at Level 36.

The robot Donut toy keeps exploding once it has a little bit of damage to it. Loita says that she told the company to do that so Carl didn’t get his hands on any of the pieces. The next one they send is more durable. This one has a small panel on the back of its head that looks like a battery compartment. It’s easily opened and once it's open, it self-destructs in five seconds unless the tab is replaced.

Princess Posse has a sweet moment with some of the NPCs, including Bonnie. Loita sends him a message and says the audiences don’t like melodrama and they need to stop being so concerned with the NPCs. Carl decides at that moment that something he wanted to do, that he thought was too soon to do, he is going to do.

Carl and Donut have to go do the infomercial and Loita is supposed to be there. Carl is making some stuff on his sapper’s table before they leave. Robot Donut knocked something off and rainbow colored smoke filled the whole room. They were then zapped away to the production trailer which was a submarine. Loita is there, being her regular bitch ass self. She is annoyed because Robot Donut is covered in rainbow dust. She says they will have one for the show, so this one can stay behind.

Carl asks her why she is so mad all the time and she says because of humans and “we should not be celebrating your culture.” Carl’s like this is fucking celebrating? She says that humans should all be exterminated and once the crawl is over and every single human is dead, then the Borant system will close its borders and “only then will the reawakening occur.”

She tells them to get out there and do the commercial and don’t do anything that will make her get up and come out there. Carl sets the robot Donut next to her and tells her to stay next to Loita.

Carl starts going off script and saying things he knows will piss Loita off. Then the whole place shakes and the hologram hosts disappear. Carl and Donut go back into the green room where they left Loita and robot Donut. Robot Donut has exploded and Loita is severely injured. The submarine window has cracked but there is a forcefield that is keeping them safe. Carl looks down at her and smiles. She accuses him of doing this and he’s like I told you those robots were always exploding, I was in the other room, how could this be me? As she is dying she tells him that he won’t win, “the Bloom will prevail”. He responds, “Nobody likes melodrama,” as she dies.

When they teleport back to the dungeon, they get zapped to the Desperado Club. They are in a small office with a Syndicate Liaison named Orren. He doesn’t work for Borant, he is a third party detective basically. He tells them that there have been 15 assassinations on dungeon admins this season. He says with all the other attacks, they know exactly how it was done, but it took them longer to figure out Carl’s.

By having Robot Donut on Carl’s sapper bench while he was working, it made the explosion that was already pre-programmed stronger. When Loita got up from the couch, Robot Donut jumped down to follow her, the little battery compartment piece dislodged and it exploded.

Orren wants Carl to sign a blank piece of paper admitting that he orchestrated this whole thing in order to kill Loita. Carl refuses. Mostly because he isn’t stupid and also because while he did orchestrate a situation in which Robot Donut exploded and killed Loita, it wasn’t that complicated. Just a happy little accident. Orren tells Carl that he is lucky and that he admires his guts. But if Carl wasn’t so valuable to the kua-tin, he would have been eliminated immediately. Some of the things he says makes Carl realize that they must have been gone longer than he realizes and he’s right -they've been gone 5 days.

Since they’ve been gone, Katia, Louis, and Firas have had to figure things out on their own. Moredaci has also been missing. Thankfully, Zev told Katia that they were in “time-out” so she knew they weren’t dead. Louis and Firas have taken the house, taken the top off of it, and have been using it to get around the quadrants. They also named it “Twister”.

Katia has been waiting for Carl to get back. They think they have tracked down the Mage and that means they can also find another piece of the Gate. They get into his sandcastle. Everything in there is made of sand/glass, if you touch it, it just crumbles away. They see a statue, human sized, of a female. It’s also made of glass. Mongo touches it, it moves and scares him, he jumps back and the statue falls over and shatters. Except for the head, it remained intact. Carl puts the head in his inventory. They find the Mage in the basement watching TV. His name is Ghazi. He was there to find the Gate because he wanted one of the gods to bring a fictional character from a TV show, Lika, alive because he’s in love with her. Unfortunately, he didn’t summon the right god.

