The ninth floor. Faction Wars. Nine armies enter, led by rich and powerful aliens from across the galaxy. The winning team must capture and hold the castle at the very center of the battlefield. Strategy, alliances, pitched battles, betrayal . . . It all makes for great fun and even greater television.

But thanks to Carl, Donut, and Katia, this season is different.

For the first time ever, the crawlers have their own army. The NPCs, who are normally used as nothing but cannon fodder, have become fully self-aware and have formed an unprecedented team of their own. And it’s not just the crawlers who are at risk this Faction Wars. Any combatant who dies on the battlefield stays in the ground.

For Donut and Katia, the stakes are even higher. No matter who wins the war, only one of them will be allowed to leave this level. If they all want to survive, they’re going to need a little help from a veteran or two.

This is it. This is what they’ve been fighting toward. This is war.

As chaos and mass panic spread outside the dungeon in the wake of Faction Wars, Carl and Donut find themselves on the tenth floor, where they’re forced to compete in a surprisingly normal set of tasks. Well, normal for the dungeon.

Races. Get from point A to point B, and don’t come in last. After each race, they pick an upgrade for their vehicle and the track gets more challenging. It all seems a little too normal, a little too simple.

Ignore those strange glitches that are occurring with increasing frequency. Don’t listen to those whispers about what’s happening on the mysterious eleventh floor, something the system AI calls A Parade of Horribles. Nobody, not even the showrunners, knows what that means. Just that the AI has ominously dubbed it “a coming-out party for the ages.”

Everything is fine, Crawler. I repeat, everything is fine.

Carl hates that it’s business as usual. The rules of this floor have taken away his agency. That just will not do.

So Carl is planning a party of his own. It’s a plan so dangerous, so insane, he can’t even consult his friends lest the AI put a stop to it. Because if it goes wrong, it’s not just the end of Carl and Donut. No. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.

The third explosive installment in Matt Dinniman’s best selling LitRPG series, where teamwork is optional and betrayal is inevitable…

‘If there’s a better LitRPG than Dungeon Crawler Carl, I haven’t read it’ Shirtaloon, author of He Who Fights Monsters

Carl and Donut have survived so far, but this fourth level is unlike anything they could imagine. The Iron Tangle: an impossibly complicated subway system tied together into a knot of trains of all kinds. The top ten list of most popular crawlers is now confirmed, and Carl and Donut have made it.

But that popularity comes with a price . . .

They each now have a bounty on their head. Carl and Donut have survived so far, but this fourth level is unlike anything they could imagine. The Iron Tangle: an impossibly complicated subway system tied together into a knot of trains of all kinds.

The secret to unravelling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly useless book. But if they want to come close to success, they’ll have to work with other crawlers. Making friends is easy…until they want to kill you.