←Book 4: The Gate of the Feral Gods

Carl, Donut, Katia, and Mongo arrive on Floor 5, "The Bubbles," to find their bounties permanently doubled. They navigate a sandstorm toward Hump Town, a settlement built against a massive metal wall, where they pay a toll to enter. Mordecai explains the floor's mechanics: 1,172 bubbles each contain four quadrants with castles that must all be conquered to unlock the stairwell, with a brutal four-day deadline per castle. The group learns the local gnomes control the castles and the dromedarian town hall hides something dangerous. Report issue

The party opens post-floor reward boxes, yielding major loot: the Surefire projectile guide, the Enchanted Toe Ring of the Leprous Bandit granting wall-walking, an Extinction Sigil Tattoo that increases lizard-class hostility toward Carl, and Pawna's Tears—a legendary +5 potion Mordecai advises saving. Donut gets Astral Paw and Wall of Fire, while Katia's Catcher skill is boosted. Carl scouts the area via telescope, spotting a floating gnome junkyard armed with ballistae and unstable thermobaric bombs. He learns from a changeling orphan named Skarn that the town hall conceals something that "eats mushrooms," and contacts Gwendolyn Duet, a fellow crawler besieging the gnome castle. Report issue

Carl recruits two new crawler groups: drunk car salesmen Firas and Louis, and a Finnish archer team led by Langley. During an excursion toward the Bactrian town, the party fights a Thorny Devil and is attacked by a gnomish biplane, with the bombs proving more dangerous to the gnomes than the crawlers. Carl realizes the dungeon is railroading them along a scripted path and retreats. He decides they need to build a dune buggy and anti-air defenses to maintain tactical freedom. Report issue

Carl and Katia engineer "The Royal Chariot," a tracked all-terrain vehicle. The group watches the dungeon's recap show, which reveals Lucia Mar as a dangerously insane crawler with a damage-reflecting "Rubber" spell that accidentally killed healer Ifechi. The recap confirms Florin is broken by grief and Lucia is spawning in an ice domain. Carl takes second place on the Top 10 leaderboard, and the group discusses Lucia's threat and the psychological toll of watching crawlers kill each other. Report issue

Carl observes Juice Box, a changeling prostitute whose on-demand shapeshifting makes her far more dangerous than her level suggests, requiring the group to maintain good relations with her. Carl briefs Louis and Firas—two heavily intoxicated car salesmen who survived by fleeing encounters—on dungeon basics. Louis's legendary Cloud of Exhaust paralyzes mobs, while Firas has an escape spell called Puddle Jumper. Mordecai forcibly sobers them both with a Rapid Detox potion, permanently clearing their alcohol systems for the floor. Report issue

Carl's team infiltrates the dromedarian Town Hall using Firas's Puddle Jumper teleportation, bypassing guards and neutralizing Changeling Principals—a cultish sect obsessed with collecting rare forms. Carl descends into catacombs beneath the Town Hall and finds Wynne, a gnome Flesh Mechanic held hostage, triggering a rescue quest. Rival crawlers under Low Thi arrive and misidentify Wynne as a torturer, killing him with a spear and failing the quest. Carl de-escalates and demands the rival group share their map data at the Desperado Club. Report issue

Carl's team burns down the Town Hall in a chaotic rocket assault and escapes using Grulke diversions and Donut's Hole spell, then warns that gnomes will retaliate by bombing the town. Carl coordinates with Gwendolyn Duet's siege forces, meets tomb raiders Morris and Bobby from the subterranean level, and receives new sponsors requiring infomercial commitments. Donut's historic sponsorship bid highlights her rising star power while Carl navigates bureaucratic sponsor obligations with his trademark dread. Report issue

Carl opens benefactor boxes and receives a neural enhancer that reveals the Necropolis of Anser is nearly nine kilometers tall, and a Toraline Root Vegetable. Katia reports the tomb raider team is struggling with trap detection in the flooding necropolis below. The town shifts to siege mode with anti-air defenses deployed as gnome retaliation looms. Carl plans to test four modified missiles on Ruckus, a giant mechanical Borough Boss buzzard, to defend the town and gather combat data. Report issue

Carl tests the Royal Chariot's guided missiles against Ruckus, a Level 55 Borough Boss mechanical buzzard, adapting after a faulty first stage by firing three missiles simultaneously to destroy it. A system glitch pauses time mid-battle, which Mordecai identifies as a gameplay timeout for AI difficulty adjustment. After the kill, an earthquake announces that Chris Andrews 2 has liberated the Water Quadrant, confirming he is in the same bubble. Carl discovers Chris's personality has drastically shifted after taking an Igneous race, and that he recently murdered fellow crawler Frank Q. Report issue

