You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that “it” factor, you may just find yourself gaining a following. That’s the only way to truly survive in this game — with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. Not Good with Rejection: After Carl dumped her, Bea freaked out and tried to fly home from her holiday immediately, dragging with her the boy she was cheating with. As a result, she survives the initial Collapse, but she's left broken and hollow afterward. She eventually gets a chance to see Carl and Donut, but can't do much more than stare at them and give minimal answers to questions she's asked. Anyone who was inside an enclosed structure during the collapse belongs to Borant, but if one of those who survived and didn't enter the dungeon becomes interesting, then Borant may offer rewards for bringing them in. It's illegal to interfere with the remaining humans, but no one bothers to enforce that. Carl's ex-girlfriend and Donut's former owner Bea gets collected with the intent of turning her into a Country Boss for Carl and Donut to fight, just to tug at the heartstrings, but those hunters are intercepted by a second group with different motivations.

Crippling Overspecialization: Hekla's party is built completely around her, and her overpowered crossbow that becomes more powerful the more women who are in the party. Of almost thirty crawlers, most of them are healers, a handful are offensive mages and other damage-dealers, and there is not a single tank. Once Hekla dies, the party immediately disbands, and Carl theorizes it couldn't have lasted much longer anyway. An Arm and a Leg: Severed limbs are one of the few things that the dungeon can't heal (except with specific races or classes, or expensive healing items).

The Hunters don't turn on each other, but Carl notes that their tendency to work alone and scatter in the face of a threat makes them easy meat when the tables are turned and the Crawlers unitedly come for them.

Hello, Crawler. As you're about to find, this is a very special book. If you're reading these words, it means this book has found its way into your hands for one purpose and one purpose only. This comes in a solid five stars even as things turn a bit darker for the series. I predict that will continue. Which I find apprehensive because I'm not a fan of the dark places this could go. It's a certainty that friends and people we have come to care about will die. Things are too dangerous and the setup too overpowering for this not to happen and still take the setting seriously. It's going to be a question of whether I can get past those kinds of things to stay with a team I've come to really enjoy. Loita: You. Your cat. Your people. Your ugly culture. This is a cancer upon the Bloom, and we should not be doing this.At first I thought this would just be some generic LitRPG like the rest. I was wrong, so wrong. This isn't the author's first rodeo, and it very much shows. Bilingual Bonus: If it can be considered a "bonus", that is. Carl doesn't speak Spanish, so he can't understand the first Neighborhood Boss that he fights, but if the reader does, they can see that she's confused, scared, and begging Jesus to forgive her. Random Number God: Carl realizes early on that the "random" lootboxes are far from random. In addition to the AI giving him all sorts of loot for his feet, he never gets shoes or pants because he keeps complaining about not having shoes and pants. The reason Donut keeps getting common torches in her minor boxes is because she hisses in annoyance every time she gets one, and the AI finds it funny. This has worked out in their favor more than a few times; it's implied that the entire reason Donut got such a good "random" benefit from the Legendary Pet Biscuit was as reward for being the first cat in the dungeon, even though the dungeon couldn't directly reward her that way. Before the dungeon, Miriam Dom was a vegan. So the producers thought it would be hilarious to arrange for her to be cursed and turned into a vampire. Within the Royal Court, Carl has thus far avoided it, but Donut has a skull from killing an assassin, and Katia has a golden skull from killing Hekla and claiming her bounty — although she was actually aiming for someone else.

Hekla tries to arrange for Katia to be killed in a way that will cause Carl to get into a fight and get himself killed too, so that Donut will be left alone and open to joining Hekla's party. Rome will exist as long as the Coliseum does; when the Coliseum falls, so will Rome; when Rome falls, so will the world.Game Master: The Syndicate AI. It doesn't have completely arbitrary power, it has to be more or less fair to the crawlers, but since it can see everything that happens everywhere and can control loot, random encounters, and information, it can easily make or break someone's crawl. Too bad it's showing signs of becoming increasingly insane. With a foot fetish and a crush on Carl. We had to step out of the way as a group of tall camels strode by on steampunk-like, metal and spring stilts."