Literature / Dungeon Crawler Carl Book One

"Rome will exist as long as the Coliseum does; when the Coliseum falls, so will Rome; when Rome falls, so will the world." - The Venerable Bede

Mordecai: The Syndicate consists of over three billion independent star systems. Every season, a new Dungeon Crawler World debuts across the net. Quintillions of citizens of the Syndicate become obsessed with the Crawl.
Carl: Wait, so this is like a TV show? Like Survivor?
Mordecai: Oh, I loved that show. And as far as you're concerned, yes. It's a show like Survivor. But it's more a Running Man situation than a Survivor one.

Carl, having recently broken up with his girlfriend for cheating on him, is smoking in his apartment after midnight when the cat, Princess Donut, jumps out the window. He has to run out into the record-breaking cold to rescue her.

This saves both their lives.

Every single man-made structure on the planet collapses without warning. Everyone with a roof over their head, whether they're in a car or in Buckingham Palace, is instantly squashed. A message arrives: The Syndicate has claimed the planet and all its resources. If the survivors want anything more than a short, lonely life on the surface without technology, they have one hour to descend into the Dungeon.

Carl, half-naked and freezing to death, has little choice but to grab the cat and run into the stairwell entrance. Inside, he finds Mordecai, a former crawler who now runs a tutorial guild. Mordecai explains the situation: Everything on Earth has been reclaimed, and now Carl has to advance through the Dungeon, gaining experience and loot. If he beats floor 18, he will win stewardship of the planet.

No one has ever made it past floor 13.

After a surprising encounter with a Legendary Pet Biscuit, Donut gains full sapience and intelligence. Together, Carl and Donut travel the dungeon, fighting monsters and encountering other players.

Dungeon Crawler Carl: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure is a LitRPG by Matt Dinniman. It covers the first two floors of the Dungeon. The sequel is Carl's Doomsday Scenario.

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This novel provides examples of:

