The Butcher's Masquerade

On entering the sixth floor, Carl appears in Orren's office with Katia. The floor begins with 85,223 crawlers, 360 hunters sequestered in Zockau for a 30-hour grace period, and Carl ranked first with a three-million-gold bounty. Orren explains that the Gate of the Feral Gods is too dangerous to leave unrestricted: the system will not let the authorities simply confiscate it, so the available options are to suppress portal access across the floor, accelerate Carl in a way expected to kill him and anyone nearby, or have him surrender the winding box until the ninth floor. Carl refuses to touch the Gate pieces and asks for a lawyer. Back in the staging area, he learns that Katia chose a HAZMAT endorsement and Donut became a Legendary Diva. The floor announcement explains that the sixth floor mirrors the third floor as an overgrown Hunting Grounds, that hunters start at level 50 because the crawlers arrived early, and that hunter minions and traps can already be active during the grace period. A Bush Elf attendant named Ian, who remembers being a crawler, warns Carl about the returning mantis hunter Vrah. Carl then chooses Agent Provocateur as his permanent Compensated Anarchist specialty, gaining explosives-focused benefits and access to an Advanced Bomb Maker's Workshop.

Carl exits into a medium Dryad settlement and finds two level-95 Funeral Bell guards suddenly paralyzed by invisible attackers. Protective Shell, gunpowder, and Ping reveal that the attackers register as orange pet dots, and Carl identifies one as Tootsie, a Night Weasel Scout belonging to Hunter Zabit. A second scout paralyzes Carl while Donut, Mongo, and later Chris fight the pets; Chris crushes Tootsie and carries Carl into the party's personal space while the guards answer with a poison-cloud attack. Inside, Carl discovers Mordecai's sixth-floor form is a tiny Pocket Kuma and laughs until the manager storms off. Katia warns that the Night Weasels were specifically hunting Carl and that more will come. The chapter ends when someone knocks on the personal-space door and Carl says the delivery is "collateral."

After Carl asks for a lawyer, Quasar appears as his Nullian attorney and immediately warns him not to trust Orren or touch anything during liaison proceedings. Quasar explains that the Gate pieces had been placed under administrative hold and would have been deleted if Carl had picked them up. He advises Carl to say only that he wants his lawyer whenever a liaison summons him, then explains that Carl's sponsorship value and entertainment appeal give him leverage because Borant still wants him alive. Carl refuses to give up the Gate without compensation and proposes collateral. The resulting agreement temporarily removes the Gate but gives the party four cretin mercenaries for floors six through eight: Bomo, the Sledge, Clay-ton, and Very Sullen. Bomo receives Teleport to Stairwell, a level-15 spell with a long cooldown that reveals and reaches floor exits, while the Sledge receives the Quasar-suggested spell Zerzura, whose effect is not yet explained. Katia reveals that the Larracos attack raised her to level 52 and pushed her base Constitution over 100, granting Steely Skin. After a short sleep, Carl prepares to buy the Advanced Bomber's Studio and Magic Workshop while Katia and Chris plan to meet allied crawlers farther south.

With 21 hours remaining before the hunters are released, Katia, Chris, Clay-ton, and Very Sullen leave to meet allied crawlers farther south. Donut and Mordecai shop for a Shield spellbook and an item with the Golden Throat enchantment because Donut's Legendary Diva songs only work reliably when she sings in key. Her support songs are Standing Ovation, Entourage, and Encore, while two offensive songs remain impractical for now. She also has the regular spell Laundry Day, which removes an opponent's armor, and Carl quietly tells her to train it in the new Magic Workshop. Carl enters the Advanced Bomber's Studio, whose simulator can model explosive designs, and copies Carl's Doomsday Scenario into the virtual system so he can study the bomb without detonating it. Mordecai's shopping trip returns without the Shield spellbook or Golden Throat item, and he asks Carl and Donut to gather special nighttime mushrooms while staying inside town. He also recommends taking a southbound caravan the next morning. Carl instead brings Bomo outside with Donut, has her put Mongo away, apologizes for what is about to happen, and orders Bomo to use Teleport to Stairwell to send them directly to the stairwell in Zockau.

A Cookbook note explains that the sixth-floor monsters change between seasons but the Hunting Grounds' political layout remains broadly stable: the named northern metropolis is taken over by a hunter who becomes its Grand, and the city's guards then attack crawlers on sight. Bomo's Teleport to Stairwell sends Carl, Donut, and Bomo directly to Zockau before the hunters are released. Under invisibility, Carl sends Bomo to the Scuttlebutt saferoom, plants a 25-missile launcher near the stairwell, and begins placing large barrel bombs around the block of hunter bars and the Desperado Club. Hunter traps around the stairwell force Donut to Puddle Jump them closer to the bars. Carl then marks the drunken hunter Chin'Dua with the Ring of Divine Suffering, infecting himself with Left to Fester, and uses Ping plus his toe ring's Super Spreader ability to copy that debuff to the flying mantis hunter Xindy. The homing missiles kill Xindy, whom Chin'Dua identifies as Vrah's little sister, and Carl kills Chin'Dua himself to clear his mark. A destabilized barrel detonates before Carl can trigger the remaining bombs manually, setting off the other planted explosives while Carl and Donut take shelter in the Scuttlebutt. After Bomo and the Sledge give them protective spells, they run back into the devastated block. The explosions have collapsed the Zockau entrance to the Desperado Club, trapping those already inside. Carl and Donut flee toward the jungle, setting off hunter traps along the way. An invisible, level-70 hunter marked as Zockau's Grand attacks Carl with crossbow bolts and evades his second missile launcher. Carl reaches the Selva boundary badly wounded, but the embedded bolts continue draining his health and a Woozy effect overwhelms him. As he loses awareness, Donut appeals to nearby crawlers for help and familiar and unfamiliar voices begin treating him.

Carl wakes in a moving cart after roughly half an hour unconscious, with Donut watching him and Miriam Dom repeatedly healing the lingering Blood Trail damage from the crossbow bolts. Donut explains that Miriam, Prepotente, and Bianca rescued them after they escaped Zockau. Carl tells Donut that his actual plan had been to block the Desperado entrance, identify and kill Zockau's Grand, Vrah, become the city's mayor, and order the guards to attack the hunters. Miriam says the bolt's Woozy debuff became much stronger because of one of Prepotente's spells. Carl confirms that he used the Ring of Divine Suffering once on Chin'Dua and used Super Spreader to transfer Left to Fester to Xindy. He then examines Bianca Del Ciao, Miriam's transformed goat, now a level-32 Hellspawn Familiar. Carl's notifications show that he has risen to level 54, Donut to level 41, and Donut has one Hunter Killer mark. Carl receives 35 Hand that Claws the Master achievements but 34 Gold Hunter-Killer Boxes, and he concludes that he killed 34 hunters. He also receives Mass Casualty Event for causing more than 250 non-mob casualties, forcing him to confront the large number of NPC deaths caused by his bombing. Miriam explains that she and Prepotente had separately tried to exploit the hunters' drunkenness with stacked debuffs, but a countermeasure was blocking part of their plan. Zev contacts Carl and Donut and says they will appear on Odette's show the next day, with new security procedures, while the Vengeance of the Daughter contract remains active. Miriam later reveals that she still carries ten unaltered Boer goats who are Prepotente and Bianca's siblings. Prepotente, now a Profane Vitiate, cannot disarm a line of traps near town, so Carl casts Tripper and sets them all off. The resulting argument escalates until Miriam makes Carl and Prepotente apologize and hug.

Carl and Donut reach a small Bugbear settlement near Zockau that has already been looted and damaged by the hunters. Miriam explains that the Funeral Bell guards deactivate traps inside town, though the approaches remain heavily trapped. Carl, Donut, Miriam, and Prepotente part on friendly terms and agree to warn one another when their plans might interfere. Carl and Donut enter a Whataburger saferoom and return to their personal space, where Katia has come back with Very Sullen, Louis, Firas, and Britney; Chris and Clay-ton remain outside while waiting for Team Meadow Lark. Before Mordecai can lecture Carl over the Zockau raid, Donut acknowledges that Carl's plan was suicidal, refuses to abandon him, and insists that he tell her his plans in advance from now on. Mordecai accepts that boundary and tells them to open their prize boxes, reset their buffs, watch the recap, and put more distance between themselves and Zockau. Carl minimizes the size of the bombing and says he is already planning a much larger explosion. The hunters are due to be released in just over 13 hours.

While waiting for the recap, Carl deliberately tries to rest and notices a background sense of mental flow that becomes louder during stress and quieter only when he is completely calm. He then opens his rewards. The Gold Junkie's Box gives him the Night Wyrm's Nasty Little Web of Suffering tattoo, which grants access to the Guild of Suffering, a cult tied to Divine Suffering artifacts. His 34 Gold Hunter-Killer Boxes produce 34 severed hunter hands and increasing gold payouts totaling 595,000 gold; Donut's single box gives her one hand and 1,000 gold. Carl's Platinum Asshole's Box forces him to drink a potion that raises Fear by five levels to level 10. The severed hands are Hunting Trophies that function as non-transferable prize tickets for a prize counter at the Butcher's Masquerade, immediately giving Donut a reason to want more hunter kills. During the recap, the group sees sixth-floor class changes and the unchanged top-ten standings. Katia reacts coldly to Eva remaining in the rankings and says Eva will not be there much longer. The post-recap announcement says 1,002 hunters are alive, ends the paid viewer system for listening to crawler private messages while preserving Borant's right to reuse those messages in non-live broadcasts, and activates the guild system. Parties are now capped at 30 crawlers; a basic 500,000-gold guild charter can unite up to five parties or individuals through shared common space and guild upgrades without automatically sharing experience. The system also formally announces the Butcher's Masquerade: only the top 50 crawlers receive invitations, each may bring a plus one, hunters and celebrities will attend, and the event will include competitions and prizes. Donut becomes determined to enter Mongo in the pet beauty contest. Carl postpones that concern but agrees they need a guild and more trophy hands. As he returns to the bomber's studio with Bomo, the mental river grows louder and begins to hurt.

With three and a half hours remaining before hunter release, the dungeon shows 83,995 crawlers, 1,013 hunters, and Carl's 34 Hunting Trophies. Katia and the others have already left to help Team Meadow Lark, while Carl and Donut prepare to move south away from Zockau. Katia's map, built from fifth-floor Gate coordinates and shared crawler reports, shows a roughly 100,000-square-kilometer floor divided by a long river. Carl asks her to organize the destruction of every known bridge except one, hoping to funnel hunters toward a controlled crossing. Miriam confirms that the main caravan road south is mostly clear because caravan bodyguards routinely cast anti-trap spells, and she identifies a large Ursine settlement just beyond the bridge Carl intends to preserve. Carl passes the caravan-route information to Katia for the community map. Meanwhile, Carl plans a second attack on Zockau using Bomo: because Bomo last entered the personal space through the Scuttlebutt, Carl wants him to leave through that same saferoom pulling a large wheeled thermobaric bomb. The device, Just Wait Until Your Daddy Gets Home, uses Nitro Sludge as an explosive amplifier, carries a Fear effect, and is simulated to flatten roughly a third of a mile while severely injuring or killing targets farther out. Donut objects to sacrificing Bomo even though he would regenerate on the next floor. She instead realizes that if Bomo becomes her individual royal-court minion, Clockwork Triplicate can create a disposable clockwork Bomo to move the bomb. The plan requires Donut to be physically present in the saferoom. Carl agrees to try her version if they can reach the Ursine settlement before the timer expires.

Carl leaves the damaged Bugbear settlement with Donut after instructing Bomo not to touch the prepared wheeled bomb until it is time to use it. A Bugbear council member named Goiter initially tells them their kind is unwelcome, but changes his attitude when Carl explains that the hunters caused the destruction. Carl warns Goiter that the hunters will return within hours. On the southbound road, Carl plants hunter-triggered mines while Donut practices Entourage. Carl briefly receives notifications that Emberus has entered the realm and then returned to the Halls of the Ascendency. At the river, Carl finds that about ten bridges have already been destroyed, then crosses the intentionally preserved covered bridge into a large, intact Ursine settlement. The town's rules prohibit fighting, alcohol, drugs, street magic, dancing, most singing, gambling, swearing, sexual activity outside marriage, several races, and all dinosaurs. The Funeral Bell guards therefore refuse entry to Mongo. Donut demands the person in charge, bringing Mayor Elmer to the gate. Carl lures Elmer closer by pretending he wants to pay the town to execute Donut and Mongo; once Elmer steps outside the town boundary, Donut uses Astral Paw to shove him down the riverbank. Carl intends to finish him, but Elmer dies from the fall itself, and a naiad immediately snatches his corpse into the river. Donut receives kill credit, while Carl and Donut are branded troublemakers and flee into the nearby saferoom. Carl says Donut should receive a control box for the settlement and wants to complete the Zockau bombing before dealing with the hostile guards. Their Clockwork Bomo delivery plan stops when Carl finds a note from Vrah pinned outside the personal-space door. Vrah says the remaining hunters are protected from further explosions and that she ordered Zockau's guards to worship Emberus, meaning another bombing would kill NPCs and could bring Carl into conflict with his own god. Carl abandons the attack, writes a defiant reply, and the system announces that the gates are down and the hunters are loose.

After Donut takes control of the Ursine settlement, she renames it Point Mongo and receives an Enchanted Collar Charm of the Effete Bourgeoisie. Its Point Mongo gem grants Dexterity and Intelligence bonuses, tax income, and level-10 Snitch, which can summon five town guards and works up to one kilometer outside a settlement Donut owns. Donut and Mordecai reset the town's hostile rules while Carl begins fortifying the settlement with anti-hunter missile launchers and traps. One of Carl's previously planted hunter-triggered traps kills a hunter named JayGee, giving Carl another Hunter-Killer trophy hand, 35,000 gold, the Insurgent achievement, and a Gold Trapmaster Box containing twenty Fail Safe trap add-ons that report when a trap is disabled or triggered. Carl also makes Donut remove the old rule forcing Bugbears to bathe in the river after recognizing that it exposes them to naiad attacks. While Carl discusses guild leadership with Katia, Donut assigns names to several Funeral Bell guards and Carl equips the sergeants with launchers. Light Cleric Tam argues that Point Mongo must restore its bans on naiads and dinosaurs, which accidentally triggers the quest The Recital: investigate or eliminate the growing dinosaur threat in exchange for a Gold Quest Box and a free town upgrade. Before they can pursue the quest, Mongo suddenly bolts through the southern gate with Donut still riding him. Carl follows into the jungle and finds roughly forty Mongoliensis surrounding Mongo. Their level-60 pack leader, Kiwi, confronts him while the other velociraptors hold back. Carl prepares an escape, but Mongo and Kiwi unexpectedly mate instead of fighting. Carl pulls Donut back toward Point Mongo while the rest of the pack retreats, and Donut angrily decides Mongo will go into his carrier and that the no-dinosaur rule may need to return.

