The Royal Court of Princess Donut begins as a two-member crawler party: Carl and Princess Donut enter the dungeon together and are grouped automatically. Its membership later becomes a choice with consequences. Taking in Katia Grim gives her access to shared experience and a place in their living space; protecting her after her departure tests whether friendship survives a change in party status. The group also depends on Mordecai, who is a manager rather than a crawler party member, and on Mongo, Donut’s bonded pet. Their relationships expose a persistent difference between the dungeon’s official categories and the people each member considers family.
Carl and Donut form the Royal Court
During Carl’s initial tutorial, Mordecai explains that crawlers who enter together are automatically placed in one party. The party menu allows its members to share experience and use a group chat. Carl discovers that his initial party consists of himself and Donut, even while she is still behaving like the cat he brought into the dungeon. The system has assigned her a crawler identity, placing her in a different category from an ordinary pet. Their partnership therefore precedes her ability to speak to him as an equal. It begins with the practical fact that Carl did not leave her outside when the dungeon opened.
Donut’s enhanced pet biscuit changes the balance between them. Once she can speak and her attributes rise, Mordecai identifies her as the party leader because she has the higher combined stat total. Donut names their party the Royal Court of Princess Donut and makes Carl its Royal Bodyguard. The titles are playful, but her control of the party menu is real. Mordecai also points out that Carl could leave. The interface recognizes a possible separation at the very moment the two begin negotiating how to remain together. Donut’s claim to leadership rests on a system calculation; their continuing partnership rests on both members accepting it.
The Royal Court does not develop as a simple chain of command. Carl handles many immediate combat decisions and repeatedly puts himself in danger to protect Donut. Donut contributes power and judgment of her own, including choices Carl cannot make for her. Their roles also expose a difference in temperament: Carl is suspicious of offers that might put her at risk, while Donut is quicker to welcome people she admires. That difference becomes decisive when Hekla’s group enters their story. Neither the party name nor the menu settles whose judgment should prevail when another crawler asks them for help.
Mongo adds another kind of bond. Donut acquires the young mongoliensis near the end of the second floor, and bonding him to her takes the remainder of their time there. He is her pet, not a third crawler with an ordinary place on the party roster, yet his safety becomes a concern for both Carl and Donut. In combat he grows into a useful companion; in their private arguments, Donut speaks of him as her child. The distinction matters because the dungeon assigns different mechanics to pets and crawlers while the Royal Court treats a threat to Mongo as a threat to one of its own.
Katia’s place in the party
Katia Grim enters the Royal Court through an obligation to another group. Hekla asks Carl and Donut to look after her while she is separated from Brynhild’s Daughters. Katia is far below Carl’s level when they meet, and Hekla explains that distance from her own group limits the experience Katia receives. Carl worries that adding her will divide the Royal Court’s experience; Donut insists they have promised to help. Mordecai calculates that they can still make progress if they finish their current quest promptly. They admit Katia and begin assessing what she can contribute, including her high constitution, defensive ability, and skill at locating stairwells.
Their decision changes more than the experience pool. Katia trains and fights beside them, and her personal space becomes attached to the Royal Court’s shared area. By the time Hekla arrives to collect her on the fourth floor, leaving would affect access to rooms used by the others, including Mordecai’s space and the training room. Katia’s place has become both social and material. Carl notices her hesitation when Hekla speaks of taking her back. Although Katia is Hekla’s friend and had originally been entrusted to Carl and Donut temporarily, she now has an established life with the Royal Court. The dungeon allows a party change, but it cannot make that change emotionally simple.
Katia’s altered body also shapes her dependence on the group. After the dungeon’s violence costs her part of her body, she tells Carl that she feels she is losing herself. He answers by insisting that the person he knows is still present despite those losses. This conversation makes their loyalty specific: Carl is defending Katia’s identity at a point when even Katia doubts it. He also recognizes the practical need to protect her better in future fights. The Royal Court’s support is consequently neither a claim that she is unharmed nor a demand that she stay dependent on them.
Hekla and the limits of group loyalty
Brynhild’s Daughters offers a contrasting model of party formation. Hekla has assembled a large group whose many classes and abilities give it options the small Royal Court lacks. Carl also sees a cost: experience must be shared among many crawlers, and the members he meets trail Hekla in level. Hekla’s authority and her followers’ trust compensate for some of that weakness. Donut openly admires her; Katia credits Hekla with saving her life. These genuine attachments explain why Hekla can ask for assistance and why accusations against her are difficult for her followers to accept.
The relationship breaks during the fourth-floor train conflict. After Hekla dies, Carl concludes from the evidence around the confrontation that she had arranged for him and Katia to be killed so that Donut, and with her Mordecai, could be drawn into Brynhild’s Daughters. His account includes guesses about parts of the plan, and those guesses are his interpretation rather than a full statement of Hekla’s private intentions. Donut rejects the premise that she would have joined Hekla after Carl’s murder. Her answer establishes a limit Hekla could not measure from Donut’s fame or combat value: Donut’s admiration for another leader would not replace her loyalty to Carl.
