Princess Donut and Mordecai meet when Donut is still a cat accompanying Carl through the dungeon's first floor. Mordecai initially treats her as Carl's animal companion, but an enhanced pet biscuit turns her into a speaking crawler whom he must guide in her own right. On the third floor, Donut chooses a class with a Manager benefit that assigns Mordecai to her for the rest of her crawl. Their relationship consequently joins personal loyalty to a formal obligation: he advises, equips, and worries over her, while she can draw him into dangers and decisions that a guild guide could have avoided. By the ninth floor, Donut also acts on knowledge of his past, arranging for him to confront a woman he holds responsible for his brother's death.
From animal companion to crawler
Their introduction is decidedly awkward. Donut accompanies Carl into Mordecai's first-floor tutorial guild and knocks over the urn containing his mother's ashes. Mordecai is distressed by the damage and, in the form he then wears, complains that he may be allergic to her. After a goblin machine explodes outside the guild, he also accuses Donut of fouling the spilled ashes. These incidents matter later because the urn is not a disposable prop to him: his mother and brother remain part of the life he had before his own crawl. At this point, however, Donut cannot discuss any of it with him. She is still a cat from Carl's household, reacting to the dungeon while Mordecai conducts Carl's tutorial.
Mordecai recognizes the significance of the enhanced pet biscuit in Carl's prize boxes and urges Carl to give it to Donut while they are still in the guild. The biscuit changes their situation immediately. Donut speaks, asserts her full show-cat title, and treats Mordecai with the hauteur she also directs at Carl. Mordecai tells Carl to inspect her statistics: Donut is now classified as a crawler rather than a pet. He must activate her menus and account for her own achievements, equipment, spells, and choices. Donut objects when the two discuss her as though she were absent, making clear that his new pupil will not accept the passive role he had assigned her.
The first decisions expose a pattern that persists across their association. Mordecai tries to warn Donut about the danger of a crown from her prize boxes, but she equips it before he finishes. He explains its consequences and tells Carl that Donut's unusually high combined statistics make her the party leader. The title does not remove Carl's agency, yet the crown and its connection to the ninth floor become more than a fashion choice. Mordecai recognizes both Donut's immediate power and the long-term cost of an item she has already claimed. Donut, meanwhile, values the crown's appearance and status even while she benefits from his explanation of its rules.
Mordecai's instruction also has to fit Donut's particular body. After she survives a dangerous close-range attack, he notes that her strength exceeds what her health and armor can safely support. He advises Carl to keep her out of melee when possible and tells Donut to improve her Dodge skill. He also explains the value of a spell she dismisses as useless because it produces light. His criticism is practical rather than a refusal to take her seriously: her spellcasting, physical fragility, and appetite for spectacular equipment require different guidance from Carl's bare-handed fighting. As Donut later acquires Mongo, Mordecai similarly warns that the young dinosaur must bond with her before the floor ends and learn restraint before his attacks get them all killed.
Donut's choice of manager
At the third-floor class selection, Mordecai advises Donut through a set of options constrained by her cat race, low constitution, crown, and Desperado pass. He explains that the Former Child Actor class lets her choose a temporary specialty on each floor through its Character Actor ability, but that the strength of the resulting skills depends partly on the system's roll. Its Cockroach ability offers a chance to survive a lethal blow. Carl and Mordecai consider other choices safer or more balanced. Donut appears to accept their recommendation of Artist Alley Mogul, then reveals that she chose Former Child Actor and used Artist Alley Mogul only as her first specialty. She celebrates the performance; Mordecai is furious.
The decisive part of her choice is the class's Manager benefit. Mordecai tells her that he is now her manager and will be teleported to any saferoom she enters. He had expected to move to a magic guild, with a larger room and better access to his own work. Instead, his movements will follow Donut's, and he says he loses his former access to the information codex and the broadcast tunnels. His anger is not a mere dislike of Donut. The choice changes his remaining time in the dungeon without his consent. Donut initially welcomes his continued presence, but a private message to Carl shows that she knew he would be upset and dislikes having made him angry.
The class selection is also more complicated than Donut's public performance suggests. Odette had told Carl that a manager could advise beyond the restrictions imposed on a guide and use chat and alchemy to help them. She also warned that Mordecai would resent being maneuvered into the position. Carl and Donut therefore agreed beforehand to take the benefit if it appeared and to let the selection look like Donut's spontaneous decision. Mordecai's subsequent glare at Carl suggests suspicion, but the scene does not establish that he has learned the plan. Their bond begins under an ethical strain: Donut and Carl gain access to his expertise by choosing a benefit that he would not have chosen for himself.
Manager duty nevertheless gives Mordecai a defined stake in Donut's survival. He later explains that the longer she lasts, the greater his eventual payment. He also describes the protection offered to managers from the fourth floor onward: a fatal injury can remove him from the season without ending his life. That protection does not make the third floor safe for him, and it does not authorize him to fight alongside Donut. In the Desperado Club, he says his first reaction to being chosen was not caused by Carl or Donut personally, while refusing to explain everything behind it. His financial incentives and contract set the formal terms; they do not exhaust his reasons for staying involved.
Daily cooperation and conflict
Once attached to Donut, Mordecai becomes part of the party's ordinary preparations. He tells her to keep training Magic Missile and helps plan the use of saferooms, equipment, and supplies. He identifies her high charisma as an economic advantage, urging Carl to let her negotiate with merchants and explaining how she can press shopkeepers for better prices and more accurate descriptions. Donut's theatrical self-presentation thus has a concrete use outside interviews and combat. Mordecai does not simply hand down orders; he looks for places where her abilities are stronger than Carl's and pushes her to practice them.