Returning to Hump Town, Carl learns the necropolis is flooding after Chris's water quadrant conquest, trapping the tomb raiders below. Dromedarian leader Henrik desperately searches for gnome hostage Wynne's body, revealing a twin pocket watch system that keeps the gnomes from bombing the town. Carl rushes to the Toe bar to evacuate Skarn and changeling children—including Ruby, a changeling suffering from mysterious Compression Sickness—into his personal space. Juice Box reveals her people seek a way home to the Hunting Grounds rather than the Gate of the Feral Gods, and Carl receives a quest to save the town from the incoming gnome bombing. Report issue

With the bombing clock ticking, Carl's team intercepts the gnomish dreadnaught Wasteland by approaching openly. Carl and Katia execute a complex deception: Katia shapeshifts into the dead hostage Wynne, and Donut plays a healer offering to treat him in exchange for safe passage aboard the airship. The ruse nearly fails when Katia's resurrection spell expires mid-inspection, but Carl produces a hastily crafted fake pocket watch to satisfy the gnome sniper. The team boards the balloon as the ambush phase begins. Report issue

Carl's team hijacks the gnome airship in a mid-air battle, using rockets, the Hole spell, and dropping gnome commanders overboard before leaping from altitude with Dolores Doesn't Splat potions and crashing through the necropolis roof into Hump Town. Carl identifies a floating command structure housing Commandant Kane whose pocket watch is a piece of the Gate of the Feral Gods—a three-part artifact that, when assembled, can banish an entire bubble to the Nothing. The Mad Dune Mage is revealed to be obsessed with understanding the gate rather than simply stealing it. Zev contacts Carl to report that Administrator Loita has taken over crawler public relations. Report issue

Carl discovers that Live Ammo Balls contain Level 11 Frenzied Gerbils released by the AI as punishment for Carl's earlier refusal to stomp creatures—a tantrum that swarms Hump Town. Carl finally complies, stomping a gerbil to disperse the horde and earning a Gold box. The group opens more loot, including Half Splat potions, a Coffee Shop Author Kit, and a Platinum Sharpening Stone. Juice Box reveals changelings and Henrik are heading into the flooding necropolis to find a ghost. The chapter ends with Chris, now a heavily armed rock monster, approaching Carl as a threat. Report issue

Juice Box reveals that Chris's body has been hijacked by Maggie My, Frank's vengeful widow, using the Infiltrator race to parasitically control him while leaving Chris conscious but trapped. Maggie was preparing to use a Celestial Grenade to summon god Algos and destroy the town, but Katia's petrify bolts stop her. Facing an impossible choice about killing his friend, Carl is spared the decision when Donut drops the petrified pair into an underground chamber. Carl shifts focus to sourcing antiparasitic ingredients and interrogating Juice Box about the changelings' connection to the Skull Empire. Report issue

Juice Box explains her brother Henrik leads a changeling cult hunting ghost Quetzalcoatlus to steal a plant-altering spell that could cure Compression Sickness, a generational birth defect. She reveals the Gate of the Feral Gods requires three artifact pieces held by Henrik, Kane, and the Mad Dune Mage—assembling it would summon a feral god and cause mass devastation. Carl receives a quest to collect all three pieces. During the storm, Katia opens up about her inability to have children, and Carl and Donut pilot a gnomish biplane to Commandant Kane's floating suburban house, where his blood-smeared daughter cheerfully greets them and reveals her father is already dead. Report issue

Carl and Donut infiltrate Commandant Kane's floating house, finding his mutilated corpse and a letter about the Gate. A Borough Boss battle triggers when Denise, a giant feral goose, emerges—with "No Magic" and "No Physical Damage" debuffs active. Carl deduces Denise is only immune to direct attacks and defeats her by forcing her head into the garbage disposal as the house plummets. The victory liberates the Air Quadrant and earns Carl and Donut the title "Princess Donut and Carl." Report issue

The group secures the gnome commandant's landed suburban house and tends to traumatized daughter Bonnie, whose grief-suppression potion will soon wear off. Carl reads a letter from the Mad Dune Mage warning they must clear the land quadrant before entering the necropolis or a ghost will escape. Donut learns her sponsor liaison Zev is being replaced because Carl purchased the social media board. The recap show updates the Top Ten leaderboard showing rivals' progress, and the chapter ends with Carl having a sudden realization about resurrection magic after watching Bonnie break down in grief. Report issue