Carl brings a panicked Donut into an Eegees saferoom after leaving Mongo with Kiwi's pack. Donut repeatedly worries that Mongo will not return, and Carl realizes her reaction is larger than the immediate dinosaur encounter. After several minutes, Donut admits that her fear of abandonment has been worsening: Katia has left the party, Carl keeps taking more dangerous risks, and Mongo's sudden disappearance triggered memories of an earlier car accident. She also says she is supposed to pretend she does not know something, but she refuses to explain further. Carl suspects the issue involves information Donut has seen through the social-media board and recognizes that Zev's unusually timed interruption is probably a warning not to press the subject while their communications may be observed. Zev confirms that Carl and Donut's Odette appearance has been moved to later that day and that Carl will receive extra security scrutiny. Donut then raises the deeper problem of the ninth floor, where her former Blood Sultanate crown permanently prevents her from descending until the Sultan and every other royal family member are dead. Carl rejects his usual vague answer and explicitly promises that he will not leave Donut behind on the ninth floor or any other floor. Mongo soon returns exhausted but unharmed, while Kiwi and the other Mongoliensis watch from the forest. Donut and Carl agree the no-dinosaur rule should probably be restored after spotting additional dinosaurs, including a much larger one farther back in the jungle. Carl then receives the Double-Billed achievement and a Platinum Fan Box, though the chapter does not explain what double-billing means. As rain begins and a distant missile detonates, Carl and Donut return to work.

In heavy rain, Carl and Donut return to Point Mongo's northern gate and learn that a Funeral Bell anti-air missile has knocked a Yenk hunter out of the sky across the river. Donut can still see the hunter's dot, and Carl's Ping reveals that he is alive but restrained in a tree. Ping also exposes seven non-hostile dots and two elite dots hidden nearby, making Carl suspect that his unexplained Double-Billed achievement is connected to the arrival of a secondary-program encounter. A flashback then returns to Carl's Gate negotiation with Quasar. Quasar secures a conditional emergency extension for Vengeance of the Daughter beyond the sixth floor, using an old rule that lets Borant extend one secondary program in exchange for an extra payment. The arrangement must remain secret, and Quasar admits that Sensation Entertainment had not yet actually agreed when he represented that they had. In the present, Carl cannot get Quasar to confirm whether Sensation ultimately accepted. Donut chooses to accompany Carl even though the Vengeance contract names only him, while Mordecai stays behind to oversee Point Mongo's defenses. Across the bridge, Tsarina Signet reveals herself with a second elite, Areson the Wise, six battle-worn Were-Kin led visibly by Clint Smashgrab, and a large caterpillar carrying the captured Yenk hunter Bravvo. Signet says Bravvo had been hunting Carl and offers Carl the decision over his fate. Carl tells her to heal Bravvo, then equips the Ring of Divine Suffering and states that he is no longer soft, leaving the actual kill for the next chapter.

Chapter 14 opens after Carl has killed Bravvo. The marked kill gives Carl one Dexterity point and raises his Hunting Trophy count to 36. Carl and Donut loot Bravvo's restricted hunter inventory, taking thirty Good Health Potions, thirty Good Mana Refills, nine Levitation potions, enchanted anti-bolt boots, a Constitution-boosting longsword, his clothes, and the corpse itself; Carl keeps two mana refills and gives the rest to Donut. Signet warns that heavy rain can draw the river Confederacy onto land, and Clint urges the group away from the river. Areson leaves to intercept hunters moving south from Zockau while Signet leads Carl and Donut into the jungle with the six Were-Kin riding Nadine, a transformed Bearded Sage Caterpillar. Nadine is revealed to have once been a Chee schoolteacher, while the six warriors were Chee children before then-Princess Imogen transformed their people during a High Elf land seizure. Signet explains that Imogen, now ruler of the High Elves, was once King Finian's Sorcerer General and personally ordered the Chee transformation and subsequent purge. Signet also recounts her own lineage: Finian was her High Elf father, her naiad mother was a true princess killed during a river revolution, and the mother's former palace is now occupied by the Confederacy's dukes. Signet clarifies that Grimaldi survived the third-floor circus collapse after freeing the performers, while Areson is the brother of the dead Apollon and of Herman the Fleet, whose fate after Larracos is unknown. Finally, Signet says she is assembling a team to strike at the two powers she considers cancers on the Hunting Grounds: the Confederacy and the High Elves.

Carl and Donut travel northeast through the jungle with Signet's group while Zev reports that Vengeance of the Daughter's ratings have improved with Carl and Donut back in the storyline, though some fans worry the guest stars will overwhelm Signet's plot. Areson returns carrying the corpse of Arwick, a pale Dream hunter he killed while scouting. Carl uses his blast-chest looting method and finds an enchanted arrow coated with Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea, a disease that repeatedly burns and heals the victim's genitals until it is removed by castration or passed to someone else, plus a hand-drawn map showing how hunter factions have divided the Hunting Grounds and claimed specific crawlers. The map shows Carl and Donut claimed by both the Hive and Skull Empire, Katia by Skull Empire, Elle and Eva by the Crafters, Prepotente and Miriam by the Nebular group, Lucia Mar by the Hive, and Louis singled out by the Dream. Carl broadcasts the map intelligence to the other crawlers. At Signet's roughly seventy-member camp, which includes Bush Elves, forest creatures, three pixies, and a talking tortoise named Edgar, Quasar finally responds. He confirms that Sensation Entertainment has agreed in principle to Borant's ninth-floor extension offer but is delaying the formal signature, and he warns Carl to make the program more exciting without eclipsing Signet enough to make the producers want Carl removed. Separately, Quasar says Carl's other problem requires 150 million credits, calls the amount effectively impossible for Carl's current finances, and notes unresolved legal issues around the transaction. Signet then issues The Vengeance of the Daughter, Part One of Two: help her assault Fort Freedom and assassinate the leaders of the Naiad Confederacy so she can avenge her mother's death and reclaim or stabilize her mother's former kingdom. Survivors of the assault will become 20 percent more willing to follow Carl's orders.

Signet sends Clint Smashgrab and another Were-Kin, Holger, to escort Carl and Donut back to Point Mongo while other allies screen the jungle for hunters. Carl realizes the escort is indirectly driven by the showrunners: elites such as Signet can receive suggestions that push their behavior, even though Clint and Holger themselves are ordinary NPCs following her orders. On the walk, Clint and Holger explain that Signet once lived among the Chee after her curse and before joining Grimaldi, and that Imogen later attacked their village and transformed its people. They also recount competing rumors about Scolopendra's nine-tier attack: the transformed Chee survivors may have been partly protected because Imogen's transfiguration spell was also part of Scolopendra's attack, while the High Elf royal court survived behind stolen magic or an artifact. Clint and Holger abruptly fight each other over an argument but instantly shift into coordinated combat when a pack of wild invisible Night Weasels attacks. Their speed, smell and hearing, paralysis immunity, and apparent high durability let them do most of the killing, with help from Carl, Donut, and Mongo. Donut's attempted Standing Ovation fails because she cannot sing it in key during the fight, and Holger later advises her that poor pitch can become dangerous with stronger bard spells and offers to help find training in Point Mongo. On returning, they find Mordecai has fortified the bridge approaches with guards and specialized alarms. Zev gives Carl and Donut fifteen minutes to reach a saferoom, then both receive their third and final sponsor: The Apothecary. The same sponsor has also backed Prepotente, Miriam Dom, Lucia Mar, Katia, Dmitri and Maxim Popov, Elle, and Imani. Carl connects the name to earlier information about the real Krakaren and suspects the Apothecary may be the Plenty's extremely wealthy silent partner, while Donut objects to sharing a sponsor with so many other top crawlers.

Back in Point Mongo's personal space, Carl and Donut find Mordecai exasperated by Samantha, who began screaming after Donut told her they were working with Tsarina Signet. Samantha says Signet is a distant relative through the Naiad royal family and can restore her body, and she demands to be taken along. Carl agrees to bring Samantha when they join Signet for the assault on the Naiad castle the following night, provided Samantha stops screaming. Zev then transfers Carl and Donut not directly to Odette's trailer but to a security checkpoint in orbit above Earth. Their dungeon menus disappear, the low-gravity chamber has a glass surface overlooking the planet, and the sight of Earth overwhelms Carl while the abrupt orientation makes Donut vomit. Two real Shade Gnoll Riot Forces mercenaries enter, scan and physically search them for prohibited items and explosives, then clear them for transfer. Carl and Donut arrive in Odette's trailer, where Zev is physically present while Odette is a hologram. Odette says they have only minutes before the show and need to discuss Carl's ex-girlfriend. The chapter ends with Odette revealing that Beatrice is alive.

Odette explains that Beatrice survived the initial collection. Bounty hunters had been pursuing her so they could illegally sell her to Borant, which intended to transform her into a specific country boss, so Odette had Beatrice removed from Earth's surface. Odette originally planned to keep her hidden until the crawl ended, but a security breach exposed the secret and another program is preparing to ambush Carl with the stolen information. Odette wants Carl and Donut to hear the facts first and proposes preempting the other program by bringing Beatrice onto Odette's show. Carl presses Odette on her motives. Odette first says she protected her investment in Carl and Donut and later says Carl should ask Mordecai what she once did to him if he wants to understand her deeper motivation. Zev then reveals that Odette is also using Beatrice's rescue to pressure Borant: everyone will publicly pretend Borant performed the rescue, while Odette receives a higher revenue share for the rest of the crawl. Odette insists that this contract was an afterthought rather than her original reason for saving Beatrice. Zev also explains that Carl's unopened Platinum Fan Box will soon send him alone to a fan-interaction event, and that event is where the rival program planned to confront him with Beatrice's survival. Beatrice is not physically nearby; she is already off planet and traveling toward the inner system, but she is standing by for a remote appearance. Carl refuses to participate, but Donut decides they should proceed with the show and reunion because the revelation will happen regardless and they now have time to prepare. After Odette leaves, Zev is visibly frightened and quietly tells Carl that Donut is going to need him and that he should focus on her rather than asking further questions. The chapter ends with Carl calling Donut over so they can talk before going on set.

Odette records a private, somber interview with Carl, Donut, and Beatrice. Before Beatrice appears, the program airs a censored segment explaining surface survivors, the walk-on list, and the illegal practice of bounty hunters kidnapping survivors for sale to dungeon productions. Odette then presents a public cover story in which Borant rejected the attempted sale, rescued Beatrice, and enabled her to become a full Syndicate citizen. Beatrice appears by hologram from an undisclosed off-planet location, visibly thin, frightened, and confused. Her own recollection does not fully match Odette's official narrative: she remembers being abducted from a tent, later seeing a small alien recognize her during a sale, then waking aboard a ship with hyena-faced personnel. On air, Donut remains deliberately controlled and tells Beatrice only to have a good life and not betray another cat. Carl says he has nothing to add. After the recording ends, Donut finally confronts Beatrice directly, saying Beatrice had been her whole world, planned to give her away, betrayed Carl, and no longer has the right to explain herself. Donut tells Beatrice that Carl is her person now. Carl says he is genuinely glad Beatrice survived but considers the relationship finished, and Beatrice is removed from the interview. Immediately afterward, an automated notice says a system regency change creates a sponsor conflict and removes the Valtay Corporation as one of Carl's sponsors. A planet-wide message then announces that a Syndicate court has declared the Borant Corporation independent of the Borant System Government and automatically executed an earlier ruling granting the Valtay Corporation 51 percent ownership. Borant Corporation remains the crawl operator, but the Borant System Government loses its ownership stake and regency passes to Borant Corporation under Valtay majority ownership. Existing contracts, including indenture contracts, remain in force. Odette says this is good news for Mordecai and other guides and tenners, though she warns that the new owner being Valtay is bad for the crawlers. Donut whispers that someone 'did it,' and when Carl asks whether she was involved, she answers, 'Viva la revolución, Carl.'

After the interview, Donut wonders whether she was too harsh with Beatrice, while Odette asks Carl and Donut not to discuss the interview until it airs after the following recap. In the green room, Carl realizes that Donut and Zev have likely been communicating covertly and that Donut knows more about the Valtay transition than she can safely explain. During the brief handoff from Borant-system control to Valtay central control, Lexis says the monitoring systems are temporarily offline and gives Carl and Donut prohibited advance information. She says Queen Imogen is a country boss and a newly introduced character, making a repurposed human likely; Beatrice had been the obvious choice because of Carl and Donut's Vengeance of the Daughter connection, but Beatrice's removal from Earth means the identity is now uncertain. Lexis predicts that Imogen may first appear at the Butcher's Masquerade, which will forcibly transfer the top 50 crawlers to the High Elf castle for a party, contests, prizes, interaction with surviving hunters, and eventually a major battle. Lexis does not state that the Valtay directly ordered a purge. Instead, she warns that Valtay now owns 51 percent of Borant Corporation but does not control every unresolved collection claim, compares the Valtay to a new and more controlling step-parent, and predicts that they may want a top ten composed of crawlers they prefer. She and Odette therefore favor descending early before the Masquerade if possible. Donut objects that abandoning the event would leave the next fifty crawlers exposed and also notes she has already begun training Mongo for the beauty contest. Just before the system comes back online, Donut blurts out that she smuggled Valtay secret agents to Zev and the Borant Emancipation Front, confirming that she had a direct role in the anti-government operation. Back in Point Mongo, Mordecai says Borant Corporation still appears to be using its old systems and that current contracts remain active, so the dungeon is likely to retain its fantasy framework for now. He reports that Point Mongo repelled another pair of Dream hunters, that Clint and Holger are reinforcing the southern wall, and that Imani has become guildmaster. Katia wants money for a manager's headquarters so Mordecai can retain a room after Katia leaves the party. Exhausted and worried about Donut's covert actions, Carl chooses to sleep and reset before continuing.

