The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Donut announces she has been sponsored by Princess D’nadia of the Prism Kingdom, a Saccathian whom she and Carl met on a talk show. Carl reveals through the chat that his sponsor is the Valtay Corporation, but he warns Donut not to speak of them aloud. He loots Gore-Gore’s corpse, finding gold, a hair restoration potion, an Ocher Line engineer’s key, and a neighborhood map showing the entire Ocher Line with all train locations. Ahead, trains continue moving while those behind them stack up because of the accident. Mobs begin spilling onto the tracks.

They find Katia crying because her severed fingers did not regenerate, making her feel like she is losing parts of herself. Carl comforts her and resolves to craft full armor for her. She reveals that her sponsor is Princess Formidable of the Skull Empire. Carl realizes this is Prince Stalwart’s sister, likely next in line for the throne. In the first novel, Carl humiliated Formidable’s brother, Maestro. Inside a new safe room, Katia presents a plan to reach station 436 quickly by transferring through the Dismemberment Limited and the Nightmare Express.

At the Dismemberment Limited platform, Donut practices her Hole spell. Carl messages Elle and Imani, who warn him to stop derailing trains, as it traps other crawlers. Imani explains their discovery: Mobs are controlled through addiction to race-specific opiates distributed at several stations. If mobs miss their fix, they physically transform into more dangerous creatures.

The sleek monorail, the Dismemberment Limited, arrives. Its operator, Levi the Seventh, begs them not to board. The interior is covered in blood and gore. A quest initiates: They must protect Levi from Fleshers, undead monsters, or be turned into Fleshers themselves.

Carl and Katia barricade the rear door as Fleshers pound from the other side. With help from Mongo, Carl and Donut fight off flesh tendrils squeezing around the barrier’s edges. A war mage named Dismember attacks the barrier. Carl distracts Dismember while Donut creates a temporary hole in the metal barrier. Carl grabs Dismember’s hair through the opening and pulls his head through just as Donut closes the hole, decapitating the war mage.

After Dismember’s death, Carl pockets the severed head, and they quickly disembark at station 281. Zev messages to book Carl and Donut for a TV show called Planet Beautiful to narrate a segment on beauty pageants and pet shows.

They decide to wait for Carl’s Protective Shell to reset before attempting the Nightmare Express. In the local safe room, Carl spends coupons to acquire an Armorer’s Workshop table and upgrade his sapper’s table. He discovers the armorer’s table can create equippable items for Katia, allowing them to add to her total mass. Inspired by cookbook notes about backpacks and item stability, he crafts a large metal backpack and loads it with over a ton of metal poles and balls.

Carl instructs Katia to transform into a multi-legged shape with a shelf on her back. After a struggle, she successfully equips the backpack, and its mass merges with her body. She discovers her new mass gives her a large strength bonus and allows massive transformations, though with a dexterity debuff. The method allows variable mass by equipping and unequipping the backpack from inventory.

The party watches the recap show, which features another crawler, Quan Ch, using his new powers. It also shows a clip of their Dismember fight, which is edited to portray Carl as reckless. The show ends revealing Lucia Mar, currently first on the leaderboard, has already found the location of the stairwells. Carl wonders how she always seems to know. The AI announces that every crawler now has a sponsor, but Benefactor Box delivery is delayed except for emergency-fee shipments.

Carl receives a Bronze Benefactor Box from the Valtay Corporation, containing a neural enhancer pill that will install an interface upgrade to identify and analyze subspace portals. He takes the pill and gains a new tab in his menu. The ability activates immediately—he sees that the safe room doorway is a subspace portal and can analyze it, even viewing a still image of the other side.

About half a day later, as the party waits for the Nightmare Express, Carl recalls their recent trip to the Desperado Club. Sledge bought them protective magic, Donut trained inside the Dodge training guild, and Carl discovered that his new portal-vision cannot snapshot areas he lacks access to. At the club, Carl initiated an information-sharing network by having all crawlers exchange chat details. He is now inundated with messages from other crawlers asking for help.

