Carl's Doomsday Scenario

In the morning, Carl receives a message from Brandon but waits to read it. He and Donut join Mordecai, who stole a dungeon newsletter. As a manager, he no longer has access to the official dungeon feed, but safe room Bopkas and shopkeepers receive newsletters with important news. This newsletter warns that Signet is about to do something big. He recommends that Carl and Donut leave the area and head to the next settlement.

Carl reads the message from Brandon, one of Carl’s former neighbors and fellow dungeon crawlers. Brandon chose to remain human, though Chris and Imani did not. The elderly residents all chose something non-human to make up for their conditions and received Legendary boxes for making it through the first two levels without killing anything. They came to the third floor far away from Carl but hope to see him again someday.

Carl and Donut head into the ruins. Something hits Carl, paralyzing him and knocking him unconscious. He wakes in a dark room with frantic messages from Mordecai and no sign of Donut. Mordecai says that as her manager, he can see that Donut is alive but does not know where she is. Carl sees from his countdown that he was unconscious for 15 hours.

Signet appears, complaining that he broke his promise to come see her again. Now he will do what she tells him to if he wants to get Donut back. Carl demands to see Donut. Signet takes him to the bottom floor of Signet’s building. Signet put Donut to sleep with a Water Lily spell. If he tries to move her, she will die. If Carl helps Signet defeat the circus, she will release the spell. Worried about leaving Donut undefended, he uses wood and metal from his inventory to construct a shelter around Donut and orders Mongo to guard her.

Carl contacts Zev. He has an idea but needs her help. She promises to do what she can. Signet leads Carl toward the circus. She says that Scolopendra’s poison cloud transformed the entire circus, especially Grimaldi, the ringleader. Only she escaped unaltered. Grimaldi protected her from the High Elves and gave her a home when they exiled for being a mixed-race child. She loves him, but now he is a giant vine monster in the center ring, infecting the other circus performers with mold parasites to control them and keep them alive. Every time they die, they return to the vine to be reborn.

Signet tells Carl that he must kill the circus creature she caught, a bear named Heather, so that she can use the blood to trigger her spell and attack the circus. The bear is large, its face an exposed skull, with white worms emerging from her paws.

The Boss Battle music begins, and a notice says that he triggered Heather the Bear, a Level 19 Neighborhood Boss. Transformed by Scolopendra’s poison, she now attacks mobs and crawlers alike. However, “somewhere in there, deep, deep down, there is a spark of the old Heather. The beloved bear has moments of lucidity” (104). The bear is fast and grabs Carl. The white worms on her paws sink into Carl’s skin, and he can hear them speak, trying to take over his mind. He cuts the connection off with Protective Shell. He throws a jug of moonshine on the bear, lighting her on fire.

The bear keeps attacking. Carl recalls the lottery ticket with a 50/50 chance of producing a level 15 fireball or a healing custard. Desperate, he scratches one circle, and a custard appears, splattering the bear’s face. The worms shrivel away. By healing the bear, Carl has reduced her corruption. He can see from her expression that she is tired and in pain. She silently asks him to kill her. He hesitates, then does so, winning the boss battle.

Mordecai contacts him with news. Donut’s status is now down to 20%. He has also confirmed that Signet is the main character of a drama called Vengeance of the Daughter. Now, Carl watches Signet cast her spell. The tattoos on her body move and disappear, becoming large monsters that surround them. They are level 50 and have a wide range of abilities.

Signet says that she and her tattoo monsters attack every night and usually break through the first defenses. However, she needs his help with the next line of defense. Carl, Signet, and her monsters fight through the army of circus creatures and stop outside the circus tents. Magic protects the tents, and she cannot enter. Only those with a big top ticket can get inside. As a crawler, Carl can loot a ticket from one of the creatures and enter the tent. There, he must knock down the three central tent poles.

Carl takes a big top ticket and enters the tent. Inside, the smell of peanuts, candy, and hay reminds Carl of seeing a circus with his mother when he was four years old. His mother had temporarily left his father, running away to her parents. He realizes now that he has been chasing this smell ever since—the smell of happiness and joy for him. Suddenly angry, he recites his mantra again: “you will not break me” (122).

The circle is filled with performers and vendors, all ignoring him. Wrapped around the center tent pole is an enormous bush that fills the entire ring. It is pale green with enormous roots. The text announces that Grimaldi the Pestiferous Vine is a city boss. Like Signet, he is also an elite. He uses his power to keep his circus family alive, though “somewhere in there Grimaldi may be aware that this may not be the most moral of choices” (125).

Carl has a plan. The previous night, Mordecai surmised that Grimaldi might have turned into a Pestiferous Vine, based on descriptions of the mold lions, and taught Carl how to kill it. He poisons himself and then drips his blood onto the vine’s roots, poisoning it as well. It will take about 20 minutes, but the roots will die. Carl heals himself with a potion. However, he must not get caught because one of Grimaldi’s minions could feed Carl’s healed blood to the roots and reverse the effect. He sits down on a bleacher to wait.

As Carl waits, he contacts Zev and asks her to give a message to the producers of Vengeance of the Daughter. He suspects the producers will allow this, as the program is Signet’s story, not Grimaldi’s. He also suspects that Carl is supposed to die when “all hell breaks loose” (130) and the tent poles break, allowing Signet to enter. However, he has an offer to make. He would like to become a regular on their program. He knows this is a good offer because of the audience ratings he and Donut get, and he promises that if they make it to the sixth floor, he will sign an exclusive agreement to only complete “elite-themed quests on the sixth floor that are directly associated with Vengeance of the Daughter” (131). This requires that they let him live. If they do not agree, he will heal Grimaldi with his blood, sit back, and do nothing: Signet’s revenge storyline will not continue.

Zev says he has a deal. Carl drips his healed blood onto the vine’s roots as he has a different idea to defeat Grimaldi without getting himself killed. He casts the Wisp Armor spell he has been saving since the first floor. This spell negates magic-based attack damage and provides temporary immunity from mind-control effects. He then eats an ice cream cone made of white worms like the ones that infected Heather the Bear. He instantly hears the worms in his head, trying to control him. He walks out of the tent. The worms try to stop him, but he resists their control.

He approaches Signet, who sees he is infected and moves to kill him. He speaks to Grimaldi in his head and Signet at the same time, saying that Grimaldi must have somehow saved Signet from infection when the poison cloud happened because he loves her, and she loves him, and they should not be fighting. Signet tells Grimaldi through Carl that he is hurting his family by keeping them infected and controlled like this: That is why she keeps attacking. Carl begs Grimaldi to come to his senses and do the right thing. Grimaldi revokes Signet’s banishment, allowing her to enter the tent.

Signet tells Carl that Donut will wake at sunrise. Then, she enters the tent. Carl recalls that at the circus he visited with his mother, a child gave each audience member a sapling tree to plant. He and his mother planted their trees in his grandparents’ yard. Years later, he found the house on the internet and saw the trees were still there, still growing. He thinks that all one needs are a few seeds to start a forest. He hopes that his small victory here has planted something strong. A notification tells him he has completed the quest. Mordecai messages him that Donut’s health has dropped below 20%, and he needs to hurry.