Hekla’s death does not resolve the other group’s crisis. Leadership passes automatically to Eva, whom members of Brynhild’s Daughters distrust. Silfa tells Carl that people are leaving and that the group is losing access to resources tied to its former arrangement. She also defends Hekla and initially blames Katia. Carl refuses to treat every Daughter as an enemy, but he will not absorb a group he no longer trusts. The scene distinguishes a shared enemy and a rescue obligation from party membership. Former followers of Hekla remain fellow crawlers; that alone cannot restore the trust needed to place them inside the Royal Court.
A manager and a pet within the household
Mordecai occupies an unusual place in the Royal Court. He begins as Carl’s tutorial guide and later acts as Donut’s manager. His designation makes him a noncombatant NPC, not an ordinary crawler who joins fights for experience. Nevertheless, Carl and Donut rely on his knowledge when choosing classes, judging risks, and using their personal area. His concern for Katia’s training and his assessment of the cost of admitting her show that he helps the party make decisions without holding its leader title. Hekla’s suspected interest in acquiring Donut includes Mordecai because the manager’s allegiance follows her. His role is institutional, but the consequences of losing him would be personal and practical.
Donut’s fear of losing her companions becomes explicit on the sixth floor. After Mongo runs into danger, she tells Carl that the shock recalled an earlier car accident. She then names the losses she fears: Katia has left their party, Carl keeps taking increasing risks, and Mongo might someday leave her. She is not making a tactical assessment of party composition. She is describing abandonment, using Katia’s departure as evidence that the people closest to her can disappear. The conversation also clarifies why Carl’s dangerous plans trouble her even when they succeed. His survival is part of the security she needs, and her public confidence does not erase that need.
The end of the sixth-floor conflict shows how membership can be temporary without making cooperation trivial. After many crawlers have fought through the Masquerade’s events, Prepotente briefly becomes leader of a newly formed party that includes Carl and Donut. Katia notices the change before they descend. Prepotente says the arrangement is short-lived and serves a specific need for Donut’s assistance. Carl observes their surviving friends moving toward the stairs and takes pride in them. The formal party is a tool for the next step; the wider set of people he regards as friends is larger than its current membership.
Katia and Donut’s forced choice
On the eighth floor, the conflict between the Royal Court’s bonds and the dungeon’s rules becomes more severe. Katia’s status as a former party member does not make her expendable to Carl or Donut. The danger associated with the crowns worn by Katia and Donut threatens to force a confrontation between them. Carl, Katia, and Bautista pursue a difficult alternative involving a job tied to the Desperado Club. The proposed route carries its own restrictions and dangers; Carl recognizes that failure could leave the two friends facing each other. This is a loyalty problem the party menu cannot solve by simply changing its roster.
Katia discusses another possible exit involving the boon associated with pregnancy, as well as the prospect of becoming a celestial attendant on the twelfth floor. Her account shows that the problem has been weighing on her before the group confronts it together. Donut’s response includes practical, awkward questions about the pregnancy possibility, while Carl considers the implications of the other route. Their discussion is important because it gives Katia a voice in her own survival. Protecting her does not mean treating her as cargo to be moved around a rule. It means working with her on choices that could permanently separate her from the others.
The eighth floor also places crawlers into squads under rules separate from their parties. The system announces a limit of five crawlers per squad and says that leaving a party will not free someone from an assigned squad. This imposed arrangement illustrates a broader pattern: the dungeon can force people to cooperate or prevent them from staying together, but it cannot prescribe affection or trust. The Royal Court’s history with Katia makes that distinction concrete. She can leave its formal party and still be someone Carl and Donut fight to save.
Beyond the party roster
On the ninth floor, Donut’s circle of allies operates at a scale far beyond the original two-member party. The Princess Posse recruits crawlers for Faction Wars, and Donut gives officers ranks within its army. Carl works with a core group that includes people whose skills and loyalties were developed in separate parties. Army membership and rank serve military coordination; neither makes every recruit an intimate member of the Royal Court. The expansion nevertheless depends on habits established in the smaller group: sharing information, accepting help across different abilities, and treating the survival of specific people as a reason to act.
The Royal Court’s own leadership changes again when Carl’s upgraded base statistics surpass Donut’s. The system makes him party leader and gives him access to a new interface tab. Donut protests and warns him against changing the party name, invoking Mongo and the idea of a broken home. Carl agrees to keep the name and titles. Her protest is partly performative by this point, but their exchange gives the old joke a clear emotional purpose. The system can transfer menu control instantly; Carl and Donut preserve the identity they created together. Donut then tells Carl that a ring is affecting him and that his behavior frightens her. Loyalty here includes a willingness to confront a companion whose growing power may be harming him.
Across these changes, party formation remains an active decision rather than a single event at the dungeon entrance. Carl and Donut begin together by system default, bring Katia in through a promise, continue to care for her after she leaves, and cooperate with allies who never become permanent Royal Court members. Hekla’s failed bid for Donut shows that a strong party can still misjudge the bonds inside another. Mordecai and Mongo show that a manager and a pet can matter as deeply as a registered crawler. The Royal Court survives changes in roster and leadership because its members repeatedly choose obligations the interface alone cannot enforce.