Dmitri and Maxim Popov are Bulgarian twin crawlers who share a two-headed nodling body after Dmitri's race selection combines them. Although the dungeon ranks them under one entry, each brother remains a distinct person with his own voice, class, and preferences. Their appearances span a dispute with a crawler-killing team, an enforced visit to CrawlCon, and the Sixth Floor campaign against the hunters. At the Butcher's Masquerade, the destruction of their shared body triggers the nodling's reproductive transformation: the brothers reappear separately as young children and become ineligible to remain in the dungeon.
A shared body and separate identities
Dmitri chose the nodling race after the brothers' game guide, Hongrish, recommended it as a way to gain an extra life. Dmitri later says Hongrish did not tell him that the choice would draw Maxim into the same body. He rejects a convention attendee's suggestion that he deliberately copied a television program about conjoined twins. The brothers' condition therefore begins with a choice made by one of them under an incomplete explanation, rather than a joint decision to live fused together. Zev later says Hongrish knew what would happen when a nodling died and steered the brothers toward that race for that reason. Her explanation of his motive does not change Dmitri's account of what he was told about the immediate fusion.
Their nodling form stands about seven feet tall, with gray, thick-looking skin, two heads, and powerful arms. Carl initially has difficulty reconciling the single body with the two people inside it. At CrawlCon, the identifying names over their heads help him tell the brothers apart: Dmitri occupies the body's right side, while Maxim occupies its left. Dmitri's face is rounder and uncovered; Maxim has sharper features and wears a knitted cap. The brothers are fraternal twins, so even before the race change they were not identical. Their contrasting appearances and conduct remain visible after it, despite the shared body and the dungeon's combined ranking entry.
The ranking screens identify Dmitri as an Illusionist and Maxim as a Bogatyr during the Fourth Floor. After specialization, a Fifth Floor recap shows Dmitri changing to a Visionary while Maxim remains a Bogatyr. Carl describes the former as a mage class and the latter as focused on close combat. The top-ten list subsequently prints both classes beside the brothers' single nodling race entry. That display reflects their joined physical form without erasing their separate class progressions. They reach fifth place on the list by the opening of the Sixth Floor, and the listing gives them a shared level and bounty even while Carl and the convention staff continue to count them as two crawlers.
Maxim's chief close-range weapon is a meteor hammer, a burning ball on a chain. Carl sees the brothers wield it against another crawler in a replay from the end of the Fifth Floor, and later sees it in direct combat against Sixth Floor enemies. The weapon's sweep can reach a target beyond an ordinary hand strike: during the Masquerade, Maxim's swing kills an elf who has just wounded Carl. The same reach nearly catches Carl, showing how close the brothers fight to their allies when protecting them. The novels show the hammer's effects but do not establish that the brothers' unusual body grants it a special mechanical bonus.
The brothers' differences are apparent outside combat. Dmitri eagerly talks with strangers and wants to meet Donut, while Maxim is more guarded and tries to keep his brother from overwhelming Carl with talk about the cat. Dmitri explains that the twins could not have a cat while growing up; he had finally acquired an orange cat named Kapitan Whiskers immediately before the collapse. That brief attachment returns at the moment his nodling body is fatally struck, when he says he misses the animal. Maxim is more direct and easily irritated, but he also greets Carl courteously and helps him up when Carl is dropped awkwardly into their production room.
The dispute with Team Cichociemni
The Popovs' dispute with Team Cichociemni is already visible in the aftermath of the Fourth Floor. Odette mentions the brothers' clash with that group among the stories audiences have been following. A Fifth Floor recap then shows the two-headed crawler attacking a large, leather-clad man with a war gauntlet. Slit, a feral demon crossing the scene, accidentally knocks the combatants aside before the man escapes into a stairwell. Carl does not identify him while watching that footage, so the scene establishes the attack and interrupted escape without itself naming the opponent.
Later reports put the broader conflict in context. Elle says the team had killed its former leader after he resisted its turn toward murdering other crawlers. That leader had been friendly with the Popovs before their transformation. Elle reports that the brothers had the group cornered, but their transfer to CrawlCon interrupted the confrontation; Li Na and Chris watched the team in their absence. Katia separately tells Carl that the Popovs were pursuing Bogdon Ro with a large group when another top-ten crawler died. Carl's first guess that the dead crawler might have been one of the brothers is therefore corrected immediately. These are accounts relayed to Carl rather than a complete firsthand record of every fight between the groups.
The argument survives the convention transfer. Fans ask Dmitri and Maxim about their break with the team and Bogdon's death during their autograph session. Dmitri declines to answer. Maxim says Bogdon deserved his fate, while regretting that other people died with him. The responses differ: Maxim publicly condemns Bogdon, whereas Dmitri leaves his view unstated. The brothers' joint pursuit of the team should not be read as proof that they agreed on every aspect of the conflict. It does show that their shared body did not prevent them from organizing with other crawlers against a group they regarded as dangerous.
CrawlCon
CrawlCon removes the brothers from the active dungeon while the Fifth Floor is still in progress. Zev tells Carl that only a small number of current crawlers have been allowed to attend and corrects her own count because the Popovs occupy one body but are two people. Unlike Carl, who has three scheduled events, they have roughly ten. A convention promotion also offers paid likeness sessions pairing them with Carl. Their fame brings them into the same program as other high-ranking contestants, but it interrupts their campaign against Team Cichociemni at a critical point.