Carl and Donut attend a mandatory commercial taping for Veriluxx New Toys, where sponsor liaison Loita reveals her genocidal views toward crawlers and confesses she tortured Zev's family to extract him from his faction. Carl deliberately goes off-script during filming to accuse Veriluxx's parent company of slavery, then a self-destruct sequence in Robot Donut—programmed by Loita—detonates, destroying the set and mortally wounding Loita. Carl watches Loita die rather than lower the protective shield to save her, and resolves to rebel against his enemies. Report issue

Carl is interrogated by Syndicate Liaison Orren about Loita's death, which was actually an accidental chain reaction rather than a deliberate assassination. Orren offers a deal—sign a confession and name an outside information source—but Carl refuses, and lacking consensus on his guilt, Orren drops the charges while imposing a punitive ban on third-party teleportation for the rest of the floor. The kua-tin secretly intervened to protect Carl from the AI and Syndicate. Carl notices that Orren is a Valtay worm wearing a face-bowl disguise. Report issue

Carl and Donut rejoin the team to find the flying house has been partially destroyed by chainsaw buzzards, its top half severed. Carl learns from chat that Bautista has cleared his castles while Lucia Mar has had a psychotic break and Miriam Dom has been cursed into vampirism. At the land quadrant, Carl meets Gwen, a blunt Canadian fighter, and learns they must breach the Sandcastle of the Mad Dune Mage, a former crawler who became a sand elemental. Carl spots a loose electrical cable just as lightning strikes, opening a magical glass door into the castle. Report issue

Carl's team enters the Sandcastle of the Mad Dune Mage and finds the boss, Ghazi, watching television in a sand-floored room. When a magical door accidentally detonates, Ghazi grabs a leather bag containing the winding box and warns them to flee from a living sand-ooze mob. After subduing Ghazi, Carl loots the Mysterious Winding Box and learns the backstory: Ghazi tried to summon the god Yarilo to make fictional bard Lika real but was tricked by lesser deity Psamathe, who now inhabits Queen Quetzalcoatlus in the necropolis. The winding box can banish the entire bubble to the Nothing, and Lika's soul is trapped in a companion device in the castle's fountain. Report issue

Carl defeats Mrs. Ghazi, the Level 52 Borough Boss Sand Ooze, by ceiling-walking via his Sticky Feet ring and igniting fire gel on her core from above while Donut distracts her with music from below. The victory causes the room to collapse into quicksand, burying Carl and Donut. Katia escapes with Ghazi, who dies from castle crystallization. Carl and Donut survive a flood using water-breathing scrolls and are swept into the water quadrant, where they must evade an aquatic predator in the dark. Report issue

Carl pulls the panicking Donut through a flooded underwater quadrant surrounded by shark mobs. He uses Bubble Beluga corpses as clockwork decoy bombs to damage a shark and draw off the others, allowing them to escape and paddle ashore. They earn the Milquetoast! achievement for winning without killing the ooze boss, and Carl receives a Potion of Bloodlust that Mordecai strongly warns against. Katia decodes the Mad Dune Mage's notes on the Gate of the Feral Gods: watches must be paired in the Winding Box to open a portal, but lingering portals become two-way rifts to the Nothing. Report issue

A possessed latex head named Lika is ejected from Carl's inventory—actually containing the withering spirit of Psamathe, a minor deity banished to the Nothing who manipulated Ghazi into opening a gate. Mordecai explains that Psamathe's other half became the sand ooze familiar now lost in the ocean. Rather than destroy the disembodied deity, Mordecai suggests hiring Psamathe as a trainer in the personal space to extract her potion knowledge. Carl reluctantly locks the muffled head in the training room. Mordecai also previews the brutal mechanics of floors 6 and 9, including permanent death in the Hunting Grounds. Report issue

Carl's crew prepares to drain the water quadrant by disabling a pump inside the massive submarine Akula. Gwen investigates Club Vanquisher and brings back new crawlers Britney and Vadim, who claims to know the pump controls. Carl's team drops chum bombs to distract sharks, then Katia shapeshifts into a diving bell to carry Carl, Tran, and Vadim 500 meters down to the flooded Akula. Inside, they find the neighborhood boss's corpse and recover a map, but Quetzalcoatlus attacks with an aural scream and an enormous creature approaches the sub. Report issue

Carl's crew escapes deeper into the Akula sub and finds the bridge littered with corpses of changeling principals including Henrik, all killed by Quetzalcoatlus. Carl retrieves Henrik's Mysterious Watch—the last Gate piece—while the system briefly freezes as a faction administrative appeal about the Gate pieces is dismissed. The sub sinks to 1,500 meters and settles at the bottom of the bubble. A colossal sharktopus named Lusca, a Level 82 City Boss, appears and swallows the submarine whole, splitting it in half with a ten-minute timer before her babies consume everything. Report issue

