> *Major spoilers through This Inevitable Ruin.*
Donut's growth is the transformation of Princess Donut from a prized show cat whose life is controlled by humans into a sapient crawler, combat specialist, public figure, chosen family member, and military commander. The Enhanced Pet Biscuit makes that development possible, but it does not create a new personality or erase her past. Donut remembers life with Beatrice and Carl, her cat-show career, the television programs she watched, and the assumptions she formed before she could speak. Her later choices arise from reconsidering those memories with the intelligence and freedom to understand what ownership, affection, betrayal, and loyalty meant.
Her development is neither a steady loss of vanity nor a simple progression from comic companion to conventional hero. Donut remains theatrical, status-conscious, easily offended, and intensely protective of her image. What changes is the scale on which she can use those traits and the number of people for whom she accepts responsibility. The same instincts that once governed ribbons and cat shows eventually inform battlefield morale, public messaging, coalition politics, and the identity of the Princess Posse.
Awakening with an existing identity
Donut enters the dungeon as Carl's ordinary cat and receives an Enhanced Pet Biscuit from his Legendary Pet Box. The biscuit's outcome is uncertain, and her physical transformation is initially alarming, but the final result gives her speech, intelligence, access to crawler systems, and unusually strong attributes. Because her combined statistics exceed Carl's, the party interface recognizes her as leader. She immediately names the party the Royal Court of Princess Donut, makes herself Grand Champion Best in Dungeon, and recasts Carl as her Royal Bodyguard. The titles are comic, yet they establish an important fact: her first autonomous act is to define the relationship in language of her own choosing.
The biscuit does not give Donut a blank adult mind. Once awakened, she explains that she can remember sitting in the apartment window, travelling to shows in a carrier, being praised as a princess, and watching Carl play video games. She can now interpret experiences that previously existed only as impressions and routines. She also recognizes that Carl had considered keeping her after his separation from Bea. This continuity makes her sapience emotionally difficult as well as empowering. She understands more, but what she understands includes decisions other people once believed she could never question.
Her earliest behavior mixes rapid learning with habits carried over from domestic life. Donut discovers private chat and floods Carl with messages until he asks her to stop and explains that all capitals read as shouting. She learns the interface quickly but treats it like the phone use she observed from Bea. In combat, she prefers Magic Missile partly because ranged magic keeps blood out of her fur. Her insistence on cleanliness and presentation is therefore not separate from her build: it helps push her toward magic, distance, and control rather than Carl's close-range violence.
Donut's attachment to Bea remains central during the early floors. Even while fighting beside Carl, she calls Bea her person, imagines reuniting with her, and initially ranks that bond above her affection for Carl. Her intelligence does not instantly free her from the emotional structure of her former life. Instead, the novels allow her to revise that structure through experience.
Building a role instead of accepting one
The Third Floor class selection is Donut's first major decision about what kind of crawler she will become. Her recommended options include Artist Alley Mogul, NecroBard, and Former Child Actor. Carl and Mordecai favor the more predictable merchant path, but Donut secretly chooses Former Child Actor and uses Artist Alley Mogul as its first temporary specialty. The decision is impulsive and deceptive, yet it is also informed. Former Child Actor is a rare Charisma- and Chance-based class opened by her performance achievement and enormous audience. Its Character Actor feature allows her to adopt new specialties on later floors rather than remain fixed in a single role.
This choice turns performance into a durable survival mechanic. Donut receives benefits tied to visibility, social influence, and adaptable floor-by-floor abilities. Her poison immunity, Charisma growth, manager benefit, and later specialty packages broaden her value beyond direct damage. The choice also binds Mordecai to her as manager, changing his expected path and making him a continuing member of the household. Donut does not fully anticipate every consequence, but she correctly sees that the supposedly frivolous performance class offers something a narrow combat class cannot: room to keep changing.
Mongo gives that change an emotional dimension. Donut treats the velociraptor as her child, worries about his safety and reputation, disciplines him, and incorporates his abilities into her own tactics. The relationship often parodies human parenting, but her sense of obligation is genuine. By the Fifth Floor she can reject a plan to descend early by saying that Mongo needs her and that she has responsibilities beyond an old romance. Motherhood, as Donut understands it, becomes one of the first roles she chooses rather than inherits.