The party comes up with a new plan: Carl and Donut will run into the tunnel toward the oncoming train. In the tunnel, Donut criticizes Carl for forcing Katia to adopt her giant form without consent. Carl agrees he was wrong.

Donut realizes her Puddle Jumper spell has shorter range than anticipated, putting them in danger. As the train bears down, Donut casts Puddle Jumper, and Carl activates Protective Shell. They teleport down the track, and the train plows through the shell, killing all monsters inside but accelerating out of control. Carl and Donut race for the platform. Donut makes it, but Carl is struck by the cowcatcher.

Carl survives, landing on the front of the speeding engine. He heals and climbs along a narrow gangplank beside the boiler, punching through a window into the gore-covered cab. The controls indicate the boiler will explode in two minutes. He opens the firebox door and finds Fire Brandy, a Level 75 Lesser Demon who fuels the train by burning corpses of her nonviable offspring. She instructs him on operating the valves to prevent the explosion and teaches him to drive the train.

Carl loots the cab, finding gold, a Steam Engineer’s Key, and a box of Sheol Bricks, fuel for the engine. Killing all the train’s monsters, including three neighborhood bosses, boosts him to level 32, earns three boss boxes, the achievement “Three Cheers for Slaughter,” and a Platinum Big Daddy Box. He sees that his Protective Shell caused catastrophic damage to the rear train cars. He messages Donut to loot boss corpses for maps and test riding Mongo.

Carl drives the Nightmare Express into a massive switching cavern with multiple tracks and portals. Another steam train passes through at speed, its caboose displaying two impaled human heads. The engineer signals a greeting before disappearing. Carl sees track switches for Auxiliary Tracks, Station Repair, and Recycle.

The train continues to Abyss Station 436, where a bare platform holds only steep stairs leading up. Carl ascends and emerges onto a catwalk overlooking a vast, flaming pit—the Abyss. He watches as trains arrive from thousands of portals, dumping their passenger cars into the pit below, where Jikininki ghouls swarm the wreckage. He realizes that the trains are not looping through time—instead, the passenger cars are destroyed and rebuilt while only the engine cars teleport back to the train yard.

Using his new skill, Carl analyzes a portal and takes a visual analysis screenshot that shows a massive train yard filled with engine cars and thousands of zombies. The analysis reveals that passage requires being on a correct vehicle or holding a compatible key. He spots a smaller portal in the yard’s corner near a rolling cage that reminds him of the one in the earlier robot room.

Carl retreats as monsters spot him. Back on the train, he checks inventory and finds three items marked as compatible keys: the Ocher key, the Steam Engineer’s Key, and the souvenir conductor hat given to all crawlers at the floor’s start. Realizing the simple solution, he sends a mass message explaining four escape methods: using the conductor hat, using an engineer’s key, taking the employee portal at station 435, or commandeering a named train to the switching station. He receives replies, including from a crawler whose party sold their hats for gold.

Carl drives back to station 283. Donut messages that she received her first Benefactor Box and reached level 30, unlocking Love Vampire. At the station, Katia has cleared track debris. Donut wears new sunglasses, a unique item from Princess D’nadia that focuses her Magic Missile into a laser. Katia reports neither she nor Brynhild’s Daughters have received sponsor items.

Elle messages that her party is stranded because Quan Ch is destroying trains, forcing them to hike to a different train. In a food court safe room, Donut explains Love Vampire: She can link to an enemy, who takes damage for her until they die. Carl’s Platinum Big Daddy Box contains an unenchanted toothbrush and five-use enchanted toothpaste that grants boss-damage buffs. Carl assigns his stat points to strength and constitution.

Carl spends time on the chat network and sees many crawlers becoming stranded due to stopped trains. He reflects on a past crawler’s entry in his cookbook and feels growing responsibility to help trapped crawlers, but he does not know how.