• Adaptation Expansion: The "Immersion Tunnel" episodic audiobook version, exclusive to Soundbooth Theater's website, expands on several existing scenes greatly, such as actually letting the audience hear some of what was said on the first recap episode of Dungeon Crawler World, adds more detail in other scenes, and even adds a considerable number of background music tracks that play in situations such as combat or receiving multiple achievements.
• Almost Dead Guy: Parodied by Donut when she gives a couple of fake coughs and pretends to still be near death even as she heals after the fight with the Juicer.
• Alpha Bitch: One of the voice-overs Carl gets to hear is of an aggressive and cheerful woman (later revealed to be a middle management Kua-Tin) who gives awful summaries of what's happened so far, introduces the morbid clip-shows, and urges the crawlers to get out there and kill! Kill! Kill! while also telling them what losers they are and how they need to get good and stop dying so much.
• The Bad Guys Are Cops: The first player killers Carl and Donut encounter are Frank and Maggie... who are both cops (immigration). They're capable of spinning a good lie to buy sympathy, but the truth is they're killers. Their story, and the reasons behind their ruthlessness, will be expanded upon in later books.
• Body of Bodies: The Borough Boss that Carl and the Meadow Larkers have to fight to get to the second floor is a rolling ball of swine made of dozens of orgy-attending orcs.
• Brains Versus Brawn: With the regular encounters, the dungeon encourages you to adopt a fighting style and Kill! Kill! Kill! With the Boss Battles, though, it pushes you to be smart, giving you clues for ways to make the fights easier. For example:
  • The trash woman who vomits up cockroaches: the way around that fight was to kill a grub as it came out of her mouth, blocking the exit and choking her to death.
  • The Juicer is a roided up troglodyte: his weak point is his bulging veins.
  • The Borough Boss is an unstoppable crushing machine of rolling pork: find a way to stop it from rolling.
• Catchphrase: Mordecai advises Carl to be careful about choosing one for himself as it can make or break a crawler's follow count. Donut is delighted by the possibility of having a catchphrase. Carl is disgusted by the idea of participating in any way in this murderpark, and it's just comedic injury that the audience has already decided on one for him when he goes on Odette's show, leading to a supercut of him repeating it.
  Carl: Goddammit, Donut.
• Charm Person: Donut's absurdly high Charisma basically gives her a free, automatic charm on any mob that is not currently tagged as hostile. She manages to talk an entire goblin clan into giving them pretty much everything they want.
• Clarke's Third Law: Mordecai gives Carl a shrug and explains that "Technology beyond your understanding seems like magic." when Carl expresses confusion as to how all of this happened so quickly.
• Infodump: Mordecai gives Carl a run-down on his situation after he survives his encounter with the goblins, telling him about the galactic system and the dungeon in brief. Some of this is played straight with Mordecai explaining the galactic situation, the gameshow elements of Carl's situation, and other social things. The exposition about managing the game's HUD and so on are assumed to be as commonsense to the reader as they are to Carl and are glossed over after a brief intro.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Carl figures out early on that his best bet to survive is to just take all of the stuff. Every of the things. Infinite inventory, so why not, right?
• Loophole Abuse: Carl knows the Rage Elemental (Level 93) can't be killed by a group of Level 2 crawlers. He also knows that any mob entering the stairwell to the second floor will be fragged by the system. He more extra knows further that the Rage Elemental moves really fast and doesn't have good brakes and there's a stairwell nearby... The managers congratulate him on his ingenuity and Nerf the loophole so no one else will be able to do it in the future.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Averted with Carl watching the number of crawlers drop, drop, drop. By the time he's preparing to face the Borough Boss and descend to the second level, as many people have died as were murdered by the Nazi Holocaust and Carl is horrified the entire time.
• Mistaken for Insane: Donut's first act is to change the party name to "the Royal Court of Princess Donut," and then change Carl's title to "Royal Bodyguard." Both Frank and the Meadow Lark team stare at him like he's a crazy person until Donut starts talking.
• Obvious Rule Patch: The Kua-Tin launched the Dungeon early and it's buggy as hell; even the bathrooms can be accidentally fatal. They keep patching the damn thing. However, some of their patches are because the crawlers are clever (especially Carl) and the bastards need to prevent their victims from having too easy a time not dying. For example, when Carl (Level 3) kills a Rage Elemental (Level 93) by luring it into a stairwell where it gets fragged because mobs can't do that, the devs congratulate Carl on his cleverness and change the rules so that can't happen in the future.
• Player Killing: Carl and Donut encounter Frank and Maggie, two player killers hunting their way through the Dungeon. Of course, this leaves them with very obvious skulls above their names, but Frank is good at spinning a sob story that gets people to let down their guards.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Carl wanders into the dungeon and the first thing he sees is a bright neon sign reading "Da Tutorial Guild". He's suspicious of the pitch black alley it points to, but steps in and gets a prize for stepping into such an obvious trap.
  • Invoked by the dungeon and discussed by Carl. The recap of the defeat of the Rage Elemental shows that it nearly died before it despawned. Carl realizes that the dungeon is trying to egg him into summoning another and killing it, but is equally sure that there is some sort of trap when it runs out of HP, and that even trying a fool-proof bomb, would likely get him killed.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Donut slips through the door Mordecai has cracked opened during Carl's first fight. Mordecai protests that he'll get in trouble if Carl doesn't come get his pet.
• Streisand Effect: Some time in the past, In-Universe, the Kua-Tin demanded everyone stop calling them Mud Skippers, even took people to court. It went from a minor epithet to a major one overnight. The Skull Empire are faced with a similar dilemma in the present with the Pork Boy Snick featuring Carl and the Maestro. A spokesperson requested that people stop referring to Maestro as Carl's Naughty Little Piggy. Odette very carefully and gleefully complies.
• Take That!:
  • Carl informs us during his first fight that he's 6'3" and 230 pounds, not unlike a certain former president once claimed.
  • The Krakaren has a Live, Laugh, Love sign outside her chamber, along with a note that says "Good news, everyone! Little Breannlyne has the chickenpox! Potluck Pox party here at noon. No peanuts. Let’s get that immunity!".
• Too Dumb to Live: Having had it explained to him that pissing in the hallway will cause an unstoppable Rage Elemental (Level 93) to be summoned, Jack pisses in the hallway.
• Tragic Villain: The roach-spewing trash woman Carl and Donut kill as their first Neighborhood Boss was just a random homeless woman before the Kua-Tin collected her. She is desperately unhealthy, has no idea what's going on, and spends her time on-screen begging for understanding and mercy in untranslated Spanish.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • It doesn't take long for Carl to get entirely sick of Donut's shit after she becomes intelligent enough to speak. He tells her she's on her own because she's such an insufferable, self-centered Jerkass. Fortunately, she's smart enough to know she can't survive on her own and she really does care for Carl, so she drops the act and explains she's terrified and putting on an act for the audience and please, please, for the love of God, don't leave me.
  • The Kua-Tin launched the dungeon early and didn't tell their guild masters, so Mordecai is unprepared for Carl's arrival. Therefore, by the time he gets to the door, Carl's goblin pursuers are too close and Mordecai is prohibited from opening the door. When he tells Carl that "Sorry, you took too long.", Carl's response is an angry "I took too long?!".
• World of Pun: The dungeon quickly establishes that it's built on punning on Earth pop culture, art, and history. For example, the Borough Boss guarding the stairs to the second floor is the "Ball of Swine".
• You Monster!: An actual achievement that Carl gets after he and Donut blow up a giant goblin boss and a lot of goblin babies.

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Now get out there and Kill! Kill! Kill!