Carl and Donut wake for the recap and watch Vrah and four other mantis hunters decapitate and loot crawlers, jungle hazards kill other crawlers, Lucia Mar defeat a dinosaur boss through damage reflection, and Katia's larger group pursue Eva. Eva charms a Dryad settlement into opposing the group, but Imani removes the effect without a fight; Carl also notices that Imani can now fly. Katia then arrives at the personal space intending to complete the arrangements that will let her leave Carl and Donut's party without costing Mordecai his room. A system announcement insists the Valtay ownership change will not alter the crawl's planned floors or basic kua-tin operation, reports that hunters have killed more than 500 crawlers while crawlers have killed more than 50 hunters, and announces a court-ordered restriction preventing hunters from communicating directly with people outside the dungeon. It also activates several patch changes and gives any crawler in the top 1,000 access to their rank for Butcher's Masquerade qualification. Katia says Eva has been pushed toward the newly activated hot-springs and lava-tube region and that Li Na can track her. Carl then opens his Platinum Fan Box and receives a Titan Entertainment CrawlCon pass. He alone is scheduled for three virtual events: judging a juvenile art contest, joining the Crawling Through the Ages panel moderated by Circe Took, and attending an autograph and keepsake session that includes limited duo sessions with the Popov brothers. Zev says only four current crawlers have been selected and Donut cannot substitute for Carl. The Royal Court of Princess Donut joins the level-7 guild Safehome Yolanda under guildmaster Imani C., linking six parties and 63 crawlers; a guild common-area door appears, along with upgrades including the Instacot 60 beds. Before Katia can finish disengaging from the party, explosions strike Point Mongo. Clint appears in his transformed beaver-like were-castor form and reports that elves have built a distant magical artillery device that is lobbing poison bombs into town. Carl gets an idea and runs back to retrieve something.

Point Mongo is being walked over by poison-gas artillery fire, but Carl, Donut, the Funeral Bell guards, and Clint and Holger in their were-beaver forms are immune to the poison; Mongo and the Ursine residents are not, so Mongo is put away and civilians shelter. Carl improvises a delivery system using Samantha's nearly indestructible withering-spirit head and miniature seeking missiles originally designed as a trap payload. He duct-tapes a missile to Samantha and ties its pull trigger to one of her latex fangs, but she closes her mouth too early and launches herself uselessly into the air. On the second attempt Carl attaches two missiles, then drinks a Levitation potion and Mordecai's Major Charlie intelligence potion, temporarily raising his Intelligence enough for Ping to reach roughly three kilometers. After filtering the map to hunters, he finds two Dream elves about 1.5 kilometers northeast of town and hurls Samantha toward them with his xistera. Samantha triggers the missiles over their clearing. One hunter dies, while Samantha bites onto the ankle of the surviving Moon Elf artillery specialist, Akland, and Carl recalls her, dragging Akland back to Point Mongo. Carl removes a Constitution-boosting bracelet, has Donut heal Akland, and shackles him to a pole for questioning. Akland says the Dream was not specifically hunting Carl because the Dark Hive and Skull Empire had already claimed him, but the Dream wanted Point Mongo because the destroyed bridges made it strategically useful and because Epitome Tagg is obsessed with finding Louis after Louis insulted his mother. Akland says he is an accountant who earned a faction-wars slot by doing well at a fantasy hunter camp run by Vrah's family and accepted extra money to join the real Hunting Grounds because he expected it to be easy. Carl deliberately prolongs the interrogation for the audience, then equips the Ring of Divine Suffering and marks Akland. The chapter ends before Carl kills him.

Immediately after killing Akland, Carl receives a system notice that the Ring of Divine Suffering has leveled up and will now award two stat points for every kill. Because the upgrade follows Akland's death, this kill gives Carl one Constitution point and two trophies, and Carl reaches level 55. He retrieves the handcuffs and loots Akland, finding only crawler biscuits and another arrow of Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea. Carl leaves the biscuits in case they are poisoned and recognizes that the arrow was meant for Louis. The effort being spent to reach Louis makes Carl worry about Juice Box, who is somewhere on the ninth floor.

Donut tells Carl that killing Akland was unnecessarily gruesome and that his increasing anger is frightening her. Carl agrees that he should not waste time expressing his rage, says he wanted to do it once, and promises cleaner kills. Donut insists that killing bad guys still needs flair and suggests developing a catchphrase. Carl then gives her Akland's Enchanted Obsidian Bracelet of the Raggle Rouser. The bracelet provides +10 Constitution, +5 Dexterity, +15 percent fire resistance, and a level-10 Fireball once every twenty minutes; Carl warns Donut not to use Fireball in tight spaces.

After Carl stores Akland's remains, Samantha rolls away, barks at an ursine cleric, insults Pawna, and ignores Carl when he calls her back. Donut compares Samantha's new rolling movement to the creatures in Critters and points out that Samantha is already stronger and faster than Mordecai said a withering spirit should become. Carl is uneasy but says they cannot abandon her yet because they plan to use her against the naiad castle in the morning, and her demonstrated ability to bring something back when recalled makes her even more useful. Donut says she misses Katia because being the voice of reason used to be Katia's job.

A note from Crawler Drakea's twenty-second edition of the Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook explains that hunters generally avoid elites, although powerful hunters sometimes attack them for equipment and prestige. Drakea describes trying to engineer hunter-versus-elite conflicts instead of fighting either side directly, especially because the naga have insured the programs that control elite creatures. For Drakea, damaging the organizations financially is more important than killing individual hunters.

Carl has collected 38 Hunting Trophies, with 11 days and 8 hours remaining before floor collapse. His first boon from Emberus is a nearly useless thirty-hour increase to fire-spell damage because Carl has no qualifying fire spell. The group finds the second Dream hunter's corpse. Carl loots a +1 Strength ring, an ordinary bow and arrows, another Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea arrow, and a photograph of Louis taken from social media. He then claims the hunters' Enchanted Venomous Elven Rock Chucker, a lightweight trebuchet made from magically created poisonous bamboo. It can hurl up to 300 kilograms, adds Poison Cloud to its ammunition, and has a ninety-second cooldown. Carl notices that its force-generating plates appear technological rather than magical, takes this as more evidence that the hunters are cheating, stores the machine in a new Siege Equipment inventory tab, and collects boulders for ammunition.

Carl and Donut hope the two dead Dream elves were the entire local group, but they cannot know how many hunters each faction brought. Their next schedule is crowded: help Signet assault Fort Freedom, move south and capture another town for anti-hunter defenses, investigate the dinosaur quest if possible, and attend Carl's three fan-box events. Carl becomes increasingly worried about the Vengeance of the Daughter storyline. Signet ultimately intends to kill her half sister Queen Imogen, but Imogen is also the country boss reserved for the top crawlers' end-of-floor confrontation. Because Signet's elite storyline belongs to another licensed program, Carl doubts Borant or the Valtay would allow that program to own the floor's main climax. He therefore suspects Signet's storyline may be forced to conclude before the Butcher's Masquerade, potentially with a deliberately tragic ending that kills Signet and everyone around her, including Carl and Donut.

After nearly three hours of grinding slickbacks, the group travels north at night to meet Signet's assault team at an all-tree near Fort Freedom, the former naiad palace. Clint has gone ahead, and Carl and Donut expect only a minor role because much of the castle is submerged. A brilliant blue lightning flash suddenly lights the forest, shakes the ground, and appears to strike near the meeting point. Samantha rolls ahead despite Carl's warning. As the group approaches, Donut's map shows Signet, Areson, the beavers, their caterpillar companion, hunter activity, and two dead bodies she believes are enemy hunters. Samantha then becomes stuck ahead of them, and Carl stands to move in.

Clint finds Carl's group after Samantha gets herself stuck again and explains what caused the lightning flash. Three off-world Skull Empire orcs attacked near an all-tree outcropping. The all-tree's roots span the region, and any forest-kin within a few hundred meters of an outcropping are protected from magical attacks because the tree absorbs the spell and reflects it back at the caster, destroying that outcropping in the process. Two hunters killed themselves with their reflected attack, while Areson captured the third for Signet's planned sacrifice. At the clearing, Donut loots the corpse of a hunter explicitly named The Talent, who died from his own reflected Lightning scroll. He carried three Lightning scrolls, nearly 75,000 gold, and an otherwise hidden credit chit obtained only when Donut used Loot All. Carl tells her to keep the chit for Mordecai to examine and to loot future hunters one item at a time.

Signet says Edgar detected the ambush before the hunters could spring it. Samantha then meets Signet and claims blood kinship, asking Signet to surrender her body so Samantha can possess it, a process Samantha openly says would kill Signet. Signet does not agree. She later placates Samantha by claiming that, after the naiads and high elves are dealt with, she may know a spell that could summon Samantha a permanent body. Carl can tell Signet has no intention of helping, but Samantha wants a body badly enough to cooperate anyway.

Edgar uses his Shell Mage ability to conceal the assault force as it approaches Fort Freedom. The submerged naiad castle sits roughly a quarter mile offshore behind a broad slope filled with alarm and summoning traps, while bush elves quietly clear a route to the water and half of Signet's force waits on the opposite shore. Signet tells Carl that the coup which killed her mother was unnecessary: because Signet was her mother's only child and ineligible to inherit under the imperial charter, rule would eventually have returned to the people. Signet believes her mother may even have intended to step down. She also tells Carl that his role is to launch Samantha into the river as a distraction while her summoned force attacks from above and Carl, Donut, and the ground team block escapees on shore.

The captured Skull Empire hunter is a level-50 Wire-Haired Orc identified only by the examine label Future Huntress. She says top-ten crawlers can be hunted outside normal faction territory by anyone who bought the appropriate hunting license and warns Carl that the Skull Empire paid for first crack at him. If she dies, she says, the Dark Hive will no longer have to wait three days before hunting Carl. As Carl prepares to mark her with the Ring of Divine Suffering, a system message announces that a champion has fallen and a hunter has claimed a bounty. Katia reports that Langley's entire team is dead after pursuing Bogdon Ro with a large group; the source does not identify the fallen champion. Shaken by Langley's death, Carl marks the captive. Her highest stat is Charisma, and after she admits she thought she could charm her way out of danger, Carl kills her as Signet's sacrifice.

While Signet summons her battle squad, Carl straps an alarm trap to Samantha and launches her into the river with his xistera. He accidentally uses the trap that plays Wonderwall. The alarm sounds inside the castle, Signet's paper monsters form, the concealment spell drops, and Signet advances toward the water with Edgar and the main assault force. Areson, the caterpillar, several elves, Carl, and Donut remain with the shore team. The chapter ends with Donut asking whether they will have to fight anything and Carl answering, "What do you think?"

As Signet's force advances on Fort Freedom, Donut wonders whether the captured Skull Empire orc's examine label, Future Hunter, was really her name; the chapter never resolves that question. Inside the castle, Samantha reports that she bypassed the guards, was sucked into a filter vent, and lost the alarm trap there. The looping Wonderwall trap now reverberates through the ventilation system. Donut tells Carl that Samantha identifies herself as the goddess of unrequited love and says Samantha believes her sand-ooze child from the previous floor is still alive on the ninth floor, although the source does not confirm how Samantha knows this.

Carl reviews the actual diversion plan. Samantha was supposed to trigger Fort Freedom's front-gate alarm so its poorly trained defenders would converge there. Because the old alarm system takes a long time to reset and the castle lacks enough guards for every entrance, Signet's amphibious force would then exploit the undefended rear and air approaches and move to the throne room. Samantha had also been given a false surrender line in case she was captured, but she ignores it and instead remains loose inside the castle. Carl recognizes that the castle is meant to be a comparatively easy obstacle in Signet's storyline and that the showrunners want him present without allowing him to eclipse their elite character.

Signet, the bush elves, Edgar, the were-castors, and her summoned paper battle squad cross the river. Areson explains how Signet's curse works: water physically repels her, so she floats, but a summoned paper creature can carry her down once she is sufficiently submerged; she still needs air and cannot survive extreme depth. He then reveals that a high elf cast the curse on Signet the night her mother was killed. According to Areson, the naiad dissenters succeeded in their coup only with high-elf help. The arrangement ended open fighting but left the surviving naiads politically dependent on the high elves, especially after the ninth-tier Scolopendra attack devastated their population and the castle government largely stopped governing.

The castle alarm eventually stops, leaving Samantha's song trap audible. Samantha reports fighting, blood, and green algae from the naiads in the water. Then a lightning bolt erupts from the river and bodies begin surfacing: naiads, dissolving paper soldiers, and what Carl believes is a bush elf ripped apart. Samantha warns that she thinks the assault force walked into a trap but says she has freed herself and will handle it. Carl decides he can no longer remain on shore. He equips his Ring of Water Breathing, despite its slimy appearance and Charisma penalty, as another explosion sends bloody water through the broken stained-glass window. Miss Nadine panics and charges toward the river even though Areson says she cannot swim. Carl removes the xistera extension from his arm so he can dive, tells Samantha he needs to recall her, and the chapter ends with Samantha protesting that she has almost caught someone.

Carl realizes too late that Samantha's message, "I almost have him," meant she was attached to the lightning-shooting creature occupying Fort Freedom's throne room. When Carl recalls Samantha, the recall brings the enormous creature with her. The impact scatters the shore team, and the boss spits out Samantha and an unconscious beaver-form Holger. The newcomer is Claude Sludgington the Fourth, a level-65 Eryops Gigantis Borough Boss. The description explains that Claude moved into Fort Freedom years earlier after the cash-starved confederate government, which still owes tithes to the high elves, tried to raise money with a fifty-gold-entry underwater ball. Eryops gain a tenfold Constitution bonus while rooted in place, fire lightning from their eyes, and are notoriously difficult to move or kill. Claude is also classified as a lizard-class mob, so Carl's Extinction Sigil causes Claude to deal twenty percent more damage to him.

Carl reads the boss hint as a direction to expose Claude's belly. Before he can execute the plan cleanly, distant fighting and a larger dinosaur roar sound from the opposite shore, an unresolved threat the group cannot address yet. Claude swallows Holger and Samantha again, then focuses his lightning on Miss Nadine. Carl dives aside, but Nadine takes the blast directly and explodes into green gore and black quills. Areson attacks Claude's head in fury while Carl triggers an uncleared summoning trap and continues trying to reach a useful angle.

