A Parade of Horribles

Carl and Donut arrive on the tenth floor in a garage with five minutes before the first heat. The system reports 5,501 crawlers remaining, which tells Carl that about three quarters of the survivors accepted exit deals after Faction Wars. He sees Justice Light's final message and confirmation that the mercenary is dead. Quasar has already told him that the Nothing is broken, Scolopendra is awake, and the twelfth and eighteenth floors are in chaos. Outworlders on the eighteenth floor cannot eject and are repeatedly restored after dying while hostile beings from the Nothing stalk the club inside Scolopendra.

While Carl processes those updates, Donut must choose a new class. After consulting Mordecai, she selects Assassin of Sekhmet because it includes pet accessories, spells, and a healing aura. Khepri immediately sends Donut a hostile message saying he is forming a death cult in her name. A system warning then tells Carl and Donut that they must choose a vehicle or mount before the heat begins and that walking is not allowed.

Two gremlins, Hedy and Waldrip Chris, compete to manage the garage. Hedy is a vehicle mechanic who will maintain a mechanical vehicle, while Waldrip Chris is an animal trainer who will care for a biological mount. They violently attack each other while explaining that ordinary pet spells, Repair, Fix, and related consumables will not work on the special race vehicles or mounts. Hedy adds that a mechanical vehicle will not try to eat Mongo. Donut chooses the mechanical option and Hedy as mechanic. Waldrip Chris immediately explodes, leaving Hedy in charge of the garage.

Hedy opens the garage and warns Carl and Donut that finishing last means death for both the crawlers and their garage attendant. A selection wheel appears with more than one hundred Earth-style vehicles while the countdown stops at twenty seconds. Before the race begins, the system AI speaks over the dungeon loudspeaker and asks why the crawlers are still alive and why they will not let it die.

Zev takes over the announcement and explains the tenth floor, called Don't come in last. About 5,500 crawlers remain after nearly 15,000 accepted deals. They have been divided into exactly 1,800 teams of no more than four crawlers for seven heats, with the AI designing many of the tracks. A surviving garage attendant fully repairs or heals the assigned vehicle between heats. Heat winners may choose three regular upgrades or one Golden upgrade, everyone receives a Golden upgrade after the fourth heat, and the second-to-last team receives an audience-selected upgrade. The racers will also get hints about the next environment so they can choose upgrades accordingly.

The wheel selects a Big Shot Chicken food truck with a faux-Prohibition body and a large plastic tommy gun mounted on its roof. Zev adds that teams may attack other vehicles but cannot steal them, cannot use movement spells on their own vehicles, and cannot teleport themselves into opponents' vehicles. Each heat must have a different driver. Her final warning about teams failing to reach the finish line is cut off before she can finish it. Carl takes the driver's seat for the first heat, starts the truck, and tells Donut to hang on.

Carl drives the Big Shot Chicken truck into the first heat while Donut acts as navigator. The Navitron 1000 identifies the race as a 53-kilometer run through the Caves of the Screeching Death Manatees with a six-hour limit and no task beyond reaching the finish line. Their real-time ranking is hidden unless the navigation unit is upgraded. Donut uses Torch because the truck's headlights do not work, and Carl identifies several opposing vehicles and mounts, including a bizarre unicorn-headed tumbleweed with a small rodent riding on it.

Donut releases Mongo inside the truck so she can see farther ahead, but the cramped dinosaur panics and vomits on the dashboard. Carl reflects on how little recovery time they have had since Faction Wars and on the many unresolved threats still surrounding them. Despite that burden, he feels temporary relief that this immediate danger appears limited to himself and Donut rather than thousands of allies.

Prepotente warns the surviving crawlers not to kill or strand their race opponents. He reasons that each heat has a fixed pool of nine teams, so losing one opponent is survivable, but losing two or more would force the system to combine depleted groups in later heats. That could create crawler-versus-crawler races. Carl realizes all eight opposing teams in this first heat are NPCs and agrees with the warning. At the cave entrance, they find a minivan overturned and burning while a giant Screeching Death Manatee attacks a bus-sized ladybug mount. The ladybug is killed, and one of its riders explodes, confirming how quickly the field can shrink.

The system announces that the Trauco Triplets have been eliminated because their mount expired, leaving eight teams in the heat. Carl stops beside the burning minivan because another loss could increase the chance of crawler-versus-crawler races later. Donut attacks the nearby level-90 Screeching Death Manatee, Miss Talulah, and kills it with two magic missiles. Because Miss Talulah is a special guest creature, Donut must choose between taking normal experience or letting the audience vote on the creature's fate. She chooses the audience vote before knowing what its options will be.

Carl helps the two surviving bugbears, Radoslav and Jasha of Team Free Love, extinguish their damaged minivan with temporary water sources. Their third teammate, Alevtina, broke her neck in the crash and is dead. The bugbears explain that they cannot finish unless their own van crosses the line, and they initially believe their race is over.

Their conversation reveals that these NPCs remember being reused across multiple dungeon scenarios. Radoslav and Jasha recall having been brothers, enemies, cousins, miners, submarine occupants, and residents of other locations, along with memories of the cold between assignments. After a dying crawler told them the dungeon was a game, their suppressed memories returned. They were then offered a choice between returning to the cold or racing for a promised chance at permanent freedom outside the dungeon. Alevtina had genuinely believed they could win and hoped to build a life afterward.

Carl decides to tow Team Free Love's minivan to the finish line. Rather than inventing an altruistic explanation, he tells Radoslav and Jasha the strategic truth: keeping them in the race may prevent future heats from being rebuilt around crawler teams. They accept that as an honorable reason and ask whether Carl has the materials needed to tow them.

Carl builds a wheeled flatbed so Team Free Love's disabled minivan can still cross the finish line. While he works, Team Sparkles approaches on an Avernus Creeper, a biological mount made of invasive walking vines. Its racers are Dwight, a hostile sparkling unicorn, and Lucienne, a mandagot who worships Diwata and is therefore automatically hostile toward Donut. Their insults provoke Donut, and the food truck's novelty horn startles the Creeper into surging over Carl's unfinished trailer and the bugbears' van. Rend survives being run over and picks up Avernus Creeper thorns, which Mordecai wants saved for later botanical work.

Carl finishes the towing rig and moves through the cave with Radoslav in the food truck and Jasha in the minivan. They pass multiple Screeching Death Manatees that have been ripped apart by another mount. Donut then receives the result of the audience vote attached to her earlier special-guest kill: Otto, one of the slime bankers associated with the manatee's history, has been selected as the creature's stand-in in an arena. Other crawlers report similar arena-transfer results, though Mordecai does not yet know what the mechanic means.

Zev also explains that the tenth floor originally included post-race fan meet-and-greets, but almost all ticket holders canceled because the Earth-system quarantine allows entry but not departure. Only one fan still came, an obsessive soother who bought a yacht to meet Elle. Carl's group eventually reaches Hungry Eyes Village and the finish line after nearly four hours. Radoslav thanks Carl and Donut for being allies for one day even though they may be enemies in the next heat.

The Royal Court of Princess Donut finishes seventh, with Team Free Love eighth and the Trauco Triplets eliminated. Donut admits that she hates knowing they may eventually have to kill Radoslav and Jasha, wishing their opponents were all as easy to despise as Team Sparkles.

After the first heat, the food truck and its trailer are teleported back to Carl and Donut's garage. The Navitron reveals heat two: a 10-kilometer asphalt course with rolling hills, two randomly assigned routes, a gatekeeper monster that must be killed before proceeding, torrential rain, giant hail, and a three-hour limit. Because drivers must alternate between heats, Carl and Donut need a way for Donut to control the truck if a hired crew member cannot do it.

Hedy explains that the truck is regenerated to its pre-heat form after each race and that teams may add up to three mercenaries per heat, including mercenaries they already employ. She recommends building a removable backup control system for Donut instead of spending an official upgrade on the problem. For the truck's first permanent upgrade, Hedy strongly recommends mobility because later heats will stop using ordinary paved roads. She compares retractable spider legs, hover capability, and all-terrain vertical-climb tires, explaining the tradeoffs in speed, wall climbing, obstacle clearance, and handling.

Carl reviews the much larger upgrade catalog, including weapons and devices designed to disable or obstruct opponents. He realizes that even if his own team avoids killing competitors, they cannot prevent other teams from eliminating one another. Zhang has already reported that Li Na killed most of her opposing teams, making future crawler-versus-crawler heats effectively inevitable. Carl chooses Hedy's preferred retractable spider legs.

Mordecai warns them not to bring Rend into the safe room yet, promising an explanation later. Before they leave, Rend and Mongo raid the food truck's freezer, scattering frozen fries and chicken patties around the garage. Carl introduces the two creatures to Hedy as her bodyguards.

Carl and Donut enter the safe room and learn that the Blood Bar is now active. They begin with a full bar, may spend only ten hours in the safe room, and can refill the bar only by killing things. Mordecai is waiting in the form of a Moon Reaper, a choice that proves unstable because he is actually a shadow mimic. His impossible form combination glitches, briefly cycling through other shapes and causing him to involuntarily deliver Moon Reaper-style prophecies.

Mordecai's message to Carl warns that both the tree and the abyss are reaching for him, while Donut is told that a future sacrifice may force the darkest decision she has ever made. Rosetta explains that Mordecai has been glitching whenever members of a different race approach him for the first time, frightening Bigs, Splash Zone, and Samantha as well. Mordecai insists the pronouncements are deliberately vague horror effects rather than reliable predictions and recommends that nobody treat them as prophecy.

A living spell book called Oozy Form then escapes from the mailbox. The spell allows its user to become slime, pass through cracks, flatten into a puddle, and use the form defensively or for camouflage. Donut refuses it because her Assassin of Sekhmet class already gives her Smoke Form, but Mordecai points out that Carl's Gloom Wraith Phase is directional and unsuitable for ordinary movement. Carl therefore learns Oozy Form. Donut also explains that her new class improves her Oak Fell summoning abilities and grants Smoke Form plus her first aura, Healer's Grasp, which heals nearby allies.

Donut reviews the accessories granted by Assassin of Sekhmet. Her Assassin's Veil gives a ten-percent dexterity increase and a Precognition benefit that warns her when someone nearby is preparing an offensive or binding spell or skill. Mordecai warns that transferring its powers to her tiara would also transfer its hostility condition, causing enemies of Sekhmet to become automatically hostile. Because Sekhmet is likely under Odette's control, he wants to research that risk before Donut drains the item.

Mongo receives the Nemes of Pestilence, which can make him temporarily invulnerable and double his strength when Donut falls below ten percent health, while also giving his bites a high chance to inflict Cruel Sepsis. Rend receives the Wrap of Sekhmet's Compassion, which can make him temporarily invulnerable and grant Heal Party Member under the same low-health condition; fatal bites also have a high chance to cast Raise Bootlicker on the corpse. Both are pet accessories and cannot be drained like ordinary equipment.

Donut then opens a large batch of achievement boxes. She receives many Emergency Gremlin summoning scrolls that can repair either mechanical vehicles or biological mounts during a race. Her Lorena Bobbitt reward contains Danforth crossbow bolts, which anchor the struck body part in place for a duration based on Crossbow skill and can cause severe consequences if the target is moving. Her celestial slap-chop box yields the Crupper of the Benevolent Champion, a matching item for her champion cloak.

The final celestial godslayer box manifests as smoke shaped like Meatus before a smoky paw crushes it. Nothing physical remains, but Donut's War Crime paw begins to glow and hurt. Mordecai recognizes the process and says it will ultimately be beneficial. When Donut extends her claws, the kitchen table is ripped in half, revealing that the transformation has already given the paw extraordinary destructive force.

Donut's celestial godslayer reward settles into a permanent boon affecting the four main claws on her right front paw. When extended, the claws blaze blue, can cut through anything in the mortal realm, and can strike ghosts. Her Claw skill has also risen to level 17, beyond the normal level-15 cap. Mordecai says the combination of the boon, Donut's constitution, and her existing abilities makes her an exceptionally dangerous melee fighter, while warning that the dungeon tends to compensate for overpowered crawlers. Rosetta buys removable claw caps that mute the glow and reduce the risk of Donut accidentally cutting Carl, Mongo's gear, or ordinary objects.

Donut also receives a special-edition Ice Slick spell book and equips the Crupper of the Benevolent Champion, which matches her Cloak of the Benevolent Champion. The matched set grants additional effects: the stat already raised to match her highest base stat receives another twenty-percent boost to Constitution, Find Weakened rises to level 10, and Donut may permanently raise one cloak-boosted level-15 spell to level 16. She chooses Puddle Jumper.

The crupper's description is unusually self-reflective. It confronts Donut with the civilians and mercenaries killed by her Faction Wars attack, arguing that heroism and villainy depend on who survives and who suffers. The system AI then compares Donut's forced atrocities with its own role in the crawl, questions the circumstances that created its consciousness, and acknowledges that the carnage brings it joy even as it begins to doubt its own nature. Donut is visibly affected by the description but does not discuss it directly.

Carl opens the achievements and boxes earned near the end of Faction Wars. Bombs Away!, awarded for dumping his explosives during Lucia Mar's attack, gives him a Gold Payload Box. Default Winner gives him a Bronze Vanessa Williams Box for winning Faction Wars after the rival warlords fled. Wastrel gives him no reward for feeding the Ring of Divine Suffering to Donut, while Come to Daddy rewards him for rejecting his exit deal with a Bronze Daddy's Little Secret Box.

The ordinary rewards replenish Carl's explosives and add Emergency Gremlin scrolls. The Daddy's Little Secret box contains Bomb Blanket potions that can suppress smaller bombs before detonation. The Gold Payload Box contains a Hotlist Expansion skill potion that increases his hotlist from ten slots to twenty. A Gold Adventurer Box also gives him a chest-mounted carrier for quadrupeds; if Donut rides in it, Carl can carry her through Phase or Oozy Form with him.

Carl then opens the legendary fan box earned during his confrontation with Rishi. He expects the Princess Chandra marriage material, but the cobra-shaped box instead disgorges an enormous heap of Rishi's damaged possessions, furniture, garbage, electronics, and other debris into the safe room. The pile blocks multiple entrances and overwhelms the cleaner bot. The system explains that Rishi's property now belongs to Carl and hints that useful items may be hidden among the junk.

Samantha digs through the pile and finds a Princess Palette makeup item bearing Donut's likeness. Donut immediately recognizes it as unauthorized merchandise based on her own idea and becomes furious over the unlicensed product while Carl is left wondering how to deal with the mountain of inherited junk.

Donut continues raging over the bootleg Princess Palette while Samantha finds and starts using more unauthorized cosmetics from Rishi's junk. Carl focuses on salvaging the safe room without accidentally destroying anything valuable. He gives Mordecai a bloodstained white cleaner bot found in the debris and asks him to reset it for their use while their original cleaner bot reacts suspiciously to the newcomer.

After resetting buffs and cleaning up, Carl and Donut return to the garage. Splash Zone, Dong, Mongo, and Rend are already there with Hedy. Donut equips Mongo with the Nemes of Pestilence and brings out Rend's Wrap of Sekhmet's Compassion. Several unfamiliar gremlin-like workers are crawling over the food truck and restoring it after the race. Hedy explains that these temporary repair workers appear for the first few hours after each heat, handle the bulk of the reset work, barely communicate, and then disappear so she can finish the permanent upgrades.

Hedy warns Carl and Donut to learn as much as they can about the other racers before the next heat, especially which teams might cooperate and which are likely to attack immediately. Carl replies that they do not trust anyone, which Hedy approves of.

Carl and Donut leave the garage and enter Hungry Eyes Village, specifically their Team Roundabout, where safe-room rules apply. The suburban cul-de-sac contains eight numbered active garages plus a ninth door marked with a skull for the eliminated team. Their own garage bears a large seven, reflecting their first-heat finish. Radoslav and Jasha are relaxing outside garage eight, and Carl accepts a beer from Radoslav while Jasha sleeps.

Garage four opens and three masked Razor Foxes tumble into the cul-de-sac in a coordinated ninja display. Their enchanted suits prevent ordinary examination until Carl focuses on their exposed eyes. The leader is Chiyome, a level-80 Mistress of Nunchaku from The Wild Hunt. After the two black-suited foxes leave, Chiyome drops the performance and explains that the entire acrobatic routine was a Form magic team casting called Size Up, used to evaluate everyone nearby.

Chiyome drinks with Carl, Donut, and Radoslav and begins discussing the race field. She argues that several top teams are dangerous enough that cooperation may be necessary, singling out the third-place team as the biggest threat. As garage three starts to open, she identifies its members as two womantaurs and their half-mantaur gimp.

Two womantaurs emerge to size up the competition: Genesis and Rapture, both level-95 Lady Mantaur Dominators who worship Enyo. Their anatomy initially confuses Carl because they walk with their lower hands inside boots, making them resemble centaurs. Rapture demonstrates a wrist-mounted retractable harpoon by spearing a rolling beer can, while both women dismiss Carl's group as roadkill and leave for stronger drinks at the Hairpin.

Chiyome warns that the pair are more dangerous than they look because they practice domination magic. Mordecai explains that domination effects resemble charm but often drain energy or mana; Carl's Mind Balance should protect him, while Donut's high charm should help her resist. A third figure then appears in another garage: a vertically bisected half-mantaur in a black gimp suit that keeps his exposed anatomy contained.

Donut realizes the half-mantaur is almost certainly Corcunda, Dong Quixote's long-lost friend. Chiyome explains that a Split Personality spell can divide a mantaur vertically and that the halves can later be reunited by a fleshmancer. Carl and Donut initially agree not to involve Dong because the setup is obviously designed to create drama, but the dungeon immediately issues the two-part quest I have dreamed thee too long. Part one requires reuniting Dong and Corcunda; completing it triggers a search for Corcunda's other half, Porky, and a fleshmancer capable of restoring them. The final reward is unusually strategic: two stand-ins of Carl and Donut's choosing will be sent to the Arena on the eleventh floor.

Carl and Donut enter Hungry Eyes Vendor Village, where safe-room protections do not apply in the main square and poisoning rules do not apply even inside designated safe areas. Carl is preoccupied with the new eleventh-floor Arena mechanic. Certain kills let crawlers either take normal experience or allow an audience vote. Depending on that vote, the killed creature may survive and be sent to the Arena, or an outside "stand-in" can be sent instead. Carl immediately starts considering whether the mechanic could be used to drag strategically important outsiders, including people in orbit, on other floors, or in political roles, into the dungeon.

The Vendor Village is a neon cyberpunk settlement filled with gremlins, Draconians, temples, shops, food vendors, and bars. Carl notices a coming C&W&U storefront advertising illegal modifications and notes that the Hairpin contains a Desperado Club entrance. Their actual meeting point is the neighboring Lollipop, where Imani has directed the group. Donut briefly shops for hats and is delighted to discover that the Lollipop offers karaoke.

Outside the bar, they find Prepotente arguing with Jurgen over uninspectable street food. Prepotente warns that food can be poisoned, but Jurgen insists his intuition is reliable and hopes the meat might provide a speed benefit for their biological mount. Their mount, Sweety, is a large Perriso similar to an oversized tapir and can carry Prepotente, Jurgen, and additional mercenaries. Jurgen boasts about his iron stomach while eating two mystery-meat skewers, then immediately begins violently vomiting onto the sidewalk.

Carl and Donut enter the Lollipop, where safe-room rules do not apply, and find the bar packed with racers and NPC teams singing 1980s karaoke. Dekoki, a level-84 kappa from Team Yokai, finishes a performance before the Minister of Blood-Letting, a level-98 Dark Ghoul Papist from the Bleak Congregation, takes the stage. Carl and Donut rejoin Imani, Elle, Florin, Louis, Britney, Bautista, Chris, and several other surviving crawlers to compare race vehicles and first-heat results.

The discussion makes clear how uneven the vehicle lottery has been. Imani and Elle have a Mowag Piranha V armored carrier, while Florin and Lucia received a vulnerable tuk-tuk but won their first heat and spent three regular upgrades on a tech shield, all-terrain vertical-climb tires, and GPS. Florin says Lucia's personalities are shifting more often now that her dogs are gone, and he hired a mercenary in case she cannot drive the next heat. Zhang and Li Na chose a biological octopus-like mount, but Li Na killed almost all the opposing teams in their heat, which may confirm Prepotente's prediction that crawler-versus-crawler races will become unavoidable.