The arrangement also draws Mordecai into Donut's responsibility for Mongo. He explains that the dinosaur needs proper rest and persuades the party to buy a pet carrier, despite Donut's dislike of confining him. Later he studies gear that might work for Mongo and advises Donut on fighting from the saddle. Donut accepts his knowledge but remains intensely protective of her pet. When a plan puts Mongo at risk, she tells Mordecai she will never forgive him if the dinosaur is hurt. Their exchanges show the limit of a manager's authority over her: advice can alter her plans, but her attachment to Mongo cannot be overridden by a calculation of efficiency.
On the fourth floor, Mordecai continues working with Donut even when events separate him from the active party. When a fan-box appearance brings Chaco into their saferoom, Mordecai attacks him and is suspended from the floor for seven days. Donut's immediate reaction to Carl's chosen prize is indignation that they have lost Mordecai for what appears to be a book of recipes. The book proves far more important than its description suggests, but her complaint captures the immediate practical loss: the manager whom she had deliberately secured cannot guide them through most of that floor. His response to Chaco also reveals that his long history can intrude on Donut's crawl without warning.
Donut's position as Mordecai's ward has effects beyond their own party. During the Iron Tangle, Hekla seeks Donut and the access to Mordecai that comes with her. Carl concludes that an apparent alliance could leave Donut isolated and force her into Hekla's group, bringing the manager with her. That danger is not evidence that Donut wants to leave Carl; it shows how another crawler could treat her manager benefit as an asset to capture. The incident gives Donut's earlier class choice a political weight neither a skill list nor a saferoom schedule conveys.
Shared responsibility on the sixth and eighth floors
On the sixth floor, Mordecai and Donut can work as a pair while Carl is elsewhere. They go shopping for supplies, including a Shield spellbook for Donut, and Mordecai sets a schedule for training her Magic Missile in the new magic workshop. Donut also gains control of a settlement she names Point Mongo. Mordecai offers to teach her how to reset its rules and direct its guards; she responds that she has already changed much of the menu herself. Their familiar disagreement reflects both sides of the relationship. He sees administrative hazards in the dungeon's systems, while she insists on exercising the authority the system has given her.
Donut, in turn, treats Mordecai as someone for whom she is responsible. Before leaving Point Mongo, she places him in charge of its defenses but orders the guards to take him to a saferoom first if the settlement is attacked. His inability to fight is part of her instruction. The manager who once objected to being dragged wherever she slept now has a role in a town she commands, and she explicitly plans for his safety. This does not remove their arguments or the unequal terms of his assignment, but it demonstrates that she sees him as more than a portable source of information.
The eighth floor brings another glimpse of their changing familiarity. Donut notices makeup and a bow on Mordecai's cyclops form and initially assumes he is experimenting with his appearance. Her teasing gives way to the discovery that he has quietly hired vulnerable changeling children into the party's attendant slots to keep them away from a deadly battle. He has used funds given to him for supplies to cover their cost. Donut immediately objects to the secrecy and calls it embezzlement, while Carl says he would have agreed if asked. The scene establishes a real conflict about trust and shared resources; it also shows Mordecai extending the same protective impulse beyond his contracted ward.
When Katia's crown places her and Donut on a collision course, Mordecai privately tells Carl that helping Katia is the right thing but may be less safe for Donut. He says he cannot have that conversation with Donut herself. This is a limit to their closeness, not proof that he wishes Katia harm: he distinguishes what he wants to do from what he considers the safest course. Donut and Katia refuse to accept the forced choice between them, while Mordecai's warning makes plain how completely Donut's survival has become a priority in his judgment.
Huanxin Jinx and the ninth floor
On the ninth floor, Mordecai is still advising Donut's class choices and assessing the consequences of her expanding spell list. Their association also reaches back to the earliest guild encounter. In the confrontation with Huanxin Jinx, Donut calls Mordecai into the tent after gaining control of the encounter. She knows he has a history with Huanxin, though she acknowledges that he has not told them all of it. Mordecai identifies Huanxin, Odette, and Chaco as responsible for his brother's death, placing the greatest blame on Huanxin. The earlier clash with Chaco now has a stated cause rather than appearing to be an inexplicable outburst.
Mordecai cannot strike Huanxin directly as a noncombatant. He instead loads a crossbow bolt into the weapon mounted on Donut's back. He says its tip contains some of his mother's ashes, incorporated according to a funeral rite of his people. Donut fires the bolt and kills Huanxin. The action belongs to both of them in different ways: Mordecai supplies the weapon and makes the meaning of the shot explicit; Donut, who can act where he cannot, delivers it. She also condemns Huanxin for exploiting Katia under the guise of helping her. Their shared act joins Mordecai's personal grievance to Donut's defense of a friend without making those motives identical.
Afterward, Donut remembers what she did to Mordecai's mother's urn on the first floor and expresses regret. Her irreverent worry about the bolt's contents retains her characteristic humor, but it rests on a newly understood fact: the ashes she once treated carelessly are part of Mordecai's family history. Mordecai later thanks her for arranging the encounter. He says he has lost much that day and believes he has gained more. The moment does not erase the deception at their third-floor class selection or every argument that followed. It shows what their enforced partnership has become by the end of the ninth floor: Donut has learned enough about Mordecai to make room for his own unfinished business, and he recognizes the choice she made for him.