When the guy comes out of the room and tells them they need to get upstairs. The sand is alive and it’s moving towards them. The dude has the winding box, Carl punches him in the face and takes it. When he comes to, he says the sand is a “sand ooze”, a familiar of a lesser deity named Psamathe. Psamathe escaped and now the sand ooze is somehow Ghazi’s wife. He says the ooze takes the shape of Lika when the sandstorm isn’t happening. He also says he had the “real” Lika and now she is trapped in the statue. You know…the one that they broke. They realize that the “real” Lika was actually a sex doll.

The Gate works like this: you use one watch to dial to a time. If you do it on one watch, the other watch copies it. This time equals your destination. Then you put both watches in the box and wind it up. The second watch will start ticking and once you remove the two watches, the one-way portal opens. It will last about 20 minutes or until you take the box and two watches into the portal. Then it closes on your destination side but stays open on the other side until a feral god comes through.

Katia realizes you can use the watches to open a portal to the ninth floor. Mordecai tells them that Crawlers can’t hop floors so it doesn’t matter if they open a portal, they won’t be able to go through it. But Katia spends time making a map using some coordinates that they looted off Ghazi.

Gwen and her group were digging out the sand house and everything turned solid. All of a sudden, the decapitated head comes out of Carl’s inventory. Except now it’s a solid sex doll head and not just a statue of glass. Oh, and it can talk. Mostly she threatens to kill you and your mother. It’s possessed by the Spirit of Psamathe (Samantha). A minor deity. Also the mother of the sand ooze. She’s also batshit crazy. Mordecai wants to keep her in the safe room. He says she can’t hurt them and she might be useful.

Carl and a few other Crawlers went underwater and went into a submarine to turn off a pump to drain the water so they could take the last quadrant. While down there, a whole bunch of shit happens but one of the biggest things is Carl finds Hendrik down there, dead. He had the other watch on him and Carl takes it.

When Carl got it, the world froze, he got a message saying 3 items in his inventory were frozen, then immediately gets another message saying it was fixed. (Later, he gets 7 Silver Summary Judgement Boxes. The AI is super happy and says that there was a court case against Carl and the AI and they won. Each box has a stock certificate in it and each one has a picture of the mothers of the people who sued them. The AI is getting a real attitude and it’s fantastic.) Carl uses the Gate to transport everyone, but Vadim (because he died), back to town. But by doing so, he unleashes a Feral God, Emberus, and his dog, Orthrus.

Emberus isn’t contained by the bubbles and he’s wreaking havoc all over the place. Princess Posse need to break one more quadrant to pop their bubble and reunite the puppy dog with his owner. But in doing so, they are accidentally hurting the dog. But they can’t hurt the dog or the god will be worse. Then the AI gives everyone in the bubble a quest to save the dog or risk the wrath of the god. Donut, Louis, and Firas go up in the Twister and Donut casts her Heal Critter spell over and over again. They eventually break through the last quadrant and pop their bubble. Donut uses her Meat Hooks scroll to lure the dog where they want it to go, which is as close to the god as they can get. By luring the dog away from danger, they completed the quest, but get a new one (this quest is only the Crawlers in the original bubble). They have to reunite the dog and owner (which they’re already trying to do). Then the AI gives them another quest for everyone in all the bubbles - kill the dog because now that he’s out of the bubble he was in, now he’s destroying other areas.

Katia and Elle immediately start messaging everyone that they tell telling them to not fucking touch that dog. But one guy doesn’t listen - Quan Ch. Carl and Donut start fighting with Quan as they are trying to lead the dog back to the god. Lots of Carl-like shit happens and he ends up doing the thing he does want to do - worshipping a god, Emberus. He then used a grenade to summon a god (would be a random one but now that he worships one, it will summon that one). Finally, the dumb god (who is also blind) sees his dog. Quan and Carl start fighting and Carl rips Quan’s whole arm off before Quan runs away and goes down a stairwell.