The Royal Court expands in the same way. Katia's addition after the Third Floor means Donut is no longer simply Carl's magically empowered pet or his only partner. She must share space, attention, and decision-making with another person. Her jealousy and sharp remarks do not vanish, but Katia gradually becomes family. That bond is tested most clearly by Hekla.
Betrayal, protection, and chosen loyalty
Donut initially idolizes Hekla. She follows the famous crawler's exploits, asks about her signature moves, and readily exchanges information through Katia. During the Iron Tangle, however, Hekla attacks Katia in an attempt to resolve the danger posed by the Enchanted Crown of the Sepsis Whore. Donut sees the concealed attack, fights back, and rejects Hekla's argument that the group should put the incident aside for practical reasons.
Her reaction reveals that she understands the attack through her own history. Donut accuses Hekla of pretending to value Katia while treating her as something usable and replaceable. The parallel with Bea is unmistakable to Carl even before Donut directly confronts her former owner. This is a turning point in her moral judgment. She had admired Hekla's strength and fame, but neither excuses betrayal once Donut recognizes what has been done to Katia. Loyalty becomes conduct rather than prestige.
Donut's encounter with Bea during an Odette interview makes that change explicit. Before the broadcast she admits that Bea had been her whole world and that she had long suspected the plan to give her away. On air, Donut maintains the polished persona expected of a celebrity crawler. She wishes Bea well and warns her not to pretend to love another cat while planning to sell her when she becomes less useful. Only after the broadcast ends does Donut release the anger she had contained for the audience.
She tells Bea that the betrayal was not caused by any fault of hers: she had loved the only person she knew, while Bea treated that devotion as compatible with replacement. Donut then rejects the old language of ownership by declaring that Bea is no longer her person and that Carl is. This does not transfer possession from one human to another. It redefines “her person” as someone chosen on the evidence of loyalty. Carl stayed, protected her, and treated her as a partner even before she could explain what she understood.
The scene also demonstrates how much control Donut has gained over her public and private selves. Earlier she blurts private information during interviews and mistakes attention for affection. With Bea, she knows exactly when the program is live, gives the audience only what she chooses to give it, and waits until the cameras are off before speaking without restraint. Her theatricality has become a boundary she can operate rather than a performance imposed on her.
From audience favorite to organizer
Donut begins cultivating a fan identity during the Iron Tangle. She discusses possible names for her supporters, rejects Carl's “Donut Holes” suggestion, and favors the name Princess Posse as it gains support. What starts as celebrity branding becomes an information network. Donut receives news from other crawlers, maintains conversations Carl does not always know about, and learns to distinguish casual gossip, private chat, party communication, and statements meant for a mass audience.
Her public voice retains its exaggeration because exaggeration is useful. Donut can hold attention, provoke an opponent, redirect an interview, or keep viewers focused while another part of a plan proceeds. She also understands that presentation affects morale. Titles, costumes, songs, mock outrage, and promised prizes may look ornamental, but they give scattered allies a common vocabulary. By the time Princess Posse names a Faction Wars army, the phrase already carries several floors of audience recognition and shared experience.
This growth remains uneven. Donut can be compassionate while still thinking in game rewards, and she does not abandon old prejudices merely because she has suffered. When Fire Brandy and Tizquick choose to die with the Nightmare after recovering memories of repeated NPC lives, Donut's immediate private concern is that Carl may lose the experience award. Carl corrects her, and the deaths become part of the group's growing understanding that non-player characters have memories, relationships, and claims of their own. Likewise, Donut's long rivalry with Tserendolgor persists well past its practical importance, although she later joins the dog soldier in a public show of solidarity. Her widening loyalties do not make her uniformly patient or fair.
