> Spoiler warning: This article covers the full Ninth Floor campaign and ending of This Inevitable Ruin.
The Ninth Floor, formally presented as Faction Wars, is the level of Dungeon Crawler World on which surviving crawlers are placed inside a territorial war centered on the city of Larracos. Unlike the smaller-party scenarios of earlier floors, Faction Wars gives recognized warlords command of armies, strongholds, officers, territory, and military infrastructure. Nine attacking teams contest the battlefield while Team Retribution, an army of self-aware dungeon residents, defends Larracos. Carl and Princess Donut enter as the two warlords of the Princess Posse, turning a competition intended for wealthy outside powers into a coalition war involving current crawlers, former crawlers, and dungeon-born people.
The floor begins with 32,429 crawlers and a nominal maximum duration of thirty days. Once a winner is declared, the opening rules reduce the remaining lifespan of the level to ninety hours. The system seeds 293 stairwell chambers, but they cannot open until Faction Wars has a winner or the collapse clock reaches thirty hours. Survival is therefore tied to the war even for crawlers who do not wish to enlist: unaffiliated crawlers may flee into the outer wilderness, but faction armies can find and forcibly conscript them.
Larracos and the battlefield
Larracos is both the central objective and the defending team's territory. It is a deep, funnel-shaped city whose lower districts were flooded during the Fifth Floor. By the time the crawlers arrive on the Ninth, the water has recently been drained. Mud, drowned creatures, damaged stone buildings, and waterlogged streets remain in the lower levels. The earlier flood consequently changes the starting condition of the war rather than disappearing between scenarios.
The nine attacking positions radiate around Larracos like slices of a pie. Each attacker begins with a primary base and throne room in its assigned sector. Larracos's throne room occupies the center of this arrangement, while its city-defense system gives control of the capital practical military value. A river from the surrounding highlands feeds the waterfall that descends into the city, and the outer sectors include plains, hills, forest, and the battlefield's only mountainous region. These features shape front lines, artillery positions, movement corridors, and the placement of faction strongholds.
The drained city's upper entrance is surrounded by Shanty Town, a ring of ramshackle homes, food markets, and temples attributed to people displaced by the flood. Its scale is unusual for Faction Wars. Because the settlement completely encircles the opening into Larracos, it functions as a second large town and an exposed defensive ring. It remains accessible when much of Larracos is closed to attackers, making it a supply center, approach route, and potential foothold. Li Na's 107th White Dragon Urban Defense battalion later mixes with Semeru dwarves and Larracos residents to guard its perimeter.
Teams and armies
The initial attacking factions are the Bone Clan, Operatic Collective, Princess Posse, Blood Sultanate, Prism Kingdom, Dream, Democratic Sortion, Madness, and Reavers. Madness controls two adjacent starting spots; the other attacking teams hold one each. Team Retribution is the tenth team and the sole defender. Juice Box and Ferdinand serve as its warlords, while its soldiers include changelings, Semeru dwarves, and other residents whose supposed non-player status no longer reflects their self-awareness or political organization.
The Princess Posse begins in spot three with only fifty-eight approved soldiers, no appointed officers, and additional recruits waiting to be sworn in. Carl and Donut must physically meet candidates to confer some officer roles. They also need to enlist crawlers before rival factions can conscript them. Donut quickly accepts Team Retribution's truce offer, allowing Princess Posse members to remain in the allied city when the ceasefire ends. The remaining hostile attackers form the Bloc and declare war on both the Princess Posse and Team Retribution.
The numerical balance changes when more than fifty thousand former crawlers arrive to fight for the Princess Posse. They come through the Crawler Project's wider network and include people who have already survived Faction Wars, Land War, or Battle Royale seasons. They re-enter without outside weapons but receive races and classes suited to the dungeon. The other eight attacking teams collectively receive roughly 150,000 experienced mercenaries, distributed at about twenty thousand per faction. Those forces retain outside equipment and enter as Hired Mercenaries, although their class and spell options are limited. The resulting contest pits the Princess Posse's dungeon experience and unusual builds against much larger armies equipped with pulse rifles, armor, and faction military hardware.
The four phases
Faction Wars is organized into four named stages: the Ceasefire, the Ramp-Up, Open Hostilities, and the Peeling of Larracos. The displayed rules identify the end of the ceasefire as the trigger for the 180-hour Ramp-Up. Open Hostilities begins when that period expires, while the Peeling begins once only four ordinary teams remain.
During the sixty-hour ceasefire, Larracos operates under protections comparable to a safe area. Crawlers appear throughout the city, recruit for armies, inspect the capital, move supplies, and build defenses. At the deadline, unaffiliated crawlers and members of hostile attacking factions are removed from the city. Team Retribution, unaffiliated dungeon residents, and its allies may remain. The Princess Posse uses this period to appoint commanders, organize battalions, fortify its inherited stronghold, and gather information about rival castles.
The Ramp-Up deliberately forces conventional mass combat. Non-scout troops may cross into hostile territory only through designated kilometer-wide corridors. Offensive magic and teleport-based spells or skills are suppressed across the floor, and celestial summons are prohibited. Donut's Puddle Jumper and the Gate of the Feral Gods cannot provide battlefield transport during this stage, although static traps, physical weapons, utility magic, and abilities the system classifies differently may still function. Once a force passes through a corridor it can move freely within the enemy sector, making each entrance a predictable and heavily contested choke point.
