Carl and Prepotente are rival crawlers whose antagonistic first meeting develops into an alliance founded on shared grief, complementary problem-solving, and opposition to the crawl's attempt to isolate its survivors. Carl initially regards Prepotente as brilliant but unstable. Prepotente, in turn, treats Carl as a reckless brute whose plans create avoidable disasters. Their insults never disappear, but repeated acts of protection make the hostility increasingly performative. By the ninth floor, Prepotente calls Carl his best friend, joins Carl's faction, and works beside him in operations that neither could have completed alone.
The relationship changes most decisively after the death of Miriam Dom. Carl honors Miriam's request to safeguard Prepotente, refuses an opportunity to kill him for his equipment and bounty, and stays with them through Miriam's final sunrise. Prepotente does not immediately absolve Carl of responsibility, but he recognizes that Carl protected rather than exploited them. Their later cooperation combines Carl's willingness to challenge the dungeon's intended outcome with Prepotente's analytical understanding of rules, item descriptions, portals, and magical systems.
Recognition and first contact
Carl learns Prepotente's name through the crawler rankings before meeting him. Near the end of the third floor, Prepotente is ranked above Carl and Donut and travels with Miriam, the shepherd who raised him before the collapse. Recap footage also reveals the pair's characteristic combat method. Miriam conceals and strengthens Prepotente while he layers status effects on a target, extending a short incapacitation into a condition long enough to make even a province boss vulnerable. Carl recognizes the method as exceptionally intelligent, although Quan Ch prevents the displayed attempt from succeeding.
Their first direct encounter occurs late on the Iron Tangle after Carl's portal operation displaces a province boss that Prepotente has put to sleep. The two crawlers see one another through an opening between distant sections of the floor. Prepotente immediately blames Carl for ruining his carefully prepared kill and insults his intelligence. Carl answers with a challenge rather than an apology. Prepotente is much warmer toward Donut, whom he considers a fellow animal granted full sapience by an Enhanced Pet Biscuit, and he expresses disappointment that she belongs to the Desperado Club rather than Club Vanquisher.
The exchange establishes the pattern of their early relationship. Prepotente is precise about the tactical damage Carl has caused but turns a legitimate complaint into extravagant abuse. Carl reacts to the abuse and overlooks the intelligence behind it. When Prepotente threatens Imani, Miriam disciplines him and makes him apologize. Carl leaves the encounter with more questions than trust and decides that Miriam's group is best avoided. Nevertheless, each man now knows that the other is one of the few crawlers capable of changing an entire floor's outcome.
Rivalry at a distance
Carl and Prepotente spend most of the fifth floor in separate bubbles. Carl follows Prepotente's progress through recap programs, rankings, and reports from other crawlers. He sees Prepotente and Miriam clear their air zone by making thousands of spiders fall asleep and drop from the roof of their cavern. Later, the pair kill an enormous turkey after the floor's bubbles rupture. The victory raises Prepotente to level 55 and places him at the top of the dungeon by level. These successes reinforce Carl's view that Prepotente's eccentric behavior conceals one of the crawl's strongest technical minds.
The two are also commercial rivals. Donut's sponsorship bid is described as surpassing those for Carl and Prepotente, placing all three among the season's most valuable crawlers. This competition matters because their respective sponsors attempt to shape their future cooperation. Prepotente becomes associated with the Plenty, while Carl and Donut receive their own interventions and coded assistance. Carl remains suspicious that sponsor gifts are designed to steer crawler decisions rather than simply help them survive.
Carl also learns how dangerous Prepotente becomes when Miriam is threatened. After Miriam's transformation into a vampire causes Club Vanquisher to revoke her access, Prepotente releases Bianca inside the club and attacks its clerical occupants. When Miriam is temporarily taken away for a program, Prepotente panics and runs off, indirectly placing her in the circumstances that lead to her vampirism. Carl does not witness these incidents directly, but they prepare him to understand that Prepotente's aggression is inseparable from his dependence on Miriam.
Rescue outside Zockau
Their first sustained interaction comes on the Hunting Grounds after Carl's failed attack near Zockau leaves him unconscious. Miriam, Prepotente, and Bianca remove him from danger. Miriam heals Carl in their cart while Prepotente scouts the road, kills threats, and disarms traps. The rescue creates a debt Carl acknowledges even though Prepotente remains openly hostile.
The trip also gives Carl a close view of Prepotente's method. Miriam explains that she hides their presence and increases the strength of his magic while he applies a sequence of debuffs without alerting the target. Carl realizes that the strategy which looked impressive in recap footage depends on careful preparation by both crawler and shepherd. He also learns that Prepotente's class has changed from Forsaken Aerialist to Profane Vitiate, reflecting a continued specialization in harmful status effects rather than direct force.
