69 pages • 2-hour read
Carl's Doomsday Scenario
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section contains cursing and depictions of graphic violence.
Chapter 12 Summary
Carl runs to the building where Signet left Donut. Mordecai gives him updates. Her health went to zero, but a special “Cockroach” skill from her Class activated, keeping her alive. Carl arrives to see Donut and Mongo surrounded by monsters called Street Urchins, with big black spikes. Donut and Mongo are both pierced all over with spikes. Mongo has doubled in size, but his health is failing. The game text explains that urchins clean the corpses and refuse from the abandoned city and will not bother crawlers unless they get in the way. Carl realizes that they were attracted by the shelter made of garbage that he erected around Donut. He tears the structure down, throwing bits at the urchins to keep them distracted. When the structure is gone, the urchins leave. He cannot move Donut until sunrise, so he sits to wait. Mongo falls asleep by his side. Carl watches Donut breathe and thinks, “this is my family” (143).
At dawn, Donut wakes. They head for the settlement Mordecai originally told them to find. They stop briefly at the remains of the circus, where the stairwell to the next floor has opened. Carl tells Donut what happened as they walk. Donut warns that if they make it to the sixth level, even with this new agreement in place, the program writers may try to kill them off to keep the guest stars from becoming more popular than the main character.
Carl reflects that Donut is maturing quickly. He also suspects that she tries to hide her intelligence from their audience to maintain a certain image. It reminds him of a conversation he once overheard when Beatrice’s mother told her that women must “make [men] think you’re dumber than you are. That’s the only way to catch a good man” (146). He fears that Donut has adopted this unhealthy attitude from her former owner.
As they travel, they fight mobs, allowing Donut to level up her Clockwork Triplicate spell. They also devise moves for a playbook of predetermined actions they can call out to each other in case of combat and emergencies.
Finally, they reach a medium-sized settlement filled primarily with skyfowl, humanoid eagle people and Mordecai’s original race. There are humans and other creature NPCs in the settlement, as well as more Guards and other crawlers. They reach Mordecai’s guildhall. As they enter, they see a tower labeled the Desperado Club.
Chapter 13 Summary
They have five days until the next floor collapses. They have reached 1.4 quadrillion views and 6.2 trillion favorites. Mordecai teleports to join them, complaining that he was kicked out of the bars in the previous settlement. He adds that he devised a potion called Hair of the Dog that negates alcohol effects, explaining that he was a mycologist on his home world and learned alchemy as a crawler.
Donut and Carl open their new achievement boxes. They each received a Gold Fan Box, which they cannot open until their fans vote on its contents. Carl receives a Johnny Quest achievement for completing a quest without dying, and a Hadji achievement for completing the quest in an unusual and creative way. The Hadji achievement awards him a Platinum Quest box.
Donut gets magical fang caps, which they place on Mongo, giving his bite extra damage and power. They both receive new skills that will help them detect locations and mobs on the dungeon map, and several skill upgrades. Carl receives enchanted heart-print boxers that increase his stats, but only if he does not wear any pants over them. Mordecai and Donut both laugh and remark that the system AI knows how badly Carl wants pants. He also receives a casino chip, which Mordecai has never seen before. It is a comp chip to join the High Roller’s Roulette Table or Wheel of Fortune game at the Desperado Club and is worth 100,000 gold coins. Mordecai promises to show them around the Desperado Club tomorrow night.
Chapter 14 Summary
Carl and Donut find a pub called the One-Eyed Narwhal, run by a human named Fitz. Fitz fawns over Donut and gives them good rates for two rooms, one for Carl and Donut to share and one for Mordecai. They eat as the recap show plays. The episode shows Carl only briefly because the Vengeance of the Daughter program owns the rights to his quest footage.
An orc NPC named GumGum approaches them, asking for help. Mordecai recognizes that she is trying to give them another quest and tells her to leave. She walks away crying. That night, Carl tries to find GumGum again, but Mordecai catches him and warns that the game is trying to bait Carl into dangerous situations.
The next day, they visit the shops. Mordecai shows them around the general store where they can sell random items. There are also specialty shops for potions, armor, and more. Shopkeepers cannot actively lie about the items they sell, but they often overcharge. Donut’s Charisma stats and Former Child Actor class give them advantages there. They buy a special carrier for Mongo. Then Mordecai tells them to go grind in the ruins and forbids them from joining quests, interacting with elites, or fighting bosses higher than neighborhood level.