Now that Carl has decided to worship Emberus he has some rules. He can’t harm other worshippers of his. He has to give a drop of blood everyday to a temple or a shrine (luckily, a shrine has just appeared in his safe room, Mordecai is not happy). 5% of his gold has to be given. He can’t have any gear blessed by Hellik, another god. And he has to complete all church related quests. He also gets Immunity to Burn effect, access to Club Vanquisher, and every 5 days he will get a “boon” from the god.

Carl gets a message from Emberus saying thank you, giving him a boon of 25% increase to constitution for 30 hours, and giving him a quest to find out who killed his son. Luckily, there is no time limit, he just has to do it before leaving the 18th floor. He also gets another quest - Kill Hellik (his twin brother). This one has a time limit of the end of the 11th floor.

Carl, Katia, Elle, and Imani have a plan to save everyone in all bubbles that aren’t popped by using the Gate. They can get everyone from unpopped bubbles into a bubble that is popped and the stairwells are open, then they will end up releasing a feral god in the unopened bubble before closing the Gate. By doing this, they manage to save 1500 Crawlers.

Katia tells them that on the 6th floor, she thinks they should separate. She has heard that Eva has been trying to gather their old team together and people keep dying. She thinks that she should try and round them up instead of Eva. She says she won’t leave the party so it doesn’t mess up the personal space and they will still see each other at home. Katia is going to join up with Louis, Firas, Gwen and her team, Daniel Bautista, and Florin.

Li Jun messages Carl and tells him that that woman “with the shopping cart” just went down the stairs (Agatha).

Imani, Elle, Louis, Firas, and Britney get all the changelings together in the Twister house and open the gate to the 6th floor. They send all the changelings through, then drop the gate off to Carl at the Desperado Club, before going down the stairs. They plan on meeting back up with the changelings and Louis wants the Twister back.

Carl has one more plan before this floor collapses and we finally get to know. He is going to open a portal to the 9th floor. Then Carl will take one of the watches, while Juice Box goes through the portal with the other watch and winding box. This will release a feral god on BOTH sides of the portal. This means a feral god will appear on the ninth floor right where all of the soldiers and shit are getting ready for the Crawlers. Juice Box is only doing this because Carl has promised to try and get the changelings down every floor with him.

The Valtay and Borant (and everyone else) knows what he is trying to do. There have been lawsuits from the Skull Empire (because they have people down on the ninth floor) trying to stop Carl from unleashing a feral god there. But Valtay and Borant are working together and have agreed to let Carl do this. They did say this, “Game-breaking antics that directly affect sponsors will not be tolerated in the future.”

Carl, Donut, and Juice Box are waiting for the portal to open, which will happen 20 some minutes before the floor collapses, when Chris/Maggie shows up.

Maggie tells Carl that she knows they have her daughter and they are planning on using her as either a mob or to make Maggie kill her in some way. She tells Carl to go down the stairs. She says, “when the caprid came to us in the rest area, it told me it’d help if we killed you.” Carl thinks about how Prepotente is a caprid but he quickly dismisses that thought.

Maggie starts shouting to the AI that if its legal to happen, it should be legal to say outloud and fuck all of them.

Mordecai has made Carl a phase potion with the vegetable thing he got in a box. It makes it so he can pass through lava rock. He takes it and then reaches through Chris, finds Maggie (the worm) and rips her out of his head. She immediately starts burrowing her way into Carl so he takes a healing potion and she is ripped right out of his neck. Mongo bites her in half as Carl passes out.

So we think we know what Carl is doing right? Plot twist!

Carl, Katia, and Donut have been using the Coffee Shop Author Kit in their bathroom to communicate secretly without anyone knowing about it.

The Gate is actually a fake. He isn’t sending a god to the ninth floor. He is keeping the gate. He tells Juice Box he is still sending her to the ninth floor though and she needs to stay hidden and tell all the NPCs what she now knows about how everything is fake. He wants all the NPCs to know what is going on by the time he gets there.

So if Carl isn’t opening the gate, who is?

Katia.

Underwater.

She opened the gate and flooded the ninth floor. She also sent in a bunch of sharks and jelly fish. Oh, and bombs.