Carl casts Protective Shell intending to roll Claude onto his side and expose the stomach. Because Carl is too close and the shell's diameter has grown with his Intelligence, the expanding sphere instead launches the massive boss straight into the air. Donut arrives on Mongo and fires her new level-10 Fireball into Claude's exposed belly as he falls. Claude lands on top of the shell, burning, and slides into the trees, where he becomes stuck face-down with his stomach exposed. Donut's Fireball has opened a hole in the belly, but Claude remains alive and fires lightning wildly into the surrounding ground and trees.

Carl throws a low-powered hob-lobber missile into the open wound while Donut fires Magic Missiles. Mongo then dives headfirst into Claude's belly. When Protective Shell expires, the bent trees spring Claude back toward Carl. Carl is knocked directly into the abdominal wound and is badly injured, including a shattered shoulder, as Mongo claws past him and eats his way out through Claude's back. Carl uses healing while choking on blood and gore, eventually pulling himself free. Claude dies after the combined assault, and the dungeon's supernatural cohesion fails, causing the corpse to burst apart.

The fight lasts only about thirty seconds. One bush elf is dead, Nadine has been killed, Holger survives, Areson is battered, and Mongo happily eats the remains. Samantha ends up sitting on Carl's lap covered in gore and claims, despite the group's combined effort, that she told him she would kill Claude.

After Claude's death, Carl receives the Premature Questjaculation achievement for completing a quest before it could be assigned and gets no reward, despite being told he would have received a good quest box. He loots a neighborhood field-guide map from Claude showing which sections of the river are occupied by naiads and which are safe to cross. Carl infers that the intended quest would have been to remove Claude from the throne room after Signet cleared the rest of Fort Freedom, but Samantha's accidental recall of the boss caused them to complete it early.

Holger then confirms that Clint was killed during the attack on the southern shore and grieves both Clint and Miss Nadine, describing Nadine as a mother figure. Areson tells him Nadine died a warrior's death and was worthy. Carl sends Samantha across the river to reconnoiter the southern position. While waiting, he manually searches for traps to train Find Traps rather than simply triggering them with Tripper. After several discoveries and accidental activations, Find Traps reaches level 10, making the remaining traps much easier to see. Carl disarms and collects silent alarms, glue traps, and ten recycled summoning traps that can summon two floor-specific town guards or minions when properly programmed; because Carl controls no town or minions, he notes that Donut would have to set them if they use them.

Samantha reports that everyone on the southern shore is dead, with bodies mutilated by what appears to have been one enormous three-toed dinosaur. Pink feathers are scattered nearby. Carl initially associates the feathers with Kiwi, but Areson identifies the likely attacker as Big Tina, a young but enormous dinosaur who wears a pink boa, carries an exhausted wand, hates ursine, and often wanders away from the Mongoliensis pack to attack Point Mongo and other towns. This updates The Recital quest: Carl must find out what Big Tina is doing and either kill her to protect the towns or discover why she behaves this way and resolve the problem.

Signet returns from Fort Freedom and confirms the castle is liberated and the Confederacy defeated. She says the victory was barely a fight because the castle government had effectively stopped functioning, algae had overrun the structure, and the confederates had even lost their throne room to Claude. After the high elves are dealt with, Signet intends to install a suitable ruler and begin rebuilding naiad society rather than rule personally.

The Vengeance of the Daughter Part One completes. Its immediate reward is that surviving members of the assault like Carl twenty percent more, but the system notes that roughly half the squad died because the southern shore was left unprotected. Part Two begins immediately. The new target is Signet's half-sister Queen Imogen, the reclusive high-elf ruler who appears at the annual elite party Carl will attend if he remains a top player. Carl is tasked with helping Signet kill Imogen and break the high elves' control over the Hunting Grounds. The reward is access to loot from the High Elf Castle, including a rumored item that can protect against Scolopendra's attacks.

Signet postpones the next stage until after the group mourns its dead. She says her curse prevents her from becoming the naiad ruler. Samantha interjects that she will do it and again reminds Signet of the promised body after the high elves are gone, but Signet gives no agreement. Edgar finally emerges from the water, mourns Nadine, confirms there is enough moonlight left, and goes to retrieve his stick for whatever ritual comes next.

Edgar performs a mourning ritual by using a silver needle-like stick to draw material from Miss Nadine's remains and repeatedly puncture the same spot on Signet's thigh. The resulting dots move on their own until they form a living tattoo. Signet explains that her tattoos represent fallen companions or worthy enemies. Her first came the night her mother was killed, when she also met Edgar.

Donut notices that Signet's three-headed ogre tattoo resembles Areson and the other ogres Carl has encountered. Signet explains that the tattoo is actually Di-we, a three-headed nodling who died protecting her from agents of Queen Imogen. When a nodling dies, each head can produce a new descendant. Di-we's death created Areson, Apollon, and Herman, each carrying one-third of their progenitor's knowledge. Areson remained in the Hunting Grounds, Apollon went with Signet to the Over City circus, and Herman is somewhere below in Larracos. The explanation also confirms that nodlings can have two to six heads, connecting the species to the Popov brothers.

After roughly an hour, the Nadine tattoo is complete. Signet explicitly says it is not Nadine herself but a blood-and-ink elemental made from Nadine's remains and Signet's memories, a living facsimile rather than the deceased person. The tattoo changes from caterpillar form into a young female chee, and a child version of Clint appears beside her. Signet says Nadine loved Clint strongly enough that her memory of him was carried into the tattoo despite the group not having Clint's body. Holger and the surviving were-castors treat the image as a memorial and say goodbye. The were-castors then begin building a wooden dam around Fort Freedom, but Wonderwall continues looping because the alarm trap remains unreachable deep in a vent.

Carl, Donut, and Samantha leave because Carl has an approaching appointment and needs a saferoom. Rather than return to Point Mongo, they cross the river and head south toward a small dryad settlement, planning to capture and train the town, investigate the dinosaur quest, continue hunting hunters, and prepare for Queen Imogen. Signet says her group will move southeast toward high-elf territory, keep hunting outworlders, and send someone to collect Carl once the assault plan is ready. Carl warns her to kill hunters immediately rather than capture them because they are growing stronger.

On the southern shore, Carl loots the mutilated ursine corpses and recovers armor and enchanted weapons worth more than a thousand gold. Pink boa feathers remain scattered around the scene. He also collects several remaining traps, including a Slippery Slope trap that would have caused him to fall into the river. Zev repeatedly urges Carl and Donut to reach a saferoom because his scheduled transfer cannot be delayed and could otherwise leave Donut alone in the wild. They hurry south, grind for about an hour and a half through thorny dervishes and other mobs, and collect several ingredients Mordecai requested.

They finally enter the small village of Alucarda as Carl's view counter suddenly spikes. Donut sees no map dots, leading Carl to infer a protection spell. At The Aloe Mana, a true saferoom, Carl asks an unnamed dryad who controls the town. The dryad says the former mayor R'aggah has "returned to the earth" and that an evil woman with two indiscriminately killing beasts has taken over: Mayor Lucia Mar. Samantha immediately says Lucia sounds like her kind of crazy. Before Carl can do anything else, his scheduled transfer triggers and the chapter ends.

Carl's scheduled transfer pulls him away from Alucarda and into an orbital security checkpoint while Donut and Samantha remain below with Lucia Mar somewhere nearby. His chat and interface are disabled, leaving him unable to confirm whether Donut reached the saferoom. While waiting in near-zero gravity, Carl sees a large fire burning near the southern tip of India on Earth below.

An older shade gnoll security officer scans Carl and quietly attempts to influence the coming children's art contest. He says his grandpup is named Lix and asks Carl to look favorably on her entry. In exchange, because he controls security aboard the production vessel Carl is about to visit, he offers to overlook future thefts from production trailers. Carl does not agree before being transferred onward.

Carl arrives inside a large underwater production facility and briefly sees incoming messages, including a live message from Donut to Katia, confirming that Donut is still alive. Zev tells him Donut is safely inside the guildhall after a fight, but she refuses to explain exactly what happened. She says the Valtay have removed most rental production trailers operated by Senegal Production Systems, Unlimited because crawlers were difficult to track outside the dungeon. An escape attempt, combined with the previous-floor Loita incident, led to tighter controls. Carl and Zev are now inside an actual Valtay landing vessel parked on the ocean floor in Earth's primary zone near Valtay headquarters, and both the AI and the vessel's security personnel are monitoring them continuously.

Zev explains that Carl's first CrawlCon event begins shortly and his second event, the Crawling Through the Ages panel, is roughly six hours later. Rather than return him to the dungeon between them, the production team plans to keep him aboard, provide food and a bed, and compensate for lost dungeon time with access to a training room. Carl objects because returning to the exact transfer point in Alucarda could leave him and Donut exposed to Lucia Mar and her beasts. Zev responds in deliberately coded language that Carl's CrawlCon participation is highly anticipated and that it may be in his best interest to "linger" aboard as long as possible. She adds that when he returns he will appear at the exact place he left, where other crawlers, pets, or anyone who knows about his participation could be waiting. When Carl starts to ask about communication restrictions, Zev immediately stops him, making clear that she cannot safely say more under surveillance.

Zev briefly opens Carl's inventory so he can equip the CrawlCon badge from his fan box and remove his bandana. Equipping the badge adds a CrawlCon schedule tab, but Carl cannot access it because the Valtay vessel has its own containment zone and blocks crawler wetware. Carl tests his gauntlet and finds that it still works despite the interface restriction, but he keeps that observation to himself.

Carl finally asks what his first event is. Zev tells him he is judging a children's art contest. Carl swears in disbelief, and the chapter ends with Zev telling him to try not to swear because the contestants are children.

Carl spends nearly two hours virtually judging the CrawlCon children's art contest while the contestants are physically present at the convention. Entries are scored from one to thirty by three celebrity judges. Carl sits between Hurk, a blue-skinned Gleener who designed the Desperado Club and other dungeon sets, and G'valt, a Bactrian playwright whose old stage drama Session of Love is legally performed by ninth-floor NPCs. G'valt becomes increasingly intoxicated and eventually passes out, after which an unseen person beside him continues submitting scores.

The contestants range from ordinary children to bizarre alien species. Keith H., a human boy, presents a crude drawing of Carl being eaten by a brindle grub while repeating his father's claims that Carl survives only because he is favored by the AI and the crawl's operators. Carl gives him a one. Buttercup Divinity, a young elf, shows Carl a highly polished moving portrait of her mother and casually reveals afterward that her mother is dead. A trio of black goat-like children called the Plenty submit themselves rather than artwork and repeatedly demand to be judged. Hurk says adults of the Plenty behave just as strangely. Carl recognizes the group as the people who created the tunneling system and who are supposedly working with the Apothecary, which gives him an immediate sense of unease.

Carl asks Hurk whether he knows what happened between Donut and Lucia Mar, but Hurk only follows highlights and cannot tell him. When Lix, the young shade gnoll whose grandfather pressured Carl at the security checkpoint, reaches the judges, Carl separately bargains with Hurk: if Hurk gives Lix a high score, Carl will praise Hurk's Desperado Club design during a future panel. Lix's entry is a black, three-dimensional stick drawing of her grandfather beating someone she describes as tax-avoiding scum. Hurk and Carl both award her thirty points.

When judging ends, Lix wins with a perfect score of ninety because the still-sleeping G'valt's unseen substitute also gives her thirty. Keith finishes last with four points. Hurk notes that the Eyber faction will be angry because their contestant, who produced a nearly perfect portrait of Donut, usually wins. Carl knows the result is visibly rigged but does not care enough to challenge it.

Before Carl leaves, Hurk warns that it has been a long time since a crawler attracted attention the way Carl does. He then explains why the later Crawling Through the Ages panel is so heavily anticipated: it will be moderated by the mother of one of the hunters Carl killed, and she has been openly hostile toward him. Hurk says the entire fandom is waiting to see what happens. Carl responds with sarcasm as the chapter ends.

Back in the green room, Carl asks Zev about the upcoming Crawling Through the Ages panel. The moderator is Circe Took, a minor Dark Hive queen, former hunter, businesswoman, and amusement-park owner whose daughter Xindy was killed by Carl during her first hunt. Zev says Circe is not part of the Dark Hive military or Vrah's Burrower clan, but warns Carl to avoid political topics. The panel begins in roughly four hours. Zev also explains that only a handful of current crawlers are participating in CrawlCon: Carl, the Popov brothers, Chirag Ali, and Tserendolgor. Lucia Mar has stopped doing events because she is too unpredictable. When Carl wishes Lucia were at CrawlCon instead of near Donut, Zev tells him Donut is safe for now and specifically says Donut is not the one in danger.

Carl asks how Zev is coping. She says the kua-tin home system has gone dark, so staff who remained after the ownership change do not know whether they will eventually be welcomed home or executed as traitors. She also reminds Carl that her family was slaughtered because she refused to wear a pin. Zev then leaves for base, telling Carl that security will provide rest and training until the panel.

Two gnoll guards, Frito and Moxo, install a tier-three bed, a crawler's biscuit, and a tier-four Ultimate Training Room. Frito quietly says the captain sends his regards and hints that Carl's inventory will probably be re-enabled immediately before his return to the dungeon. The bed instantly refreshes Carl and gives a thirty-hour buff. Carl refuses to eat the biscuit because his blocked interface prevents him from properly examining it.

The Ultimate Training Room works despite the Valtay containment restrictions and is far more capable than Carl's normal room. It permits up to six hours of daily training across as many as six skills, shows progress toward the next level, provides an additional training bonus, and combines skill, magic, explosives, crafting, and other specialist facilities. It can also simulate installed workshop tables without Carl physically carrying them. At a simulated Sapper's Table, an AI badger trainer tells Carl that a more ambitious weapon concept he has in mind would require facilities such as a hypnotist's bench, necromancer's altar, or spider nursery, or some other way to create multiple permanent minions. Carl instead starts a two-hour module to improve the adhesion of his sticky bombs using the advanced bomber's studio and alchemy training.

Carl later uses the remaining time to train Powerful Strike from level 9 to level 10. The training display confirms Mordecai's earlier warning that Carl's Primal ability lets him train skills beyond level 15, but equipment bonuses become progressively less effective above that threshold.

Frito and Moxo then escort Carl toward the panel. Passing through the transformed art-contest studio, Carl meets Dr. Ratchet, an older dwarf preparing a demonstration using the ship's access to dungeon AI protocols. Dr. Ratchet warns Carl to keep his head down both during the panel and after he returns to the dungeon. The guards lead Carl through a zero zone where all enhancements vanish and his gauntlet fails to form. In that zone, Carl also finds that Syndicate Standard feels strangely like an old language he once knew rather than merely a translated script.