Carl first meets them physically in a production-facility room before their shared autograph event. The brothers have been confined there between appearances, with a basic training area, a bed, and scant food. They attempt to play cards while keeping their hands hidden from one another, an awkward task made possible and difficult by their joined form. Both stop to help Carl after he lands on the floor. Maxim complains that they were promised more food, while Dmitri asks after Donut. Their conversation gives Carl a clearer sense of the brothers than a ranking display or combat replay could: two people manage a common body and circumstances while pursuing separate interests.
At the signing, a handler offers fans moving images and other merchandise, and the brothers sign individually with a pen in each hand. One popular image shows them using the meteor hammer inside a train car under attack. A purchaser presses Dmitri about whether the nodling fusion was intentional, and Dmitri explains Hongrish's misleading recommendation. Another pair of attendees ties themselves together to imitate the Popovs, then separates after bickering. Carl finds the failed costume amusing; the brothers do not. Their reaction, and Dmitri's repeated defense of his choice, make clear that the public treats a life-changing predicament as entertainment in ways its subjects do not always welcome.
Dmitri enjoys talking with the autograph customers and signing their purchases, whereas Maxim grows bored and becomes livelier around some of the women in line. A joint photograph with Carl, made shortly before the session, can be purchased for all three signatures. These details matter because the event treats them simultaneously as a marketable duo and as two individual celebrities: there are two signatures, distinct answers to personal questions, and separate reactions to the visitors. When the session ends, guards escort the brothers back to their space before Carl can say goodbye properly. Dmitri calls a farewell and asks Carl to greet Donut for him.
Sixth Floor allies
On the Sixth Floor, the Popovs contribute to the loose coalition fighting hunters. Their work includes scouting a hunter group with other teams; Carl notes that the targets are too far south for a raid before the allied crawlers move into elf territory. The report is brief, but it places them in the information-gathering side of the campaign as well as its battles. They are not members of Carl and Donut's immediate party. Their cooperation instead occurs alongside other crawler groups whose movements and discoveries help determine which hunters the coalition can reach.
Dmitri also tries to make contact with Donut despite the restrictions that kept her out of CrawlCon. A short enchanted rod given to him reaches her later, and Carl remembers Dmitri's excitement at finally meeting her and passing it on. The item description suggests a connection to a hammer, although the scene does not establish the full purpose of that connection. It is a small exchange, but it follows directly from Dmitri's disappointment when he learned at the convention that Carl had arrived without his cat companion.
The brothers enter the Masquerade with other allied crawlers as the confrontation with the hunters turns chaotic. They appear among friends in the crowded room before the violence, and the group also possesses a guitar found in a boss room, which Britney uses to accompany Donut's performance. When nymphs flood the battle space and block an exit, the brothers swing their meteor hammer through the attackers alongside Prepotente, Li Na, Bautista, and Florin. Their presence is part of a coordinated defense against immediate threats within the room, not merely a name on a list of surviving crawlers.
Later, as Carl is struck by an arrow and attacked at close range, the brothers' hammer kills an elf advancing on him. They stand over Carl while Donut's healing brings him back to awareness. An enchanted, burning sambhur mount then hurtles through the darkness, propelled by one of Imogen's spells. Its antlers tear through the Popovs' body before Carl can warn them. Dmitri's last words before closing his eyes are about missing Kapitan Whiskers. The attack follows a moment in which the brothers have just protected Carl, making their apparent death a direct loss within the fighting rather than a distant report of casualties.
Death, separation, and exit
Donut initially counts the brothers among the dead after the battle. Carl remembers Signet's earlier explanation of nodlings: at death, a multi-headed nodling splits into new young creatures according to its number of heads. Signet had described a three-headed nodling whose death produced three descendants. Carl and Katia therefore search the remains of the Masquerade fight instead of accepting the apparent death as the end of Dmitri and Maxim's story. Katia's Find Crawler skill locates two people beneath a pile of bodies and debris, and Carl digs them out.
The brothers are now separate, unconscious young ogres, each labeled a Nodling Yearling rather than a single ranked crawler. Imani lifts them from the wreckage. As they wake, the labels above both change to Ineligible, and they disappear from the dungeon. Zev explains that children and pregnant crawlers cannot participate, that the brothers have been transferred to a kinder facility on the surface, and that they are free. The sequence confirms both parts of the nodling mechanic: death divides the joined body into children, and the resulting children leave the crawl under its eligibility rule.
The news changes how the surviving crawlers understand the loss. Elle recognizes the transformation as an escape; Carl relays Zev's message, and the group moves from shock to celebration even while mourning others killed at the Masquerade. Donut later recounts the brothers' apparent death and unexpected survival, including Zev's assurance that they are all right. Carl subsequently describes their departure as an example of getting crawlers out, and Katia treats it as evidence that an eligibility rule might provide another route of escape. Those later conversations show the importance of the brothers' outcome without establishing their day-to-day life after transfer.
The brothers no longer participate in the dungeon's subsequent campaigns. Katia has their meteor hammer later, but the books do not show every step by which it passes to her. Carl still recalls the Popovs when considering the possibility of a crawler being removed from the dungeon, and the production room where he met them remains recognizable on a later visit. Their verified story ends with two separate children alive outside the active crawl; their longer-term circumstances are not established in the first seven books.