Their attempt at civility quickly becomes an argument. Carl triggers a line of traps with his Tripper skill after Prepotente insists that the traps require a more delicate approach. Prepotente treats the detonation as an attack, and Carl answers his threats with a crude insult. Miriam stops the confrontation, requires mutual apologies, and makes them embrace. The hug is unwilling on Carl's side and ends with Prepotente screaming in his ear, but it becomes a comic precedent for later embraces that carry genuine affection.
Miriam's final request
Miriam's death transforms the relationship. Near dawn on the sixth floor, Carl and Donut find Prepotente paralyzed with a single point of life while Miriam protects him from surrounding monsters. A magical burst has caused Prepotente's newly acquired Ring of Divine Suffering to mark Miriam automatically. The resulting Left to Fester debuff prevents him from healing until his marked target dies. Because a failed attempt to wake him could kill him, Miriam asks Carl to understand the situation before Donut uses the spell Miriam has provided.
Miriam explains her history with Prepotente and asks Carl to tell him why she has made her decision. Vampirism is spreading through the floor, she is being hunted, and her condition endangers her other surviving goats. Her death will cure those infected through her and free Prepotente from the ring's debuff. She has summoned Carl because she believes his devotion to Donut allows him to understand her bond with the animal she raised as a son.
Carl refuses to kill Miriam himself, but he agrees to guard both her and Prepotente until sunrise. This distinction is central to Prepotente's later judgment of him. Carl has a strong material incentive to kill them: both carry large bounties, and Prepotente possesses valuable equipment, including the ring. Instead, Carl protects the helpless pair. He secretly marks Miriam with his own Ring of Divine Suffering to gain Intelligence when dawn kills her, but he does not claim her bounty or attack Prepotente. He also promises to preserve the possessions she leaves for him.
Prepotente is conscious of his surroundings while paralyzed and therefore watches Miriam die without being able to intervene. When Donut wakes him, Carl apologizes and tries to direct his attention toward the siblings who still depend on him. Prepotente swallows his Ring of Divine Suffering, collapses beside Miriam's remains, and mourns her. Carl recognizes the particular helplessness of witnessing a mother's death and understands Prepotente's grief through his own history. He remains wary that Prepotente may attack, but neither he nor Donut abandons him.
Prepotente eventually opens an emergency benefactor box and receives equipment that allows him and Bianca to fly. Before leaving, he thanks Carl for remaining with Miriam. He then declares that he will destroy everyone responsible for her death or die in the attempt. Carl responds with a sense of solidarity rather than alarm because the vow resembles his own resistance to the people and institutions controlling the crawl. Their rivalry is not resolved, but they now recognize the same purpose in one another.
A temporary party and the destruction of the seventh floor
At the Butcher's Masquerade, Prepotente asks to join Carl and Donut's party for the remainder of the sixth floor. His stated reason is practical: he has assembled clues concerning the next floor and needs the enchanted hammer and stick in Donut's possession. Carl initially refuses because Prepotente's higher level would make him leader of an established party, but the three eventually descend together with Prepotente in command.
Their cooperation during the battle against Queen Imogen demonstrates why the alliance works. Prepotente attacks from Bianca's back, combines shields and potions, and strikes the final blow after Carl's attacks leave Imogen vulnerable. The victory creates another dispute when Osvaldo takes the Apito memorial crystal from Imogen's body. Both Carl and Prepotente have quests connected to the object, but Prepotente pursues it much more openly. Even while they share a party, they retain separate goals and withhold information from each other.
On the seventh floor, Prepotente explains that the level reproduces a galactic fairy tale about an inescapable maze. He connected the story to the unusually long description of Miriam's boots and to information inadvertently disclosed during a program appearance. Carl supplies the title of his eighth-floor lore book, and Donut supplies the two enchanted tools. Prepotente then treats the glass wall of their starting chamber like the vulnerable tail of a Prince Rupert's drop. A light tap creates a fracture that propagates through the entire construction, destroys the floor, and sends every crawler directly to the eighth.
Carl receives blame from other survivors because he was present, but he insists that the plan belonged to Prepotente. The episode establishes a recurring division of labor: Carl gathers people and resources, while Prepotente identifies the hidden rule that permits an apparently impossible escape. It also shows the limits of their trust. Prepotente does not reveal the full plan until he acts, and Carl has only enough warning to hold Donut when the floor disintegrates.