Those restrictions favor the outside factions' numbers and nonmagical weapons, but they also make their attacks easier to channel. The Princess Posse digs trenches, prepares fallback positions, creates trapped no-man's-land zones, and divides its army among named battalions rather than relying on Carl and Donut to direct every fighter personally. Its defensive planning survives the loss of the Democratic Sortion and continues as the Prism Kingdom, Operatic Collective, and Blood Sultanate are eliminated. By the close of the Ramp-Up, the Princess Posse controls its own sector and captured territory while maintaining fronts toward the Skull Empire's Bone Clan, the former Blood Sultanate lands, and Shanty Town.
Open Hostilities and Operation Ruin
Open Hostilities removes the corridor restriction and restores the abilities suppressed during the Ramp-Up. Territorial borders cease to be reliable barriers, and the surviving teams can attack across the broader map. The Princess Posse begins Operation Ruin, a coordinated attempt to end the remaining hostile factions before they can combine their strength against the crawlers.
The coalition prepares simultaneous operations rather than a single advance. Florin's 101st Crocodiles hold captured territory near the northern river. Tran's 102nd Bulwark battalion protects the southern approach behind a warning field of traps. Team Retribution and the 107th defend Shanty Town. Other groups target faction leaders, strongholds, communications, and the conditions that determine ownership of a throne room. This division of responsibility allows the army to keep fighting even when divine appearances, personal quests, and attacks elsewhere pull Carl away from the central command.
The most conspicuous preparation is the Nest, a tall granite synergy tower constructed at the edge of the opening into Larracos. Its protected blocks, overlapping enchantments, deflector towers, and elevated position give Donut a line of sight across much of the battlefield. The structure serves as a fortified sniper and observation post, but its visibility also makes it an obvious target. Donut's ability to strike distant objectives from the Nest becomes essential once the operation expands beyond the range of ordinary units.
Operation Ruin does not produce a clean progression from one castle to the next. Gods manifest on the battlefield, alliances shift, and the War Mage Rebellion emerges as an entity outside the original ten-team structure. War mages kill Bone Clan warlord Stalwart and take the Gate of the Feral Gods. Because Team Retribution already occupies the Bone Clan throne room, the system initially awards the defeated faction's assets to the defenders, even though the War Mage Rebellion receives credit for the decisive kill. The dispute over the rebellion's status becomes critical as the number of recognized factions approaches the trigger for the final phase.
The Peeling of Larracos
When the Peeling begins, Larracos loses its protection and every surviving force can enter. Under the original victory rules, an attacking team must hold the central throne room for six hours. Team Retribution wins by preventing that outcome for a full week. If an attacker takes the room, it also gains access to the city's defenses after a half-hour grace period. Alliances cannot jointly claim the final victory.
The system grants the War Mage Rebellion standing as a faction-like entity and accepts three emergency actions proposed in Agatha's name. The rebellion receives full warlord access, permission to claim throne rooms, and a Conscription spell that can absorb unaffiliated fighters. The third action makes defeat immediately fatal to every affiliated warlord and soldier still on the battlefield. This change turns the alliance between the Princess Posse and Team Retribution into a potential death sentence: only one team can formally win, even though both have fought toward the same outcome.
The rebellion occupies Team Retribution's throne room and activates the countdown toward victory while gaining control of the city-defense system. Akuma's forces generate zarogoths, fortify their position, and use Larracos's towers against the allied armies. Fighting spreads through the funnel city and Shanty Town as the Princess Posse attempts to protect Donut, destroy the generated creatures, and prevent the rebellion from holding the castle for six hours. Li Na eventually tears through the castle, forcing surviving war mages to abandon the throne room and escape by portal. Akuma then leaves the realm, formally defeating the War Mage Rebellion, but the original conflict among the Princess Posse, Team Retribution, the Dream, and other remaining forces is still unresolved.
The Princess Posse avoids a final battle against its NPC allies by changing what counts as control of Larracos. The Sledge casts Zerzura, combining the city and Shanty Town within the spell's area and transferring both settlements to the Court of the Ascendency on the Twelfth Floor. Dungeon residents inside the transferred area gain the temporary protection that applies there before the Ascendency begins. Outside mercenaries are expelled from the dungeon instead of moving with the city.
The transfer removes Ferdinand and Juice Box from the Ninth Floor. The system interprets their departure as abandonment of their warlord posts and declares Team Retribution defeated. With the other contenders already removed or defeated, the Princess Posse wins Faction Wars without slaughtering the allied residents it was supposed to overcome. The result fulfills the formal victory condition while denying the floor its intended last confrontation between attackers and defenders.
Destruction and aftermath
The victory is achieved under a separate divine deadline. Emberus enters the realm and announces that he will destroy the Ninth Floor unless Samantha is brought to him within sixty-six minutes. Zerzura, the defeat of the Dream, the removal of Team Retribution, and the resolution of Katia's crown crisis all occur while this shorter clock is running. After Samantha reaches Emberus and is recovered, the system issues a final three-minute warning that the god will destroy the level.
At the end of the war, only about 28,000 of the former crawlers who entered with the Princess Posse remain. The current crawler population has fallen to 20,221. Many survivors accept exit deals once Faction Wars is over, while those who continue use the newly available stairwells before Emberus's destruction reaches them. The Ninth Floor closes with the destruction of its battlefield, but the people of Larracos and Shanty Town have already been removed from it. Its decisive outcome is therefore not simply the Princess Posse's military victory: an army composed of crawlers, former crawlers, and dungeon residents uses the rules of Faction Wars to preserve the defending population that the game had treated as expendable.