Studio Three is a class-two zone, so Carl's strength returns. A Valtay Porter Bot designated 6.ff, who tells Carl to call him Biff, prepares him for the virtual panel. Carl is the only panelist attending remotely; the other three panelists are already seated elsewhere, while Carl remains physically alone with Biff and the two gnoll guards. Carl notices that his assigned chair is directly beside the space reserved for Circe. The chapter ends with three minutes until the panel starts while Frito and Moxo smoke in the corner and boast that they have the best seats in the house.

A note from Crawler Rosetta's ninth edition of the Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook gives a terse warning: never trust mercenaries. Carl then studies the three other Crawling Through the Ages panelists. Uptown Hal is a former game guide from before crawlers filled that role and now hosts a popular tactics program. Sydnee Iglacia is a saccathian crawl historian. Drick is an elderly, scarred moon elf and former crawler who reached the end of the eleventh floor roughly four hundred seasons earlier. Frito and Moxo say Drick later died in a waystation fight but had a Valtay contract and was preserved by a Valtay worm. Drick also emphasizes that the Valtay do not directly run the crawl: Borant Corporation remains the operator, using mudskipper infrastructure with mercenary support.

Before the panel begins, Carl overhears the three discussing the danger waiting for him in Alucarda. Drick says Carl should immediately go on offense because both the mantids and the Nebular faction will be present but should not know his exact return time or location. Uptown Hal says drawing the hunters into the area was the best option after Lucia Mar established herself there because Carl would fare worse against Lucia one-on-one. The panelists wish they could tell Carl directly.

Moderator Circe Took arrives and can see Carl's virtual projection even though the other panelists initially cannot. She calls Carl's survival luck a dishonor to the Hive. After Carl insults the Hive, Circe slashes through the projected table where he appears to be sitting. Carl retaliates verbally by mocking Xindy. Circe then begins a long history lecture that presents the Hive's preferred account of the crawl, primal technology, enhancement zones, and the Indigenous Species Protection Act. Sydnee repeatedly reacts as though she disagrees. Carl eventually derails the lecture, promotes Sydnee's book, and tells the audience they are really there to watch him and Circe fight about Xindy and Vrah.

When Circe orders Carl cut off, an unidentified woman in a patterned brown cloak stops the staff member from muting him. At this point Carl notices Frito and Moxo have disappeared, leaving Moxo's smoking device behind, and realizes the vapor in his room has drugged him in a way that removes his inhibitions. Carl believes the Valtay arranged this, but the source does not establish why. The robed woman says she is one of Carl's sponsors and also a sponsor of CrawlCon. Because her contract prevents her from addressing Carl directly, she says only that she has instructed the convention to let him speak and then leaves. Later, Uptown Hal identifies her as the spokeswoman for "the collective," and Carl concludes she represents the Apothecary.

Carl uses the opportunity to crowdsource tactical information about Vrah and the hunters. Audience members say eight mantises remain, one male staying in Zockau as a trade representative and seven warriors including Vrah; the warrior mantises are all Circe's daughters and members of the Dark Hive. Others say the Nebular faction is also camped nearby and claims the right to hunt Carl because he is in its territory. Circe threatens to personally kill whoever harms her remaining daughters. Carl responds that he intends to be that person, and Circe leaves. Uptown Hal warns that the mantids are disciplined tacticians and says that if Carl survives, he should make sure he kills all of them. Carl then turns the panel into a public strategy session on how to fight mantises.

As the session ends, Carl announces that if the advice works he will bring the heads of Circe's daughters to his autograph table the next day, then remembers his bargain with Hurk and loudly praises the Desperado Club's design. Frito and Moxo return. On the way back, Frito tells Carl that the drugging was "business" while another matter involving their commander is "personal," but he refuses to explain further.

When Carl's interface returns, Donut's newest message gives the exact Alucarda situation: she warns Carl not to approach the saferoom because Lucia Mar is inside it and can hurt him even if he enters; Donut has killed Lucia's dog, Lucia is furious, Dark Hive mantises are outside in town, and another group resembling "bad Star Trek aliens with big hats" is also present. Carl already recognizes the latter threat from the panel's Nebular warning. In the empty studio he then finds a level-5 Automaton Table and an autographed copy of Dr. Ratchet's Guide to Building Automatons for Fun and Profit. Carl inventories both, re-equips his bandana and Ring of Divine Suffering, and enters the green room with about five minutes remaining before his return transfer.

Carl's current state is 39 Hunting Trophies with 914 hunters remaining. The CrawlCon audience continues helping him plan against Vrah and the Dark Hive. They explain that mantids are unusually vulnerable to poison, but Vrah likely has antidote protection and is immune to poison clouds, so any poison would need to be fast, delivered directly, or otherwise difficult to cure. Mantid necks are less armored, and loud alarm traps can drive them back because of their sensitivity to sound. The crowd also says mantids often swoop in to steal other hunters' kills, and that Vrah once killed another hunter in the Hunting Grounds, after which most factions became reluctant to challenge the Dark Hive.

The discussion turns to the Nebular Sin Patrol. Carl learns that the Nebulars are a multi-species religious culture that mechanically and biologically alters its members, lives nomadically on inhospitable worlds and abandoned stations, and usually presents itself as pacifistic. Their hunting teams, however, are young male priest-candidates who treat crawlers from seeded worlds as abominations and hunt them as a crusade. They have claimed targets including Prepotente and Miriam Dom and recently attacked Lucia Mar despite her Dark Hive claim, further demonstrating that the informal hunter truce is breaking down. Uptown Hal says scarcity produces competition and violence, while Drick quotes the Nebular "Ballad of Survival" idea that violence breeds chaos and that from chaos people are born and eventually destroyed.

Back in the green room, Zev tells Carl that the panel ran long and that the Valtay have blocked live tunnel attempts while rumors spread that Carl attacked Circe Took and that the Apothecary encouraged him. Carl reorganizes his hotlist and inventory for his return, but the facility still prevents him from removing items. He coordinates a plan through chat with Donut, Katia, and Samantha. Katia reaches a guildhall and begins modifying Daniel's stuffed back alley mouser with a fake crown and sunglasses to serve as a rough Donut decoy.

Donut gives Carl the full Alucarda situation. Lucia Mar and one remaining dog are inside the saferoom. Lucia has discovered a way around its protections by placing traps that eject occupants into town; Donut was teleported outside twice and chased back in when the hunters arrived. Donut is now inside the guildhall, while Lucia waits in the saferoom. Outside are roughly six or seven mantids and about ten robed, tube-covered Nebular hunters. Donut and Mordecai believe the hunters knew Carl was returning before they arrived.

Samantha, who is attached to the back of one of the mantids among the severed heads it carries, confirms that the hunters know Carl is coming back but do not know the exact time. She admits they tried to torture the return location out of her. Samantha deliberately gave them a spot five meters away from Carl's real return point, but the local dryad exposed the lie, so the hunters now know the actual location. Samantha also reports that the Nebulars and Dark Hive are arguing over which faction has the right to kill Carl and may attack each other first.

Carl activates an alarm trap in inventory and finalizes the return plan. He asks Zev whether he can drink an invisibility potion before teleporting, but neither invisibility nor even a test health potion can be used in the facility, so he knows he will arrive without protective consumables. With seconds remaining, Carl becomes unnaturally calm and again senses the internal "river" urging him toward chaos. He asks Zev to watch over Donut if he dies. Zev promises to do her best as the return transfer begins.

Carl materializes back in Alucarda with his face against the saferoom tavern door. He immediately drinks an invisibility potion, drops a Smoke Curtain, and narrowly avoids a mantis strike and a barrage of Nebular magic. One Magic Missile still hits him hard enough to cut his health nearly in half despite Wisp Armor. The local dryad who exposed Samantha's lie is already dead outside the tavern.

On Carl's signal, Donut executes the saferoom decoy plan. She uses Clockwork Triplicate on the Sledge and sends two copies from the guildhall into the saferoom. The first triggers Lucia Mar's teleport trap and appears among the waiting hunters. The second carries a stuffed black-cat decoy wearing a fake crown and sunglasses, causing Lucia to believe Donut has entered. Lucia immediately uses her own teleportation escape spell and relocates herself, her dog, the fake Donut, and the Sledge copy to her preset destination. Vrah is waiting there. She attacks the decoy first, discovers the deception when stuffing flies, and Lucia escapes with her dog. Carl later reasons that Vrah knew Lucia's preset destination because she was still receiving outside intelligence, but the chapter does not independently confirm the source of that information.

Carl casts Tripper, triggering the remaining town traps, and throws an alarm trap that begins blasting Ballroom Blitz. The music gives nearby mantids the Unsettled debuff. From the wall of a temple, Carl throws a full-strength hob-lobber into the clustered mantids and Nebular priests, killing three Nebular hunters and badly injuring the others. He then hits a flying mantis with his final Bloodlust potion, giving her the Enraged buff. She immediately tears the head off one of her own sisters and dives into the mixed group below.

Carl uses the Ring of Divine Suffering to mark three wounded Nebular priests just before the enraged mantis kills them. Intelligence is the highest stat for all three. Marked For Death levels between the second and third kills, so Carl gains seven Intelligence points total from the three deaths, and the next two marked kills will be worth three stat points each. Carl also confirms that Vrah can be marked but Lucia cannot. Around this point the town's map-blocking protection vanishes and normal map dots return.

The battle below collapses into open warfare. Three mantids die, most of the Nebular hunters are wiped out, and Carl falls through the roof of the desecrated Temple of Diwata, where he finds piles of dryad and funeral-bell-guard corpses killed by Lucia. He exits and moves toward the saferoom as the final Nebular hunters die.

Vrah then lands directly in Carl's path, now level 74 and carrying severed heads across her back, including Langley and Bogdon Ro. She negates Carl's invisibility and confronts him. During their exchange, Vrah says she expects to return to Hive Home Two after the hunt and enter the birthing hall, where her future offspring will inherit memories of this kill. Carl taunts her about Xindy and her apparent retirement from hunting.

Carl's real trap is Donut. She has slipped outside while invisible and spent her mana casting Second Chance on as many of Vrah's severed-head trophies as possible. At Carl's cue, the reanimated Langley head bites Vrah's exposed neck, followed by Bogdon Ro and another head. While Vrah is distracted, Carl drives an Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea arrow directly into her neck before her shield fully activates. The disease literally ignites and repeatedly heals Vrah's genitals and can only be removed by self-castration or by transmitting it to someone else. Vrah retreats into the air.

Carl and Donut dive into the saferoom as two surviving mantids rush them. Carl kicks the enormous wheeled bomb Just Wait Until Your Daddy Gets Home out the door and closes it. The explosion is strong enough to throw everyone inside the saferoom to the floor. Afterward, Carl learns that Lucia and Vrah both escaped, but the blast killed the three remaining warrior mantids along with the crucified ursine and numerous nearby mobs. This leaves Vrah as the only surviving Dark Hive warrior on the floor, plus one male mantis trade representative sheltering in Zockau.

Carl immediately realizes that Vrah's disease gives him leverage over the Zockau representative because she must either endure the infection or transmit it to someone else. He rushes into the personal space and writes the salesman a message offering protection until floor collapse if he comes immediately and brings all the Dark Hive gear he has collected. The chapter ends when Mordecai asks what Carl did and Donut announces, "Carl gave Vrah gonorrhea!"

Carl sends Bomo through the guildhall connection into the Zockau saferoom with his protection-for-gear message for the remaining Dark Hive trade representative. Carl himself stays with the gathered guild members. Florin confirms that Lucia Mar survived, says "Good," and leaves without explaining why. Mordecai tells Carl and Donut to open their boxes, reset their buffs, watch the recap, and leave Lucia's devastated town before she can return.

Carl takes in the larger group around him and realizes that these people have become his family. Katia, Elle, Imani, Bautista, Louis, Firas, Gwen, Tran, Britney, and others have all progressed significantly. Elle is now a level-51 Tundra Princess. She explains that Chris is with Li Jun and Li Na watching Team Cichociemni, which has allied with Eva and killed its own leader after he resisted becoming a murderer. The Popov brothers had that group cornered before being transferred to CrawlCon. Katia diverted their own moving party toward Carl's position, but a pterodactyl attack stranded them in the jungle.

Bautista explains that the back-alley-mouser decoy came from his remaining stuffed-beanie collection, which has been replenished partly by his sponsor, and that he can re-tag surviving summons twice. Louis demonstrates a team-combat idea in which armor thrown onto Katia automatically equips if it lands correctly. He imagines using progressively larger equipment to exploit her mass-changing ability. Katia privately tells Carl that Louis is worried the guild may abandon him because the Dream hunters targeted him, so Carl encourages the idea while warning them to make it safer.

Carl then processes more than thirty accumulated achievements. Uprooted recognizes that he displaced and killed the rooted Eryops boss. Bisected reveals that administrative teleportation prevented his collision with the saferoom door from severing a body part and awards a Silver Lucky Bastard box. Desecrated and Temple Defiler explain that Lucia killed the Temple of Diwata congregation and that Carl's accidental destruction of its fading shrine improperly humiliated the goddess, earning a Gold Apostate box. Stabbing Vrah with an arrow by hand earns a Gold Ranged Weapon box, infecting her earns an unenchanted bronze condom, and kicking Just Wait Until Your Daddy Gets Home out the door earns a Gold Spicy box.

Donut reveals that her own close-range Fireball achievement awarded a vocal-coach training room. Its holographic instructor, Lover Illiana, has already raised Donut's Singing to level 4, which Mordecai says may allow future voice-based illusions to gain substance.

Carl opens fourteen Hunter Killer boxes, including the earlier Future Hunter box. The system appears to award boxes for six kills caused indirectly by the Bloodlust-enraged mantis even though Carl did not receive experience for those victims. His Hunting Trophy total rises to 52, and the Hunter Killer boxes alone yield 637,000 gold. The Silver Lucky Bastard box includes invisibility potions and a hammer-skill cloak Carl gives to Firas.

The Gold Apostate box gives Carl an Enemy of the Church tattoo for Diwata. All Diwata adherents outside Club Vanquisher will attack him on sight; Carl gains 25 percent bonus damage against them, plus another 25 percent because he follows Emberus, for 50 percent total. The tattoo cannot be hidden and can only be removed by killing Diwata or removing Carl's arm. The system specifically warns Carl never to let Diwata see him.

