It’s off to the races for Carl and Donut in the eighth book in the Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat Princess Donut must compete in increasingly difficult and unhinged challenges in order to survive the tenth floor of the dungeon.

Autorentext

Matt Dinniman is a writer, artist, and musician (well, he's a bass player) from Gig Harbor, WA. He is the author of several books, including the bestselling Dungeon Crawler Carl series.

Klappentext

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • It’s off to the races in the explosive eighth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series—featuring bonus material exclusive to this print edition.

As chaos and mass panic spread outside the dungeon in the wake of Faction Wars, Carl and Donut find themselves on the tenth floor, where they’re forced to compete in a surprisingly normal set of tasks. Well, normal for the dungeon.

Races. Get from point A to point B, and don’t come in last. After each race, they pick an upgrade for their vehicle and the track gets more challenging. It all seems a little too normal, a little too simple.

Ignore those strange glitches that are occurring with increasing frequency. Don’t listen to those whispers about what’s happening on the mysterious eleventh floor, something the system AI calls A Parade of Horribles. Nobody, not even the showrunners, knows what that means. Just that the AI has ominously dubbed it “a coming-out party for the ages.”

Everything is fine, Crawler. I repeat, everything is fine.

Carl hates that it’s business as usual. The rules of this floor have taken away his agency. That just will not do.

So Carl is planning a party of his own. It’s a plan so dangerous, so insane, he can’t even consult his friends lest the AI put a stop to it. Because if it goes wrong, it’s not just the end of Carl and Donut. No. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.

Includes part eight of the exclusive bonus story “Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret.”

Leseprobe
1

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the tenth floor.

Time to Level Collapse: Level timer has been
temporarily suspended for this floor. Please wait
for the announcement from that inebriated fish
if we can manage to wake her up for the details.

Views: 933 Septillion

Followers: 3.5 Quintillion

Favorites: 971 Quadrillion

Leaderboard Rank: 3

Bounty: 3,200,000 gold

Congrats, Crawler. You have received a Platinum Venison Box.

Remaining Crawlers: 5,501

Entering your garage.

Warning: The next heat starts in five minutes. Safe room access is blocked until the heat is over.

I hit the tiled floor with a heavy thump. One moment I'd been sitting in the zero zone, talking with Quasar about that psychotic Naga woman, and the next I was here.

I stood, wiping myself off. I was still covered in blood and gore and red ash from the end of Faction Wars. This was a large room with a black-and-white-checkered tiled floor and corrugated metal walls, like a smaller-sized airplane hangar. It was cold. I turned to face the only other creatures in here. They were a pair of white-tagged gremlins standing in the back corner, both wearing overalls.

I blinked at the NPCs just as Donut appeared next to me with a yowl. She hit the ground sideways, yelped, and then jumped to my shoulder.

"Carl, I'm atop the leaderboard again! I'm number one!"

"I'm very happy for you."

"So, I met the new wife."

"Yeah, I heard," I said. I gave her a pat. "I haven't met her, but Quasar filled me in. I heard you grabbed the upper hand pretty quickly."

"Don't be racist. It's upper paw. But yes. If she thinks she can just slither in and take advantage of the Posse like that, that legless bitch has another thing coming. And I thought Miss Beatrice was bad. You sure know how to pick them, Carl."

There was an ominous countdown timer in the upper left of my vision. It was at four minutes and thirty seconds and counting down. We needed to figure it out before we did anything else.

Donut: MORDECAI, I HAVE TO PICK A NEW CLASS! HELP ME WITH THE CHOICES.

Mordecai: There you guys are. You have four minutes to get your vehicle ready. Donut, you're back as party leader, so pick a class quickly.

I turned in a circle. At the front of the garage was a massive roll-up door. A chain pulley system crisscrossed the ceiling. I'd seen plenty of similar systems in both car shops and dry dock repair bays. The two gremlins started jogging toward us.

I already knew some of what was going on out there because Quasar had told me, but even he hadn't known everything. I clicked through my messages and pop-ups, my heart still racing. I briefly paused at that number "5,501." That meant 75% of us had taken deals.

I took the briefest of moments to let that sink in. Such an overwhelming sense of secondhand relief flooded me. I didn't blame anyone for tapping out. Each and every one of them had earned it.

Part of me wished I had the luxury.

I was stalling, even if just for a second. I already knew what the next message was. A message reminding me why I would never be able to take that path. I took a breath.

Justice Light: I am not sorry. Peace to you all, brothers and sisters.

This message is from a deceased mercenary.

Sadness overwhelmed me. I already knew Justice Light was dead. Quasar had told me. Still, the sight of those words was like a kick to the stomach.

You crazy asshole. What did you do? What did that trap do?

A response to his message appeared on the group chat.

Rosetta: Rest well, comrade. We are not far behind.

She was still in here in the safe room, as was Tipid. They'd both been converted to hired mercenaries.

Quasar hadn't really known the specifics. All he knew was that the Nothing was "broken" and that everything was in chaos on the twelfth and eighteenth floors. And furthermore, the outworlders on those two floors were protected from really dying by the system AI. They could get hurt on the eighteenth floor, they could still "die," but they would immediately get brought back to their rooms in the club. A club that was physically inside of the now-awake dungeon boss. The system wasn't letting anyone eject.

Some of the things that had leaked from the Nothing were using this to their advantage. It was like what we'd done to Growler Gary, but worse. Much worse.

Quasar had only given me a quick version. So far, the now-awake Scolopendra hadn't yet done anything other than move around a lot. Apparently, the tourists on the eighteenth floor had the ability to move themselves to the sixteenth floor, where it was safe, but they first had to make their way through the seventeenth floor for some reason, where it was not, and anyone who even attempted it got turned to mince and immediately brought back to life on the eighteenth, where the worst of the worst were stalking the hallways.

Forgotten gods. Demons from hundreds of former quests. All sorts of other horrific creatures. Several had made their way to the eighteenth floor, but, luckily-or not luckily, depending on how you looked at it-these creatures all appeared inside the final boss. And not just inside the monster's guts, but inside the club, where they immediately set themselves on the guests. Guests who couldn't die, no matter what was being done to them.

The cameras had gone dark after the first few hours.

Those on the twelfth were faring better, considering they were in the bodies of gods with god powers. Though apparently the non-sponsored gods were all suddenly acting quite strange. That's all Quasar had known.

I hoped the city of Larracos and all those who'd gone with it to the twelfth floor were doing okay.

More messages came, but I …