Princess Donut, the deuteragonist, serves as Carl’s companion and moral counterweight, evolving from a pampered pet into a capable warrior and leader in her own right. A round and dynamic character, her development on the sixth floor is marked by her embrace of a new performative role, her unwavering loyalty, and her burgeoning leadership capabilities. Her choice of the Legendary Diva class makes her an avatar of Violence as Spectacle, as her spellcasting is directly tied to her ability to captivate an audience. Though her singing is initially comically inept, her determination to master her new skills, including seeking a Golden Throat enchantment, shows her commitment to adapting and contributing to the party’s survival in new ways.

Donut’s fierce loyalty, particularly to Carl and her pet dinosaur, Mongo, is a cornerstone of her character. She frequently acts as Carl’s conscience, questioning his more ruthless plans and providing emotional grounding while remaining unwaveringly loyal. When Mordecai confronts her about Carl’s extremely dangerous raid on Zockau, she defends their partnership, stating, “No, we are not going to have some long, drawn-out storyline where we break up and then get back together” (74). This awareness of narrative tropes underscores her critical intelligence as well as her commitment to their team. Donut is the book’s most consistent source of metafictional gestures, frequently pointing out how her team’s experiences align with RPG and fantasy tropes. For instance, as the story nears its climax, Donut attempts to forbid Carl from spending any more time with Signet, as narrative tropes dictate that the two will have sex just before Carl is killed. This loyalty extends to Mongo, whom she mothers with a fierce and sometimes overbearing protectiveness. Her panicked reaction when Mongo is lured away by a pack of wild mongoliensis and her subsequent confrontation with their leader, Kiwi, reveals a primal, protective instinct that transcends her normally vain and dramatic personality.

Her emotional arc is further complicated by the reappearance of her former owner, Beatrice. The confrontation forces Donut to confront feelings of abandonment and betrayal, culminating in a speech where she reclaims her own narrative and solidifies her bond with Carl, telling Beatrice, “You’re not my person anymore. Carl is” (180). This moment is a profound declaration of her character’s growth and her choice to define family on her own terms. Beyond her roles as performer and companion, Donut begins to exhibit genuine leadership. After she and Carl inadvertently cause the death of the mayor of an ursine settlement, she inherits control of the town, which she promptly renames Point Mongo. She quickly adapts to her new role, managing the town’s rules and directing the guards to establish defenses against hunters. This newfound authority provides her with a new strategic asset, the Snitch skill, which allows her to summon guards to her location.

Her journey from a dependent pet to a formidable strategist is punctuated by her brutal solo confrontation with the rival crawler Lucia Mar, where she uses her tactical ingenuity to decapitate one of the girl’s giant rottweilers with a Hole spell. This shift toward a more pragmatic and ruthless mindset is further evidenced by her secret involvement in galactic politics; her choice to smuggle Valtay intelligence agents demonstrates a mastery of weaponized information that precipitates a corporate takeover of the crawl. Yet this growth comes at a steep psychological cost. In the quiet aftermath of the Butcher’s Masquerade, she expresses a haunting fear that she has become “broken” after realizing that she feels no grief for their many fallen friends. Carl’s reassurance that she’s merely wearing a “mask” to survive underscores the tragic toll of their environment. Her arc on the sixth floor ends on a note of systemic entrapment: By receiving the “Crown of the Sepsis Whore,” she’s forced into a zero-sum survival conflict with her close friend Katia. Her evolution from a pampered show cat to a high-stakes warlord and royal successor is complete, leaving her as a character who must now balance her original humanity with the cold, lethal demands of the dungeon’s final stages.

Katia is a secondary deuteragonist whose arc in this book is one of transition. As a round, dynamic character, she grows in power and independence, ultimately preparing to depart from Carl and Donut’s immediate party to lead a larger contingent of crawlers. Her physical prowess and high survivability make her a natural protector for the larger group of allied crawlers she intends to join. Katia’s decision to leave the party is a pivotal moment that alters the core group dynamic. While her loyalty to Carl and Donut remains, she recognizes the need for her strength elsewhere and the danger of remaining too close to Carl’s chaotic plans. She serves as a grounding force for Carl, often being the one to caution him against his most reckless impulses, telling him before a major operation, “Don’t do anything stupid” (35).

Her departure reflects a mature understanding of their situation. She becomes an information hub for the allied crawlers, helping to coordinate their movements and defenses, demonstrating leadership qualities that extend beyond the battlefield. In addition to protecting her friends, she’s driven by a desire for revenge against fellow crawler Eva Sigrid, who was her friend and colleague before the collapse—an alien invasion that killed most of Earth’s inhabitants and forced the surviving humans and their pets into the game world. In the third book, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, Eva betrays and hunts Katia, and Katia finally gets her revenge in The Butcher’s Masquerade, though not before Eva curses her with the “Crown of the Sepsis Whore” (687), forcing Katia into a future confrontation with her close friend and ally Donut. Katia remains a trusted confidante and a vital part of Carl and Donut’s extended network, embodying the forced alliances that define the crawlers’ social structure.

Eva is Katia’s former friend and colleague and now the subject of an intense vendetta. Katia and Eva worked together as professors before the collapse, but they have since fallen out, and Eva has aligned herself with the bloodthirsty Dark Hive of mantis hunters. She wears the skulls of over 50 victims on her back, and she makes it her mission to kill not only Katia but also her entire crew, including Carl and Donut. Though she’s a secondary character in the novel as a whole, she’s the chief antagonist in Katia’s storyline. She dies at Katia’s hands in the novel’s climactic scene, but the Epilogue shows that in her last moments, she forces the “Crown of the Sepsis Whore” onto Katia’s head (687). Because of the highly specific rules associated with this object, Katia won’t be able to proceed to the 10th floor unless she prevents Donut from doing so, dooming Katia to a future in which she will be forced to betray and perhaps kill her close friend and ally.

Prepotente is a major supporting character who acts as a foil to Carl, showcasing a different, more emotionally volatile path of survival. A dynamic and round character, his journey is defined by his obsessive devotion to his former owner and adoptive mother, Miriam Dom, and his subsequent transformation through grief. His initial interactions are marked by an arrogant and theatrical personality, often insulting Carl while simultaneously relying on him for protection. His unique class, Profane Vitiate, and his goatlike caprid race give him an unsettling, almost demonic presence, which is amplified when he begins riding his hellspawn familiar, Bianca. The defining moment for Prepotente is the death of Miriam Dom. He's paralyzed and forced to watch her turn to dust in the sunrise. His reaction isn’t just sadness but complete devastation, screaming at her ashes, “Oh, Mother, what did you do? Please. Please, no” (424). This raw display of grief strips away his arrogant facade, revealing a deeply wounded individual. In the aftermath, he consumes his own Ring of Divine Suffering and dedicates himself to the singular purpose of vengeance. He tells Carl, “If I can’t exist in a world with my mother, then nobody even remotely responsible for her death can exist in this world, either” (432). This new, cold resolve makes him one of the most ruthlessly efficient killers on the floor, as he single-handedly hunts down and eliminates a significant number of the powerful Odious Creeper bosses. His arc serves as a dark mirror to Carl’s own, exploring how personal loss in the dungeon can forge a survivor into a weapon of pure destruction.

Mordecai is the party’s mentor and manager, a static but round character who provides crucial strategic guidance. His primary role is to be the voice of reason and caution, often acting as a brake on Carl’s and Donut’s more impulsive decisions. Despite his transformation into a diminutive and “disgustingly cute” Pocket Kuma, a form he finds deeply humiliating, he adapts and continues to perform his duties with stern professionalism. This physical change forces him to rely entirely on his intellect and experience in the absence of physical strength. Mordecai’s knowledge of the dungeon’s mechanics is extensive, and he consistently guides the party’s skill choices and equipment upgrades. He disapproves of Carl’s selection of the Agent Provocateur class, favoring a more direct melee approach, but he nonetheless adapts his own plans to support Carl’s choices. His expertise is indispensable, from identifying the best potions to explaining the complex social and political dynamics of the game. His frustration with the party’s chaotic style is a constant source of tension and humor, yet his underlying loyalty is never in doubt. He represents the logistical and intellectual side of survival, demonstrating that success in the dungeon requires more than just brute force.

Vrah is a primary antagonist for the floor, an elite mantis hunter who embodies the professional and ruthless nature of the forces arrayed against the crawlers. She’s a flat, consistently menacing character, driven by a personal vendetta against Carl for the death of her sister Xindy. This motivation makes her a more focused and dangerous threat than a typical hunter. Her practice of collecting the heads of her victims and wearing them on her body serves as a visual symbol of her prowess and cruelty. As a member of the Dark Hive and the daughter of the influential Circe Took, Vrah possesses significant resources and connections, allowing her to cheat the system by receiving information from outside the dungeon. She leads a coordinated squad of mantis warriors, showcasing a level of teamwork and strategy that most hunter groups lack. Her confrontation with Carl is a central conflict, culminating in him infecting her with Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea, a humiliating and debilitating curse that neutralizes her as a physical threat while turning her into a different kind of danger to her own people. Her character represents the apex predator of the Hunting Grounds, a formidable and single-minded killer.

Lucia is a recurring antagonist and one of the top 10 crawlers, representing the profound psychological impact that the dungeon can have. A dynamic character, her actions are erratic, violent, and often self-destructive. Her defining feature is her use of clever, rule-bending traps, particularly her ability to teleport other crawlers out of safe rooms into ambushes, which directly plays into the theme of Information as a Form of Power. Her rage is often directed at Donut, stemming from a past humiliation, but her violence is indiscriminate, as seen when she slaughters an entire temple of peaceful dryads. The recap episode of her fight with Donut reveals a fractured personality, where she appears to be talking to an invisible youth assistant named Alexandro and refers to herself as a child. This, combined with Florin’s later discovery that her consciousness may be housing multiple children, recasts her from a simple villain into a tragic figure. Her cruelty isn’t necessarily born of malice but from a shattered mind, making her one of the most unpredictable and dangerous wildcards in the game.

Signet is an elite NPC whose narrative arc is defined by a singular quest for vengeance against her half-sister Queen Imogen for the murder of their naiad mother. As a powerful summoner cursed to never touch water, Signet serves as a focal point for the Vengeance of the Daughter storyline, most notably through her “living tattoos”—blood-and-ink elementals of fallen companions that she carries on her skin. Though initially driven by grief and anger over the violent coup that killed her mother and led to her exile, she develops a meta-awareness of the dungeon’s artificiality, eventually recognizing that her lifelong trauma is merely manufactured entertainment for a galactic audience. This realization culminates in her ultimate act of defiance during the Butcher’s Masquerade; dying by suicide to break the event’s “peace seal,” she sacrifices her existence to the Nothing to provide Carl and Donut with the tactical opening necessary to destroy the hunters. Signet’s journey provides a critique of the syndicate’s cruelty, as she transforms her pre-programmed revenge plot into a genuine rebellion against the system that commodified her grief.