The Gold Ranged Weapon box and Gold Spicy box provide two jacket upgrade patches. The small Radiant Star arrow patch grants +5 percent Dexterity and +5 percent ranged-projectile damage. The finely made medium bomb patch grants +11 percent Constitution, +6 percent explosive damage, +2 Dangerous Explosives Handling, and a 15 percent discount from traveling Spider Reaper Minion merchants. Carl and Donut finally realize that Donut's old Scutelliphily hobby potion gave her expertise in patches and embroidery.

Carl then assigns enough stat points to bring his base Strength to exactly 100, causing a visible increase in his musculature and triggering a permanent-upgrade choice. Swole doubles future Strength gained from level-up stat points; Prison Bitch gives a 20 percent Strength bonus in hand-to-hand combat against opponents with lower base Strength; Stepson gives foot attacks a 15 percent chance to inflict the stagger effect Ouch. Mordecai and Katia recommend Swole, while Donut argues for the foot-based option. Carl chooses Swole.

As Katia sews the new patches onto Carl's jacket and Donut critiques every stitch, Carl reflects on the artificial nature of his enhanced strength, the zero-zone experience, the AI's apparent favoritism, his new Diwata enmity, and his growing debts to Emberus. The internal silence in his mind becomes a roar described as "the sink is running." Despite everything, Carl smiles because, for an hour or two, he is home with his people.

Carl, Donut, Mordecai, and Mongo watch the recap of Donut's fight with Lucia Mar while the rest of the guild group leaves to respond to an emergency and continue south toward Chris and Li Na. The recap shows Lucia entering Alucarda in her skeletal combat form with Cici and Gustavo 3, tearing the dryad mayor apart, killing local NPCs, sampling food and alcohol from the town's pubs and saferooms, and placing teleport traps at their entrances. Mordecai identifies Lucia's trap spell as Loop-de-Loop, which can either send a victim to a preset location or swap Lucia with the victim.

The show then reconstructs Carl's departure for CrawlCon and Donut's ambush. Lucia has hidden the town's map dots with a protection effect and waits above the street with both dogs. When Carl is transferred away, Donut attempts to reach the saferoom door but triggers Loop-de-Loop and swaps places with Lucia, landing between Cici and Gustavo. Donut evades both dogs, tears Cici's back with her claws, and casts Wall of Fire to split them up.

Lucia throws several Cloud of Dispel Magic potions because she initially assumes Carl has simply gone invisible. As Donut tries to reach the treehouse pub and its guildhall door, Lucia uses Samantha as a projectile and then sets a second trap. Samantha deliberately reaches the doorway first, triggering Loop-de-Loop herself and then landing in a snare between the dogs. Gustavo grabs Samantha in his jaws, preventing Donut from being sent into the same position. Lucia then teleports directly in front of Donut, and both crash into the treehouse pub.

The treehouse is not a true saferoom, so Donut and Lucia can attack one another inside. Donut hits a ninety-second snare just before the guildhall door, then damages Lucia with Magic Missile and Fireball. Lucia unexpectedly pauses the fight, asks the ursine proprietor for milk, and speaks to someone Donut cannot see. The recap deliberately cuts out Lucia identifying that unseen person, but Donut tells Carl and Mordecai that Lucia called him Alexandro and said he was her youth assistant. Lucia also refers to old companions Bini, Abraham, and Siti, says one of her dogs killed them after she failed to tell Gustavo to sleep, and repeatedly strikes herself in the head while arguing with the unseen voice.

When Cici advances on the still-snared Donut, Donut uses Entourage, invisibility, and Hole together. She overlays one illusion on herself, drops invisibly through the floor, and causes the Hole spell to break the snare. Cici sticks her head through the opening after her. Donut ends the spell, decapitating the giant dog. She inventories Cici's head and escapes back toward the original saferoom while Gustavo remains occupied with Samantha.

The recap ends with Lucia grieving over Cici's corpse, rapidly changing demeanor, shifting from skeletal form into her beautiful human form, and declaring that everyone must die. Carl connects the upside-down ursine corpse he saw earlier with the bartender, concluding Lucia later killed him and the remaining NPCs. Mordecai says youth assistants are not dungeon entities: they care for children who are too young to participate and are normally kept outside the crawl, making Alexandro's apparent presence with Lucia deeply abnormal.

The daily announcement reports just over 66,000 crawlers remaining, exactly 100 guilds combining almost 1,500 parties, and more than 90 percent of crawlers partied with someone else. Crawlers are killing hunters so effectively that some hunters are abandoning the hunt and hiding in Zockau. The administrators say crawler performance has forced a complete redesign of the seventh floor. Descending within six hours of floor collapse will no longer grant a head start, while descending too early will place crawlers at the back of the pack.

The announcement also confirms that seven days remain to secure a top-50 position. Every top-50 crawler will receive a mandatory invitation to the Butcher's Masquerade and may bring one optional plus-one.

Immediately afterward, Bomo returns through the guildhall connection looking exhausted. Just outside stands the small male Dark Hive trade representative Carl tried to lure from Zockau. The mantis says they must speak quickly because "she's coming for me," and the chapter ends before he names Vrah or explains further.

Carl leaves the small male mantis in the situational hallway while asking Mordecai how dangerous it would be to admit him to the personal space. Mordecai says the visitor cannot use Lucia-style teleport tricks there, but he could report anything he sees and cannot be restrained or hired. Bomo explains that the mantis attacked him twice in the Zockau saferoom: the first attack froze the mantis for one minute, and the second froze him for an hour. Carl knows a third prohibited attack will strip the offender of his gear and teleport him naked to the nearest monster nest.

The mantis is Edict, a level-50 Dark Hive merchant. He says he is not a hunter but an accountant assigned to handle trading. He recognizes Akland's name and confirms that hunters are retreating to Zockau because the floor has become too dangerous. More urgently, Vrah is approaching and has ordered Edict to mate with her so she can transmit Carl's Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea infection.

Edict explains that the magical gear he collected is not his to surrender. The Burrower government paid for it in advance, and he was supposed to deliver it directly to them when the floor collapsed before continuing to the ninth floor. The Dark Hive sells the gear to the Burrowers, who are the mantis royal government rather than simply a rival hunting faction. To prevent Carl from taking the gear, Edict has already transferred it to an unnamed third party for later delivery. If the contract were broken, the Burrowers would reclaim the payment from Edict's family hive, Deep Mind, financially destroying them.

Carl's true objective is to keep Vrah infected by preventing her from transmitting the disease to a compatible mantis. Edict understands this and explains why every available choice would ruin him. Refusing Vrah would expose Deep Mind to retaliation from her wealthy family. Obeying Vrah would also violate mantis social rules because Edict's government-employed hive cannot legally mate with a for-profit family without licensing and a bond. Mantis mating is lethal for the male: the female removes and eats his head while a secondary abdominal brain keeps his body alive long enough to continue mating.

Edict decides that the only honorable way to protect his family is to die in battle. As he grows more resolute, he condemns his civilization's expansion into space and says that finding the stars began a slow death through endless expansion. He says the primals eventually understood this too and claims some kua-tin understand something they call the Great Consensus, although he insists there is no true consensus.

Vrah arrives in the hallway, limping and suffering as the disease repeatedly ignites and heals her lower abdomen. Edict asks Carl for access to the personal space, then deliberately lunges at Carl with a punch. Because this is Edict's third prohibited saferoom attack, he freezes with the Super Naughty status and is immediately teleported away naked to the nearest monster nest. Carl suspects this was the outcome Edict deliberately engineered to preserve his family's honor.

The punishment leaves a huge pile of Edict's gold on the floor, even though he had already transferred the contracted magical gear elsewhere. Vrah screams in frustration from the hallway. Carl notices she has removed all of the trophy heads from her back, likely to lighten herself while traveling. The disease continues burning even inside the saferoom complex.

Carl shuts the personal-space door on Vrah, then reconnects the exit to devastated Alucarda. He and Donut step back into the surviving pub and prepare to leave before Lucia or another hunter returns, while Mordecai remains behind long enough to gather the spilled gold.

Much later, Carl, Donut, and Samantha continue south after leaving Alucarda. Carl has learned that his new Enemy of the Church tattoo has immediate practical consequences: Diwata-worshipping dryads attack him on sight, and if a town mayor follows Diwata the funeral-bell guards can be ordered against him as well. Carl and Donut therefore avoid dryad settlements while grinding through level-40 venomous whip-cracker plants, gathering ingredients for Mordecai, and taking advantage of their poison immunity. Donut reaches level 45 while Carl remains level 56.

They have also captured two more ursine settlements, which are renamed Ferdinand Peak and Nipton. Donut kills one mayor and Carl kills the other. Carl is still trying to reach his attorney about a legal question connected to the automaton book and crafting plans; Mordecai admits he does not know the answer and tells Carl to transcribe everything he can from Dr. Ratchet's book while waiting for legal guidance. Zev continues reminding Carl that he has one final CrawlCon appearance and must reach a saferoom in time.

Hunter activity has nearly vanished. After news of the Dark Hive losses spreads, no one in Carl's chat reports seeing hunters all day. Lucia Mar is also missing. Mordecai thinks her escape spell may have sent her to the opposite side of the map and may be usable only once per floor, but Carl is not convinced. He remains disturbed by Lucia's behavior, especially the unseen Alexandro connection and her statement that Donut killed "the wrong one." Carl still believes Lucia must eventually be stopped because she attacks crawlers and slaughters NPCs, but he also recognizes that Donut understands how lucky she was to survive their fight and is avoiding talking about it directly.

Approaching another ursine settlement, the group finds a defensive wall of living level-10 Jericho Bush vines. The plants are non-hostile magical defenses, but the northern entrance is lined with dead vines and there are no guards or normal signs of activity. Mongo gives his warning growl associated with other dinosaurs. Samantha scouts ahead and reports that some bears remain alive inside buildings, but the streets are filled with badly mutilated corpses and pink feathers. The bodies have been lying there for more than a day, which alarms Carl because the dungeon normally cleans up corpses unless it has a reason not to.

The settlement is identified as Prepotente Town Number Four. Carl messages Miriam Dom to ask whether she and Prepotente are there, but receives no reply. The high hedge keeps the town unusually shadowed, which Carl notes would suit Miriam's vampire race. Samantha returns covered in gore and says the destruction is even worse on the next street.

Carl notices a briefly appearing white map dot inside one of the buildings, indicating that someone living is hiding nearby. While quickly looting the dead, he examines the remains of a level-40 ursine lamplighter named Fodera. The examine result explicitly says Fodera was killed by Big Tina. This confirms that the massacre is tied to the unresolved dinosaur quest rather than establishing Lucia as the killer.

Zev then warns Carl to get cleaned up and reach a saferoom for his final event. She also tells him that Odette's interview with Carl, Donut, and Beatrice tunneled the previous night and, together with the Dark Hive events, has sharply increased attention on Carl. Carl again asks Zev to help him contact his attorney. Zev says she will try and adds that there is something else they need to discuss in person.

The nearest pub is not a true saferoom and appears abandoned. Inside, Carl sees Ottawa Senators decorations and an autographed Daniel Alfredsson photograph. Just before entering the guild space, he notices a severed bear claw embedded in the wall beside the door with dried blood beneath it, as though the proprietor had been dragged away while trying to hold on. The chapter ends with Carl feeling that the Big Tina quest is becoming increasingly ominous.

Carl transfers to the production facility for his final CrawlCon event and, for the first time outside the dungeon, physically meets another active crawler besides Donut or Katia. Dmitri and Maxim Popov share a single two-headed nodling body and together rank fifth among the crawlers. Their green room is markedly worse than Carl's earlier accommodations: they have a bed, only a level-one training room, the remains of a single cooked chicken, and almost no other comforts despite having been held there for three days between convention appearances.

Carl's CrawlCon badge identifies which head is which even though his normal menus are disabled. Dmitri occupies the body's right side and is a magic-focused Visionary; Maxim is a melee-focused Bogatyr whose primary weapon is a flaming meteor hammer. Carl recognizes their current race as the same nodling type as Areson. He recalls that a multi-headed nodling who dies can split into separate child forms corresponding to the original heads, giving the race a form of additional life at the cost of temporarily becoming children.

Maxim is cordial, while Dmitri is immediately disappointed that Donut was not allowed to attend. Dmitri explains that he had adopted an orange cat named Kapitan Whiskers only one day before the collapse and has been especially interested in Donut because of that loss. He tells Carl that seeing Carl try to save a cat when the collapse began made him think Carl was a good person.

Zev then arrives with another kua-tin, Skindle, the Popov brothers' outreach associate. Maxim angrily complains that Skindle left them confined for hours and that the promised food amounted to one chicken. Skindle introduces Zev as her boss and Carl's outreach associate.

Zev tells Carl that his replacement sponsorship has finally been resolved. The first bidder who won the replacement-sponsor auction was unable to pay, forcing a second bidding event. A new sponsor has now been selected and intends to award Carl his first benefactor box during the signing. Zev does not identify either the failed bidder or the new sponsor, saying the first bidder's identity is above her pay grade and that Carl will learn the new sponsor's identity at the end of the event.

The signing line is already full. Zev estimates roughly 300 lottery-selected ordinary fans, 30 premium attendees, and press at the end. Normal lottery places cannot be sold or transferred, though premium spots can be. Because this is the final day of CrawlCon, organizers cannot expand the event further. Zev estimates the signing may run three or four hours rather than the nominal two, and Skindle says everyone can leave once the line is finished, so the crawlers should keep each interaction efficient.

As the group heads toward the event, Carl jokingly asks Dmitri and Maxim whether Skindle gets angry when they tell her to go fuck herself, since Zev does. Dmitri is horrified, while Maxim says they will try it later and report back.

Carl and the Popov brothers spend roughly three and a half hours at a remotely mirrored CrawlCon signing. Their soother handler, Effex, is physically at the convention while Carl and the Popovs sign magical merchandise from the production facility, with their marks reproduced for fans across the galaxy. A blob-like fan presses the Popovs about whether they deliberately chose a conjoined form. Dmitri says their game guide, Hongrish, recommended the nodling race because it could provide an extra life, but never warned that the choice would force Dmitri and Maxim into one body. Maxim quickly loses patience with the fan's conspiracy theory.

Most attendees ask Carl about Odette's interview with Beatrice or his attack on Vrah. Carl refuses to elaborate on Beatrice and says only that Vrah will be dealt with. He learns that Circe Took is traveling toward the Earth system after the attack on her daughter, while Vrah is apparently trying to endure the infection rather than remove the affected anatomy and destroy her chance to become hive queen. Numerous fans arrive in Carl, Hekla, and Quan Ch costumes, and the Popovs are questioned about Team Cichociemni and Bogdon Ro. Maxim says Bogdon received what he deserved, though others should not have had to die with him.

Near the end of the line, a premium attendee named Jenn'ifer approaches with a head symbiote named Maggie. Jenn'ifer is president of Princess Posse Inner System chapter 43 and has used the group's money to buy the premium slot so she can deliver a message to Donut. She explains that the Syndicate preserves samples of lost planetary biology by relocating selected species to compatible biomes and that cocker spaniels are among the canine varieties chosen from Earth. Acting on Donut's suggestion, the Princess Posse has filed a lawsuit to stop that part of the preservation plan, and Jenn'ifer says donations are rapidly arriving. Maggie becomes violently agitated whenever the breed name is spoken, and Effex identifies her as a symbiote rather than a second premium attendee.

After the final fan leaves, the press arrives. Zev tells Carl that his replacement sponsor will be announced before questions begin. The presentation states that the Valtay's acquisition of 51 percent of Borant forced Carl to surrender his original sponsor and triggered the replacement auction. A huge black, red-eyed goat representative appears briefly as the new sponsor is announced: the Plenty. Carl also receives a gold benefactor box to open after he returns to the dungeon. The representative disappears after only seconds, prompting Carl to mock the idea that the Plenty controls the universe's transportation systems.

Nihit, a naga reporter for Elemental Collection Updates, then shoves aside another reporter and confronts Carl. Carl recognizes him as the reporter Odette said she had beaten to the Beatrice story. Nihit accuses Carl and Donut of cheating, receiving illegal assistance, and participating in system sedition, and he claims Odette is complicit. Carl initially jokes that Nihit will have to join the long list of people already targeting him, but he recognizes that Nihit's anger is about more than losing an exclusive. Nihit insists he can hurt Carl safely from the inner system.

Carl challenges that assumption, grabs the magical signing pen, and drives it into Nihit's neck. The pen shatters, leaving a piece of metal embedded in the naga as he falls bleeding and screaming. The other reporters surge forward, the production room abruptly lights up, and the event ends. Maxim closes the chapter by observing that Bulgarian media may be distrusted, but at least it generally pretends to be impartial, unlike Nihit.

After Carl stabs Nihit with the magical signing pen, about twenty gnoll guards flood the production room, confiscate the pens, and escort Dmitri and Maxim away before Carl can properly say goodbye. Carl is kept behind under guard until Zev arrives. She tells him that Nihit has been healed and wants to press assault charges.

Because the attack occurred off system, Zev explains that ordinary Syndicate law applies rather than Borant's dungeon jurisdiction. Carl is not a full citizen, while Nihit is. If prosecutors pursue the case, the charge will be filed and effectively held until Carl leaves the dungeon. A conviction would produce both a sentence and a monetary warrant. Zev explains that the Syndicate does not use long-term prisons in the conventional sense: lighter offenses tend to produce shorter sentences and larger warrants, while repeated offenses can produce longer sentences and lower warrants.

Licensed governments or corporations can buy out a prisoner's warrant and franchise the person for the remainder of the sentence. The purchasing entity must pay substantial fees, the court, and compensation due to the prisoner after release, while also covering transport, housing, and food. Low-warrant prisoners are therefore much more likely to be purchased, especially for frontier colony, factory, or mining work. Carl calls the arrangement slavery; Zev rejects that label because franchisees are eventually paid, though she acknowledges survival is not guaranteed. She estimates Carl's assault might produce roughly a 30,000-credit warrant and a three-cycle sentence, and warns that a powerful organization such as the Skull Empire would likely buy him out.

Carl asks whether someone can buy out their own warrant. Zev says direct self-purchase is technically prohibited but can be evaded through corporate structures. She cites Prince Maestro, who is franchised to a subsidiary that was later acquired through layers of ownership by the Skull Empire, as an example of a loophole available to the wealthy.

When Carl asks why Nihit was so hostile, Zev explains that the reporter's anger is personal as well as ideological. Nihit's brother is married into the Blood Sultanate and participates in faction wars. Nihit wants Carl and Donut eliminated before they reach the ninth floor and belongs to a small but growing group that views them as apocalyptic figures.

That explanation forces Carl to reconsider Donut's ninth-floor problem. Because Donut once wore the Crown of the Sepsis Whore, removing or losing it did not erase her place in the Blood Sultanate's royal line of succession. To descend from the ninth floor, she must kill the Sultan and every other member of the royal family. Carl believes the royal nagas consistently survive faction wars until the end, making access to them exceptionally difficult. He hopes Quasar's legal work may make the task somewhat easier.

Carl also remembers that when Donut lost the crown at the end of the third floor, the item regenerated and may have been awarded to someone else. If another crawler put it on and remains alive, that crawler would also become part of the royal line and would have to die before Donut could leave the ninth floor. Carl asks whether Nihit's fear implies there is some way to physically harm faction-war participants there. Zev tells him to worry about surviving the sixth floor first.

Back in the saferoom, Carl tells Donut and Mordecai what happened at CrawlCon. Donut focuses first on Dmitri wanting to meet her and then confirms that she has much more influence over the Princess Posse than Carl realized. She says she approved the anti-cocker-spaniel shirt design days earlier and believes roughly 700 Princess Posse chapters are operating, although the AI filters enough board traffic that she cannot tell precisely. Carl objects to the campaign, while Donut insists her audience numbers support it and claims the effort is already moving forward. She cannot determine how much money the group has raised because monetary discussions are filtered from her messages.

Mordecai then returns to Nihit's threatened assault charge. He says Odette's own trial was a highly theatrical proceeding that ended when she pleaded to a lesser charge just before the verdict. Carl is surprised to learn Mordecai personally testified against Odette. Mordecai clarifies that Odette was not charged for something she did as a crawler, but for conduct while she was his manager.

The conversation turns to loot. Donut's recently added red gem has given her +2 Intelligence, +1 Dexterity, and points in an unusable spear-throwing skill, while her small settlement provides only 403 gold every ten days. Carl has a Gold Tyrant Box and the Gold Benefactor Box from the Plenty. His sponsor menu shows that the Plenty currently sponsors only three crawlers: Carl, Miriam Dom, and Prepotente. When Carl asks whether Donut has heard back from Prepotente, she says no and is interrupted by receiving a Gold Benefactor Box from the Apothecary.

Carl opens the Gold Tyrant Box first and receives a small amethyst sliver that grants +3 Dexterity. His Plenty box contains a black upgrade patch bearing a gray goat-head symbol. Before he can fully inspect it, Carl receives a Silver Benefactor Box from the Apothecary. Donut opens her own Apothecary gold box and receives the Enchanted Silver Bracelet of the Ab-solar. The bracelet grants protection against vampirism, protection against lycanthropy, and +25 percent magical damage against all sapient undead.

Mordecai notes that the Apothecary and the Plenty appear to be coordinating at least their sponsorship rewards. Carl examines the Plenty patch and discovers that its Midnight Epicure symbol is not a deity mark, as he had assumed after seeing the same symbol tattooed on Prepotente. The patch grants exactly the same three protections and damage bonus as Donut's bracelet. Because it is an upgrade patch, Carl will also gain +1 to all stats after attaching it to an eligible garment, and removing it later would destroy it. Mordecai tells Carl to sew it on immediately because the sponsors evidently know something the crawlers do not. Donut worries that the anti-vampire protection could mean they will have to fight Miriam Dom, but neither Carl nor Mordecai knows what the matching rewards actually forecast.

Carl then opens the Silver Benefactor Box from the Apothecary. It contains a potion recipe and a drawing of Mongo. Mordecai recognizes the recipe as something he has unsuccessfully pursued for fifty cycles and immediately identifies the missing preparation step: centrifuging the mixture before flash-freezing it. He already has the necessary ingredients, including rare thorn sap tips, but the final ingredient is Mongo's blood.

The recipe creates a Charm Animal potion tailored to a specific animal. Each potion requires one liter of Mongo's blood, collected outside a saferoom. Carl and Mordecai argue that Mongo could be healed afterward or put to sleep during collection, but Donut refuses absolutely because Mongo trusts her and she will not violate that trust.

Before Carl can continue the argument, Miriam Dom sends an urgent message. She is trapped near Prepotente Number Four, dawn will arrive in ten hours, and she says she will not survive unless Carl reaches her before then.

Carl immediately questions Miriam Dom about her location and predicament. She is roughly twenty-five kilometers east of Prepotente Number Four, south of the river bend, and says the system had prevented her from contacting Carl directly. Carl sees that several intermediaries' delayed messages contain the keyword Elite, explaining the restriction. Miriam says the elite is now dead: Prepotente killed it, but the fight left him paralyzed for thirty-five hours, with fifteen still remaining. Bianca is trapped in a pet carrier in Prepotente's inventory, and his arm is locked around Miriam's waist. Because his frozen body will shatter if any part breaks, she cannot free herself. Miriam has survived daylight only by repeatedly alternating Revive with blood potions, and she has too few potions left to survive the next day.

Carl decides to rescue her. Mordecai says both the knockout potion and the animal-charm potion will each take about fifteen minutes once he has the ingredients. Carl lays out a timed route through two intervening dryad towns: collect the knockout potion at the first, draw and heal Mongo there, then collect the finished Charm Animal potion at the second. Mordecai proposes a safer alternative: let Miriam die and collect her gear in daylight, since two sponsors have just provided anti-vampire protection immediately before a vampire summons Carl after sunset. Carl refuses because Miriam previously saved his life and has been asking for help for hours. He sews the Plenty's Midnight Epicure patch onto his jacket, gaining an achievement and several Sewing skill levels.

Before Carl and Donut leave, Mordecai creates two Holy Goopers by combining blessed Emberus shrine water, fine healing potion, and an air-activated coagulant inside potion balls. Because Emberus is a light-based god, the mixture acts like napalm against vampires. Mordecai tells Carl that after a vampire is hit, Donut can maximize Torch to burn it to ash. Carl leaves Samantha behind despite her protests.

In the dark hockey-themed pub outside the guildhall, Donut's low Torch reveals a hidden ursine barmaid who urgently tells them to extinguish the light before Big Tina sees them. The woman is Prudence, a level-28 ursine suffering the Terrified debuff. She is hiding behind the bar with her two young sons, Randy and Todd, after Tina ate her husband from the doorway. While Big Tina rampages outside, Prudence explains the history behind the violence.

Before Scolopendra's nine-tier attack, dancing was forbidden by the local ursine clerics. A group of mothers secretly taught their children ballet and planned a private recital. Tina, the eight-year-old daughter of the town's head cleric, was the best dancer and was supposed to perform last. Her father discovered the recital and arrived with other clerics just before her solo. Tina's mother resisted him publicly. In response, the cleric pushed Tina aside, breaking her sparkle wand and injuring her, then whipped his wife nearly to death on the stage. Before he could punish the other families, the nine-tier attack struck.

Prudence says most of the female ursine were transformed into dinosaur-like creatures, while surviving males were unchanged and only a few women remained ursine. Tina was the only child transformed. She now kills indiscriminately but especially hunts ursine. Her mother and several other mothers also became dinosaurs, but they retain more control and have historically restrained Tina. Tina's mother is Kiwi, revealing that the dinosaur Mongo previously mated with is Big Tina's mother.

The Recital quest updates: Big Tina's violence has escalated from an occasional nuisance into a major threat, and the High Elves may deploy their army if she is not stopped. The quest allows two solutions: kill Tina or give her what she wants. Donut realizes the second option means completing the recital and finally letting Tina dance.

Then the severed bear claw from the wall falls and begins crawling away. The system identifies it as a level-5 Glamoured Fragment, 4.2 percent of its original body, and explicitly calls it Big Tina's minion. Such fragments can only be created by a vampire two sunsets after killing the victim. Separated pieces may combine into Shambling Berserkers, while fragments that reassemble at least seventy percent of their original body become something more dangerous. Carl finally understands the sponsors' anti-vampire rewards: Big Tina is not merely a transformed dinosaur but a vampire allosaurus. The quest updates again with a warning that the crawlers still do not understand the full situation as Tina roars outside.

The chapter opens with a thirteenth-edition Cookbook note from Crawler Allister warning that dungeon vampires combine traits his culture associates with both deliberate predation and destructive consequences that compound over time. He emphasizes that vampire mobs and NPCs are extremely fast, strong, intelligent, capable of spellcasting, and inclined to surround themselves with protectors. His advice is not to rely on familiar vampire mythology and, whenever possible, to abandon an infested area rather than fight.

Carl asks Miriam Dom whether she encountered Big Tina. Miriam confirms that she fought the giant allosaurus with the pink feathered necklace and wand, nearly killed her, and infected her with vampirism before Tina escaped. Miriam says many dinosaurs in the region are now vampires and the infection is spreading rapidly through the forest. Newly infected creatures are initially weak if they survive, but quickly become stronger. The infestation was part of the elite storyline, and the elite died before it could be contained. Miriam again urges Carl to reach her so they can stop the spread.

Carl grants Prudence, Randy, and Todd access to the guildhall and gets them to safety. Outside, a map-wide storm intensifies and the river begins overflowing. Once Prudence and the cubs are secure, Carl and Donut step back into the dark town. Donut sends out a low Torch, and Carl's map fills with red dots. The streets are now covered with vastly more reanimated body parts from ursine and many other forest creatures. Carl realizes Big Tina and other infected dinosaurs have been gathering two-day-old remains into a massive sorting area where glamoured fragments can find pieces belonging to their original bodies.

The fragments are already recombining. One partly restored ursine construct totals level 42 from the individual levels of its assembled parts despite representing only 21.8 percent of the original body. Carl realizes the mechanism is designed to create enemies much stronger than their victims were in life: infected creatures tear victims into many pieces, wait for the fragments to animate, then allow matching parts to reunite and combine their levels.

Rather than retreat immediately, Carl decides to slow the process because Miriam has indicated the infestation may still be containable. He assembles the royal chariot, mounts a loaded missile launcher, targets the central mound and its edges, and flees with Donut and Mongo. As they clear the town, Carl fires all the missiles. Explosions produce experience notifications and an enraged roar from Big Tina. Carl tells Donut the attack probably did not stop the reassembly but may have delayed it.