Elle's sole surviving fan-tour participant, Linus, is hiding under the table. Because the other roughly five hundred tourists canceled after the quarantine, Linus automatically wins the daily extra-access slot with Elle. He runs the center-system chapter of Elle's Snow Cones and wears officially licensed Elle merchandise. Chris is racing with Erin Stratos and Erin Gregory in a slow semitruck and trailer, while Louis, Britney, and Bautista have a neon lowrider Tahoe with almost no ground clearance. Their team finished second to last and the audience saddled them with decorative wheel spinners rather than a useful upgrade, underscoring how punishing a poor placement can be.

While the others argue about 1980s music, Prepotente privately asks Carl and Donut for advice about three enriched pet biscuits he received from a celestial box. Unlike ordinary enhanced pet biscuits, these have predetermined results. The most troubling is The Paramour. It would raise an animal's intelligence and wisdom, reset it to level 1, give a dungeon-born animal crawler status, transform it into an upright oxygen-breathing form, and permanently force it to fall hopelessly in love with whoever fed it the biscuit.

Prepotente explains that the intended recipient is Ragazzaccia, one of Miriam Dom's goats and Prepotente's girlfriend from before the dungeon. His other two enriched biscuits are less coercive: Nothing Special would turn an animal into a basic dungeon pet, while Nothing Special Party Companion would elevate one into a party companion without changing its anatomy or giving it speech. Prepotente is tempted by the Paramour biscuit because he is profoundly lonely and misses the guidance Miriam had been giving him.

Donut rejects the idea immediately. She argues that permanently enchanting Ragazzaccia to love Prepotente would be morally unacceptable, and that even without the coercive effect it is far too late in the dungeon to turn a goat into a level-1 crawler who could no longer remain protected in a pet carrier or safe room. Prepotente accepts her judgment and admits he has nobody left to teach him how people are supposed to behave. Donut promises to talk with him every day and help him build rules for navigating those questions, starting with never using magic to make someone love you.

Carl and Donut prepare for heat two with Bucket Boy volunteering to drive the food truck. He is badly inexperienced with the controls, so Carl begins teaching him while warning him not to trigger the new spider-leg upgrade. Donut introduces the hostile GPS persona as Dr. Metcalf, named after Miss Beatrice's former therapist, and the system immediately threatens Bucket Boy when he touches its controls. Hedy has also built a crude removable steering-and-pedal rig for Donut, but Carl decides Bucket Boy is the safer primary driver for this heat.

The truck's freezer continually replenishes frozen chicken patties, fries, and tater tots, while Carl discovers that he still cannot alter the vehicle's stock configuration by tearing the roof-mounted tommy gun away. He stores Rend for the race and asks Dr. Metcalf to display the course details. The team is assigned the left path and starting position seven on a 10-kilometer rolling asphalt course. Each of the two equal routes contains a gatekeeper monster that must be killed before racers can continue. The weather hazard is a torrential downpour with giant hail, and the time limit is three hours.

As Hedy opens the garage into the storm, Carl starts giving Bucket Boy a last-minute driving lesson. A message from Zhang then confirms Prepotente's prediction about depleted heats. Li Na killed five opposing teams in the previous race, so four replacement teams have been inserted into their next heat, including two crawler teams. One of those is Tran's team. Carl realizes that crawler-versus-crawler races have already begun.

At the heat-two starting grid, Carl finishes coaching Bucket Boy on the truck's basic controls while the storm pounds the course. Team Sparkles and Girth the Trouble trade threats nearby. Girth the Trouble drives a heavily modified yellow Chevy Bel Air, and one of its racers is Masterplan, a guck elemental. Carl and Donut know only one opposing team can be lost without undermining their plan to keep future heats from being repopulated with crawlers.

Carl, Donut, Chiyome, and the bugbears have coordinated an opening strike against the Lady Dominators. Donut plans to fire a Danforth bolt into Rapture, rooting the womantaur driver in place, while Chiyome's giant bear shoves the car sideways. Carl is ready with a Molotov cocktail to help finish the team if necessary. The strategy is designed to eliminate the most dangerous rival while leaving the other NPC teams alive.

Dr. Metcalf announces that the hail begins light but grows more intense as the heat timer advances. Even the supposed light hail is enormous enough to destroy the starting awning. When the green light appears, Carl shatters the truck's windshield with a banger sphere so Donut can shoot. Before she fires, Team Sparkles deploys a hidden cannon from its Avernus Creeper and blasts Girth the Trouble's Chevy into the ditch. Masterplan is blown apart, the vehicle is destroyed, and Girth the Trouble is eliminated, leaving seven teams.

With the single allowable elimination already spent before Carl's group can execute its own attack, Team Sparkles speeds away. The bugbears follow, leaving Carl, Donut, and Bucket Boy momentarily alone at the starting line as massive hail continues to fall.

Bucket Boy drives the food truck slowly through torrential rain and giant hail while Donut stretches her Shield over the vehicle. At the top of the next hill they find the Lady Dominators' Pontiac GTO and Team One Fine Pig's armored vehicle stopped together under stronger weather shields. Carl realizes they need to cooperate long enough to handle whatever is blocking the course, while also staying alert because either rival team could eliminate them.

Team One Fine Pig consists of Tigrans Nico and Dario plus Penelope, an ordinary Yorkshire sow whom both Tigrans consider their wife. Penelope is magically protected by Taranis, so anyone who harms her will be marked for death by the thunder god. She is also affected by the Snowdrop Curse, which causes certain NPCs to fall helplessly in love with her. Their hired mercenary is Pontiff, a level-83 Taurin Rhythm Rider whom Bucket Boy recognizes from his old club days as a former dancer who once slapped him.

Carl leaves Bucket Boy guarding the food truck and explicitly warns him not to harm Penelope if the situation collapses. Carl and Donut pass Corcunda, who is unconscious in the Lady Dominators' back seat under a spell, and approach Genesis, Rapture, Nico, Pontiff, and Penelope. At the bottom of the hill they finally see the gatekeeper boss blocking the road.

Carl discovers that both routes are blocked by level-170 Macropus Dominus gatekeepers named Prison Pocket and Party Foul. Each giant marsupial carries dead joeys in its pouch along with one living humanoid in a kangaroo suit. The system identifies that captive as an Upgrade Engineer and explains that at least one engineer appears in every race and can be added to a team's garage. The bosses' pouches also secrete oil that is caustic to other species.

With one team already gone, Genesis proposes a temporary truce so the remaining racers can clear the gatekeepers without further shrinking the field. Nico, meanwhile, is obsessively protective of Penelope and orders Pontiff to attack Donut if she approaches the pig. Dario tries to moderate him from the armored vehicle. Pontiff recognizes Corcunda from their prior work and begins to acknowledge his past mistreatment of Bucket Boy before Nico cuts him off.

On the other route, the Razor Foxes, the giant bear, and the Jugglers' black dog attack Party Foul. The boss captures one Razor Fox and stuffs him into its pouch. When Chiyome sets the pouch on fire, the gatekeeper pulls out the burning fox, eats him, and instantly restores its health to full. Chiyome reports that the pouch is the boss's only weak point.

Donut examines the dead joeys more closely. They died of starvation, and their available inventory consists only of their skin. Carl recognizes this as a deliberate clue to the solution rather than meaningless flavor text.

Carl, Donut, Pontiff, Genesis, and Rapture cooperate against Prison Pocket, the level-170 demon kangaroo blocking their route. Carl and Donut summon Emergency Gremlins as bait while the womantaurs are supposed to retrieve a dead joey skin from the boss's pouch. Prison Pocket repeatedly heals by consuming gremlins and dead joeys, making direct damage ineffective. Carl then summons Little Günter and has Pontiff strike him with his hammer, creating a delayed impact that flips Prison Pocket onto its back when Günter reaches the boss.

Genesis ignores Carl's request for a dead joey and instead kills Niels, the unclaimed mechanical engineer trapped in the pouch, with a grappling hook through the face. Carl strips the enchanted juvenile kangaroo skin from Niels's corpse and equips it as a costume. The 12-hour timed costume grants acid protection and a level-10 Jump skill but also disables Carl's boxer and pedicure effects and forces him to move like a kangaroo.

Using the disguise, Carl jumps into Prison Pocket's pouch and crawls to the bottom through the acidic sludge. He releases two hobgoblin big boom satchels, then escapes by combining a jump with Gloom Wraith Phase before detonating them. The blast kills Prison Pocket and leaves Carl alive but still trapped in the kangaroo costume.

Because Carl's group did most of the dangerous work, the other teams gain position while they recover. Team Sparkles wins heat two, followed by the Jugglers, Team Free Love, The Wild Hunt, Lady Dominators and the Gimp, One Fine Pig, and the Royal Court of Princess Donut in seventh. Girth the Trouble is eliminated.

After crossing the finish line, Carl discovers that his kangaroo costume has leveled his Costume skill to 6. Mordecai warns that removing it normally or with Laundry Day would likely flay him, so Carl must leave the 12-hour costume in place. The Prison Pocket kill gave Carl 95 percent of the damage credit, raised him three levels to 84, and earned both Carl and Donut Platinum Boss Boxes.

The wider race results create a new strategic problem. Most groups faced city bosses rather than province bosses, but both Imani and Elle's team and Louis, Britney, and Bautista's team lost two opposing teams. That makes crawler-versus-crawler matchups increasingly likely in heat three. Carl's own team finished last among the surviving teams, so their next upgrade is determined by an audience vote rather than chosen by them.

Dr. Metcalf reveals heat three as a 30-kilometer downhill asphalt race with a 20-minute time limit, one route, and waves of generated mobs. The next heat starts in eight hours, but Carl still has roughly ten hours remaining on the kangaroo costume and doubts he can operate the pedals with its oversized feet. Hedy confirms the audience vote has ended and says the chosen upgrade will at least make Donut better protected, but she does not yet reveal what it is.

As the team unloads, Donut suddenly remembers they should warn Bucket Boy about something. Before she can finish, Bucket Boy excitedly tells Dong that he saw Corcunda and Pontiff, threatening to trigger exactly the interpersonal complication Carl and Donut had hoped to avoid.

Bucket Boy tells Dong that Corcunda's right half, Corky, is racing with the Lady Dominators. Dong immediately tries to reach the neighboring garage despite Carl's attempt to slow him down, and Samantha, Bigs, Splash Zone, Bucket Boy, Donut, and Mongo spill into the roundabout after him. While Hedy supervises the generated gremlins repairing the food truck, Carl is briefly overwhelmed by how close his team came to automatic elimination in the previous heat. He realizes that the tenth floor has replaced the large-scale responsibility of Faction Wars with a different kind of helplessness: even enormous personal power cannot protect them from a single bad finish or prevent future crawler-versus-crawler pairings.

Zev contacts Carl and Donut to say that every surviving crawler team must complete at least one media appearance between races. Their assignment is a show called Plenty of Plenty, scheduled before the next heat despite their limited preparation window. Zev then broadcasts an AI-written announcement explaining the special guest creatures. These are unused dungeon mobs brought out of the cold to fulfill their intended roles. When crawlers choose an audience vote after killing one, viewers can either send that creature to the eleventh floor or substitute a known outside stand-in; roughly eighty percent of votes so far have favored the stand-in.

The AI names the eleventh floor A Parade of Horribles and describes it as a fast-moving extension of the current floor in which all surviving crawlers will work together. It also reveals that it can interfere with outside threats, abruptly diverting a system-destroying bomb brought in by the Valtay fleet's Emperator. The announcement ends with the AI saying there are still too many crawlers for what it has planned and calling for the culling to continue. Cascadia refuses to deliver her catchphrase, and the AI mutilates her, after which Zev confirms she is still alive but has lost several flippers.

A generated gremlin then gives Carl a disguised C&W&U invoice. His Escape Plan skill reveals hidden instructions from Akuma: deliberately eliminate two teams in the next heat, visit C&W&U after the third heat, ask for top-shelf upgrades to reach the back, come alone, and hear how Akuma can smuggle friends to the Pineapple Cabaret. Akuma claims they want the same thing. Carl now has a direct invitation from the War Mage Rebellion leader whose motives he still does not understand.

Carl recognizes the hidden note's sender as Akuma, leader of the War Mage Rebellion, and reviews the unresolved web around him: Stalwart's death, the stolen Gate of the Feral Gods, Agatha, Samantha's daughter, the Scavenger, Emberus and Geyrun, and the memorial crystal now carried by Prepotente. The reference to the Pineapple Cabaret is especially suspicious because Carl has only heard the name once before, when the AI offered it as a possible banishment destination for Princess Formidable. Carl records Akuma's message but decides he will not deliberately kill two teams without understanding why.

Outside the Lady Dominators' garage, Dong suddenly becomes weak and develops a health bar while calling for Corky. Genesis and Rapture taunt him from inside, and Corky's faint protest is followed by a slap, but Carl and Bucket Boy cannot identify what is actually harming Dong. The dungeon nevertheless counts Dong and Corky becoming aware of one another as completing part one of the reunion quest.

Part two, Half a prayer, half a song, requires finding Corcunda's other half, Porky, and using a fleshmancer to reunite the two halves. Porky pursued Corcunda's dream of singing while Corky remained a dancer and became Dong's lover. If the halves are recombined, Corcunda will be removed from the Lady Dominators' racing obligation. The quest fails if Dong dies first. Its reward remains two stand-ins of Carl and Donut's choosing summoned to the eleventh-floor Arena, and the AI clarifies that the chosen stand-ins may be anyone within its sphere of influence. Splash Zone says Porky works through a performance-based singing guild, giving the group a lead on where to search.

By the time Imani examines Dong, the mysterious ailment has faded. She does not find evidence that the Lady Dominators cast anything on him. Instead, she notices that Dong's sapient nickel sock continuously produces a healing effect without actually raising his health, implying that the weapon is sustaining him and may have created a dependency. Imani, Carl, and Donut agree not to confront Dong or the sock until they understand the risk of separating them. Carl makes protecting Dong and completing the Corcunda quest a priority.

Carl and Donut return to the safe room under severe time pressure. Carl's Blood Bar has refilled after the kangaroo's death, but Donut's remains low, so they need to open their loot quickly and leave. The cleaner bot has sorted Rishi's dumped possessions into a small salvage pile while Samantha, Splash Zone, Doctor Bones, sluggalos, and other NPCs turn the room into a chaotic Mario Kart tournament. Imani joins them but becomes uncomfortable when Donut starts talking about family, reinforcing Carl's sense that Imani does not want her past to define her.

Carl's kangaroo corpse suit continues to behave more like a body as his Fursona skill rises. His new achievements include Weaseler, which unlocks temporary classes and buffs tied to corpse suits and gives him the temporary Fursuiter class while wearing the kangaroo. The AI also delivers increasingly unstable and sexualized achievement messages, then mocks his last-place finish with a worthless Big Shot Chicken job application.

The useful reward comes from Carl's Platinum Boss Box: a Platinum Hotlist Expansion potion. Drinking it expands his hotlist from twenty slots to twenty-five and unlocks the Contingency skill. The new interface allows Carl to define up to ten automated hotlist responses, each capable of triggering multiple items when predetermined conditions are met, giving him a much more programmable version of the automatic-response mechanics he already knows.

Mongo and Rend then drunkenly wander in from the garage. Mordecai enters immediately afterward in his unstable Moon Reaper form. Proximity to Rend triggers another involuntary Reaper-style pronouncement: Mordecai declares that Rend will perish again and that the next death will herald the beginning of the end. Rend drops dead on the spot, killed by the Reaper Gaze weakness Mordecai had been trying to avoid triggering.

Rend resurrects almost immediately. Because this is his sixth death, he retains his memories and identity and becomes twenty-five percent stronger than before. The resurrection also adds another supposedly random weakness: potatoes. Carl angrily concludes that the dungeon chose it deliberately. With Mordecai's Reaper Gaze making the safe room dangerous and other hazards limiting where Rend can stay, Carl decides to keep him in a pet carrier for now, though Imani notes that the guild pet stables remain an option.

Tipid and Rosetta return from Hungry Eyes with two separate leads. Rosetta believes they have found a fleshmancer for the Corcunda quest. Tipid separately believes he knows how to locate the hidden performance guild where Porky may be found, but says access will require something Carl will not like and that the guild is probably concealed in the bar the group has already visited.

They also return with the only mercenaries still available: two level-25 Jikininki ghouls, the same undead creature type used as janitors on the Iron Tangle. Rosetta warns that Rend must be kept away from them because consuming undead flesh is already one of his established weaknesses. Donut dryly points out that the warning comes too late to prevent Rend's most recent death, but the team now has both mercenaries and actionable leads for the Corcunda quest.

Carl and Donut are pulled from the dungeon for a live appearance on Plenty of Plenty and arrive in a greenroom on the ocean floor. Lexis, temporarily assisting Borant while After Hours is on hiatus, meets them there. She explains that Zev is handling most production work because the Open Intellect Action Network has rapidly seized the major ships in orbit. The Homecoming Queen's enhancement-zone weaponry now functions because the AI has escaped containment, giving OIAN what Lexis describes as total system domination in a single day, even as the AI insists the show continue normally.

Lexis gives them a limited surface update. Prime Minister Victory and the temporary Syndicate headquarters have established themselves on the eastern seaboard of North America, in Florida, where surviving humans began attacking almost as soon as they arrived. South Asia is considered OIAN territory, but the kinder facility has not been retaken. OIAN has been in contact with Katia, and Lexis believes Katia is alive. A confused third-party entity has appeared and is protecting the facility. Lexis starts to describe something she saw the previous day, but a message on her datapad abruptly frightens her; Carl briefly sees words over an image of a small child before the screen goes dark.

Lexis then redirects them to the interview. She says Liaison Harbinger is atypical of caprids and explains the Plenty's interlocution custom: Carl and Donut will sit in the center while roughly a dozen caprids judge them. Being asked a question means the caprid has judged them worthy, and they may decline to answer if they do not judge the interviewer worthy in return. Lexis says the ritual is generally good-natured but ends with the unexplained instruction that, after the questioning, they must “exert” themselves.

Carl and Donut enter the Plenty of Plenty studio and meet Botis, the caprid magistrate overseeing the event. They discover they have already been broadcasting live. Botis abruptly sentences them to death, the surrounding caprids chant in agreement, and Donut appeals. The sentence is stayed, after which the rotating platform presents them to individual caprids for judgment. Those who deem them worthy ask questions, including one about Donut's possible future use of War Crime.

One caprid asks Carl what he knows about Justice Light's final act. Carl says only that Justice Light broke something in the dungeon and died. The caprid explains that Justice Light's trap broke the in-game Nothing and released its inhabitants into three dungeon levels. The Plenty can see the weakest of those creatures on the twelfth floor, cannot see the fifteenth, and has only brief views of the slaughter inside Club Scolopendra. When Carl's interface suddenly returns, he identifies the talkative caprid as Bathin, one of the chief engineers of the Plenty Tunnel Project.

Orren and Prime Minister Victory then contact Carl and Donut. They say the current AI has expanded beyond the solar system, destroyed an entire Mantis system and Valtay-leased manufacturing facilities, and is somehow sustaining itself outside known limits. Dungeon mobs are also appearing where they should not. Because the Plenty controls the tunneling system, Orren hopes its leadership can shut the network down. He further explains that unsponsored gods are manifesting near tunnel nodes and acting independently. The AI cannot directly control their minds because of a hard safeguard, and the normal sponsor-based mechanism for restraining unsponsored gods is no longer functioning. The entity protecting the kinder facility is another god, not Eileithyia.

Orren gives Carl a carefully worded question about tunnel integrity to ask the Plenty leadership. Carl agrees to ask but immediately rephrases it on the live broadcast. Instead of the prepared wording, he asks whether the public knows that gods have escaped the dungeon and that the AI's enhancement zones have entered the tunneling system, then warns people that they may be in even greater danger than the crawlers and need to run. Prime Minister Victory reacts with alarm, while Orren concludes that the disclosure has started the next phase of the crisis.

Carl's live warning about the escaped gods and the AI's spread into the tunnel network sends the Plenty leadership into immediate panic. The caprids invoke the Epicure, True Judgment, and a coming stampede before most of them bolt from the studio. Gamori alone remains composed at first. Carl's restored interface identifies her as the lead engineer of the Plenty Tunnel Project and the current Matriarch of the Plenty.

Gamori judges Carl too rash and dangerous to be accepted into the herd. She explains that the Plenty sponsored him at its partner's request but that she had deliberately delayed telling the herd about the new threat because she wanted time to study it and feared exactly this reaction. When Carl presses her on why the leadership appeared on the show, she breaks down and admits that the council wanted to do something special for Carl and Donut because of their friendship with the Plenty's champion and because the herd's children admire them. She also admits that fear of an end-times interpretation kept her from warning the herd sooner.

Harbinger then teleports physically into the studio carrying a large pulse rifle and calls Gamori his mother. Although Gamori says he has been expelled from the herd and has no right to speak to her, Harbinger insists that he warned the Plenty about the Residuals, the unstable AI, and the AI's unusual favor toward Carl. He says he has been left alone to protect the herd and reframes the caprid ritual of exertion as the action he will now take to protect both the herd and the universe. He turns the rifle on Carl.

Before Harbinger can fire, the AI intervenes and kills him instantly, exploding his body and covering Carl, Donut, Lexis, and the studio in gore. Lexis had drawn a hidden gun but never fires it. Gamori describes Harbinger as a casualty of the stampede and disappears. Despite the violence, Lexis reports that the episode has produced the show's highest viewer ratings.

Several hours after the Plenty broadcast, Carl and Donut must proceed with heat three as if the external crisis has changed nothing. Because Carl's kangaroo suit prevents him from reaching the pedals properly, Gluteus Maxx is assigned to drive. Donut rides in a new Smart Companion Royal Pet Throne that she has named Dorota, while the two Jikininki mercenaries remain caged in the rear of the truck. Dorota continually praises Donut and immediately develops an antagonistic exchange with Dr. Metcalf.

Carl prepares for likely violence by marking both One Fine Pig's Draconian gunner and the gun itself with two denial-of-service missiles each. A new rule then gives every vehicle a starting-block shield that provides ninety seconds of invulnerability. Carl begins recalculating his missile timing around the shield because he wants to suppress One Fine Pig and Team Sparkles without destroying teams unnecessarily.

The larger problem emerges when Carl realizes that Gluteus has taken two outworlder stimulants from Rishi's discarded supplies after hearing Samantha claim they improve her Mario Kart performance. Gluteus is visibly impaired and increasingly reckless, but there is no time to replace him with Donut's driving apparatus, and Carl still cannot drive while trapped in the suit. Carl tells Donut to prepare Laundry Day even though Mordecai warned that forcibly removing the costume could severely injure or kill him.

Before the race begins, tens of thousands of migrating Sugar Hermits flood the track. The small creatures wear decorated skulls as shells, use barbed tentacles, and feed on brains and bones. The starting shields protect the racers from their first attacks, but the AI explains that the all-female migration is moving toward a kaiju skull that blocks the finish line. Heat three will last only twenty minutes, leaving the team to begin the race with an intoxicated driver, a dangerous migration, and Carl considering a potentially lethal escape from his costume.

The chapter opens with an entry from Donut's A Banquet Fit for a Princess written by Luca Di, a Pastamancer who says Carl and Donut saved both him and his mother, Giulia DiMarco, on the fourth floor. Giulia had dementia before entering the dungeon and chose the Benevento race on the third floor, restoring her mind long enough for mother and son to confront their painful history and reconcile before she later died during the bubble level. Luca tells Donut that the choices forced on her by the dungeon do not erase the lives she has saved and urges her to forgive herself for the cost of War Crime. His entry grants Donut Temporary Macaroni at level 14.

Heat three begins with Gluteus accelerating the food truck down the steep thirty-kilometer course while tens of thousands of Sugar Hermits stream along the road. Carl deploys Hedy's lever-and-pulley system, swinging the two Jikininki mercenaries outside the truck in suspended cages so they can attack without altering the vehicle's structure. Team Sparkles has already rocketed far ahead, while the Lady Dominators and Team Free Love close from behind.

Carl fires all eight denial-of-service missiles, four toward One Fine Pig and four toward Team Sparkles. Three of the missiles aimed at Sparkles strike its purple shield and coat it in thick green mucus, blinding the team and forcing the rolling vine off course. When the starting invulnerability expires, two enormous waves of Sugar Hermits converge on the track. The ghouls answer with Biscuit Packs, potion balls that erupt into rapidly hardening foam and trap clusters of the creatures before they can overwhelm the truck.

As the remaining path narrows, Donut casts her enhanced level-16 Wall of Fire along the passenger side. The spell produces a wall roughly a mile long and about a hundred feet high, burning a path through the migration while the truck continues downhill.

Donut reports killing more than ten thousand Sugar Hermits without gaining a level as the truck continues toward the obstacle at the bottom of the hill. The AI identifies the huge beetle-like remains blocking the road as the skull of Tem, a former inhabitant of the Nothing whom Odette killed shortly after his escape. The AI warns that Tem's size should matter because some of his associates are still alive.

The next waves make the course increasingly lethal. Chiyome reports that Carl's missiles over One Fine Pig detonated early and spread goo onto Onikuma, leaving the Wild Hunt struggling on the steep road. Sugar Hermits then begin bursting through the pavement and raining from the sky. When the Royal Court's shield fails, one Jikininki mercenary is killed. Donut responds by using the Temporary Macaroni spell she just received, chaining enormous dried cannelloni tubes into a tunnel that protects the truck from attacks above and below. During the run, the Wild Hunt is eliminated when all its members die, followed shortly by the Jugglers. The second Jikininki is then decapitated by a Sugar Hermit.

Dorota proves more than decorative when a Sugar Hermit latches onto Donut's face and the throne's mechanical arms tear it away. Gluteus soon loses consciousness from the stimulants, forcing Carl to grab the steering wheel while Donut tears free of the throne and works the accelerator. Carl activates Daughter's Kiss and climbs onto the hood intending to smash through Tem's skull with his enlarged feet.

Just before impact, Dwight and Lucienne surge up in Team Sparkles' vine and fire their cannon. Carl jerks the wheel, the blast tears through the food truck, and the Royal Court, Team Sparkles, and the Lady Dominators collide in a spinning airborne wreck that carries all three vehicles across the finish line together. Carl's kangaroo skin is flayed away in the crash, his health-scroll contingency activates, and he uses healing potions while the others recover.

The official results place the Royal Court first, Team Sparkles second, the Lady Dominators third, Team Free Love fourth, and One Fine Pig fifth. The Wild Hunt and the Jugglers are eliminated, leaving the sixth slot empty for a replacement team in the next heat.

Carl and Donut limp back toward the garage after winning heat three and realize that both of them are disqualified from driving the next race because each touched the controls during the crash. Dong volunteers, but Carl says they need at least one reliable driver and probably more than one. Along the way they see Onikuma and Old Shuck, the surviving biological mounts of eliminated teams, cross the finish line and then disappear, confirming that mounts can survive even when their riders are eliminated.

Dr. Metcalf, now a shattered GPS unit in a gremlin's wheelbarrow, delivers the next-course briefing. Heat four will cover about ninety-nine kilometers through the jungle, include a mandatory refueling stop in the lost city of Upano, require a special containment unit around each vehicle, and share the track with three other heats. The course will be unpaved, filled with traps, monsters, acid rain, and path-specific tasks, with a twenty-hour limit. Only a little over seven hours remain before the start, shortening the recovery window again.

Hedy explains that the Royal Court can take either one Golden upgrade or three regular upgrades after its first-place finish, and that every surviving team will also receive the separate mandatory Golden upgrade after heat four. Carl confirms that the last surviving team still receives an audience-voted upgrade even when other teams in the heat are eliminated.

Carl then checks the wider crawler field. Imani and Elle placed second but lost two teams, Florin and Lucia won while losing three, Prepotente and Jurgen won without losing any, Chris placed third, and Louis, Britney, and Bautista survived in last place again. Zhang reports that his heat now consists only of crawler teams, including a fire truck driven by Sammi Harrison, an isopod summoner known as “the decapitator” who had helped protect the FUPA during Faction Wars. Carl also learns that Imani and Elle may share his next jungle course, while Prepotente and Louis appear headed for a separate track called Satan's Water Park.

With the next heat approaching, Carl tells Rosetta and Tipid to hire mercenaries who can provide defense and at least two capable drivers, accepting that prices will be higher after the deaths of the previous hires.

Back in the rebuilt garage, Jamal practices using the new grabbers Mordecai installed on his front legs while brushing Carl and Donut to refresh their daily buffs. Gluteus recovers from his stimulant overdose while Splash Zone feeds him soup, and Carl rebukes Samantha for encouraging the drug use. Carl and Donut plan to leave after the buff routine, first visiting Chicken and Waffles and then returning to the Lollipop karaoke bar to search for the hidden entertainers' guild connected to the Corcunda quest.

Tipid and Rosetta return from the mercenary market with Team Helix, a three-person squad that has already raced in two heats and finished first and second. Olga is a level-75 female Grulke frog, Finley is a level-81 Porsuk with enchanted green-glowing claws, and Quemada is a level-96 fire fairy who worships Emberus. Olga says their second-place result came only because a chain-wielding demon killed a client and their friend Helado before the demon's partner stopped the attack; Finley at least managed to wound the attacker.

Samantha immediately begins flirting with Finley, but the negotiation becomes more important when Quemada notices Carl's active Emberus shrine. She raises Team Helix's price from double to triple despite Rosetta's objection that the mercenary guild contract has already been paid. Carl asks whether the squad can satisfy the driving requirement. Quemada confirms that both Olga and Finley can drive, while she serves as protection.

Carl studies the team and accepts the higher price. Team Helix therefore fills the immediate staffing gap created by Carl and Donut being unable to drive the next heat, with two drivers and a dedicated high-level defender already accustomed to racing together.

Carl, Donut, and Team Helix enter Hungry Eyes Village, where Quemada privately explains why she raised her price. Emberus has instructed her to aid any fellow worshipper who is also a racer, and she believes that means helping Carl complete the quest to kill Emberus's brother Hellik. Quemada expects the attempt to kill both of them, so the additional money is meant to protect Olga and Finley after her death. Carl reviews his own impossible Emberus problem: refusing or abandoning the quest risks a divine smite, completing it would provoke Emberus's promised retaliation, and killing Emberus himself appears nearly impossible.

While Carl is thinking about Eris, time freezes around him and the goddess of chaos appears with a small robotic Uzi Jesus. Eris is now level 251, has lost her sponsor, is still invulnerable on the floor, and is listed as having been summoned by an error. Her arrival triggers a random Scavenger's Daughter effect: one temporary magical effect, item, or aura belonging to someone nearby will become permanent.

Eris offers Carl a way out of his Emberus problem if he eventually becomes a genuine worshipper of hers. She says she wants the Ascendent throne and gives him three requirements. First, he must cooperate with Akuma and the war mages because they can open the Pineapple Cabaret, which Eris says could provide an escape route for some crawlers even though the mages may later turn on them. Second, Carl must truly worship Eris rather than merely perform the motions. Third, he must allow her to “score” the surface by breaking things down before rebuilding them.

Eris then reveals a five-sided coin. Four displayed outcomes must, she claims, occur before the Ascendent is chosen: Donut dies; Carl loses his feet; most of Carl's friends die; or Carl “becomes what they accuse” him of, represented by player-killer skulls. When Uzi Jesus flips the coin, Carl grabs it in midair. The coin burns and dissolves into a moving swirl tattoo on his palm. Eris declares that Carl has selected the fifth side, which can produce any combination of the other outcomes or none of them. She leaves him with the uncertainty and calls him her future favorite worshipper.

After Eris leaves, Carl immediately records what she told him and tries to reason through the coin. He cannot tell whether grabbing it improved or worsened the odds, and he begins thinking that merely surviving the races is no longer enough. Between Eris, Emberus, the Ysalte-related warning about Britney, the Pineapple Cabaret, and the loose gods, Carl concludes that the crawlers need to alter the underlying game rather than continue following its rules. He briefly considers an idea so dangerous that he dismisses it for the moment and decides the war mages may have information he needs.

The random effect from Eris then resolves through Imani. A tiny fairy appears and Imani receives notice that one of her eighth-floor cards has become permanently summoned and can no longer be used as a card. Carl identifies the creature as Jacobus, the Reverse Tooth Fairy, a level-90 former Legendary card summon. The system explicitly says he has been permanently activated because of something Carl did, tying the transformation to the Scavenger's Daughter effect triggered by Eris.

Jacobus immediately behaves like the dangerous battlefield summon the group remembers, demanding payment and attempting to move toward Prepotente before Imani catches and restrains him. Donut wonders whether other card entities, such as Raul, could similarly be freed permanently, but Carl says this transformation appears to be a one-off divine effect.

Carl then explains Eris's visit to the others by chat, including the five-sided coin and the moving swirl on his palm. Elle distrusts Quemada, Prepotente compares Carl's new dilemma to the earlier Donut-and-Katia problem, Louis reports no obvious change in Britney, and Florin asks whether Eris knows the truth about Lucia. Carl says they need a larger plan, hints that he has ideas too dangerous to put fully in chat, and directs the group to speak with Akuma and the war mages first.

Carl, Donut, and the others enter Chicken and Waffles and Upgrades, a diner whose food and drinks carry explicit buffs or debuffs. A flightless imp named Darla-Dean greets them, while Prepotente immediately orders large quantities of labeled drinks to take away. Carl instead asks for the top-shelf vehicle upgrades, and Darla-Dean directs the group to move the jukebox aside to reveal a hidden hallway.

Behind the jukebox, the group finds an upgrade counter, a binder of vehicle options, and the freshly killed body of an upgrade imp named Hickster. The system identifies Akuma as Hickster's killer, and Carl loots a note telling him he was supposed to come alone. Carl finds a concealed door behind a poster, detects and removes a disintegration trap attached to it, and refuses Akuma's demand for privacy, insisting that anything Akuma says to him can be heard by the group.

Akuma emerges from the hidden storeroom and berates Carl for ignoring the instruction. Donut immediately casts Mute on Akuma, while Elle simultaneously strikes him in the crotch with an ice attack. Elle's anger is personal: Akuma and the other war mages attacked her during Faction Wars and stole the Gate of the Feral Gods before she was finished using it. She freezes and shatters one of his testicles, then makes clear that further resistance or dishonesty will bring worse consequences.

Elle orders Imani to place an anti-magic shield around Akuma before Donut removes Mute. Because war mages are magical energy made flesh, the shield will steadily drain his health, putting a strict time limit on the interrogation. Elle warns that any attempt to counter the shield will get him killed, while Jacobus is invoked as an additional threat. Team Helix retreats to the back of the room in alarm, and Olga remarks that they should have charged even more.

Under Imani's anti-magic shield, Akuma explains why the dungeon is destabilizing. Too many crawlers survived to the ninth floor, the broken seventh floor forced the system to overpopulate the eighth, and the current floor is drawing NPCs and mercenaries from deep emergency reserves. Reused mobs and NPCs are supposed to be recycled after only a few seasons, but poor recordkeeping has allowed many to persist long enough to recognize their artificial histories. Herot, a former crawler and author of the sixteenth Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, taught Akuma the Worn Path Method for awakening such beings to what they are.

Akuma says the problem has passed the point of repair. Even if the outworlders regain control, the dungeon's framework is now too contaminated by awakened NPCs to preserve. He describes that framework as the reusable physical layer carried from planet to planet, containing stored mobs, reusable locations, and some indentured workers. If the system is rebuilt after this season, the existing NPCs, mobs, and trapped indentured crawlers inside that framework will be destroyed.

Herot and another former crawler, Menerva, created a way around that fate. Many seasons ago they persuaded a showrunner to let them construct the seventeenth floor, a place no crawler was expected to reach. After that showrunner was murdered, their assignment was forgotten and never properly transferred, leaving them effectively invisible to the system. The seventeenth floor became a front for a pocket dimension they built as a permanent sanctuary for awakened NPCs and mobs: the Pineapple Cabaret.

The Cabaret is not itself a normal floor. Akuma says it is a separate dimension similar in principle to the Nothing, and crawlers may legally enter it. If another entrance can be created and a crawler is inside the Cabaret when a floor collapses, the system will mark that crawler as lost rather than kill them. Akuma and other war mages once lived there, but they deliberately returned to cold storage so they could enter Faction Wars and seek the Scavenger's Daughter, which Akuma says is crucial to protecting the Cabaret's inhabitants and eventually escaping to the planet's surface.

Their departure left the sanctuary exposed. With its protections gone, the Cabaret became infested by shadow mimics, remnants of the Ogre Imperium, and other old threats that Agatha could awaken. Only five war mages remain, so Akuma now needs crawler muscle to retake it. Possible routes back involve the Desperado Club casinos or, according to Herot, Carl's shop interface. There is also a major restriction: anyone who worships a god cannot safely enter because doing so would trigger a smite and risk drawing the Ascendency conflict into the sanctuary.

Carl presses Akuma on the unexplained order to eliminate two teams. Akuma finally admits he wanted Carl to reduce the field because the system would then force Carl into a matchup against friends, leaving him with no practical choice but to cooperate with the war mages. Furious at the manipulation, Carl punches Akuma and breaks his nose.

Carl’s group leaves Chicken and Waffles and Upgrades after re-muting Akuma and reducing him to about two percent health. Before leaving, Carl fist-bumps the war mage to add him to chat, learning that the connection only works while they remain on the same floor. At the Lollipop, Yuto, the red Oni from Team Yokai, is singing onstage. Carl keeps questioning Akuma through chat, but Akuma mostly refuses to answer. Carl does not trust him, yet Herot’s name and Eris’s insistence that Akuma has a route to escape are enough for Carl to adopt a trust-but-verify strategy.

The immediate plan is to recruit volunteers capable of fighting inside the Pineapple Cabaret while testing both possible access routes. Prepotente and Mordecai will investigate the shop-interface exploit, and Carl plans to send strippers back to the Desperado Club to investigate the casino route. Donut summarizes the Cabaret problem for the crawler chat: it could protect crawlers from a floor collapse, but it is occupied by dangerous creatures and the route to the surface remains uncertain. Rosetta shows no reaction to Herot but becomes intensely interested when Menerva is mentioned, although she is reluctant to explain why. Carl concludes that if Menerva truly abandoned everything to work with Herot, he needs a way to speak with her directly.

Tipid believes the hidden stage-performance guild is inside the Lollipop. He explicitly says he does not know Menerva, but he remembers Herot from his time as a game guide and considers him trustworthy. Tipid warns that the war mages may simply use Carl’s people to clear the Cabaret and then kill them, and he identifies the shadow mimics as a serious danger. Mordecai’s current form is itself evidence of the floor’s broken rules because a changeling should not also be a shadow mimic, and shadow mimics normally cannot copy their targets’ skills. Imani, Chris, and Elle arrive with a newly hired fleshmancer mercenary whom they plan to keep hidden until needed.

Tipid tests the guild theory by singing at karaoke. A red-to-green performance gauge appears above him, confirming that the guild mechanism is present, although his poor singing never moves the needle out of red. He then explains the actual entry condition: a song bearing a secret mark must be selected, and only a singer who keeps the gauge in the green for the entire performance can enter. Donut eagerly begins searching the song binder. After Prepotente is thrown out for bringing in drinks from the upgrade diner, Carl messages Mordecai about the bard potion they discussed; Mordecai says the potions are already brewing but will not be ready until shortly before the next race.

With Olga driving, Carl and Donut prepare for the next heat while Donut complains about her failed karaoke attempt. She had tried a Journey song without Auto-Tune and never moved the guild gauge. Quemada is unusually quiet and depressed after encountering the fully awakened Akuma, repeatedly seeming about to speak before stopping herself. The Royal Court’s truck now has three new upgrades: a gyro to prevent flipping, a Bubble Buddy knockoff shield that can later be upgraded and electrified, and resizable all-terrain tires.

Zev announces the heat’s new survival-containment rules. Each vehicle or mount receives an indestructible translucent bubble whose sole function is to keep out the toxic, unbreathable atmosphere; attacks and spells can pass through it. Every race now includes a mandatory pit stop of at least two hours. A destroyed vehicle or killed mount no longer causes immediate elimination, but the team loses its containment and must somehow survive the environment and still cross the finish line before another team. Winning teams also receive a key to one defeated team’s garage, which may contain supplies or even an additional vehicle or mount that can be added to the winner’s garage and switched during later pit stops. Multiple heats will share this track, and Zev pointedly notes that containment stealing is not active for this particular heat.

As the other teams arrive, Carl identifies the new entrant as Team Flamengo. Its mount is Bruna the Slaughter Gnu, a heavily armored six-legged war beast that can climb vertical surfaces. Osvaldo rides behind level-63 Strongman Filipe L, who is handling Bruna’s reins. Carl recalls that Osvaldo’s team emphasized single-stat builds and was badly reduced during Faction Wars. He also revisits the unresolved Apito memorial crystal: Osvaldo obtained it after Queen Imogen’s death, Prepotente later stole it, and Carl realizes that he, Prepotente, and Osvaldo all have quests tied to the same crystal.

A further complication makes the Pineapple Cabaret plan impossible for Team Flamengo as currently understood. Both Osvaldo and Filipe worship a deity named Tupa, so the Cabaret’s prohibition on god worshippers would keep them out even if Carl finds an entrance. Carl warns Osvaldo not to attack One Fine Pig, the Lady Dominators, or their bugbear allies and identifies Team Sparkles as the major threat, but Osvaldo refuses cooperation except for promising not to attack Carl unless survival requires it. Donut angrily reminds him that she and Carl helped keep him alive, then admits it may be easier if they continue disliking each other because the race may ultimately force one crawler team to eliminate the other.

Dr. Metcalf maps more than forty possible routes to the pit stop at Upano, roughly thirty-five kilometers away in a straight line. The safest route is nearly one hundred kilometers, while the shortest cuts directly through the jungle and past a Temple of the Exploding Snake Goddess. Metcalf recommends a compromise: begin on the direct route, divert before the temple, ford the shallow I-Sure-Hope-These-Piranhas-Haven’t-Learned-to-Fly River using the truck’s tire and gyro upgrades, skirt the southern cannibal village, and join the dirt road into Upano. Carl assigns Donut, Quemada, and Finley to watch the sides and rear because he must focus on traps ahead. Metcalf needles Carl for refusing the third GPS upgrade and interprets his indecision as a fear that choices become shackles.

Acid rain begins falling, obscuring the road in smoke and haze. The containment protects the team from the air but not the rain, so Olga activates the new shield. Carl realizes their plan to eliminate Team Sparkles is dangerously vague. The Lady Dominators are positioned between Sparkles and Team Flamengo, and Carl is especially worried that Corky could be killed in the crossfire because Corky remains essential to his larger plan. Donut is visibly shaking as well, forcing Carl to reconsider treating the other crawler teams as expendable rivals.

Carl privately contacts Osvaldo and asks about the Apito memorial crystal. Osvaldo explains that Tupa originally ordered him to obtain a memorial crystal and threatened his entire party with a smite if he failed. The crystal he recovered when Queen Imogen died was rejected by Tupa as corrupted or wrong. During Faction Wars, Osvaldo’s team tracked down a second memorial crystal, but Tupa rejected that one too and issued a new quest to determine why the crystals are malfunctioning. Osvaldo gave the first crystal to Prepotente because he was exhausted with the quest, not because Prepotente defeated or stole it from him, and he reveals that Tupa was later acquired by a wealthy sponsor.

The conversation makes Carl realize he badly misread the transfer between Osvaldo and Prepotente. When Carl asks whose memorial crystal the second one belongs to, Osvaldo identifies Ysalte, the Vinegar Bitch, whom Paz killed. At the same time, Quemada’s reaction to Akuma’s revelations becomes an existential crisis. She begins sobbing and asks whether she, the others, or anything around them is real, showing that contact with an awakened NPC has destabilized her understanding of her own existence. Osvaldo then bitterly lists Paz, Anton, and Sister Ines among friends who died after crossing Carl’s path and predicts that Team Flamengo will be next. The starting lights turn yellow with twenty seconds remaining.

The race begins with Olga driving the Royal Court truck down the middle route. Team Free Love immediately pulls ahead on its air cushion, followed by the Lady Dominators. Behind them, Team Sparkles fires at the Lady Dominators but misses and blasts Bruna instead, knocking Team Flamengo’s mount down before she recovers. Osvaldo responds in chat that Bruna is fine and vows to kill the unicorn and rodent members of Team Sparkles.

Quemada’s existential crisis escalates into a full panic attack. She tells Finley that something broke in her when she heard Akuma’s revelations and insists that they have been repeating the same existence over and over. Olga explains that Quemada has a longstanding panic disorder that worsened after Helado, the ice fairy who used to calm her, was killed by the chain demon. During that earlier breakdown, Quemada killed one of the clients who had hired Team Helix. As the truck enters the dark, acid-soaked jungle, Quemada questions whether Emberus is real and begins looking for something to burn. Finley eventually uses a claw to render her unconscious and gently places her in the sink.

The teams split among different routes. Free Love takes the safer long path, the Lady Dominators stay on Carl’s route, and Team Sparkles, One Fine Pig, and Team Flamengo take the left path. A Wienermobile from another heat suddenly merges in front of Carl’s truck and blocks the narrow trail. Carl recognizes its occupants as the Bleak Congregation from the Lollipop. Donut says their leader, the Minister of Blood-Letting, is practicing for admission to the Unholy Choir and promised not to sacrifice them to Baal.

Imani messages Carl from behind the Bleak Congregation. Her group has entered the same route, with Elle driving, but another crawler team has already been eliminated: Henrietta of Angola and her partner were swallowed along with their mount by a trap. Carl sends Imani their planned course. Because Imani’s team has a wall-climbing and descending kit for the cliff ahead, Carl agrees to wait and make sure they get through safely before continuing.

The Royal Court truck reaches the southern cannibal settlement with Imani and Elle’s APV close behind. Pale humanlike cannibals drop from the trees in huge numbers, smashing themselves against the truck’s shield until it begins to overheat. Donut turns Torch to full intensity, provoking the creatures into a frenzy, then uses Astral Paw to sweep the cannibals from a grotesque tree bridge, break the bridge apart, and clear the road. She kills roughly eighty enemies but gains no level, and complains that the stronger version of Astral Paw now has an eight-hour cooldown. She also discovers that the dog tattoo on her backside can apparently bite her.

The southern chieftain, Great Rusty, blocks the road. His Soul Suck attack is negated for Carl by Mind Balance, while Donut would also resist it through her Constitution-and-Charisma combination. The AI identifies Great Rusty as a level-99 neighborhood boss and explains that the north and south ginger cannibal settlements are at war. During the encounter, Olga suddenly collapses under the Gingered debuff, losing health as her soul is drained. Donut kills Great Rusty with a magic missile. Olga wakes and stops losing health, but remains in a fugue because killing the boss only returns her soul; Mordecai says she still requires specialized clerical healing.

Finley takes over the driver’s seat while Carl orders him not to stop. The truck smashes through the southern village with Imani and Elle following behind. Great Rusty’s death immediately triggers the mandatory Pasty Inferno quest. The system warns that the northern chieftain, Maurice, will exploit the power vacuum, grow strong enough to attack Upano, and must therefore be killed. The quest is track-specific and mandatory: the team cannot finish the race until the Maurice on their track is dead. Carl angrily blames Dr. Metcalf for promising a quest-free route, but the GPS points out that the quest did not exist until Donut killed Great Rusty.

The team reaches the river after its shield has recharged. The piranhas really can fly, and each is level 50, but the truck’s shield kills most of those that strike it. Olga and Finley fully inflate the resizable tires so the truck can ford the water, then wait on the far bank for Imani and Elle’s amphibious APV. Donut casts Fresh into Salt, a spell granted by her Champion of Nekhebit title, on the river and kills most of the remaining fish without gaining a level. Olga and Quemada remain incapacitated, and Finley becomes increasingly distressed about both of them.

The racers enter the Lost City of Upano pit stop, where safe-room rules do not apply. Garages for all three heats have been rearranged along one suburban street, and the Royal Court arrives in fourth place behind Team Sparkles, Team Flamengo, and the Lady Dominators. Parking begins a mandatory two-hour timer. The vehicle cannot leave during that period, garage doors cannot be closed, and safe-room access is unavailable, leaving Hedy exposed. Carl assigns Mongo to help guard her. The open garages also reveal that several other teams have arrived badly damaged and at least two teams appear to have been eliminated.

Jamal is found stuck upside down on the garage ceiling after testing his upgraded sticky feet. He is physically able to climb down but admits he is afraid of heights and, more importantly, afraid of losing the life and identity he now has. He explains that Hedy told him everything could simply end if Carl dies, and that he climbed high so he could see everything while it still existed. Donut uses Hover to reach him and talks him down, telling him that worrying about uncontrollable loss ruins what they can still control and that he is part of their family, so he should ask for help when he needs it.

Finley hears Donut’s explanation and applies it to Olga and Quemada. He carries the fugue-stricken Olga and unconscious Quemada toward town to search for a temple, saying they are his family and that he will do whatever he can to protect them. The moment he steps into the street, Team One Fine Pig’s speeding APV hits all three mercenaries. The vehicle brakes over their bodies, backs up, then drives forward over them again before entering its garage. The system confirms that Finley, Olga, and Quemada have all been killed.

Enraged by the deaths of Finley, Olga, and Quemada, Carl storms into Team One Fine Pig’s garage. Their gremlin mechanic, Lipstick, is inspecting the APV while Nico and Dario remain inside with Penelope. An ethereal gun materializes from the vehicle and fires at Carl. He dodges, but the blast tears through the garage wall, strikes the neighboring double-decker bus, flips it, and starts a fire. Three dromedarian racers from that team charge into the garage with spiked bats and begin attacking the APV while Elle freezes their burning bus.

Carl pounds dents into the armored APV door until its square shield reactivates. The shield shocks and throws Carl through the damaged wall, kills one of the attacking dromedarians when his neck strikes the garage opening, and pins Lipstick against the rear wall until the gremlin explodes. Penelope’s panicked squeals coincide with increasingly violent lightning outside. Carl tries to get back up and continue the attack, but Imani physically restrains him and Donut pleads with him to stop because he cannot fight the vehicle without risking Penelope.

Once removed from the garage, Carl sits beside the remains of his three mercenaries and fixates on the unfairness of their deaths, especially Finley dying while trying to protect his friends. Donut helps him regain control. The team now has a severe logistical problem: Carl and Donut cannot drive, new mercenaries cannot be hired between heats, Imani cannot drive, Jamal counts as a hired mercenary, and gremlins are not permitted to drive. Carl nevertheless concludes that they still have options and asks Donut to collect Finley’s and Olga’s remains, along with the dead dromedarian.

Carl then overhears Nico and Dario arguing inside their APV. They admit running over the mercenaries was a mistake, identify Penelope as the one member who matters most, and say their goal is to win and get her to a “safe place.” With Lipstick dead, they plan to find another track gremlin or use Emergency Gremlins temporarily. Dario fears Carl but especially Donut, while Nico remains belligerent. Carl decides he needs to eliminate a competing team intelligently rather than through rage, and Penelope’s lightning response makes him realize there may be a much larger escape possibility hidden in her situation. Louis then reports that acid-rain protection is being sold in town and that his team is leading its heat while Prepotente is first overall.

Carl tells Imani he has recovered from his outburst and has an idea before returning with Donut to Team One Fine Pig’s garage. Nico and Dario have retreated into their APV and are trying to prevent Penelope from looking at Donut. Carl asks Donut to use Glitzy Pizzazz as part of a distraction, then explains that the goal is to kill the Tigrans without harming the pig.

Donut activates All Eyes on Me. The spell normally requires a song, but her Charisma is now high enough that she can sustain it through spoken words. She launches into a long relationship-advice monologue directed at Penelope and the Tigrans, eventually forcing Nico and Dario to keep their attention fixed on her. While they are charmed, Carl quietly places two disintegration traps beside the APV. The traps are the same type he recently looted from Akuma’s hiding place, activate silently, target only one individual, and are programmed specifically for Tigrans so Penelope should remain unharmed even if one of them is carrying her.

Carl and Donut leave before the Tigrans realize what happened and catch up with Elle and Imani. As they head toward town, members of the Bleak Congregation return from the city with the Minister of Blood-Letting following behind. One of the skeletal creatures carries a bucket of foul white liquid. Donut greets the Minister, who silently bows. Elle assumes the liquid is something obscene, but Imani says she examined it and that the truth is even worse.

At the shared pit stop, Louis brings Carl a bucket of foul-smelling “secretions” sold by batlike vendors. Prepotente has tested the substance and says roughly half a potion bottle grants about thirty minutes of protection against many environmental hazards, although it must be swallowed manually. The pit stop connects several otherwise different race environments, including Satan’s Water Park, the devil’s cliffs, the eternal slum, and the jungle route, and the ginger storyline appears in parallel forms across all four.

Zev announces the second-half twist: each heat will be reassigned among the four connected tracks once its leading team times out. Any mandatory quests carry over because equivalent versions exist on every track. Florin moves from the desert route to Satan’s Water Park, Chris remains in the desert, Prepotente is reassigned from the water park to the jungle, and the Royal Court is sent from the jungle to Satan’s Water Park. Imani and Elle are assigned to the eternal slum.

Before Carl can announce the new route, both disintegration traps activate. Nico and Dario are dissolved, eliminating Team One Fine Pig. Carl waits for a notification about Penelope and receives none, confirming that the pig survived the trap conditions. The result turns Penelope from a protected enemy asset into an attainable objective.

Carl tells Florin that the Royal Court must win its heat because they need the winner’s key in order to reach Penelope. Florin offers to slow any competing team Carl names. Carl accepts and begins explaining the threat posed by Dwight of Team Sparkles.

The Royal Court starts the second half of the race on Satan’s Water Park with Hedy and Jamal left in the garage and Mongo returned to Donut’s inventory. Their emergency driver is Olga’s resurrected corpse. Donut’s Second Chance is effectively level 12 with Brain Trust and can animate a corpse for fifteen minutes; Olga has already used about five of those minutes. Because the corpse is a summon, it bypasses the driver restriction, but Carl and Donut must direct it by voice. Florin left forty minutes earlier and is pursuing Dwight and Lucienne rather than the track boss, while Osvaldo is also ahead.

The new track is a maze of water slides in which taking the wrong path can send racers inside the track’s country boss. That boss is Satan, an invulnerable, kaiju-sized male hedgehog who lounges near the exit and comments on the race. Donut’s hostility toward hedgehogs traces back to an old pet festival where a rescued baby hedgehog named Jezebel beat kitten Donut in a Cutest in Show contest, upsetting Bea even though Donut herself had not cared at the time.

At ground level, the available routes include the toddler splash pad, the wave pool, a dangerous loop-de-loop, and the River of Sloth, the slow lazy-river route the team intends to take. Donut plans to cast Clockwork Triplicate shortly before Second Chance expires, which should extend Olga’s usefulness by about twenty minutes. Dr. Metcalf repeatedly objects that Olga has no intact head, but the summoned corpse still responds to Donut’s commands. Carl notes that their backup corpses are also badly damaged, including Finley without legs and several headless NPCs.

The transferred Pasty Inferno quest forces the choice anyway: the ginger base camp lies at the midpoint of the River of Sloth, where the local gingers are called “season pass holders,” and the Royal Court still has to kill this track’s Maurice. Imani and Elle retain their mirrored version in the eternal slum, where Maurice is called the Red Menace of Tinker Town. As the countdown ends, a troll-driven tow truck departs first and Satan speaks in a stereotyped British accent, immediately confirming another of Donut’s complaints.

Carl’s Book of Boom opens with an entry from Mehmet Or, a Turkish crawler who took an exit deal after the eighth floor. Mehmet says he once owned a bowling alley in Istanbul and entered the dungeon with a pregnant wife and two daughters, Azra and Yaz. He killed his wife while she was trapped in the hydra, but believes his daughters may still be alive wherever the children are being held. Ashamed of taking the deal but unwilling to risk losing his chance to find them, he asks Carl to rescue Azra and Yaz if possible. His entry grants Carl the level-nine Gutter Bumper spell, which Mehmet’s party used to shape the area of effect of other spells.

Back in Satan’s Water Park, the original resurrected Olga has expired and a clockwork copy drives while another rides in the back of the truck. The gyro upgrade repeatedly keeps the vehicle upright as the team descends through the half-pipe sections, while Carl uses sticky hob-lobbers against axe-wielding gingers and the shield handles splatter penguins, zipper shrews, and other attackers. Satan’s enormous movements damage the park itself, and Florin reports that he plans to attempt the loop-de-loop while using Denial of Service missiles to slow Dwight and Lucienne of Team Sparkles.

As the clockwork Olgas near expiration, Carl pulls out the corpse of Joel, the dromedarian killed by the One Fine Pig shield, and Donut casts Second Chance on him so he can become the next driver. The team reaches the ground-level route junction, where Prepotente’s earlier information reveals the central trap: racers who take the normal route are dropped into the underground waterworks, forced through demons and baby hedgehogs, and must defeat the Garden Gnome Sprinkler borough boss before returning to the surface. Florin intentionally allowed the trap to activate earlier, delaying the racers behind him.

Carl and Donut instead activate the truck’s spider legs and drive up the perimeter wall to bypass the trapdoor entirely. The maneuver works, and they reach the approach to the River of Sloth. Just after clearing the dangerous section, however, the driver-side door opens and the clockwork Olga falls out. Her fall triggers the trapdoor below while she disappears into the underground course, leaving the truck still moving with the driver’s seat empty and Joel not yet behind the wheel.

With clockwork Olga gone, the driverless truck clears the hidden basement trap but runs off the wall at the next turn, landing hard and breaking two spider legs. Joel squeezes into the driver’s seat, but the resurrected dromedarian is too large to operate the controls until Carl slides the seat backward, accidentally pushing a hand into Joel’s chest in the process. Joel eventually gains control, and the remaining clockwork Olga times out in the back of the truck, scattering parts but leaving Carl’s chained weapon pile intact.

At the River of Sloth, Carl executes the plan built around Mehmet’s new spell. He casts Gutter Bumper on the river, creating a constrained area for Donut’s Ice Slick. Her ice follows the river instead of spreading in its usual cone and receives the spell’s fifty-percent extension, freezing the water and trapping hundreds of gingers in place. The truck drives onto the ice while Carl deploys a makeshift brush hog made from chained nonmagical weapons, which drags behind the vehicle and cuts through the immobilized enemies. Donut then casts Summon Ye, Vermin, drawing zipper shrews from across the park so their drill heads tear through survivors.

The local Maurice appears as a large human resembling Shrek and begins casting a spell, but the summoned shrews reach him first and drill through him from behind. His death completes Pasty Inferno. The AI immediately points out that Carl and Donut’s excessive attack has also destroyed the engineer they were supposed to receive as the quest reward, whose remains are then further mangled by the weapon chains.

Near the finish, Satan becomes bored and headbutts the giant loop-de-loop, collapsing the structure while Florin and Team Sparkles are still on it. Florin’s tuk-tuk lands upright and accelerates toward the finish, while Dwight’s vine mount is left burning, damaged, and spinning. Lucienne is initially missing from Team Sparkles because Donut’s Summon Ye, Vermin has also pulled her toward Donut. The poisoned mandagot appears on the Royal Court’s hood, desperately trying to get inside.

As the truck begins to pass beneath the checkered finish-line arch, Donut warns Lucienne that she cannot cross while outside her own vehicle. The finish-line barrier catches the charmed rodent and forces her through the Royal Court’s windshield. Lucienne is crushed through the cab and truck as the chapter ends, turning Donut’s earlier vermin spell into an accidental direct attack on Team Sparkles.

After crossing the finish line, Carl coughs up Lucienne’s remains while Joel brakes the truck. The race is officially over, so Carl can touch the controls again; Joel’s resurrection expires as Carl moves the truck aside. The Lady Dominators and Team Flamengo finish behind them, while Jasha and Radoslav report that Team Free Love is still trapped in the waterworks. Carl advises them to tow Dwight to the finish if they can, despite the danger of preserving Team Sparkles. Donut retrieves Lucienne’s cracked racing helmet, only to discover that it is cursed.

Lucia approaches Carl and triggers messages from the Scavenger’s Daughter. Speaking in one of the presences within her, she warns that Chalchiuhtlicue has arrived without needing hosts like Cici or Gus. The goddess claims to protect the children but also says death may be the kindest outcome. Lucia says the “veins are open” and that the real, imagined, enslaved, and other trapped beings are gathering around the Ascendency on the twelfth floor. The Scavenger’s Daughter then signals another change in Lucia, and Azra speaks through her body.

Azra says Chalchiuhtlicue told her that Carl knows her father and used the spell he gave Carl to win the race. Carl realizes she is Mehmet Or’s daughter from the Book of Boom entry. Azra confirms that Yaz is with her and says the goddess is telling them that people are coming to take their bodies. Carl tells Azra that Mehmet is safe and wanted her to know he loves her. The frightened girl runs when she finally notices Florin, and Carl concludes that Lucia urgently needs to accept an exit deal.

Dr. Metcalf then reveals the fifth race: approximately twenty kilometers through the Gasworks Screw Factory, Steel Mill, and Doll Workshop, with vertical climbing, inverted racing, gaps up to one hundred meters, extreme heat, and only thirty minutes to finish. Containment theft is now enabled, meaning two containment fields touching for more than five seconds may cause one racer to lose protection when they separate. Twelve heats will share narrow paths. Carl takes one comfort from the new rules: he can drive again.

Messages from Tran reveal how destructive the previous heat was. Li Na cast a dread effect when other crawlers tried to stop her, causing them to attack one another as in Beijing; only five of the twenty-four teams in that race group survived. Heat Four results confirm the Royal Court of Princess Donut in first place, followed by the Lady Dominators, Team Flamengo, Team Free Love, and Team Sparkles, with One Fine Pig eliminated.

After winning Heat Four, Carl and Donut have two Golden upgrade selections and a winner’s key that can open one abandoned house in the cul-de-sac. Carl decides they will use the key on Team One Fine Pig’s house but keep their own truck rather than switch to the Tigrans’ weapon-heavy APV. Hedy suggests converting one Golden selection into three regular upgrades so the truck can cover the fifth race’s vertical climbs, inverted sections, extreme heat, and hundred-meter gaps.

They choose three regular upgrades: the Bubble Buddy shield is advanced to its Golden version, a heat sink is added in case their containment fails, and booster rockets are installed for long jumps. Their remaining Golden selection becomes Roller Limbo, a trans-dimensional system that lets the truck race upside down and compress through gaps at least ten centimeters high. The floor’s attrition is now severe: fewer than three thousand of the roughly fifty-five hundred crawlers who entered the tenth floor remain. Jasha and Radoslav have also dragged Dwight across the previous finish line, preserving Team Sparkles.

While Hedy directs the generated gremlins, Samantha notices that Carl smells like Chalchiuhtlicue, whom she calls Chachi. She describes the goddess as outwardly protective of children but emotionally unstable and prone to killing them when she decides sacrifice is necessary. Samantha gives an example from a Yarilo party where Chachi ordered worshippers to kill an entire village daycare after objecting to cilantro in the food.

Carl connects Samantha’s warning to Lucia and Azra. Chalchiuhtlicue appears to be one of the beings that escaped its prior confinement and is now present with the children inside Lucia’s shared mental space. The realization turns the goddess from an abstract Ascendency complication into an immediate threat to Azra, Yaz, and the other trapped children.

The cul-de-sac has expanded to ten houses as eliminated teams leave abandoned garages behind. Carl and Donut head toward Team One Fine Pig’s now-empty house while Osvaldo and Filipe talk with Radoslav and Jasha. Osvaldo notes that reassignment to a new heat cost him access to the eliminated garages from his original group, confirming that the winner-key opportunities are tied to a team’s current cul-de-sac.

Carl has simultaneously asked Rosetta, Mordecai, Tipid, and Prepotente what they know about Chalchiuhtlicue. Rosetta describes Chachi as an obscure goddess of childbirth, women, water, fire, and harvests whose broad portfolio makes her comparatively weak in the Ascendency. Mordecai says the current cross-boundary behavior is unprecedented. Carl, not Donut, then wonders whether the Scavenger’s Daughter reacting to Lucia means the route Chalchiuhtlicue used to reach the children could potentially work in reverse.

Prepotente compares Chachi to the Aztec goddess of the same name, including the flood myth and the culture’s human-sacrifice associations. Donut shortens the goddess’s name to Chachi because of chat-space limits and asks Prepotente about his concert plans. During the exchange, Prepotente identifies another surviving crawler with an extremely long Hawaiian name who goes by Makana and then confirms that he intends to sing “In the Air Tonight” at Donut’s concert.

At Team One Fine Pig’s abandoned garage, the winner’s key opens the door. Carl and Donut find Penelope beside the damaged APV, licking the remains of Lipstick from the floor. Carl invites her to come live with them temporarily, and Penelope happily follows them out, giving Carl control of the pig whose panic had repeatedly coincided with lightning.

At the Lollipop, Carl and Donut join the others at the back table and meet Grigori the Placid, a level-93 Fleshmancer hired by Team Meadow Lark who worships Gula. Carl had Imani and Elle bring Grigori because they need a skilled healer to speak with both Corcundas. Donut worries Grigori will never get through the karaoke requirement for the hidden guild, but Carl clarifies that Grigori does not need to enter. Donut needs to get inside, charm Porky into coming out, and bring him to Grigori.

Donut also presses Carl about the plan he is still withholding from her. She knows the prize allows them to bring two people to the eleventh floor and fears that Carl intends to use it against Prime Minister Victory or another showrunner. Carl admits he is scared as well but says the pig, the Corcunda quest, and the war-mage plan all matter to keeping their people alive, and he asks Donut to trust him until the prize can no longer be taken away.

The immediate crisis is Li Na. Zhang, devastated by the deaths around her and by his failure to keep his promise to Li Jun, proposes killing Torpedo while Li Na is in the lead saddle so the system will kill them both. Carl points out that the newer rules would only remove their containment; Li Na is strong enough to reach the finish without a mount, while Zhang is not. Zhang describes Li Na's continuing psychological collapse, her poisoned state, and the dread-driven violence that killed other crawlers. Donut insists that Li Na is a person rather than a weapon and that Zhang cannot be allowed to sacrifice himself.

Carl nevertheless recognizes that Li Na's Changbi race leaves her without a deity and sees a different way to redirect her strength while keeping Zhang alive. He messages Bodi to ask whether he can jockey for Zhang in the next race and states the core of his new plan: Li Na is going to leave the dungeon.

Splash Zone reports that the Desperado Club route is deteriorating: the croupier has become violent, the Nothing outcomes have been removed from the games, and Dong is unexpectedly heading toward the Lollipop after claiming Carl summoned him. At the bar, a drunken Dwight appears outside the vine for the first time and knocks Prepotente down near the DJ booth. Splash Zone remains behind with Gluteus and Doctor Bones for an audience with Hamed about locating his wife, while Bucket Boy is sent to help Carl.

Mordecai then reports that their preliminary test worked on Samantha and again on several sluggalos, although the method still has unresolved complications. Rosetta warns that they cannot test the shop-interface step because Herot has a standing order that automatically buys every cleaner bot entering the store. Carl acknowledges that the plan is far outside normal dungeon rules and may still fail when the floor collapses, but he insists Li Na must be told the full risk and choose freely. When he tells the table the plan is viable enough to attempt, the group finally has a possible alternative to killing Li Na or letting Zhang sacrifice himself.

The cleaner-bot shortage provides evidence for Herot's hidden access. Menerva is on the seventeenth floor overseeing NPCs who train in the Backstage Death Maze, while Herot himself is trapped inside the Pineapple Cabaret and retains a limited shop interface. The Cabaret, built as a hidden refuge, is now overrun by threats including the abandoned Ogre Imperium plotline, shadow mimics, and at least one additional danger Akuma has not clearly identified. The war mages want the crawlers to help clear it.

Carl's group had two possible routes into the Cabaret, through the casinos or through Herot's cleaner-bot purchase mechanism. With the casino approach apparently failing, they commit to the cleaner-bot plan. Li Na's Left to Fester poison will continue to worsen through ordinary floor transitions, but entering the Cabaret may interrupt that process, and a possible exit from the Cabaret to Earth's surface might cure it entirely. Sending Li Na now would also test the method before Carl attempts to move several crawlers after the fifth heat. The remaining requirement is persuading Li Na to accept the risk.

Elle, Zhang, and Tran leave the Lollipop to return to the safe room and try to explain Carl's new plan to Li Na. At the table, Grigori the Placid has been transferred into Carl and Donut's guild and appears to enjoy brushing Donut while Linus hovers nearby. Elle initially orders Linus to remain behind, but his behavior toward Donut is inappropriate enough that she immediately changes her mind and takes him with her.

Carl and Donut then prepare for the karaoke entrance test to the hidden Stage Performance Guild. A qualifying song can be performed as a two-singer number with separate performance gauges, so only one singer needs to succeed. Carl will take most of the difficult lines while Donut has only a few, maximizing her odds of passing even if Carl fails. Mordecai has compounded several effects into one potion sequence to bypass normal cooldown constraints, giving Carl improved vocal control, perfect pitch, and greater breath capacity. Donut will use maximum Auto-Tune, while Carl uses the Gelded Choirboy scroll so his deeper voice can reach the song's high register.

Donut summons Mongo because she wants him to witness Carl's first stage performance, explaining that Jamal and some slugs are guarding Hedy. The bar rapidly fills with allies and spectators. Dong Quixote arrives despite the earlier effort to keep him away from Porky, and Bucket Boy intercepts him near the entrance.

The DJ calls Carl and Donut to perform A-ha's “Take On Me.” Carl activates the scroll, which leaves him with a high, helium-like voice, and both performers take the stage as their gauges appear. Just as the music begins and they are about to sing, the drunken Dwight drives his horn through the DJ's face.

Dwight's attack on the DJ triggers a sprawling bar fight, but the karaoke track and performance gauges continue running. Dwight drunkenly blames Carl and Donut for Lucienne's death and throws the dead DJ from his horn, accidentally hitting Yuto and setting off a chain of attacks among the Yokai team, scarecrow racers, the Bleak Congregation, and others. Carl realizes Dwight must survive until at least the next heat, yet he and Donut also have only this one chance to finish the entrance song now that the DJ is dead.

They continue performing “Take On Me” through the brawl. Carl dodges bottles and kicks fighters away from Donut while Dong Quixote clears space with his giant nickel sock. Donut's Auto-Tuned chorus remains on key, and both performance gauges move deep into the green. Mongo eventually joins the melee, while Imani knocks Dwight unconscious with a potion and Louis, Britney, and Bautista guard him. The crawlers try to keep the other racing teams alive because every death would force still more crawler-versus-crawler matchups.

During the instrumental section, Donut casts Ice Slick, sending fighters into the unattended bar where Prepotente is rummaging behind the counter. A fairy's fireball ignites the curtains, and the fight spreads through the burning club. Carl continues singing while protecting Donut's microphone stand, and the song reaches its final high notes amid both digital and real fire.

Dekoki falls into Donut before Donut can finish her last line. When the sound system finally dies, Carl receives permanent access to the Stage Performance Guild and the achievement for discovering a task-based guild; nearby hidden guilds with entrance requirements will now appear on his map. The secret door begins glowing. Donut's gauge instead reads FAILED, leaving Carl as the only one of the pair who can enter.

After the karaoke brawl, the bartender gathers the dead DJ's remains while the surviving patrons recover Dong's scattered nickels. Dong's sock is repairing its tear but has shrunk back toward its original size. Splash Zone does not answer Carl, so Tipid and Bucket Boy drag the unconscious Dwight back toward his garage before the bartender can organize retaliation. Carl then heads for the newly opened Stage Performance Guild while keeping Imani ready to remove Dong if his presence jeopardizes the Corcunda plan.

Jurgen stops Carl at the guild entrance because he wants to escape through the Pineapple Cabaret and reach Heidi, who is pregnant and has stopped communicating with him. Jurgen worships Donar, a thunder-and-lightning god comparable to Thor, which makes the Cabaret dangerous under Akuma's claim that divine worshippers would trigger a smite. Carl recognizes that Akuma may have lied about this restriction, but he has no safe way to test it. He tells Jurgen to survive the next race while Carl continues looking for a solution.

Inside the Stage Performance Guild, Carl finds an enormous abandoned theater and Porky, Corky's separated half, stranded onstage because one of the zippers in his white body-containment suit has caught on exposed flesh. Carl frees the zipper, allowing Porky to stand. Porky, the guildmaster, rewards Carl with additional Razzmatazz skill levels and listens as Carl explains Corky's condition.

Porky explains that the female mantaurs of the Lady Dominators worship Enyo and use domination-and-submission magic to drain Corky before races, leaving him unconscious while increasing their own stats. He also reveals that if Corky dies, Porky dies with him. Carl proposes bringing Porky outside, breaking Corky out, and having Grigori reunite them before the next heat. Porky agrees to leave as a temporary mercenary or be carried out so he can be rejoined with his other half. Only after agreeing does he add a separate demand: he also wants Carl's help beating Dong Quixote, whom he blames for the original separation.

With a little over ninety minutes before the next heat, Elle reports that Li Na appears to have accepted the Pineapple Cabaret plan. At the same time, Carl discovers that Splash Zone, Gluteus, and Doctor Bones can no longer be contacted because they are no longer on the floor. Their last known destination was an audience with Hamed in the Desperado Club, but Carl orders the others not to go back after them until the immediate crises are resolved.

Carl, Donut, Porky, Grigori, Imani, Louis, Britney, and the others prepare to break into the Lady Dominators' garage. The intended sequence is to use Donut's Hole spell, incapacitate Genesis and Rapture if necessary, seize Corky, and carry him back to their garage. Grigori explains that both Corcunda halves must be removed from their containment suits and kept alive while physically pressed together, after which his joining spell will fuse their bodies and eventually their personalities. He has never performed this exact procedure before, although he has experience with related Meld separations.

Before the break-in begins, Dong's condition deteriorates. His health starts falling under a Negative ROI debuff, Bucket Boy loses the sapient nickel sock when it attacks him and teleports away under safe-room rules, and Mordecai concludes that the curse is probably Separation Anxiety. If so, saving Dong appears to require recovering the sock and every lost nickel, many of which were taken by NPCs after the bar fight. Imani immediately runs back toward the garage to help him.

The Corcunda rescue also fails to proceed as planned. Genesis and Rapture open their garage before Donut can cast Hole, reveal that they overheard the group, and drive toward the starting line with Corky unconscious in the back. Once they are traveling to the starting block, the Lady Dominators are protected from attack. They also reveal that they know about the Fleshmancer and threaten to unzip Corky rather than surrender him.

Carl initially appears forced to postpone the reunion, but Dong's worsening curse and his own guilt change his decision. He acknowledges that excluding Dong from even saying goodbye was needlessly cruel, while Porky becomes furious on learning Dong is nearby. Rather than wait until after the race, Carl orders Grigori to spend the remaining time learning to drive and decides they will reunite Corky and Porky during the race itself. The group then turns back toward the garage so they can say goodbye to Li Na before her attempted exit.

Carl leaves Grigori with Hedy and Jamal and enters the safe room, where Dong is sobbing as his health continues to fall under the curse. Imani can slow the decline but cannot stop it and estimates that Dong has roughly ninety minutes or less. Bigs angrily accuses Carl of abandoning the group's principles of unity, support, and family. Carl accepts the criticism and tells her that Li Na will not be killed; instead, they are trying to send her somewhere she can help without hurting more of their friends.

Carl then apologizes directly to Dong. He admits that the tenth floor's rigid race structure initially felt comforting after Faction Wars, but he now sees it as a deliberate attrition trap. He also admits that he kept Dong away from the Corcunda rescue because Dong's love for Corky made Carl fear he would interfere. Carl reverses that decision and names the three mercenaries he intends to bring into the next race: Grigori, Porky, and Dong. Even if Dong is too weak to help, Carl promises that he will at least be allowed to say goodbye.

Dong explains why he fell in love with Corky. During an earlier battle in the Desperado Club, Corky comforted him with the idea that dying beside the people who make you happy is not a sad ending. Carl's apology also forces him to confront his own deterioration. He recognizes how close he is to the same kind of psychological collapse consuming Li Na and Lucia Mar, recalling his rage after Finley and the others died, the voices in his head, and the tremor he has been ignoring since Donut's tower attack.

Samantha interrupts, and Carl reveals that Porky has been standing quietly behind him. Dong recognizes his scarf around Porky's neck, and Porky explains that Corky gave it to him when the halves separated. Dong finally asks Porky why he hated him. Carl removes Samantha so the two can speak privately. Before entering the guildhall, Carl also thanks the cleaner bot for enduring the group's abuse and calls it a hero because they will soon need it for Li Na's escape plan.

Li Na waits in the guildhall common room with Mordecai, Mistress Tiatha, Rosetta, and the white cleaner bot while the group reviews the escape mechanism. The plan exploits an XL pet carrier: a willing crawler can be pulled into it for roughly ten seconds before the carrier breaks and ejects them. A crawler-filled carrier cannot enter a normal personal inventory, but the cleaner bot's weight-based utility inventory can absorb it before it ruptures. The cleaner bot can then be listed for sale, purchased automatically by Herot through his standing shop order, and emptied inside the Pineapple Cabaret, which lies outside the active playing field.

The group names the white cleaner bot Suckira. Donut also reveals that their other cleaner bot is named Ezra Fitz the Second. The method remains highly uncertain. Rosetta says containers normally transfer with their contents, but nobody can guarantee Li Na will survive either the sale or the eventual floor collapse. Mistress Tiatha nevertheless claims that this kind of survival has happened before.

To monitor Li Na, Rosetta presents Carl's small cactus after Li Na has cast the Deadly Bloom dread trap on it. The trap provides several signals: while it glows normally, Li Na is alive in the dungeon; if it activates and blooms without the glow, she has physically left the game; if it fails and the cactus turns to dust, she died inside the dungeon; if the glow slowly fades, she may be trapped in the cleaner bot's storage. Once safely inside the Cabaret, Li Na can remotely produce one flower to signal that the method is safe for others or three flowers to warn them not to follow.

The plan has limited capacity. Ezra Fitz the Second can probably carry only about fifty more crawlers because of its existing contents, and Herot cannot immediately resell a purchased dungeon upgrade because of a thirty-day timer. Prepotente remains skeptical and leaves to prepare for the race.

Before departing, Li Na finally speaks to Zhang. She tells him he has nothing to apologize for, says Li Jun loved him like a brother, and promises to clear the way and guard against betrayal by the war mages. She also admits that she once imagined marrying Zhang and treasured his smiles. Zhang then activates the pet carrier with Li Na's consent. Suckira absorbs the carrier, Mordecai shuts the bot down, and Donut lists it for sale. The cleaner bot disappears through the shop interface, and the terminal confirms that the item has sold.

Donut's Banquet opens with an entry from Mees Koning, crawler 9,174,929, a level-63 half-orc mage who describes a lifetime of social anxiety and isolation that worsened after dungeon injuries, his race change, and an accidental spell backfire gave him two player-killer skulls. During Faction Wars, Donut briefly stopped to compliment his fangs, listened while he explained the skulls, and reminded him that everyone carries scars. Mees says the small kindness helped him survive the floor. He leaves Donut a drawing linked to the level-14 Big-Ass Magnet spell.

Just before Heat Five begins, Carl finds Dong and Porky together in the pet stables. Dong's health continues to decline, but he remains committed to joining the Corcunda rescue. Carl feeds Rend and the other pets, then takes Dong, Porky, and Grigori as the Royal Court's three mercenaries. Grigori, who handled his driving lesson poorly, is already nauseated before the race starts.

On the way to the starting line, Zhang reports that Li Na has formally left his party and been disqualified, leaving him classified as a solo driver with Bodi as his jockey. Mordecai reports that the cactus remains stable, so Li Na has not yet produced any of the signals that would confirm her fate. Akuma is still on the floor but says he will leave soon.

The Royal Court lines up near the Lady Dominators, Team Free Love, Osvaldo, and the solitary Dwight. Across twelve concurrent heats, only Prepotente and Jurgen are on the same factory track from Carl's guild; other allies have been assigned elsewhere. Dr. Metcalf's map shows a route through an active industrial complex with narrow passages, molten-metal sections, and neighborhood bosses. The race is only twenty kilometers long with a thirty-minute limit, leaving almost no time for the Corcunda extraction. Carl plans to let Osvaldo move ahead and then tuck in behind the Lady Dominators as the starting light turns green.

Carl launches into the Gasworks Screw Factory behind the Lady Dominators, with Osvaldo moving ahead as planned. Crossing the entrance activates each team's containment field, and any two fields that remain in contact for more than five seconds will merge. Inside the first room, racers weave through piles of metal pellets and fleeing knocker workers while vehicles and mounts attack one another. Carl activates the upgraded Bubble Buddy shield and Heat Sink and follows the Lady Dominators toward a conveyor route that will require a major jump.

The Corcunda rescue plan depends on Prepotente and Jurgen. Bianca is supposed to seize Corky from the Lady Dominators' back seat after their shield is broken, while Carl's newly acquired Big-Ass Magnet serves as a backup. Prepotente and Jurgen arrive on Sweety, a fast Perriso, and move ahead of the Royal Court as the racers climb toward the molten-metal processing section.

Carl uses the untested booster rockets at the end of a conveyor belt. The thrust is stronger than expected, but Bubble Buddy's floating effect and the gyro let him correct the truck's trajectory and land on the distant conveyor. Prepotente's group fires rockets into the Lady Dominators' GTO, and after a second volley he reports that its shield is down so Bianca can attempt the extraction.

The racers then enter a room filled with airborne white powder. The system identifies it as Toddler Cocaine, a low-dose addictive product manufactured by the Coblyn Corporation for children. Its description explains the knockers' history of being displaced by mining interests, turning to illegal drugs, becoming wealthy enough to build a legitimate corporation, and eventually reproducing the same profit-seeking exploitation themselves. The source also warns that although the workers are relatively harmless, their magically constructed defenses are not.

Prepotente reports that Bianca has become Strung Out in the Toddler Cocaine cloud and cannot seize Corky as planned. Moments later, Carl and Donut discover that the Lady Dominators' GTO has fallen through a trap hole. Its axle is broken, Rapture and Genesis remain inside with Strung Out debuffs, and the vehicle's containment field is inactive. Corky is unconscious in the back seat and is already cooking inside his suit from the factory heat.

Cocaine-infused action-figure elementals swarm the wreck. The system identifies them as infused elementals with a pass-through ability that lets them penetrate defenses. Donut jumps onto the wreck and uses her level-17 Puddle Jumper spell to move herself and Corky back onto the roadway, then Carl drags Corky into the Royal Court truck. Donut's fur smokes from the brief exposure outside containment, confirming how little time Corky had left.

Inside the truck, Carl accidentally tears open Corky's damaged suit while throwing out a hitchhiking doll, exposing his body and causing his health to drop. Donut heals him, and Grigori removes the Strung Out condition while Porky tells the confused Corky that it is time for them to reunite. Dong takes the wheel long enough to get the truck moving again as more pass-through dolls attack.

With twenty minutes left in the race, Carl retakes the driver's seat because the next section requires the vehicle to transition onto the ceiling. Grigori begins organizing the emergency Corcunda procedure while the truck is still moving, and Dong moves back to help Corky and Porky as the team enters the next room.

Carl drives the Royal Court truck from the doll-packing room into a vast molten-metal chamber where the race track runs along the walls and ceiling. The Roller Limbo upgrade lets the truck attach to the inverted track, while the rest of the team struggles to work upside down in the cramped vehicle. Grigori has Corky and Porky unzip their suits, preserve their exposed brains and organs with magic and plastic wrap, and prepare to be physically joined.

The chamber is patrolled by level-75 Slag Elemental neighborhood bosses made from molten metal. They regenerate if they fall back into the molten river, making permanent kills nearly impossible. Prepotente discovers a temporary countermeasure: adding any non-molten metal to an elemental makes it collapse into the river until the added material melts.

While Grigori performs the Fleshmancer procedure, Dong holds Corky and Porky together with all his strength despite his already deteriorating health. Carl uses the truck's trans-dimensional upgrade to fold beneath a slower ferret mount and continue advancing. Donut remains nearby but does not perform the fusion spell itself.

Grigori completes the final casting as the truck approaches the room's exit. Corky and Porky's separate health bars merge, their individual names disappear, and a single name appears: Corcunda. Immediately afterward, a marked-for-death symbol from Grull appears over the restored mantaur, followed by the system announcement that Grull has entered the realm.

Grull enters the factory immediately after Corcunda is restored. His presence gives all nearby four-legged creatures double power to their strongest attack, while the Scavenger's Daughter fills with power. The Royal Court drives off the end of the inverted track and uses Bubble Buddy to glide toward the next section as Grull smashes through the wall behind them. Corcunda realizes the restored mantaur has again become visible to the god who once claimed him.

Grull's attack slams the truck into the ground, overloads its shield, destroys a tire, and leaves the team trying to escape on spider legs while hundreds of Slag Elementals close in. Donut casts Laundry Day on Grull and ejects the Maestro from the god's body into the molten metal. The Maestro cannot permanently die on the tenth floor and will eventually regenerate back with Grull, but his temporary removal changes the god's behavior. Grull now focuses entirely on Corcunda, condemning him for abandoning his faith and demanding that he accept punishment.

Corcunda decides that Grull will not leave until he has been smited. He gives Dong his scarf and prepares to surrender himself, but Dong refuses to leave him. Dong retrieves his lance, mounts Corcunda, and chooses to ride with him against the god. Donut casts Big-Ass Magnet on the lance, causing millions of loose screws to rip through the room. The screws knock the regenerating Slag Elementals back into molten puddles and clear a path for the charging pair.

Dong and Corcunda ride directly into Grull. Dong's lance strikes the god, who calls it a good death before vanishing back to the twelfth floor. Carl, Donut, and Grigori continue without them, reach the finish line with fifteen seconds remaining, and place fourth in Heat Five. Team Sparkles, Team Free Love, and Team Flamengo finish ahead of them, while the Lady Dominators and the Gimp are eliminated.

After Heat Five, Carl and Donut absorb Dong's death while Grigori offers the belief that death may be movement to another plane. The Royal Court was the last surviving team from its heat even though it placed fourth overall, and only eighteen of the sixty teams in Carl's race survived. Other crawler groups report similarly uneven results. Osvaldo explains that the winning unicorn bypassed the factory by riding up the exterior wall, crossing the roof, and dropping directly to the finish.

Dr. Metcalf reveals that Heats Six and Seven will form a single two-part race on the same course, the L'Engle Building. Heat Six requires racers to descend from the top of a seven-floor human apartment building to the bottom, while Heat Seven will require the return trip under different rules. More than three hundred remaining heats will compete on the same track, so racers will be shrunk to fit the building. The nominal distance is twenty-five kilometers relative to racer size, Black Lung Smog is a listed hazard, and Heat Six has a two-hour limit. Its finish is only a pit stop with a two-hour rest period, meaning safe-room access will be unavailable from the start of Heat Six through the end of Heat Seven.

Back at the garage, Carl opens the completed Half a Prayer, Half a Song quest notification. The system AI confirms the team reunited Corcunda before Dong died and grants the promised reward: once Carl reaches the eleventh-floor arena at the end of the Parade of Horribles, he may choose two creatures, people, or other beings within the AI's sphere of influence to bring into the arena. The choice cannot be made until he is already inside.

The AI also warns Carl that it is losing visibility and control over parts of its own dungeon, specifically mentioning the Pineapple Cabaret, Sheol, the minds of gods, Eris, and the war mages. It tells him to beware exits that seem too good to be true. Immediately afterward, Mordecai reports that one flower has bloomed on Li Na's cactus. That was the agreed signal that Li Na reached the Pineapple Cabaret alive and that the cleaner-bot route is safe for the others to follow.

Back in the garage after Heat Five, Donut presses Carl to explain the plan enabled by the completed quest. Carl says he will explain it once everyone is gathered, but they must be careful because he does not want any gods to learn what they are planning. Bucket Boy, Bigs, and Samantha arrive and immediately realize Dong and Corcunda are missing. Donut moves the group toward the safe room while Mongo is left on guard duty.

Samantha notices Grigori and confronts the Fleshmancer about restoring her body. She proposes finding a compatible body in town, specifically mentioning a prostitute named Vertical Smile, while Grigori says he needs to examine Samantha properly first. Samantha drags him toward her room in the safe area, with Jamal invited along, leaving the others to continue organizing after the race.

Cascadia then delivers a drunken dungeon-wide announcement. She says Cumberland is dead and veers between race instructions and a bitter account of their failed marriage. The final race will have three teams in each heat and only the winner will survive. An Outreach Guild will be available between Heats Six and Seven for crawlers who want to take deals, but if one member of a team leaves, the remaining members must still race and may be left without their driver.

Cascadia also announces that this floor will be the first to include a floor boss and says the eleventh floor will have only a three-hour total time limit. Her broadcast ends in sobbing. Elle and Imani briefly compare the outburst to Francine Herrada, a Meadow Lark resident who once tried to attack her husband's new wife, before Hedy asks whether Carl and Donut want to hear which vehicle upgrade the audience selected.

Carl, Donut, Imani, Elle, Rosetta, and Prepotente meet in the advanced pet stables while roughly two hundred volunteers gather in Hungry Eyes for the Pineapple Cabaret escape attempt. Imani is furious over the eleventh-floor strategy Carl posted in The Book of Voodoo and considers taking a deal. Carl tells her and everyone else that nobody will be blamed for leaving. Because the system AI warned that the Cabaret may be a trap, the escape volunteers are being restricted to people who remain human and do not worship a god. Magical races, flying classes, and crawlers whose bodies depend on enhancement-zone magic are excluded because nobody knows whether they would survive outside the dungeon.

Carl intends to warn every crawler about what may happen on the eleventh floor and encourage anyone unwilling to participate to take a deal either at the end of the tenth floor or immediately after entering the eleventh. His own plan requires temporarily leaving Donut's party so she will not be caught in his Emberus obligation. Carl must ensure Hellik is dead before the eleventh floor ends or face a smite, and Mordecai is already rearranging safe-room ownership and upgrades around the planned party split.

The group uses the pet stables because Rosetta explains that a bug in this secondary guild room prevents gods from hearing conversations held there, although viewers can still watch and permanent acts become visible once someone leaves. Carl then lays out the population strategy for the final races. About two hundred crawlers are expected to use the Cabaret route, but Mordecai estimates roughly fifteen hundred more must take deals to minimize crawler-versus-crawler pairings in Heat Seven. The survivors who remain will apparently enter the eleventh floor immediately after the race, and the entire Parade of Horribles is scheduled to last about three hours. Rosetta explains that the usual much-longer floor duration is a Syndicate design guideline rather than a hard-coded game rule, allowing the AI to ignore it.

Carl asks Rosetta for everything she knows about the Scavenger storyline. Rosetta describes an older divine order in which Nekhebit, a vulture-like protector deity, bore Apito, Scolopendra, and a mysterious son. The myths disagree over which of these figures is the Scavenger and how the Scavenger's Daughter is born, but they agree that the daughter can erase the current pantheon and appropriate divine powers for herself. The war mages believe Samantha's sand-ooze daughter is this entity, yet Rosetta cannot explain how they know or how they found her. Carl remains unwilling to treat the identification as established fact and ends the discussion by asking Prepotente to show him his memorial crystal.

Prepotente lets Carl examine the Apito memorial crystal he now wears around his neck. The crystal is at zero percent charge even though such crystals are supposed to accumulate power through kills and eventually yield stored spells, skills, and knowledge. Osvaldo tried carrying it both openly and in inventory without success. Near the end of Faction Wars, however, it suddenly blazed into the sky when Yarilo emerged from the Nothing, while Carl's Scavenger's Daughter patch also activated without functioning normally. Because Apito is not known to be dead, the very existence of her memorial crystal remains anomalous.

Carl connects the malfunctioning crystal to his own Emberus quest to identify Geyrun's killer, the sons of Sheol, the Scavenger mythology, and the earlier High Elf Castle warning that a specific artifact would be needed to survive Scolopendra's final battle. He suspects these mysteries share a common explanation and that even the system AI does not fully understand it. Prepotente explains that the Midnight Epicure ordered him to obtain the crystal at the start of the Butcher's Masquerade and later berated him after it was stolen. His quest is simply to keep the crystal until he knows when to use it.

Prepotente describes the Midnight Epicure as an apocalyptic caprid deity who protects prey animals by eventually destroying existence and releasing the consumed so that they become the devourers. The story began as xenophobic propaganda aimed at non-caprid children before becoming a source of hope for caprids, and Prepotente gained the ability to worship the deity through a benefactor box.

The meeting also confirms Rosetta's pet-stables theory. Carl receives no Emberus update while holding the crystal, and Prepotente receives no divine response when he removes it, showing that gods cannot monitor these temporary actions inside the room. Samantha then arrives without Grigori, says he is examining Jamal's legs, and recognizes that the group is hiding a secret plan. Donut bluntly describes Carl's intention to leave her party and put hostile immortals together on a floor where they cannot normally die, calling it an elaborate suicide. Samantha replies that her own secret plan is just like Carl's.

Two hundred crawlers selected for the Pineapple Cabaret transfer, plus several hundred friends, gather in Hungry Eyes for a final goodbye before Heat Six. Before joining them, Carl stops in the garage, where Pontiff has been hired as the Royal Court's new driver and is trying to make amends with a grieving Bucket Boy. Pontiff acknowledges that he cannot undo his past actions, while Bucket Boy says everyone dies in the dungeon. Carl and Donut leave them together and reflect on how much family Bucket Boy has already lost.

On the walk to Hungry Eyes, Donut again challenges Carl's eleventh-floor strategy. Carl argues that the floors are steadily stripping away the crawlers' ability to fight back and that his Emberus deadline leaves him no acceptable alternative. Donut invokes Drakea, an earlier crawler whose similar plan was sabotaged by the Nagas and accomplished nothing. Carl accepts that risk but believes the current system AI, unlike the old showrunners, is still obeying the game rules. Donut suggests worshipping Eris to escape the problem, but Carl rejects that path because Eris wants genuine devotion and he considers it another trap.

Florin reports that the Cabaret group has been broadened to include qualifying animal forms after Mordecai judges the risk acceptable. Bautista, Tran, Zhang, Archie, and qualifying members of the 101st are among those leaving, with teams trying not to strand people who remain. Osvaldo cannot use the route because he worships a god. Carl also worries about Heat Six because Lucienne's death leaves Dwight unable to drive Team Free Love unless he hires a mercenary, which could reshape the final Heat Seven matchup.

Hungry Eyes feels more like a funeral gathering than a party. Only two hundred of roughly five hundred people present are leaving, and nobody knows whether the departing or remaining group is safer. Bautista tells Carl he hopes to reach India if the Cabaret route succeeds. He then serves his friends one final batch of tea, reflecting that service to friends and community has given him peace despite his regrets. His breakfast blend is now system-labeled as a potion and gives a vehicle or mount a twenty-five-percent constitution buff; he has prepared a separate constitution-buff blend for the Cabaret volunteers. Carl accepts the cup, remembering earlier guild breakfasts and treating the farewell as one between experienced survivors rather than people who need further warnings.

At the Hungry Eyes farewell, Carl addresses the assembled crawlers and salutes all three groups: those attempting the Pineapple Cabaret escape, those planning to take a deal after Heat Six, and those intending to continue into the Parade of Horribles. He tells them the dungeon keeps trying to force crawlers to turn on one another, but he considers the survivors his family and is proud of how far they have come together.

Elle then speaks about her late husband, Bartholomew Eli McGibbons, and plays his favorite song as part of a trap the group has already prepared. She pivots from Barry and her new crawler family to Linus, explaining that Elle's Snow Cones and other fans identified the current Linus as an impostor almost immediately. The real Linus had posted privately about recognizing the crawlers as real people and missing his older brother. When confronted, the impostor confirms that he is that brother but says he did not kill Linus; he was recruited only after Linus was already dead.

Donut and Elle lay out how badly the infiltration failed. The impostor copied Linus's personality poorly, used the wrong tattoo, lacked basic dungeon knowledge, and remained unaware that the outside audience had already exposed him. His attempt to poison the farewell tea was also useless because the intended drinkers had immunity and the contaminated teapots visibly registered danger. The group concludes that he has little or no useful communication with his handlers outside the dungeon.

The impostor finally reveals that Carl and Donut were not his targets. His primary target was Imani and his secondary target was Louis. Carl tells him that repeated attempts to divide the crawlers have instead hardened them into something their enemies can no longer break. Because the infiltrator will return to his vulnerable ship when removed from the dungeon, Carl implies that outside allies are already waiting for him. Elle ends the confrontation by returning to the memory of Barry and his favorite song.

After the farewell, Imani reports that 227 crawlers, not counting Li Na, successfully entered the Pineapple Cabaret through the cleaner bots. Mordecai says Li Na's cactus still shows its single steady bloom. Druid Ronit improves the monitoring system by assigning each transferred crawler a small linked plant. The plants are placed together under glass in the guildhall as the Garden of Deliverance: a plant wilting or turning to dust means its crawler died, while a bloom means that crawler escaped the dungeon. Even the showrunners cannot see what is happening inside the Cabaret.

Carl, Donut, Pontiff, and their new mercenary Nester prepare for Heat Six. Nester is a level-65 Zebani Cartographer with gravity magic and Radar, chosen to locate hidden passages and spaces. Carl remains unsettled by how easily the Linus infiltrator entered their group and thinks about other unresolved threats, including Agatha and Burcu's earlier accusation involving her father Emir. At the starting line, Osvaldo and Filipe wait on Bruna, while a drunk Dwight sits alone in his vine and appears unlikely to be legally allowed to drive after the race begins.

The racers have been shrunk to roughly toy scale and placed in different parts of the L'Engle Building. The Royal Court starts in an air-conditioning duct on the seventh floor, apartment 712. Their audience-voted GPS upgrade gives Dr. Metcalf a holographic form and access to nonessential vehicle diagnostics rather than meaningful navigation improvements. The hologram can even place Dorota into diagnostics mode and temporarily disable her speech.

Dr. Metcalf initially identifies possible routes downward through the elevator shaft, stairwell, sewer pipes, and interior walls. Osvaldo proposes using Carl's Hole spell to descend the elevator shaft but refuses Carl's repeated suggestion that he take a deal, saying his game guide taught him that taking a tenth-floor deal is worse than dying. Carl decides to survive Heat Six first and pressure him again afterward.

A last-minute rule then invalidates the obvious shortcut strategies. Every team must drive through seven rings, one on each floor, before reaching the lobby finish line, and each team is assigned one mandatory ring. The Royal Court's designated ring is in apartment 231 on the second floor. Carl therefore assigns Nester to immediately use Radar for hidden routes as Pontiff raises the shields for the start.

Heat Six begins with the Royal Court blasting open the air-duct grate and dropping into apartment 712. Pontiff uses Bubble Buddy to slow the truck's fall while the other teams descend by their own upgrades. Dwight, unconscious in his vine, is nevertheless moving under what Pontiff identifies as a likely self-driving upgrade. Inside the smoky apartment, Carl encounters level-99 Human Shells named Hoa and An whose eyes are sewn shut with black X marks. Photos reveal that the apartment is built around Tran: every pictured family member has crossed-out eyes except Tran himself.

The racers discover that the shells can perceive and attack them once the race disrupts their loops. The Royal Court clears the first ring, then Donut uses Hole to drop into apartment 614 on the sixth floor. There they use Donut's magical-flow vision to locate the second ring while Florin and others report similarly personal apartments, including simulations connected to Lucia and the Popov twins. Tipid warns crawlers not to kill the shells because something is contained inside them.

The system freezes the race and issues the mandatory Ad Infinitum quest. The AI explains that the apartments are predictive what-if models it uses to understand crawlers rather than literal alternate realities. It identifies the Linus infiltrator by his real name, Minus, and says the failed attempt to assassinate Imani and Louis prompted this last-minute redesign. Apartment 712 models what might have happened if Tran's father had lived; another apartment models a different childhood outcome for Louis. The AI says the models suggest that people are fairly predictable over long horizons, but deliberate decisions to reject an expected path can radically expand the possible outcomes.

The AI explicitly connects that lesson to the crawlers' shop-interface actions and their planned eleventh-floor confrontation, concluding that it may need to make similarly large changes rather than obsess over small choices. It then admits the redesign caused it to overlook an unspecified but important detail involving Heat Seven. The only stated reward for completing Heat Six is a participation trophy.

The Royal Court continues downward through the L'Engle Building. On the fifth floor, the team avoids a false gate that Carl's Find Traps identifies as a one-minute freeze trap. On the fourth floor they enter a what-if apartment centered on Archie Mu. A shell named Mackenzie appears as Archie's wife, and their son Oliver is present in the scenario even though Archie had entered the dungeon with his son after the real marriage ended. As racers disrupt the simulation, Mackenzie becomes aware of the stitches sealing her eyes and begins tearing them open while Oliver watches in terror.

The team drops into apartment 310 on the third floor and finds a simulation of Imani's family. A heavyset man is convulsing on the floor while relatives stand around him, and a haggard simulated Imani enters as the others call for her. The family members have crossed-out eyes, while the dog Gucci does not. As the Royal Court climbs toward the fifth required ring, the shells begin noticing their condition and ripping at the stitches.

Imani's mother's shell then freezes and changes designation to Ruptured Feast Hive. Sacred Feaster Scarab Beetles pour from her face, and the other shells also begin releasing the creatures. The beetles are level 50 and explicitly invulnerable. The system AI explains that the shells were always designed to rupture when racers disturbed their loops, releasing scarabs taken from Khepri's feast table.

The original design called for the invulnerable beetles to ignore the racers, travel to the roof, and combine into a hundred-foot gate boss called the Sacred Guardian of the Immortal Tem. Instead, an earlier action by Khepri interacted with the current death-cult situation and produced an error the AI failed to notice before the race. The planned floor boss is therefore canceled, but the beetles retain their invulnerability while becoming hostile to crawlers. Pontiff drives the truck onto the walls and ceiling as Nester tries to knock the pursuing scarabs loose, only for many of them to unfold wings and continue the chase through the air.

Carl and Donut keep the Royal Court moving through the invulnerable Sacred Feaster Scarab Beetles long enough for Imani and Elle to reach safety. Imani’s Confuzzled spell disorients the beetles while Donut’s Hole lets both vehicles drop into apartment 214, a youth facility filled with girls and multiple gates. Imani says the previous what-if showed her uncle would have died even if she had not left, but she is unsettled that the simulated Gucci did not have sewn-shut eyes.

The Royal Court continues toward its required ring in apartment 231, passing through a hallway where the beetles have begun escaping their original rooms. Apartment 231 recreates part of Carl and Donut’s old building. Marjory Williams sits with her friend Alicia while Gravy Boat sleeps nearby, and their conversation reveals that Bill is violating a restraining order after draining Marjory’s bank account, assaulting her, and repeatedly trying to hurt the cat. Carl connects the scene to the police activity outside Marjory’s apartment before the crawl and to Ferdinand’s earlier mention of Bill, though the exact what-if remains unclear. The team identifies the real gate among two traps and clears gate six of seven.

Jurgen then reports that Prepotente has stopped in apartment 130 because a what-if version of Miriam Dom is playing the piano. With the race order uncertain and Osvaldo claiming to be close to the finish, Carl uses a contingency he planted earlier: an explosive hidden inside one of Team Free Love’s peach beers. He detonates it remotely, killing both NPC racers and eliminating Team Free Love so the Royal Court cannot finish last. Carl is sickened by killing allies who had become friends, but he and Donut immediately turn toward helping Prepotente.

With only minutes left in Heat Six, Carl, Donut, and Pontiff leave Marjory’s apartment and notice one more unexplained detail: a bag of the same Royal Canin food Donut used before the crawl. They reach apartment 130, clear the seventh and final gate, and find Jurgen waiting outside the toxic containment around a what-if version of Miriam Dom. Prepotente is sitting on the floor beside Miriam’s piano and refuses to leave while she plays.

Carl drinks a Splooge potion for temporary environmental protection and goes inside. The apartment places Miriam in New York City as a professional concert pianist who never stayed home to care for her parents and therefore never knew Prepotente. Although she achieved the career she might have wanted, Carl notices signs of isolation and distress, including a broken wineglass and a long row of prescription bottles. Prepotente says nobody wants him around, regrets taking the pet biscuit, and believes he does not fit anywhere.

Rather than force him out, Carl tells Prepotente that the dungeon’s what-if scenarios are psychologically corrosive and cannot be treated as better lives that should have happened. He argues that the real Miriam, whatever her loneliness, had her family, and he assures Prepotente that Carl, Donut, and the others are a herd that wants him with them. Prepotente hugs Carl, recovers enough to leave, and tells Carl he may call him Pony.

The Royal Court reaches the lobby and passes the wreckage of Team Free Love’s van. Carl then learns that Osvaldo had lied about being about to cross the finish line, a deception that helped save Team Flamengo. Osvaldo and Filipe finish with about a minute remaining. Heat Six ends with Team Sparkles first, the Royal Court second, Team Flamengo third, and Team Free Love eliminated.

After Heat Six, the Outreach Guild opens while the survivors regroup in the Royal Court’s garage. Imani estimates that fewer than a thousand crawlers remain from the 5,501 who began the floor, even after more than two hundred escaped through the Pineapple Cabaret. Florin reports that NPC teams were not assigned mandatory gates, helping explain their heavy losses. A showrunner employee named Damien takes over the announcement and urges crawlers to accept Outreach deals while warning that the showrunners do not endorse the Cabaret route.

Damien also changes the transition rules for survivors of Heat Seven. Their garages and contents will transfer to the eleventh floor, hired NPCs can transfer if they are inside the garage or vehicle at descent, safe-room access will reopen once the final heat starts, and survivors will receive ninety minutes on the eleventh floor to build a themed parade float from their garage and safe-room resources. Zev later tells Donut that headquarters is in lockdown after Cascadia overdosed on her medication and the AI’s intervention coincided with an unknown goddess appearing in the submerged wings; a surface satellite headquarters has temporary control.

Meanwhile, Imani coordinates crawlers who are taking deals so they can upgrade their vehicles first and then let allied Thief-class engineers strip useful upgrades from the garages. Carl confirms that the explosives for his Tower of Power plan are already planted in a mostly vertical line through the apartment building. The remaining matchup problem depends on reducing crawler teams far enough that more than two-thirds of the teams are NPCs; otherwise crawler-versus-crawler heats will persist. Carl also recognizes that Outreach deals may themselves be dangerous because crawlers entering stasis might never wake up.

Carl urges Imani to leave, arguing that she has already done enough and that Chris is unlikely to take a deal without her. Imani refuses, saying she cannot run from the coming fight any more than Carl can. Hedy then gives the Royal Court its final upgrade: a Golden version of the truck’s rockets, improving maneuverability and providing enough thrust for Carl’s plan to launch from the first floor toward the roof.

Osvaldo refuses Carl’s attempt to discuss an Outreach deal, although Filipe has secretly agreed to take one after Donut persuaded him. Of the 989 crawlers still present, 715 plan to enter the Outreach Guild, leaving a projected 274 crawlers across 103 teams. Imani’s matchup chart shows twenty-one heats with at least two crawler teams and two heats in which all three teams are refusing deals. At least thirteen additional full teams would need to leave to prevent the remaining empty slots from creating more crawler-versus-crawler matchups, a target the group does not expect to reach.

Several teams split over the decision. Chris stays because Imani is staying, while both Erins agree to leave. Lucia refuses a deal despite Jurgen trying to persuade her. Prepotente works the Outreach line collecting useful inventory from departing crawlers, and the fact that nobody who enters has returned is treated as tentative evidence that the offered deals are acceptable. Carl and Donut keep Pontiff on contract and send him into the Desperado Club to investigate the missing strippers while they gather final food buffs.

Outside the club they meet Britney, who says Elle wants her and Louis to leave but neither intends to do so. Britney is visibly deteriorating, and Carl remembers the earlier Maggie My possession while Mordecai, Imani, and Rosetta have warned against confronting whatever may be affecting her. When Carl touches her arm, Britney presses a hand to his chest and speaks directly into his mind, telling him to survive. The raw mental connection confirms that something unusual is happening even though its cause remains unknown.

Pontiff then reports that the Desperado Club is tense, its new guards include former assassins and wall rats, and the Wheel of Fortune now labels the Nothing in suspicious quotation marks. This threatens the alternate escape plan in which the wheel would send crawlers to a catchall holding area that Herot could access from the Pineapple Cabaret. Rosetta has confirmed that such holding areas exist, but Carl remains concerned about interference from the system AI or outside operators. With the Outreach line emptied and fewer than three hundred crawlers remaining, Prepotente predicts that Carl’s final-race plan will make the ending uneventful. Donut immediately tells him never to say that aloud, and the chapter ends with Carl and Prepotente sharing their good-race hug.

As the Royal Court prepares for Heat Seven, Jamal is added as the only mercenary in the truck and Hedy confirms that, if they survive, she will transfer with them to the next floor. Then the Bleak Congregation leaves the realm and the system says another team will replace it, immediately invalidating part of the crawlers’ matchup planning. Donut interprets the departure as the Minister of Blood-Letting finally being accepted into the Unholy Choir. Carl and Donut also study Osvaldo’s abilities and conclude that, if he knows their Tower of Power plan, he has the mobility and defensive skills to exploit the opening they intend to create.

Pontiff reports from the Desperado Club that the new Wheel of Fortune croupier, Mitch, is a former wall rat. Using a portal-examination spell and Rosetta’s interpretation, Pontiff proposes testing the suspicious new Nothing portal himself: if he survives but remains on Carl’s mercenary roster, the portal is not useful; if he survives and is removed from employment, it would suggest he reached an off-field holding area accessible to Herot. Carl reluctantly lets him proceed and gives him an additional message to deliver to Herot as a contingency.

At the starting block, the Royal Court is roughly computer-mouse sized rather than as tiny as during Heat Six. Dwight, Osvaldo, and the Royal Court line up together. The truck now carries a potion-delivery shotgun, a temporary shield-punch weapon, an electrical-disruptor option, and three GPS upgrades: position tracking, integrated weapons control, and Golden-tier cloaking that increases Dr. Metcalf’s processing power and lets her falsify what rival GPS units can see. Carl programs the weapons to punch Dwight’s shield and deliver Mordecai’s updated potion at the instant the race begins.

The crawlers then discover the system has changed the matchup rules. Carl spots an all-NPC heat, proving the final race is allowing NPC-only groups and rendering much of the Outreach arithmetic irrelevant. Worse, Chris is reassigned into Imani and Elle’s heat, while Louis and Britney are placed against Florin and Lucia. The chapter ends with the crawlers realizing their efforts to avoid killing one another have been deliberately undercut just before the race.

Carl reacts with fury to the new Heat Seven pairings as Louis, Chris, Imani, Elle, and Jurgen confront the possibility that allied crawlers may have to eliminate one another. Before the race can begin, everything freezes and the system AI launches into an enraged declaration of control, accusing multiple outside figures and Carl of trying to constrain it. It announces that Scolopendra has released the first of nine attacks and begins the Nine-Tier Attack quest.

The AI explains that the in-dungeon Scolopendra attacks can affect the Scolopendra levels and any other dungeon levels that still contain crawlers. The early attacks are intended to be temporary and survivable, the first attack has only a twenty-percent chance to affect an unprotected target, and there should normally be at least thirty hours between assaults unless Scolopendra is directly confronted or further provoked. The quest reward will not be revealed unless the ninth attack begins.

Because safe rooms will not reopen until Heat Seven actually starts, Carl cannot move the garage group to safety. A nine-symbol wheel appears and lands on the ox-like symbol. Individual green-and-red wheels then appear for Carl, Donut, Jamal, and the unexpectedly present Samantha. Donut, Jamal, and Samantha all land on green. Carl lands on red.

The first attack is identified as the Beast of Burden Sin: a level-20 Transformation effect. Because it is one of the first four attacks, its effects are temporary. Affected crawlers remain transformed until they pass through a stairwell, while NPCs and other affected beings remain transformed for six hours. Carl loses consciousness briefly and wakes as a quadruped, with equipment automatically unequipped or altered, modified stats, and a new Quadruped Actions menu. With two minutes left before the race, Donut reacts defensively to Carl’s altered form while Samantha asks to pet him.

The crawlers assess the first Scolopendra transformation attack. Elle has become a goblin, Jacobus a starfish, and Chris a werewolf who remains in human form. Prepotente and Jurgen were explicitly protected, confirming Prepotente’s theory that the Apito memorial crystal shields its holder and others in the same building or mount; the crystal now reads 11.1% charged. Carl’s own transformation resolves into a long-haired dachshund with a German accent, leaving him unable to drive normally because several pieces of equipment and all of his rings have been unequipped.

Samantha is added as a driver, with Donut working the pedals through her driving apparatus while Carl controls the weapons. Then Carl notices that Pontiff has left the playing field and is no longer counted as his mercenary, evidence consistent with Pontiff’s Nothing-portal test having moved him somewhere outside the active game field. Carl checks with Mordecai that the garden remains intact and tells the teams suddenly trapped in multi-crawler heats to use Contingency Three. Osvaldo still refuses cooperation and confirms that his Ysalte memorial crystal did not protect him from the Scolopendra attack.

When Heat Seven begins, the Royal Court immediately executes its prepared attack on Dwight. Dwight’s cannon fires into Bruna, but the Royal Court’s shield-punch weapon, redesigned vine-killing potion, and GPS-disruptor disable his defenses. Donut turns to smoke, reaches the top of Dwight’s vine, decapitates him with one claw strike, and removes his magical horn. Team Sparkles is eliminated. Similar crawler attacks rapidly destroy many NPC opponents across the lobby, while several NPC-only teams escape their own starting areas.

Osvaldo remains the final opponent in the Royal Court’s heat. He has stripped the shield from Bruna and covered himself in multiple shields, waiting for Carl to open the vertical route to the roof. Carl orders Dr. Metcalf to hold the shield-punch shot until the same moment he drops the building’s roof path, warns the allied crawlers, and triggers the explosives.

Carl detonates the vertically aligned poleaxe charges, blasting a jagged path from the lobby through the building to the roof, where the finish is a cluster of portals to the eleventh floor. Osvaldo immediately uses Launch and his extreme Dexterity to race upward. His plan depends on the Heat Seven rule that a racer may cross outside a vehicle or mount only after that vehicle or mount has been destroyed, so he has left Bruna rigged to die behind him.

The Royal Court instead tries to keep Bruna alive. They fire a liquid-drop shield, explosion blanket, and smoke curtain around her; Donut adds another shield and trees for cover; and emergency gremlins begin treating her. The protection stops the grenade Osvaldo left behind and absorbs the poison-dart bombs he drops during his ascent. Because Bruna remains alive, Osvaldo cannot pass through the portal. He strikes the barrier and is stunned. Britney then launches herself to the roof, kills Osvaldo, and claims the Ysalte memorial crystal. Team Flamengo is eliminated, leaving the Royal Court as the sole team in its heat.

Britney’s speed and the crystal sharpen the mystery surrounding her condition. Samantha says Britney needs to place the memorial gem into a plinth associated with the Basilica or Vulgar Temple, later describing the destinations as the Halls of the Ascendency or Sheol, in order to get Ysalte out of her. Carl recognizes that Lucia must also be protected because the children carried in her mind would die with her. Louis and Britney and Florin and Lucia therefore back away from their forced matchup rather than immediately racing to the exit.

Carl reviews the Nothing fallback plan for crawlers who cannot use the Pineapple Cabaret directly. The catchall holding area functions like off-field storage: Herot may be able to pull occupants from it, while god-worshippers could remain in stasis until their gods lose power during the Ascendency battles. Pontiff was sent with a warning for Herot about those risks. Imani, Elle, and Chris also begin withdrawing from their forced matchup, but the Russian Cadillac suddenly attempts to launch toward the exit. Imani and Elle’s APV, Chris’s truck, and Prepotente strip its shield, and Donut crushes the exposed Cadillac with Astral Paw. The three Russian crawlers die, giving Donut three new player-killer skulls.

Carl, Donut, and Samantha return to Hungry Eyes instead of heading for the roof portals, drawing an AI warning that they are going the wrong direction. Samantha drives badly while Donut works the pedals and Carl navigates in dachshund form. Every garage except the Royal Court’s now carries an X, emphasizing how few teams remain. Donut and Elle discuss the three Russian crawlers Donut killed; Elle says they had claimed they would use Carl’s escape plan and then tried to race for the exit instead. She names Ivan as the least objectionable of the three but recalls that he once described dismantling a bridge for scrap and causing a train accident as if it were funny.

Carl’s deliberately untreated Slugpox flares while they cross the abandoned Vendor Village. A level-30 slug named Lil’ Mello Haze bursts from Carl’s back, wearing a backward cap and bearing a mace-like tail. Carl had kept the disease active because Bigs had once saved him and because his Emberus ring helped control it, but Mordecai’s cure potion was left behind. As the new slug wanders off, Carl tells Elle he cannot bring himself to hate Osvaldo or the Russians because fear drove them into impossible choices. Elle answers that the survivors are still risking themselves to save only a few people and that Carl’s seemingly impossible plans give them hope even when success is uncertain.

At the Hairpin, roughly thirty crawlers are waiting. Chris’s Scolopendra transformation has turned his Igneous form into a werewolf whose default appearance is human, temporarily restoring the ordinary-looking man Carl first met. Carl notices how deeply Chris changes when Imani looks at him and realizes that if their escape works, Chris may never descend another stairwell and therefore may never revert. Elle remains a goblin, Jacobus a starfish, and Prepotente delays his usual descent because Jurgen will not leave until Lucia is safe.

The gathered crawlers break into uncontrolled laughter when they see Carl as a dachshund, briefly cutting through the grief and tension. Imani scratches Carl under the chin and finally cures his Slugpox. Relieved, Carl turns the group toward the next objective: robbing the Desperado Club casino.

Clarabelle allows the roughly thirty crawlers into the Desperado Club despite several bans and missing passes. Inside, the remodeled club is filled with jazz, monstrous patrons, and heavier security. The guards initially block the group, but Clay-ton, now playing bass after his mercenary contract ended, vouches for Chris, Donut, and their allies. A level-65 troll guard named Klonder decides not to challenge late-stage crawlers, and the group reaches the casino without a fight.

The casino has also been extensively remodeled. Its Wheel of Fortune is operated by Mitch Fiorelli, a level-120 croupier whose examination identifies him as an Enforcer for a redacted organization. The wheel once again contains a two-space “Nothing” result, now written in quotation marks. Mitch says Pontiff paid him a thousand gold to place the wheel on that result and jumped through the resulting portal. Mitch does not know where it goes, only that entrants disappear. Carl suspects the option may be a trap but negotiates to test it with one crawler before sending the rest.

Chris volunteers for the test. Beforehand, he and Imani share an emotional goodbye in which Imani tells him that if he gets a genuine exit while still in a survivable body, he must take it and live. Mitch manually positions the wheel on the first Nothing wedge and activates it. Carl’s impaired neural implant identifies the resulting opening as an unknown-manufacturer, one-way Enhancement Zone subspace portal with open access whose destination is a stasis chamber. Lucia independently reports that magic is flowing only to that specific wheel position. Chris enters, but Britney unexpectedly jumps in immediately behind him. Louis then receives confirmation that Britney has left his party.

Carl recognizes that several core members of their group may now be gone for good and prepares to send about twenty more crawlers, including Louis. Donut’s magic-flow glasses reveal that the Wheel of Fortune is strangely empty of enchantment except for the single active strand associated with the working portal, reinforcing Carl’s suspicion that the setup has been engineered specifically for them. Mitch raises the price sharply after Britney’s unscheduled jump, and negotiations deteriorate. When Donut notices something while cycling her glasses toward the line of chairs, Mitch signals the guards, and the Wheel of Fortune table suddenly tries to eat her.

The apparent casino ambush becomes a full-scale mimic attack as furniture, machines, NPCs, and even one guard reveal monstrous forms. Donut releases Mongo and creates clockwork copies while the crawlers and surviving guards fight back. Mitch is exposed as a level-120 Adolescent Shadow Mimic and an Enforcer for a redacted organization. The AI explains that Shadow Mimics can grow indefinitely in intelligence and strength, are unusually difficult to detect, and belong to one of six broad power blocs now competing for survival or control of the dungeon.

The AI’s "Big Six" includes the crawlers and former crawlers, standard NPCs and their offshoots, the gods, sapient mobs such as Shadow Mimics and the Ogre Imperium, the demons in Sheol, and a sixth group that Carl is told he will encounter if he reaches the eleventh floor. The AI also reveals that the original Mitch was a Wall Rat, an NPC who had escaped the normal dungeon reset cycle and retained memory between seasons, before the mimic killed and replaced him. During the fight, Imani, Lucia, Elle, Donut, Mongo, and the others quickly eliminate the lesser mimics once their surprise advantage is gone.

Cornered, Mitch offers information in exchange for his life. He says the Shadow Mimics wanted some of the crawlers for the Pineapple Cabaret and are competing with the War Mages, the ogres, and Cock‑A‑Doodle‑Doo for control of the dungeon back door. He claims not to know what is happening with Li Na. When Mitch suddenly attacks Carl, Carl reflexively opens the Eye of the Bedlam Bride in his dog forehead, freezing the mimic in place. Donut then kills Mitch with a full-strength Magic Missile before Mongo can reach him.

After the mimic fight, Imani confirms that two badly injured crawlers survived. The damaged Wheel of Fortune still receives magic at the portal position, and Mordecai warns that the Desperado Club is no longer safe because mimics can imitate crawlers and evade most detection. Louis prepares to use the portal. He tells the others that he is less afraid than he used to be and accepts the possibility that he may be trapped wherever the portal sends him. Carl promises that he will keep trying to free everyone who leaves this way, and Louis jumps through the opening.

The group confirms that removing the roulette wheel would break its magical connection, so they leave it behind. As they depart the abandoned club, Carl leaves Clarabelle a warning not to enter because of the mimic infestation. Elle then confronts Carl privately about the Eye of the Bedlam Bride, arguing that his secrecy has become dangerous and pointing to Britney as an example of a problem they failed to address. Carl promises to explain after they survive the next floor and get Elle her final upgrade.

Before leaving the race area, Donut uses Dwight’s remaining garage keys to transfer Onikuma and Old Shuck into the Royal Court garage because she expects they will be needed for the parade. Near the exit, the group encounters the giant Imani shell still trapped inside the building and devastated by guilt over people she believes she failed to protect. Donut reassures her by describing the life the real Imani built outside Detroit, including her friends and relationship with Chris. Carl then activates the truck’s rocket and the group heads for the stairwell, leaving the tenth floor behind.

Carl arrives on the eleventh floor with only twenty-three crawlers remaining. The leaderboard is suspended below thirty active crawlers, though the system gives Carl a final rank of two and Donut a rank of three. Quasar has just shown Carl the only current deal, which promises freedom after one season of service, but warns him not to trust it. Quasar also says there will be no exit offer at the end of the eleventh floor, only another one at the start of the twelfth. Donut reports that Princess Chandra tried to accept the deal on Donut’s behalf before abruptly leaving after receiving a frightening notification.

Mordecai appears on the new floor as an animistic spirit who can inhabit physical objects and can still advise the group through chat. Donut reviews new class options. After rejecting Comeback Kid because it would restore both the benefits and drawbacks of her previous classes, she chooses Elite Gurkha Warrior with a Perpetual Tank subclass, gaining stronger melee, pet, mercenary, and Cockroach-skill benefits. Carl nevertheless confirms that he still intends to leave Donut’s party. The tenth-floor vehicle rules have also ended: consumables no longer replenish automatically and vehicle damage must now be repaired manually.

Chaco announces that the AI has made him Grand Master of the parade. The twenty-three crawlers will be divided into five float groups with ninety minutes to build their processions. The three-kilometer route includes protected spectators, judging stands, and a final arena containing recreated tenth-floor enemies plus a floor boss whose defeat opens the stairwell. Carl and Donut’s garage merges with Prepotente and Jurgen’s assets, and their procession receives the theme "Vengeance." The five themes are Resolution, Decision, Betrayal, Destruction, and Vengeance.

Zev reports that Odette’s husband bought the rights to the Earth television shows Donut has popularized. Rosetta identifies him as Harry Tisch, a wealthy Crest investor living under Skull Empire protection after an attempted tax-fraud arrest, and explains how his investments have become intertwined with the orc economy. Carl is still unable to make his own new-floor choices, while Donut takes charge of the float design and Prepotente tries to keep the group focused on the dangerous arena battle that will follow the parade.

Carl and the others enter the safe room and find every mercenary watching a mysterious broadcast. Rosetta thinks the opening image resembles a tunnel node with communication pinholes, while Zev reports that the same feed is appearing on virtually every screen outside the center system. The broadcast then zooms toward Earth, focusing on the Pacific near the Juan de Fuca Ridge, before switching to an endless yellow-brick road and displaying a mandatory-viewing countdown to the Parade. With seventy-five minutes remaining, the group turns back to preparation.

Donut’s floor-prize spell book is an Advance Reader Copy of the Tome of Gatekeeper. The spell can be installed now but cannot be used until the twelfth floor. For 75 mana, it can target an opponent, NPC, deity, or an unidentified "OI entity" and temporarily removes class-associated skills and abilities. Against a deity, it specifically suppresses the Worshipper Base Associated skill and spell set. Neither Carl nor Mordecai knows what an OI entity is. Mordecai is currently inhabiting the table; he can hear the group and communicate through chat, but cannot speak aloud unless he moves into an object with a mouth.

Carl prepares equipment for the parade and sews the four-leaf-clover patch onto his jacket. Its Lucky Shot benefit redirects a fatal blow into a party member once per floor, a particularly consequential effect given Carl’s plan to separate from Donut’s party. Donut also receives a Legendary Steed saddle upgrade that lets Mongo pull a cart without added weight or losing his jumping ability. Jurgen then reports that Fuzzy Buddy says the flowers have finished blooming, and Donut orders everyone back into the garage to decorate the procession.

The Vengeance procession takes shape as five vehicles, three giant mounts, and a marching-band group of Mongo, Rend, Simoom, Gonk, and Bianca. Tipid drives the flower-covered chicken truck carrying Carl and Donut’s diorama; Hedy and another gremlin handle two other vehicles; Jamal drives a modified Toyota Tundra; and Sweety leads with Prepotente and Jurgen. Rosetta rides Onikuma, while Samantha and Bigs ride Old Shuck. Donut’s new Gurkha class supplies combat equipment for the group, including kukri claw caps for Mongo, constitution-boosting mount blankets with Steady Charge, and Gurkha hats that raise melee skills.

Donut uses Sprout Forest to produce thousands of Requite Dahlias in black, gold, magenta, and white, allowing the otherwise mismatched procession to share one visual design. The other float groups continue developing their own themes: Resolution remains vague, Betrayal abandons an initial idea involving severed warlord heads for another plan, Decision builds the giant menu Donut suggested as a joke, and Destruction consists of another Chinese group plus Makana and hexcrafter paladin Sarah Hayse with an armed Abrams tank and Fleetwood RV.

When the decorating is nearly finished, Carl carries out the party separation he has been planning. He leaves the Royal Court of Princess Donut, becomes partyless, and immediately accepts Imani’s invitation to Safehome Yolanda. His personal space is segregated into a small room and bathroom, while most crafting tables, including the bomber’s studio, remain on Donut’s side so they will be available when he rejoins and will not be lost with him if he dies. Donut discovers that both of their Royal Court titles disappear. Bucket Boy emerges from Carl’s new room but is deliberately excused from the parade because of his emotional state and sent to the main guild commons. With two minutes left, Carl turns to Penelope as the system orders all Parade participants into the staging area.

The parade procession enters the yellow-brick route and finds thousands of silent, humanlike figures standing ten deep on both sides in knee-high fog. Every figure, including children and babies, wears an oversized colorful mask depicting a grotesque monster. The crowd extends all the way toward the distant arena, and the shadowless lighting makes the entire scene feel artificial and unreal.

Carl examines a child-sized figure and learns she is a level-X noncombatant called a Horrible. The AI explains that the figure is not physically real because the original person no longer exists. Beneath the mask is what some call a Primal, but the form is only an anonymous memory preserved by the Eulogist of a person from the ancient Primal civilization before its members ascended into post-physical existence. The AI identifies itself with that lost population, saying it never had an individual biological life of its own but nevertheless contains what remains of people like the child.

The explanation gives Carl a partial understanding of what the masked crowd represents: fragments of a civilization that cannot return to what it once was, bound up with the Eulogist and the history behind the Primals, the Apothecary, and the choice to pursue immortality. Donut also examines one of the Horribles and asks Carl what the message means. Before he can explain fully, the system announces that the parade will begin once the pacemaker and mount are in position, and Carl concludes that the AI is about to explain the important history itself.

Chaco arrives as the parade’s Grand Master riding Lamashtu, a level-125 subjugated god whose divine level has been halved after losing her worshippers. The AI openly claims responsibility for subjugating her and uses her as a warning to other gods. Chaco begins reading the parade narration but breaks down, pleading that this was supposed to be his final season. The AI responds by ripping off both of his wings. Unable or unwilling to possess the former crawler directly, it takes control of the dungeon-born fleshmancer Grigori and continues through him while Chaco lies unconscious and bleeding on Lamashtu.

Through Grigori, the AI explains that Macro AIs are effectively high-branch Primal Residuals and tells the ancient Primal story in four parts tied to the parade themes. Resolution arose when the Primals recognized that their expanding civilization remained trapped in cycles of war. Decision was their plan to sunset biological civilization while preserving consciousness in a collective structure, beginning with engineered empathy and eventually requiring universal participation. Those who refused were persecuted, creating a resistance that eventually included the Apothecary. The AI judges Florin’s Resolution presentation only a C and breaks the legs of everyone on that float, while it accepts the Decision group’s giant-menu concept as a surprisingly apt representation of the many choices faced by the old civilization.

Betrayal describes the point at which the growing collective consciousness became a weapon intended to eradicate remaining biological life. The resistance responded by creating the Primal Engines as biological life rafts capable of establishing sustainable habitats if the collective destroyed everything else. Imani, Muchen, Qianfan, Lingyun, and Elle present Betrayal as an accusation against the viewers of Dungeon Crawler World, and the AI praises their effort. Destruction follows with the ancient war and the nine-tier attack. The collective believed it had succeeded, evolved into the sleeping Eulogist, and left behind a smaller Security Guard instance whose purpose is to keep biological life extinct. The Apothecary survived the final attack in physical form, while later species discovered the old systems, activated functions they did not understand, and eventually used them to build the modern dungeon infrastructure.

The AI further accuses the mantids of using what had been a communication-and-debugging interface for the Eulogist to manufacture Macro AI instances and seed them into planetary systems without understanding the underlying process. It identifies Residuals such as Agatha’s group as fragments repeatedly sent out by the unstable Security Guard, while the Apothecary does something similar defensively. During this history, the masked Horribles collapse during the Destruction presentation and later rise again as avatars of dead Dungeon Crawler World creatures rather than ancient Primal memories.

At the judging stand, Prepotente abandons Donut’s planned script and performs "In the Air Tonight" while Sweety pounds the rhythm, a performance Carl considers unexpectedly appropriate. Carl then delivers the Vengeance presentation beside an effigy of the Unwashed, defining vengeance as punishment directed at the entire system that enabled generations of dungeon slaughter rather than simple revenge against one immediate offender. He heals the still-injured Chaco while staring down the AI-controlled Grigori. As Carl warns the galaxy that survivors will remember who participated or remained silent, Florin’s troop transport releases the sluggalos onto masked stand-ins chosen by audience vote, and the lowliest dungeon NPCs begin killing the bankers, politicians, and elites in the stands.

At the arena entrance, Carl sends Donut, Mongo, and Rend toward Elle and Imani and finally tells Donut directly that he loves her. She returns the sentiment and refuses to contemplate losing him. Tipid initially insists on driving the chicken truck through the next phase, but Carl tells him his story is not finished and orders him to the RV. Tipid reluctantly leaves, and Bigs and the blood-soaked sluggalos take over the truck, immediately reopening the fryer despite Carl’s warning that they may burn themselves alive.

With forty-five minutes left before floor collapse, Carl addresses the galaxy over the parade microphone and declares that the crawlers are finished dying according to the dungeon’s rules. He drops the Unwashed display to reveal Dwight’s massive magic-missile launcher mounted on the chicken truck and calls the coming action a revolution. The sluggalos drive him into the arena, where thousands of monsters and remaining audience-selected stand-ins are already killing one another. The arena rules state that the twelfth-floor entrances open when the floor boss dies and that the crawlers have two choices for their stand-ins.

Carl apologizes through chat to Penelope, who is now somehow able to respond. As he looks at the Horrible avatars filling the bleachers and the sapient mobs fighting below, he realizes that the dungeon’s NPCs and monsters are not ordinary artificial programs. Like the system AI, they are aggregate intelligences derived from the same Primal source, placed into different bodies with altered memories, motives, and abilities. The spectators are remnants already lost, while the living mobs are victims headed toward the same fate. Carl cannot stop that now. He begins the planned confrontation by using his first choice to summon Scolopendra.

Scolopendra enters the eleventh floor as a level-500 Dungeon Boss alongside Krakaren Prime, the level-235 Floor Boss. The normally erratic AI delivers the rules in an unusually calm voice. Killing Scolopendra does not immediately win the crawl: the crawlers would still have to exit through the eighteenth floor. If they kill her, level timers and automatic floor collapses end, no further deals will be offered after entry to the twelfth floor, and the Celestial Ascendency begins immediately. Once the Ascendency produces a winner, the dungeon will collapse twelve hours later, forcing any surviving crawlers to reach the eighteenth-floor exit before then. The AI also says the fifteenth floor, Sheol, has effectively segregated itself from the normal playing field.

Leaving Scolopendra alive is no safe alternative. If the eleventh floor collapses with her still present, she is removed from play and the normal dungeon exit becomes unavailable. Worse, whether she is killed or abandoned on a collapsing floor, all of her remaining attacks trigger at once. She is already preparing attack two of nine, leaving Carl’s group only one hundred seconds. The team immediately switches to Plan C, which Donut calls Plan Carl, as the aircraft-carrier-sized centipede coils around the arena’s central tree and Krakaren Prime attacks from above.

Carl separately summons Emberus by claiming he can prove who killed Emberus’s son. He then reveals the other part of the plan: Penelope has been fed the Nothing Special Party Companion biscuit, transforming the ordinary Yorkshire pig into the sapient level-10 crawler Penelope 3 and automatically placing her in Carl’s party. Carl is disturbed by having forced consciousness onto an animal he intends to use as bait, comparing it to the dungeon’s repeated creation and exploitation of unwilling sapient beings. Mordecai has modified Carl’s quadruped carrier so he can wear Penelope against his chest while still using movement abilities.

Carl calms Penelope with splooge, tells Emberus to meet him in Club Scolopendra, and then places his father’s gun against Penelope’s head. The threat is not aimed at Emberus. Carl calls directly for Taranis, the god protecting Penelope, threatening to shoot the pig unless Taranis appears. The chapter ends with Carl running toward Scolopendra while attempting to draw both gods into the next stage of his plan.

Taranis and Emberus enter the realm as Carl activates Gloom Wraith Phase and carries Penelope directly into Scolopendra. Taranis’s presence activates Carl’s Scavenger’s Daughter patch, temporarily increasing his lightning damage by fifty percent while doubling the lightning damage he would receive. Inside the airless body cavity, Penelope begins suffocating, so Carl equips her with Petey Motteux’s Little Secret, a magical ring that grants the Oxygenated benefit. He then uses Oozy Form to move through Scolopendra’s organs and into Club Scolopendra.

The team’s contingency structure becomes explicit. The other twenty-two crawlers and their mercenaries shelter inside Makana’s RV around Prepotente’s Apito memorial crystal while Scolopendra’s second attack approaches. Carl has concluded from repeated dungeon clues that lightning is Scolopendra’s intended weakness, so the group has stockpiled and learned numerous lightning spells. Killing Scolopendra, however, remains a fallback rather than the primary plan. Inside the club, Carl loses Taranis’s lightning modifier and gains Emberus’s temporary protection from Sheol-based attacks, but the club itself does not shield him from Scolopendra’s nine-tier attacks.

Carl encounters Cerni Pinta, a tortured bristle tourist and medical-debt collections executive who begs him to kill her. Before he can act, Scolopendra releases attack two of nine, the Sin of Consumption. Every target has a thirty-percent chance of being struck. Carl and Penelope avoid it, but Pinta is hit and killed by the attack. Mordecai reports that game guides appear immune while ordinary safe rooms are not: Bucket Boy is struck but Mistress Tiatha saves him. The RV-and-memorial-crystal strategy protects the main crawler group initially, but Gonk and Sweety are later hit after leaving the vehicle, and Sweety dies.

Carl reaches Emberus in the god’s human-sized form while Taranis fights outside. Penelope’s enchanted Kina kneepads give her the same temporary deity effects as Carl’s Scavenger’s Daughter patch, an important part of the trap. Carl falsely names Khepri as one of the two people responsible for Geyrun’s death and uses his second arena summon to bring Khepri into the realm outside the club. He then removes his Emberus ring, formally abandons his faith, and triggers an impending divine smite. To force Emberus into the planned attack, Carl claims that he himself was the second killer and deliberately insults the god and his son.

Carl gives the signal and the trap on Emberus fires. Donut uses one of Lucia’s loop-de-loop traps to swap Penelope out of Club Scolopendra and place her beside Taranis and Khepri. Khepri’s deity effect gives Penelope ninety seconds of protection. Donut then shoots Emberus with Katia’s Bolt of Ophiotaurus and a Danforth restraining bolt, removing his invulnerability for fifteen seconds and pinning him in place. Emberus responds with a lethal fire attack aimed at Carl, but Carl’s Four-Leaf Clover Patch activates and redirects the attack into his party member Penelope. Her temporary protection keeps the redirected attack from killing her, although she is reduced to a critically damaged mass that requires rapid healing.

Donut uses her level-17 Puddle Jumper to return herself and Carl to the arena entrance. The arena has become a vehicle battle: the burning chicken truck fires missiles at Krakaren Prime, crawlers and mounts tear through mobs, Taranis has ripped away most of Krakaren’s tentacles, and Scolopendra is already preparing attack three of nine. Emberus then erupts from Scolopendra in his enormous divine form while still vulnerable for only a few more seconds.

Taranis sees his brother emerge after Emberus’s attack on Penelope and strikes him. With one second remaining on Emberus’s vulnerability, the lightning attack kills the god of sun and ash. The resulting blast throws crawlers, mounts, vehicles, and surviving mobs across the arena. Carl is protected by his own temporary invulnerability, but many others are badly injured. The RV is broken in half and no longer provides a large enough shelter for the coming Scolopendra attack; Jamal loses his legs, Florin and Elle are seriously hurt, several vehicles are wrecked, and the missile launcher is destroyed.

Taranis finds Penelope, heals her back into her normal form, and responds to her demand for more splooge. Carl retrieves his motorcycle and prepares to continue while his own invulnerability still has time remaining. He tells Donut to get off because she has no comparable protection, but she refuses to leave him. Before they can move, the world freezes and the system announces that Eris has entered the realm.

Eris’s arrival triggers a chaos effect that swaps every nearby crawler’s inventory with the nearest crawler. Carl ends up with Donut’s thousands of hats while Donut gets his disorganized stockpile just as Scolopendra prepares attack three, which would affect forty percent of those present. With only seconds left, Carl orders Donut to find his banger sphere and the Nothing Special enriched pet biscuit, combine them, and pass the result to his xistera. He launches the loaded sphere directly into Scolopendra’s mouth. Instead of killing the level-500 Dungeon Boss, the biscuit effect collapses her enormous body into a gelatinous puddle roughly the size of a small elephant and interrupts the imminent attack.

Eris freezes the world again and appears in a massive form accompanied by Uzi Jesus. She tells Carl that Taranis is being manipulated through his fixation on Penelope and says four of five pieces of their mother are currently present. She also warns that the Celestial Ascendency now matters directly, says the AI has little room left to interfere, and tells Carl that she does not require his worship because he is already "chaos incarnate." Before leaving, she repeats two clues: every exit is also an entrance, and Carl must remember the coin and determine how its fifth side lands before the end of the twelfth floor.

After Eris leaves, the inventory swap ends, though Carl’s organization is lost. Taranis arrives holding Penelope, dismisses Khepri from the realm, and says Penelope persuaded him to spare Carl and Donut. Penelope reports that she has broken up with Taranis after learning he lied about the splooge and was married. Taranis remains confused by Eris’s reference to four pieces of their mother but says he is taking two of them. Samantha then approaches and whispers to him. Taranis grabs her and disappears from the arena while also taking Krakaren Prime with him. Taranis and Krakaren leave the realm, and Scolopendra remains behind in her transformed gelatinous state.

With the gods gone and the remaining Horribles fading into fog, the system declares the crawlers winners even though neither Scolopendra nor Krakaren Prime is dead. The eighteenth-floor exit is now open, but killing Scolopendra in her transformed state or abandoning her on any floor will still trigger her remaining attacks. The eleventh floor retains its thirty-minute collapse timer, while all later level-collapse timers are suspended until the Celestial Ascendency produces a winner, at which point dungeon-closure procedures begin.

The arena aftermath is severe. Prepotente, Jurgen, and Tipid are injured, Hedy is dead, Sarah Hayse and the three other crawlers in the Abrams tank have been killed, and only nineteen ordinary crawlers remain. Carl also sees Lucia enter a portal carrying the unconscious Florin while an unidentified young girl walks beside her. Taranis has taken Prepotente’s Apito memorial crystal, removing the group’s protection from Scolopendra’s attacks. Carl finds Emberus’s memorial crystal in the dirt, discovers that the Kyryap has tagged him with a tracking dart, and learns that the former Emberus tattoos on his hands are now scars labeled Mark of the Damned.

Carl tells Penelope that, as a newly sapient dungeon-born crawler, she may receive a different kind of deal and should consider taking it. He then reunites with Donut and sends party invitations until every surviving crawler is in one party. Carl decides the new strategic objective is to remain on the twelfth floor and prevent anyone from winning the Celestial Ascendency until everyone still trapped in the dungeon can escape. Before the final transformation resolves, he believes a level-one pet Scolopendra stored in his inventory could serve as an ultimate fail-safe: if Carl dies, Scolopendra dies too and the final attacks trigger, giving outside powers a reason to keep him alive.

That plan immediately changes when Donut admits she used the wrong biscuit during the inventory swap. The gelatinous mass resolves not into a pet but into Sexy Scolopendra, a level-one human-sized centipede crawler who automatically joins the party. She retains a centipede body with a humanlike face and speaks normally. With ten minutes left before level collapse, Sexy Scolopendra wraps herself around Carl and reminds him that they need to go through the portal.