For several hours, they do so. Then, as they return to the settlement, they see a pile of dead women, all labeled as sex workers. GumGum explains that the bodies drop mysteriously from the sky at night, and she finds them in the morning. The local magistrate gave her permission to gather the bodies and put them outside the gates for the urchins to clean up. However, the skyfowl in charge of the settlement do not care about non-skyfowl victims. Carl says that he will help if he can, triggering a new quest—“The Sex Workers Who Fell From the Heavens” (176), which requires them to find out why the sex workers are being killed.
Chapter 15 Summary
That night, Mordecai takes Carl and Donut to the Desperado Club. The employee at the door recognizes Mordecai. She warns them to keep Mongo in his new carrier because pets are not permitted inside, especially after an incident the previous night with a crawler whose pets caused damage. Inside, the main room has a public section and a members-only section. The members-only section will be the same room on every floor from now on, no matter where they enter. There are also signs that lead to other areas. Some, like the Casino, The Hunting Grounds, and Guild-O-Rama, are closed. Others are open and labeled: “Bitches, Penis Parade, Jobs, The Silk Road, and Restrooms” (183). The one labeled Bitches is a female strip club and brothel. The Penis Parade is the male equivalent. The Jobs room gives out quests such as assassinations and thefts. The Silk Road is a marketplace.
They order drinks. Donut is excited to try alcohol for the first time. Mordecai calls over a pharmacist named Quint. Quint is a former crawler and a friend of Mordecai’s. They haggle over pharmacist supplies that Mordecai makes Carl buy, explaining that he is building up their inventory. Meanwhile, their drinks arrive, and Donut is drunk after just a few sips.
Quint tells them about the pet incident the previous night. A woman crawler came in with two rottweilers who attacked the employees and tore the club apart. When the employees and other club members tried to stop it, she killed an elite with her giant mace and left. Donut drunkenly says that it must have been Lucia Mar. She rants about how awful her dogs are.
Mordecai tells Carl that once they reach the fourth floor, the game system’s protection will kick in for some NPCs and any dungeon tourists. This protection will apply to Mordecai as their manager. If he dies in the game, he will simply be freed from his obligations for the season. Carl is concerned that this means he could simply get himself killed the moment they enter the fourth floor, but Mordecai assures him that he receives incentives to stick with Carl and Donut as long as he can. Finally, Mordecai says they should visit the Silk Road marketplace.
Chapter 16 Summary
The market is a long room with a single row of shop stalls selling a variety of items. Mordecai takes Carl and Donut to a stall, warning that the owner is odd but harmless. The owner, Pustule, is a female hobgoblin selling a variety of bombs, dynamite, and other explosives supplies. They haggle over prices. Carl buys goblin dynamite and a case of hob-lobbers—small round explosives—with a promise to return for smoke bombs when she has them in stock.
Carl and Donut head back to their inn while Mordecai stays at the bar. They walk through the settlement in the dark. Suddenly, Mongo screams and runs into an alley. Carl and Donut chase him and discover three creatures called krasue—flying disembodied women’s heads with their hair streaming and organs dangling from the severed necks. Game text explains that they are made from women who lived in sin. Destroying their heads will not kill them: The body, hidden elsewhere, must be destroyed. With them is a male elf. At their feet is GumGum’s dead body. Donut casts her torch light on the krasue and fly away. The elf claims to have lured them into a trap to kill them. Before he can do anything, however, Carl kicks him, and Donut hits him with a magic missile, killing him.
Chapters 12-16 Analysis
The second section centered on Carl and Donut’s first quest, which Carl completes in Chapter 11 with surprising results. The third section sets the stage for the next major plot point. These chapters introduce a new setting location: medium skyfowl settlement. This location, filled with shops, pubs, and guildhalls, mirrors the structure of earlier dungeon floors but introduces a more urbanized atmosphere, blending the organized functionality of safe settlements with the decaying sprawl of the surrounding ruins. In addition to the general setting of the town, these chapters introduce the Desperado Club, a gated and exclusive space that caters to high-ranking crawlers and elite dungeon participants. First foreshadowed in the opening book when Carl and Donut received their membership tattoos, the club now materializes as a physical manifestation of class stratification within the dungeon. It features segregated areas, privatized quests, and access to high-reward challenges, underscoring how the dungeon reinforces social hierarchies even within its violent, gamified system. Mordecai’s explanation makes clear that the Desperado Club will remain important later in the series, particularly when they reach the sixth floor.
