Capture the flag is now the name of the game in This Inevitable Ruin aka Dungeon Crawl Carl 7, or really more like capture the enemy castles and hold the throne rooms, and probably also kill all members of the enemy group. This is also the Faction Wars part, meaning that some of the other teams actually are from outside the dungeon, and are paying to participate. A lot of the outside groups are now eligible to directly participate, and several do. There’s an interesting scene with Maestro’s dad, who is in the game as the leader of his empire’s team, there is the Naga team which is important because this is floor 9 and that means either Katia or Donut won’t be able to leave unless the Naga (aka the Blood Sultanate) are all taken out.
There’s only a couple of teams for the actual crawlers, but it looks like most of the ones with names are on the Princess Posse team which also gets a major boost in more ways than one from a “Surprising” outside source (quotation marks because there have been massive hints about this, or parts of it, for a while now). Katia’s backstory is finally here, and it relates to some of Carl’s more powerful but side-effect heavy tools/powers. Kiwi is also back in a small part that’s kind of odd, but maybe relevant later. Mordecai gets a moment towards the end that seems to mean more to him that to the plot, but who knows. The AI is definitely now a major part of the story. There’s a bit more from Quasar, Carl’s in-game lawyer, and some of the “gods” start having more of an impact beyond being a random threat. There’s a lot going on here. Including Jamal, the talking shark who needs and keeps busting his cybernetic legs.
Some stuff that has been built up for multiple volumes gets resolved to some extent, but there’s also plenty of big questions or threats out there, not limited to but including what’s going to happen with Odette, Lucia Mar, the deities, Kiwi’s newborns, Samantha, and probably a few more.
This volume is a little more even in terms of switching between challenges and perspectives and so on. There are some answers, but definitely not all. We’ll see.