Trapped inside Lusca's mouth with sportscast commentary from Kevin and Troy, Carl crafts a makeshift bomb using the Potion of Bloodlust to trigger a cannibalistic feeding frenzy among the baby octo-sharks. Carl then casts Protective Shell and lets Lusca swallow the sub whole, piercing her brain—stopping her dead—while Katia uses a giant buzzsaw to cleave through Lusca's head. Ejected to the ocean floor under crushing pressure, Vadim escapes via pod only to be instantly killed by a trap. Carl uses all three Gate of the Feral Gods pieces to teleport himself, Katia, and Tran back to safety, inadvertently summoning a feral god whose arrival shakes the world. Report issue

Carl opens a massive loot haul including Drakea's Enchanted Kerchief of Disorder (granting trap detection, a Tripper spell, and remote detonation) and an Anarchist's Battle Rattle patch jacket. Mordecai warns that the AI exhibits signs of "Primal Degeneration," where Macro AIs eventually go insane. Elle messages that a fire god named Emberus is rampaging across the surface, destroying bubbles while searching for his dog Orthrus—which Carl accidentally sucked into the Nothing by assembling the Gate. With 160 crawlers trapped and their bubble heating up under Orthrus's pounding, Carl realizes he caused the crisis and prepares to pop his bubble and return the dog. Report issue

Carl's team emerges into a violent storm to confront Orthrus, a colossal two-headed juvenile Gate Guardian trapped in the bubble's water, while the System issues a mandatory quest to prevent Emberus from destroying the bubble if Orthrus dies. Tomb raider Morris Sp volunteers to reconnect a submerged electrical wire under threat of Quetzalcoatlus and is crushed after succeeding, triggering a massive lightning strike that liberates all four quadrants and pops Bubble 543 open. Carl's crew lands to rescue the wounded Orthrus, with Donut frantically casting Heal Critter to keep the colossal puppy alive. Katia is racked with guilt over sending Morris to his death. Report issue

Carl's crew pilots their flying house into the dark space between bubble worlds—the Lacuna—with the injured two-headed puppy Orthrus in tow, lured out using a Scroll of Meat Hooks. The System issues a group quest to deliver Orthrus safely to Emberus, while simultaneously announcing a world quest inviting all fifth-floor crawlers to hunt and kill the puppy for massive rewards. Chaos erupts as Orthrus carelessly destroys neighboring bubbles. As they near Emberus's location, an unknown attacker damages Orthrus, and Carl spots crawler Quan Ch circling back for a killing blow. Report issue

Carl and Donut pursue Quan Ch, who attacks Orthrus using a celestial robe granting flight and lightning. After a chaotic aerial chase, Carl dives the plane and throws a healing potion at the critically wounded puppy, sending the aircraft into a death spiral. Carl throws a celestial grenade while worshipping Emberus, summoning Divine Intervention that knocks Quan out of the sky before Orthrus vanishes. They crash-land and Carl endures Quan's ambush before ripping his arm off with Talon Strike, gaining twin sun tattoos as gifts from Emberus for his worship. They fail the capture objective but complete a side quest for saving Orthrus. Report issue

Carl formally joins the religion of Emberus, God of Sun and Ash, gaining burn immunity and two deity quests: investigate the murder of Emberus's son Geyrun and kill the suspected brother Hellik before reaching the 12th floor for a Celestial God Box reward. From Quan's severed arm, Carl takes Rockard's Ring of Sniping, which shows map indicators for low-health and magically-geared creatures. Imani coordinates a complex multi-bubble extraction operation to rescue roughly 500 stranded crawlers using Desperado Club gate pieces, with strict rules to prevent unleashing feral gods on trapped survivors. Report issue

Carl oversees a coordinated plan where crawlers summon feral gods into the Lacuna to clear out enemy bubbles, successfully extracting hundreds of stranded crawlers. Katia reveals she is leaving Carl's party on the next floor to protect Eva's former daughters from being targeted in the open-world sixth floor, forming a new alliance with Louis, Firas, Gwen, Bautista, and Florin. Carl gives Katia The Left Fang of the Green Sultan as a parting gift. The changelings are safely transported to the sixth floor via portal. Mysterious level 12 woman Agatha suddenly descends the stairs early, and Katia shares an emotional goodbye with Carl and Donut. Report issue