Dungeon

Description
The World Dungeon is an 18 floor maze created when Earth underwent The Transformation. It is managed by The Borant Corporation.

While the 18-Level World Dungeon is ostensibly a process by which a human can reclaim control of Earth from Borant, it is really a way to generate income via advertising, sponsorships, royalties, and purchases in Dungeon Crawler World, a deadly alien game show. Should a crawler actually exit the dungeon's 18th floor, they will win regency of Earth. No crawler is expected to survive this long. One person in the history of Dungeon Crawler World made it as far as the 13th floor. He died within 30 minutes.

Floors
Each floor is successively harder, with floors 1 and 2 being a "tutorial". Floors 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 are special in that they are all created at the same time and linked in an in-universe fairly tale. Excluding Floor 3, they are also the levels where "tourists", or rich Syndicate citizens, can pay to enter the floors and fight each other and/or crawlers. All other floors are created as needed.

Each floor collapses after the specified time limit, killing any crawler who has not descended to the next floor or, on floors 10+, made an indentured servitude deal to exit the dungeon. In general, crawlers who enter the stairs to the next floor more than six hours before floor collapse are put in stasis until floor collapse and then placed on the next floor without being aware time has passed. Crawlers who descend with less than six hours remaining not only get more time leveling up, they are allowed to move to the next floor immediately, getting a head start on those who descended early.

Here is a list of the floors in the dungeon with basic stats on the floor. All times are calculated from the known time of The Transformation. Each time assumes that the collapse timer for the next floor begins when the previous floor has six hours remaining.

Note: Though the year is never specified in the books, it does state that The Transformation occurred on Tuesday, January 3rd. 2017 was the most recent year prior to the book's publication that had January 3rd fall on a Tuesday. 2023 is the next time this will happen. Just a fun fact for you.

System AI
The System AI maintains the operation of the World Dungeon, running everything from the physics systems to the item descriptions, awarding achievements and loot boxes to the crawlers, and generally acting as the main force keeping the dungeon deadly for the crawlers and interesting for the spectators watching the show.

Inhabitants
Aside from the crawlers making their way through the dungeon, each floor of the World Dungeon is filled with a variety of mobs and bosses placed there by the show runners to fight crawlers. In addition, NPCs provide services in the dungeon and act as quest givers and characters for the crawlers to interact with.