This setting also includes a new race of NPCs, the skyfowl. Carl and Donut are fortunate to have Mordecai, who was originally a skyfowl, as their manager to help them navigate interactions with these NPC. Without Mordecai’s knowledge, they would be at a disadvantage dealing with them, as they are (according to Mordecai) self-important and xenophobic against those who do not have wings. Skyfowl are happy to cheat people they do not like and see most other races as servant classes. Mordecai, by comparison, is more open-minded, though it is unclear if he is different because of his time as a crawler or because these particular skyfowl are programmed NPCs rather than the real thing. As Carl has seen on previous floors, the dungeon AI tends to build NPC personalities around exaggerated stereotypes and caricatures rather than realistic portrayals of real, complex personalities. This reinforces the theme of The Blurred Line Between Entertainment and Reality, as the game’s worldbuilding intentionally trades in spectacle and stereotype for audience engagement, reducing entire races and characters to archetypes in a performative ecosystem.
Having established the new location and the NPCs involved, this section shifts to kick-off the next major plot element, Carl and Donut’s second quest. The quest underscores Carl’s moral code and desire to help others. Despite Mordecai’s warnings to ignore quests and focus on gaining experience and strength, Carl wants to help, despite GumGum not technically being a real person. This is a crucial part of his character and contributes to the theme of The Balance Between Survival and Morality: Carl does not wish to compromise his moral code or the sake of mere survival. His repeated resistance to Mordecai’s pragmatic advice and personal mantra signals that Carl is not simply trying to win the game—he is trying to retain a sense of self within it. Further, even when Carl tries to deny his own desire to help, the game ensures he becomes entangled anyway. As Mordecai says in Chapter 14, those running the game know who Carl is and understand how best to bait him. Once Carl’s curiosity and sense of justice are engaged, they know he will not be able to resist becoming involved. This moment further blurs autonomy, suggesting that even Carl’s moral choices are anticipated and monetized, emphasizing how entertainment and survival are constantly intertwined.
In addition to these crucial plot elements, these chapters depict small moments that contribute to overall narrative, often revealing something about the characters or adding to the novel’s tone. For instance, the scene in Chapter 12 when Carl rescues Donut from the street urchins reveals something vital about Carl’s character: He now views Donut and Mongo not only as friends and teammates, but as his family. His protective behavior and his fear for Donut’s safety reveal the depth of his care and reliance on Donut’s presence for his own sense of well-being. This moment powerfully illustrates The Value of Friendship in Survival Situations, as Carl’s emotional bond with Donut becomes both a source of strength and a point of vulnerability in the dungeon’s cruel design. His declaration that “this is my family” marks a turning point in his internal compass—Donut is both a companion and a reason to keep going.
The dungeon’s twisted sense of humor, often delivered through system messages and pop culture references, adds a satirical edge to Carl and Donut’s struggle for survival. For example, the system AI makes pop culture references to the popular 1980s cartoon Johnny Quest, from which it draws the titles of achievement boxes like the Johnny Quest, Hadji, and Bandit achievements. These small references contribute to the comedic tone of the narrative, as do the system AI’s snarky and mocking comments in the game text and various notices. There is also the running gag that appears throughout the first and second book: Carl’s desperate desire for pants. Carl constantly complains about his lack of pants, and the system AI has now made a point of withholding such clothing from him. Instead, he receives a magical pair of boxers that explicitly forbid him from wearing pants even if he should find any, to the amusement of Mordecai and Donut. The boxers are genuinely useful, but the main point of the item is its comedic value. However, this ongoing joke also subtly reinforces the dungeon’s arbitrary cruelty and lack of dignity. It strips Carl, literally and metaphorically, of comfort and control. While Carl gains powerful tools and achievements, he remains humiliated in small but persistent ways, reminding both him and the audience that power in the dungeon comes at a personal cost. These comedic interludes both heighten the absurdity of the dungeon and underline the characters’ attempts to preserve normalcy in an environment that continually reduces them to content.
Unlock all 69 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs