The Butcher's Masquerade

The fifth installment of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, a LitRPG novel blending game mechanics with fiction, continues the story of Carl, a former boat mechanic, and Princess Donut, his talking Persian cat, as they survive inside a planet-spanning alien dungeon built over the ruins of Earth. Alien corporations destroyed the planet's surface, funneling survivors into an underground gauntlet broadcast as galactic entertainment. Carl and Donut have descended through five deadly floors, becoming the show's most-watched contestants. Their companions include Mordecai, a former crawler and their manager; Mongo, Donut's velociraptor pet; and Katia, a shapeshifting crawler. On this floor, Katia leads a separate group of allies, including Firas and Gwen, against antagonists like Eva, a rival top-ranked crawler with a personal vendetta against Katia.

Carl arrives on the sixth floor, called "the Hunting Grounds," a jungle world where over 1,000 alien hunters have paid to stalk the remaining crawlers. He is summoned before Orren, a liaison for the Syndicate that administers the crawl, who demands Carl surrender the winding box of the Gate of the Feral Gods, an artifact that could devastate the entire level. Carl refuses until his attorney, an alien named Quasar, negotiates a deal: Carl surrenders the winding box in exchange for four mercenaries with teleportation spells, including the Sledge, who receives the Zerzura spell capable of transporting an entire town to a lower floor.

Carl selects the Agent Provocateur specialization for its bomb-making workshop, while Donut picks a Legendary Diva bard class that casts spells through song.

Before the hunters are officially released, Carl teleports into Zockau, the northern hunter city, and plants barrel bombs along a row of pubs. Using the Ring of Divine Suffering to mark targets, he kills Xindy, the younger sister of Vrah, a high-level mantis hunter. The explosions kill 34 hunters and destroy the entrance to the Desperado Club, the hunters' main social hub. Vrah shoots Carl with poisoned bolts as he flees, and he barely survives with help from Miriam Dom, a high-ranking crawler and vampire, and her son Prepotente.

Traveling south, Donut kills a town's mayor and claims the settlement as Point Mongo. Mongo bolts into the jungle and mates with Kiwi, leader of a female velociraptor pack. A quest reveals the dinosaurs are actually ursine women transformed by Scolopendra, an entity whose magic reshaped the floor's inhabitants. An allosaurus named Big Tina terrorizes the ursine settlements.

Carl enters the Vengeance of the Daughter storyline with Signet, an exiled half-naiad summoner seeking revenge against her half-sister, Queen Imogen of the High Elves, who orchestrated the assassination of Signet's mother. During the assault on a naiad castle, Carl accidentally summons the throne-room boss by recalling Samantha, a reanimated doll head. Donut finishes the creature with a fireball. Several companions die, their memories tattooed onto Signet's skin as living ink portraits. The quest chains into killing Queen Imogen at the High Elf Castle.

Carl is forced to attend CrawlCon, an intergalactic fan convention. He hijacks a panel moderated by Circe Took, Vrah's mother, turning it into a strategy session and learning that mantis hunters are vulnerable to poison and loud sounds. He meets the Popov brothers, a two-headed Nodling ogre ranked fifth among crawlers. Nodlings split into separate entities upon death.

Returning to the dungeon, Carl finds the village of Alucarda occupied by Lucia Mar, a dangerous child crawler. Mantis warriors and nebular cult hunters, a fanatical group targeting Carl, lie in wait. Carl detonates all traps simultaneously and throws a berserking potion that turns one mantis against her sisters. He stabs Vrah with an arrow carrying an incurable disease before detonating a thermobaric bomb that kills the remaining mantis warriors. Donut fights Lucia solo, using her Hole spell to decapitate Lucia's larger rottweiler before escaping.

Talk show host Odette reveals Carl's ex-girlfriend Beatrice is alive and off-planet, and Donut confronts Beatrice on air. Separately, the Valtay Corporation acquires majority ownership of the Borant Corporation that runs the crawl, a shift Donut helped engineer by smuggling agents to a resistance group.

Miriam becomes trapped in the forest with a paralyzed Prepotente. A botched spell means Prepotente cannot heal until Miriam dies, and Miriam's vampirism has spread to Big Tina and the forest wildlife. At dawn, Miriam turns to dust, curing the plague but leaving 50 Odious Creepers, massive plant-zombie hybrids. Prepotente inherits Miriam's magical boots, which contain fairy tales about the dungeon's lower floors. A world quest demands all Creepers die by sunset, but two survive, triggering Gehenna Brambles: a magical blight that transforms plants into lethal thorn walls. A new blood bar mechanic ejects idle crawlers from safe rooms.

Donut tames Kiwi, gaining control of the velociraptor pack. Circe sponsors the goddess Diwata to enter the dungeon, curing Vrah's disease but creating an endless stream of mantis nymph soldiers. Carl and allies use automatons, a trebuchet, and coordinated raids to thin the hunter ranks. Carl learns that the Princess Posse, Donut's fan organization, has purchased a spot in faction wars, a competitive team battle on the ninth floor, making Carl and Donut official warlords.

The floor's climax is the Butcher's Masquerade at the High Elf Castle. Queen Imogen reveals the event is a sacrament of the goddess Apito: If it concludes peacefully, Imogen receives a divine boon, but anyone who breaks the peace seal is banished to the Nothing, a realm of eternal torment. A magical ballroom system separates crawlers and hunters, allowing observation but preventing harm, while soul crystals suppress magic and weapons.

Signet appears at the party, invited by Apito. The Twister, a flying house used by the crawlers, crashes after being overrun by mantis nymphs, and Imogen kills an allied support team before the seal activates. Samantha infiltrates the security room but finds the guards dead and two soul crystals already removed by Diwata, revealing a parallel mantis scheme. Britney, a fellow crawler, disables a warning light using stuffed butterfly creatures sewn into her jacket.

Signet breaks the seal by slitting her throat, animating her tattoo companions as Memory Golems. The Sledge activates the Zerzura spell, teleporting the castle and carrying changeling refugees and allies to the ninth floor. Everyone else plummets into the exposed basement as brambles close overhead, and the AI declares a four-way boss fight.

Donut uses her Laundry Day spell to strip the goddess Diwata's divine armor from Circe's mortal form, and Circe is killed by her own nymph offspring. Vrah is torn apart by Mongo and the remaining dinosaurs. The crawlers coordinate attacks against Imogen; the Popov brothers and fellow crawlers Gwen and Firas die before Prepotente delivers the killing blow.

Katia kills Eva, another crawler, in the battle's aftermath. In her dying act, Eva places the Crown of the Sepsis Whore, a cursed artifact tied to the Blood Sultanate on the ninth floor, onto Katia's head. The crown binds its wearer to the faction's royal succession, meaning only one of Donut or Katia can leave the ninth floor alive. The Popov brothers, as Nodlings, split into baby ogres upon death and are classified as ineligible children, escaping the dungeon entirely.

Carl, Donut, and Prepotente enter the seventh floor, but Prepotente uses sponsor-provided items to shatter the level's glass maze in seconds, exploiting knowledge from Miriam's magical boots about the fairy tale the maze was based on. The AI screams as every crawler is pulled through to the eighth floor. Donut selects the Florida Panhandle as their starting location, upending Carl's preparations.