Joint reasoning on the eighth floor
Prepotente leaves the party before the eighth floor begins and chooses the Bahamas, while Carl and Donut begin in Cuba. They cooperate through messages rather than traveling together. Carl shares information from the Bahamas lore book, and Prepotente supplies analysis when Carl's actions release a threat capable of affecting the entire floor. Their exchanges remain full of insults, but Carl explicitly calls Prepotente the smartest person he knows when he needs a second mind on the problem.
Together they develop a plan to save crawlers who no longer possess stairwell keys. Carl proposes exposing the stairwell chambers from below so a floor-wide magical force can pull the trapped crawlers through the portals. Prepotente compares the idea with earlier portal behavior he has observed, judges it plausible, and publicly supports Carl's theory. His estimate of success declines as he considers more variables, making him a poor motivational speaker but a credible technical witness. Carl supplies the argument the survivors need: even an uncertain collective escape is preferable to killing one another for guaranteed individual passage.
Before descending, Prepotente warns Carl to read the new quest's conditions carefully and account for crawlers on the opposite side of the world. He also settles the unresolved issue of Miriam. He says he has decided not to kill Carl for allowing her to die, although he frames the pardon as a conclusion that Carl was too foolish to have prevented it. More importantly, he assigns Carl a role in revenge against the actual culprits. Their alliance becomes an explicit commitment extending beyond the immediate floor.
The rescue succeeds on a vast scale. Although thousands die on the eighth floor, more than thirty-three thousand reach its end. Carl initially feared that skipping the seventh floor would merely cause the system to increase deaths on the eighth. The survival total instead validates the kind of cooperation he and Prepotente have developed: rule-breaking is most effective when Carl's insistence on saving others is paired with Prepotente's ability to test whether the mechanism can work.
Friendship during Faction Wars
The ninth floor turns their informal alliance into a military one. Prepotente initially pursues his own campaign against the naga faction and destroys much of its army without joining the Princess Posse. Faction Wars officials rule that Carl cannot coordinate directly with an unaffiliated crawler. After a dispute and a penalty for threatening the adjudicators, Prepotente accepts that joining Carl's army is the only way to continue the operation lawfully.
When Carl recruits him and grants him the rank of Colonel, Prepotente unexpectedly embraces him and calls him his best friend. He admits that he has been lonely since Miriam's death and hurt when Carl did not join him in the Bahamas. The confession does not end the insults; even while crying, Prepotente describes accepting Carl's stupidity as part of their friendship. Carl responds awkwardly but abandons a contemplated coercive shortcut and treats Prepotente's voluntary decision as a relief.
Their partnership immediately improves the naga operation. Prepotente brings a memorized map of Club Vanquisher and knowledge of a secret exit that Carl did not know existed. He helps operate the club's portal controls, refuses Carl's order to flee when the group is trapped in a divine confrontation, and joins the improvised plan against the naga leadership. Later, he guides the survivors to a concealed guild entrance amid the fighting. Carl's reaction to the map confirms an old lesson: many of their earlier problems arose because he avoided talking to Prepotente rather than learning what information the caprid possessed.
By the end of the floor, physical affection has become part of their bond rather than a punishment imposed by Miriam. Prepotente deliberately hugs Carl as a fellow warrior after a major operation. During the final evacuation, he assists Carl from above, wishes him luck, and tells him that he loves him before entering the stairwell. Carl returns the sentiment, if hesitantly. Their friendship remains abrasive and unequal in temperament, but it is no longer ambiguous.
Nature of the relationship
Carl and Prepotente are effective allies because their strengths address different failures. Carl is willing to act before a complete solution exists, draw disparate survivors into a common plan, and accept personal risk to prevent the dungeon from forcing crawler-on-crawler violence. Prepotente notices anomalies in item descriptions, remembers obscure rules, recognizes structural analogies, and calculates how magic will behave. Either approach alone can fail: Carl's improvisation can create new disasters, while Prepotente's secrecy and social hostility can leave him isolated with a correct solution nobody else is prepared to follow.
Miriam is the moral bridge between them even after her death. She forces their first apology, entrusts Prepotente's future to Carl, and leaves a loss both men translate into resistance. Carl's decision not to exploit Prepotente at his most vulnerable gives Prepotente a reason to trust him. Prepotente's later willingness to join Carl's faction, share unique knowledge, and participate in collective escape plans repays that trust. Their bond does not become gentle, but it changes from competitive suspicion into a friendship capable of altering the crawl's rules and preserving lives on a scale neither crawler could achieve independently.