Tactical independence on the Eighth Floor
The Eighth Floor card system forces Donut to manage a form of combat very different from firing spells on command. As deckmaster, she must build a deck, draw and discard under timing restrictions, deploy totems with independent personalities, combine buffs and snares, and protect herself while her ordinary inventory and magic are constrained. Carl initially tries to advise from beside her, but he recognizes that he cannot control every decision once the real battles begin.
Donut responds by studying the system rather than merely following instructions. After repeated practice battles and live encounters, she talks continuously about card theory and the choices made by other crawlers; Carl concludes that she understands the game better than he does. Her deck includes powerful but difficult personalities, and success depends on managing their conflicts as much as their statistics. This resembles her larger social role: authority does not mean that allies become obedient extensions of her will.
In the climactic fighting, Donut uses the Midnight Express card to transfer deckmaster status temporarily to Carl. The move frees her to use ordinary spells and inventory while he handles the cards. It is a precise reversal of their earliest arrangement. Carl once acted while Donut rode on his shoulder and supplied ranged attacks; now she can deliberately redistribute control between them to exploit two overlapping systems. Their partnership works because either can become the supporting player when the situation requires it.
Warlord of the Princess Posse
On the Ninth Floor, Donut's cultivated identity becomes formal command authority. She and Carl serve as warlords of the Princess Posse during Faction Wars, directing forces that include crawlers, former crawlers, mercenaries, and NPCs. Donut issues instructions over army chat, coordinates with colonels and other warlords, monitors separate fronts, and makes decisions while physically distant from Carl.
During the assault across No Man's Land, Donut gives the troops a sequence rather than a slogan alone: protect their hearing when the bombardment starts, move to chat, use invisibility and obfuscation, cross without stopping, and enter the enemy trenches. She then gives the order to advance. The promised reward for enemy casualties is characteristically theatrical, but the command itself is operationally specific. Elsewhere she catches fleeing targets, redirects units, and recognizes tactical openings without waiting for Carl to narrate them to her.
Her ability to weaponize conversation also becomes a command skill. Donut taunts rival leaders to destabilize them, draws information from hostile exchanges, and helps keep Epitome Tagg occupied while the party attempts to save Louis. During the emergency procedure, she simultaneously prepares Mordecai's brew and maintains the verbal pressure in warlord chat. The scene combines performance, loyalty, and tactical timing: abilities that once produced entertaining interviews now help keep a friend alive.
Faction Wars also magnifies the cost of Donut's magic. The Nest's synergy empowers her Atrocity-class spells over enormous areas. Her Rolling Battle Formation produces consequences larger than she expects, while later mass attacks contribute to her receiving the Oak Fell class and becoming Champion of Nekhebit. These rewards do not replace Former Child Actor; they accumulate on top of it. Donut ends the floor with the flexible performance build she chose for herself and a second identity imposed by warfare and divine politics.
The Princess Posse ultimately wins Faction Wars when Ferdinand and Juice Box leave the realm, causing Team Retribution to forfeit. The victory is collective and depends on Carl's plans, allied sacrifices, NPC decisions, and thousands of combatants. Donut nevertheless reaches it as an actual warlord rather than a mascot. She has commanded attacks, managed crises, represented the coalition, and carried powers capable of changing the battlefield for everyone upon it.
A partnership of two agents
By the end of the Ninth Floor, Donut and Carl still protect one another, but protection no longer flows in only one direction. Carl worries about dangers designed specifically for Donut; Donut warns him when his plans expose him to forces he is underestimating. They can lead different operations, exchange only the information each needs, and reunite without treating separation as abandonment. Their arguments increasingly concern judgment, risk, and responsibility rather than whether a cat should obey her owner.
Donut's growth is therefore cumulative rather than corrective. The show cat is not replaced by the spellcaster, the performer by the strategist, or the wounded pet by the warlord. Each identity supplies tools for the next. Her eye for presentation becomes media control; her possessiveness becomes fierce commitment; her appetite for recognition becomes a banner under which others can organize; and her experience of being treated as property sharpens her response to people who disguise exploitation as care. She remains difficult, funny, vain, and sometimes cruel, but she is no longer living inside a role selected for her. She chooses her family, her voice, and—within the dungeon's brutal limits—the responsibilities attached to her name.