Book 1 recap: Dungeon Crawler Carl

The recap, as text

Picture it. Two in the morning, freezing, you are outside in boxer shorts, and every building on Earth just fell down. Welcome to the crawl.

Welcome to the Ink and Fables recap. Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 1. This recap spoils the whole book. Carl is a Coast Guard veteran minding his ex girlfriend's cat.

A voice says Earth is being harvested, but survivors may reclaim it inside an eighteen level dungeon. He carries the cat down into the rubble.

A goblin war machine chases him to a chained tutorial door. The guide will not open it with goblins about, so Carl kills one. The machine explodes.

The guide is Mordecai, a former crawler in a rat man's body. This is a galaxy wide show, and ratings matter as much as strength. The cat used his mother's ashes as a litter box.

One legendary box holds an enhanced pet biscuit. While Carl is still deciding, Donut snatches it, swallows it, and collapses into goo.

She comes back talking, very posh, with better stats than him, so she takes charge, names the party her royal court, and makes him the bodyguard.

Her own box holds a crown. Despite every warning she puts it on, and it makes her heir to a royal family she will someday have to kill.

They nearly split up, then make up. He punches a lava spitting llama, squashes bugs barefoot, and settle on one goal. Find Carl some pants.

Donut mentions Bea had been cheating, which stings, so Carl throws dynamite into a big room. Out of the garbage rises the Hoarder, fifteen feet of once human woman.

The cat empties her mana into magic missiles. Carl loops a chain round the boss's neck, it breaks, and his fists finish her. First boss down.

With no stairs in sight, Carl's tattoo and the cat's charm win over two goblin shamankas. Drugs buy a steam motorcycle and a sack of explosives.

They wheel a cart of bombs into the goblin boss chamber and set it off. Only afterwards does Donut mention it was full of goblin babies.

Next morning a man named Frank waits in their safe room with a story Carl sees through. He pulls a gun, and the room freezes him and his partner.

They run. Donut kills a rat, Carl hides lit dynamite inside it for whoever follows, and they roar off east.

A hundred miles on, painted signs lead to a stairwell and nursing home staff with dozens of elderly residents. Deeper floors might mend those minds, so Carl signs on.

The Ball of Swine guards the stairs, a rolling sphere of pig aristocrats. Carl and the handymen build a gym gear fortress that wedges it against the ceiling until it pops.

On the stairs they are whisked onto a galactic talk show. Donut charms the crowd, and the host, a crab in a mantis mask, coaxes out Carl's catchphrase. Goddamnit, Donut.

Off camera the host drops the costume. She is a legless former crawler with two lessons. Loot is never random, because the show is choosing. And stop complaining about pants.

The second floor opens with a six day timer and a warning. Relieve yourself outside a bathroom and a Rage Elemental comes for you.

They skip the local boss. Bosses on this floor, it turns out, can leave their rooms. Out comes the Krakaren Clone, twenty feet of octopus mother covered in screaming mouths.

Donut says she loves Carl almost as much as Bea. Then their bomb kills the boss and breaks his legs. At six percent health, she drags him out by his cloak.

The nursing home is towing its residents toward the stairs when one relieves himself on a wall. A Rage Elemental forms, kills two, and flings a ninety nine year old at the ceiling.

A new rule empties the safe rooms an hour before collapse. So Carl oils the stairwell floor and rolls his motorcycle down the hole. The elemental slides in after it and dissolves.

An admin rents them to a children's show where two captured crawlers must guess who dies. Carl dares the host to use him instead, whispers a plan, and all four survive.

Then the host brings out Frank and Maggie. The rat trap took his hand and hurt their daughter, and Maggie ended her. She vows to watch Carl and the cat die.

Back in the safe room, Donut confides that she overheard Mordecai say to leave her behind on the ninth floor. Carl tells her not to worry yet.

The kobold boss pit is full of caged dingoes. Carl feeds them biscuits so they fight for him when a frenzied gerbil is released. It bursts out of a dingo, and Carl crushes it underfoot.

A hidden reward room lets them pick one animal. Donut chooses a pink chicken dinosaur, names him Mongo, and he bites her nose. By the deadline he is bonded.

They land on the talk show once more, where the host mentions, helpfully, that a Mongoliensis is a velociraptor.

So here they stand. A man with no pants who has decided to fight the show, a cat with a crown, and a very small dinosaur. Can they pick a race and a class before the show does? The transcript and the Book 2 read along are at Ink and Fables, link below. Subscribe for the next recap.