They are flooding Larracos and blowing it up all at the same time.

The Valtay and Borant are furious. This is not at all what they thought was going to happen nor where they thought it would happen. He isn’t hitting where the war factions are. He is killing off the NPCs.

Zev pops in and is telling Carl that he is flooding the markets, the mercenaries will be killed. Access to the Desperado Club will be cut off and now sponsors won’t be able to get in and gamble. Borant is going to lose a lot of money. The sponsors won’t be able to buy shit for their troops. Also, they can’t make new worker NPCs. So every worker in a shop can’t be replaced. The shops, including food markets for the troops, will be closed. Zev is trying to pretend like she is lecturing Carl but Carl can tell she is excited and is just trying to tell him everything that is happening.

Carl does feel bad that he killed a bunch of NPCs but he knows they would just die anyways once the ninth floor opens and that will be bloody and painful. And anyways, this is war.

Zev tells him that some of the factions had their armies hidden in the city and that Carl has probably killed tens of thousands.

Right before Carl, Chris, and Donut head down the stairs, Donut tells Carl that she is worried that even more hunters will be after them now. Carl says he is betting on it. Then he pledges outloud that before the end of the sixth floor, every hunter who is there, will be dead. “One by one, I will break you. I will break you all.”

The epilogue has us meeting Dr. Hu and some woman that he is with. Dr. Hu is president of the Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network that had just sent Carl an emergency box. The woman is concerned that they are going to draw attention to their small “NFC” and how they are able to afford such boxes. Dr. Hu isn't concerned. He says the more times Carl goes on Odette’s, the “more people sign up for the cause.”

Then we head Earth side. Yes…Earth side. Where … surprise… there are still humans alive there. There’s two aliens there searching for someone…or something. We find out there is something called a “Walk-on list”. Basically those who stayed top side and did not go down the stairs. We already know the ones who go down the stairs are referred to as Crawlers, but now we find out that those who stay topside are Natives, and those who die in the collapse are Collected. The Dungeon sends search parties out to find certain Natives, capture them, and put them into the game. Usually to torment Crawlers. These two aliens are looking for a particular cat - Gravy Boat (aka Donut’s boyfriend). We also find out that there were people in the tropical zone looking for the woman (Bea) but that Borant had parked their headquarters close by and a tsunami had destroyed the whole area. They also mention that people are looking for “that little girl’s father” in the southern hemisphere (no idea who that is yet … Lucia Mar’s dad maybe?). These two happen upon a settlement in what used to be Seattle that is known now as New Queen Anne (why….why change the name….I do not understand).

Now we get a different POV - Brad. Oh….fucking Brad.

We learn that Bea and Brad flew home early, but had been stranded in Atlanta airport for hours because of a snowstorm. When they finally got home to Seattle, they were in a parking garage awaiting an Uber, when some crazy guy started setting cars on fire and a bunch of people ran out of the garage. Then everything collapsed. Bea had wanted to go home so they went to her apartment. She was hoping to find Donut but she found Gravy Boat instead. The cat hated her but Bea would not give it up for anything. She spends a lot of time crying and mumbling. Brad wishes he had went down the stairs but he didn’t, because Bea was scared. Bea is NOT handling this well at all.

Brad is not sleeping next to a sleeping, crying Bea, when someone cuts their tent open. Before the two aliens could capture Gravy Boat and Bea (who they were shocked to find), someone else enters the tent.

One of the aliens gets shot and dies. Brad gets shot. Gravy Boat gets knocked out.

Who is this person? Oh….Odette’s right hand lady, Lexis. She calls Odette and Odette tells her to leave the other alien, make it look like he killed the other one. Let Brad die. Leave Gravy Boat. But take Bea with her.

What a fucking epilogue huh?!

Crawler count at the end of Floor 4: 85,223

End of Floor 4 Leaderboard

Name	Level	Bounty
Carl	38	1,000,000(x2)
Lucia Mar	48	500,000 (x2)
Prepotente	55	400,000 (x2)
Donut	39	300,000 (x2)
Elle	47	100,000