As they race through the storm toward Miriam, other crawlers confirm that vampirism is spreading far beyond Carl's location. Gideon reports fighting a vampire creature that nearly tore out his throat. Tserendolgor, roughly two hundred kilometers away, says local drillbeaks have become vampires that are about twice as strong and extremely fast. She believes severe injury, rather than mere contact, is required for infection and reports that applying Ultraviolet to her flamethrower kills them quickly. Mordecai says outbreaks like this have happened before, but not usually with such rapid spread.

Carl also uses the exchange to assess the upcoming top-50 party. Gideon is outside the top thousand, while Tserendolgor is ranked 54 and is trying to rise into invitation range. Carl tells her not to push too hard because he suspects the party may be a trap and wants capable crawlers outside the top fifty who could potentially rescue those attending. He specifically notes that her ultraviolet flamethrower may be useful.

Carl and Donut reach the first planned dryad settlement much faster than expected. Funeral bell guards initially allow them through, but once the local Diwata-aligned mayor sees Carl, the settlement brands him a troublemaker and warns that guards will attack him on sight. Carl and Donut rush into the Y-Not Lounge saferoom. Dryads already inside call Carl an apostate and attack him, only to be teleported away by saferoom protections. Donut notes that the hostility is directed at Carl rather than her.

With hostile red dots gathering outside, Carl realizes Donut cannot rely on him to handle the next step. As they move toward the guildhall door, he pats Mongo and tells Donut she will have to draw the blood herself. The chapter ends with Carl apologizing to Mongo and telling him it will be only a little blood.

While Carl waits inside the guildhall, Donut reports that Mongo is furious after the blood draw and that the dryad mayor outside is offering her 5,000 gold to bind Carl and turn him over. Because Mordecai had time to prepare only one knockout potion and one Charm Animal potion, Donut has only a single chance to collect enough blood. With help holding the flask, she cuts and heals Mongo three times before obtaining more than a liter. Mongo is fully healed before waking, but Donut remains angry about how much blood the recipe requires.

To leave the hostile settlement, Donut casts Smoke Curtain outside the saferoom while Carl drinks an invisibility potion. They sprint to the western gate before rebuilding the royal chariot. Carl tells Donut to hit only the mayor and suggests Magic Missile, but Donut launches Fireball instead. The spell ignites the mayor, the pub, and then much of the settlement despite the heavy rain. Donut is delighted that the burning town now counts as hers, while Carl tells her they should not repeat the tactic.

About twenty minutes later, they reach Prepotente Number Seven, another dryad settlement. This one does not attack Carl. He enters the guildhall, collects the completed green Charm Animal potion from Mordecai, and leaves again with Donut and Mongo.

Near Miriam and Prepotente's approximate location, the group still cannot see them. Miriam agrees to fire sparks into the air, but Carl initially cannot spot the signal from the ground. He drinks a Levitation potion and rises above the forest canopy into the freezing rain. From there he sees Miriam's sparks roughly two kilometers away and farther south than expected, off any visible path. He tells Miriam he has located her.

Before Carl can descend, a huge flying creature strikes him. The dungeon locks him into a special boss-introduction sequence and reveals Sierra, a level-65 Northropi Vampire neighborhood boss and Bereft Minion of the dead vampire hunter Viscount Fog. The description explains that Fog and Sierra hunted undead together until they confronted Miriam Dom. When Sierra tried to save Fog, Miriam injured her. Sierra escaped but became infected and, in less than a day, transformed into the kind of creature she and Fog had hunted.

When the fight begins, Sierra catches Carl with both talons, one around his legs and one around his torso, and tries to pull him apart. Carl repeatedly heals himself while Donut hits Sierra with Magic Missile. Carl smashes one Holy Gooper against the talon on his chest, making it burn but not forcing Sierra to release him. At Carl's command, Donut raises her Torch into an intense artificial sun. Sierra's head bursts into flames, but she throws Carl upward before crashing into the treetops.

Carl drinks his last half-splat potion while falling, forms his gauntlet, and drives straight through Sierra's body before hitting the ground hard enough to break ribs and legs. Heal keeps him alive, but Sierra remains alive despite catastrophic injuries and burning. Donut's light intensifies the flames, and Carl spots Sierra's still-beating heart on the ground. Remembering Allister's warning not to assume dungeon vampires match familiar mythology, Carl nevertheless drives a jagged branch through the detached heart. Sierra finally explodes, drops the neighborhood map, and the boss fight ends.

Carl warns Mongo away from Sierra's remains because vampirism is contagious and he does not know whether eating infected flesh can transmit it. He concludes that without the anti-vampire protection on his jacket he would likely have been infected during the fight. Donut notes that her light is now level 14 and that it burns vampires much like Fireball. The chapter ends with Carl telling her to put Mongo away until they are clear of the gore so he cannot become infected from the remains.

The chapter opens with two Cookbook annotations. Crawler Volteeg writes a single despairing note about missing a woman so badly that survival no longer seems worthwhile, and Crawler Drakea later identifies it as Volteeg's only entry and condemns the dungeon that produced it.

Carl and Donut reach Miriam Dom and the paralyzed Prepotente with less than an hour before dawn after fighting through swarms of turkey-sized bambiraptors. Most of the bambiraptors are vampires. The infected ones do not attack their uninfected kin, and Donut's Torch is highly effective against them: ordinary strength stuns them, while maximum intensity sets their heads on fire. Prepotente stands frozen with one arm locked around Miriam. His timer shows roughly six hours remaining, meaning he will not naturally recover until about five hours after sunrise, and he carries the Fragile debuff. Miriam is visibly exhausted and surrounded by the corpses of creatures she has killed while defending them.

Miriam drops a spellbook and asks Donut to learn its spell so she can eventually wake Prepotente. Carl is suspicious. Miriam explains that she had the spell herself but used a once-per-night ability to unlearn it and convert it into a spellbook. Donut uses Second Chance on a dead raccoon-like creature to retrieve the book without approaching Miriam, then reads it before Carl can stop her. It teaches Get Out of Jail, a forty-point spell. Miriam insists they must not cast it until after dawn because she does not know whether using it prematurely on the Fragile Prepotente could harm or kill him.

Miriam then explains why she summoned Carl. Before the collapse, she gave up a life, career, and fiancée to care for her aging parents near Parma. After twenty years, she had become rooted to the farm and deeply attached to her goats. She tells Carl this because she believes his bond with Donut is the closest parallel to her bond with Prepotente and her other animals, and she wants Carl someday to explain her choice to Prepotente.

On the sixth floor, Miriam and Prepotente were hunted by the elite vampire hunter Viscount Fog, star of an in-dungeon program called Blood Hunter. Miriam explains that the intended storyline was for vampirism to spread through the forest until Fog killed her, the progenitor, thereby curing the infected creatures before the outbreak became an apocalypse. Vampirism creates a hierarchy. Because Miriam is the progenitor, killing her before any infected victim has survived a full month would end the curse for those infected through her chain. Miriam says more than a dozen crawlers have already been infected by forest creatures and dinosaur vampires.

Miriam herself gained the title Princess of Hell after surviving a floor while infected, making her own vampirism permanent. She also explains that different vampires receive different powers. Big Tina, as a boss monster, has unusually strong abilities to control other creatures and create undead minions from her kills.

Prepotente tried to solve the problem using a benefactor scroll called Community Pool. While physically touching both Miriam and Fog, he attempted to transfer Miriam's infection to Fog, which would have made Fog the new prime vampire and allowed them to kill him to end the outbreak. Fog countered the spell. Prepotente countered the counter, and the effect repeatedly bounced between them. Prepotente's five-use Opposite Day ring and a similar ring belonging to Fog continued the exchange.

The repeated reflections stacked stun effects on both men. After the third application, the stun also produced Fragile, meaning even minimal damage could kill the sufferer. The magical interaction also turned Fog's condition inside out, giving him Cursed Light Walker: instead of dying in light, Fog lost health while away from it. Frozen and unable to heal, Fog died at sunset and crumbled to dust.

Prepotente's wards prevented him from becoming a vampire, but the magical burst caused another item to activate unpredictably. He had recently acquired and equipped a Ring of Divine Suffering. Because Miriam was the only eligible target nearby, the ring automatically marked her, giving Prepotente the Left to Fester debuff. Miriam believes this may prevent him from safely recovering while she remains alive, and she fears trying Get Out of Jail while he has only one hit point in the Fragile state.

Carl finally understands that Miriam did not summon him primarily for protection. She wants him to kill her. Her death would remove the vampirism hierarchy she created before it becomes permanent in the newly infected crawlers, stop Big Tina's current infection chain, and remove Prepotente's mark-related obstacle. Donut objects that Prepotente would retaliate against anyone who killed Miriam. Carl recognizes that Miriam likely wants to die before Prepotente wakes because he might endanger himself trying to save her.

Carl refuses to kill Miriam. Instead, he promises to protect both her and Prepotente until sunrise. Just before dawn, without letting the others see, Carl equips his own Ring of Divine Suffering and marks Miriam. The ring identifies Intelligence as her highest stat and gives Carl Left to Fester until his mark dies. Carl consciously rejects the enormous bounties on Miriam and Prepotente and the opportunity to take Prepotente's ring and equipment, deciding that Miriam chose him because she trusted him to protect Prepotente after her death.

As the rain stops, sunlight reaches the clearing and Miriam's health begins to drain. Donut asks Carl whether he would make the same sacrifice to save her. Carl answers that he would do so without hesitation. Miriam rests her head on the frozen Prepotente's shoulder, calls him her beautiful boy, and turns to dust. The chapter ends there, before confirming Prepotente's recovery or the wider cure.

With six days and fifteen hours remaining before floor collapse, the system announces that a champion has fallen. Carl removes his Ring of Divine Suffering and prepares for Prepotente's eventual reaction to Miriam's death. Before sunrise, Miriam had emptied her inventory because she feared turning to dust would make her body unlootable. Carl promised to return the pile of potions, plants, and magical items to Prepotente, although Miriam had explicitly allowed Donut to keep one small orange cone-shaped hat. Carl also quietly takes two of Miriam's more than forty Size Up potions. As he pockets the second one, the number 50 appears beneath the level timer.

The system then launches a mandatory sixth-floor world quest, The Creeping Apocalypse, for every active crawler and hunter. It confirms that Miriam's death cured thousands of crawlers, monsters, and hunters affected by her vampirism chain, including Big Tina. The problem is that the undead constructs created from the forest slaughter are not vampires and therefore remain active. Many are Shambling Berserkers, but fifty have become far more dangerous Odious Creepers.

The AI explains that Odious Creepers are slow during daylight but become fast at night, can merge with Shambling Berserkers and other Creepers, and can replicate if body parts are available. Their locations have been randomized and marked on everyone's map. All fifty must be killed before sunset. Each Creeper awards +5 to a random stat, every five kills adds another +5 levels, and the crawler or hunter with the most kills receives an additional prize. Only the individual who deals the most damage receives kill credit. The AI warns that failure to eliminate every Creeper before sunset will trigger catastrophic consequences for hunters as well as crawlers, explicitly pressuring the hunters hiding in Zockau to participate. The announcement also notes that Carl gained three Intelligence points when Miriam died, confirming the benefit from his Ring of Divine Suffering mark.

Mordecai recognizes the mechanism. He believes the self-building glamoured fragments would normally have become Glamoured Creepers after reconstructing seventy percent of their original bodies, but after Miriam's death removed their controlling vampire hierarchy, a plant such as an Odious Blossom has commandeered them. He warns that these creatures can control nearby vines, rip body parts from victims to strengthen themselves, shoot poisonous darts, and grow from the ground. He says the accelerated process is normally rare and slow, but the dungeon has compressed it into this event.

Carl asks whether Mordecai can devise a chemical solution similar to the one used against the Pestiferous Vine. Mordecai says creatures this large would probably require a full aerosol application and that he lacks time for trial and error or a practical delivery system. He concludes that the dungeon expects direct hacking and burning. The unusually rich rewards convince him the encounter is intentionally lethal and meant to draw the hunters back into the field.

Katia joins the discussion and estimates that some reconstructed creatures may already have been around level 150 before the plant transformation. She says they will need coordinated ranged attacks. One Creeper has appeared in the middle of Eva's group; Katia hopes it kills them but says her group will have to move in if it does not. Carl warns her to work only with crawlers she trusts. He also reiterates his concern about the top-fifty party while Donut resumes her hostility toward Tserendolgor.

Despite Mordecai's repeated warnings to avoid the Creepers, Carl and Donut must first wake Prepotente. Donut sees several dinosaur dots approaching the clearing from the south, likely Kiwi and the other transformed mothers. Carl asks whether Big Tina is among them and, hearing that no large dot is present, tells Donut they must act quickly. He kneels before Prepotente and explains that Miriam would want him to stay strong for his surviving brothers and sisters. He also asks Prepotente not to attack the approaching dinosaurs because Carl and Donut still need them for the unresolved Recital quest.

Donut casts Get Out of Jail, and Prepotente wakes. He initially says nothing. He removes his Ring of Divine Suffering and drops it, briefly tempting Carl with the possibility of obtaining a second ring. Instead, Prepotente picks it back up, puts it in his mouth, and swallows it whole.

Prepotente collapses before Miriam's rain-soaked ashes and begins grieving. He calls Miriam his mother and laments that she had promised to play piano and sing his special song. Donut responds with unusual gentleness, comforting him and telling him to grieve while she and Carl handle the incoming creatures. Kiwi enters the clearing but remains at its edge without attacking.

Still overwhelmed, Prepotente asks what he is supposed to do now. Then his expression changes as he receives an emergency benefactor box from his sponsor. The chapter ends with him returning his attention to the place where Miriam's ashes had been and sobbing.

Thirty-six female mongoliensis eventually gather around the clearing, with roughly twenty initially visible along the tree line. They are blood-covered but among the dinosaurs that avoided vampirism. Carl reasons that, with Big Tina now cured, the pack has come looking for the source of the outbreak or for some other unresolved purpose connected to Tina. Their map dots are hostile to Carl but friendly to Donut.

Mordecai, communicating remotely, has warned Carl and Donut to keep Mongo in his carrier because his presence might interfere with the taming attempt. The single Charm Animal potion has now become Charm Mongoliensis. For one minute after use, it will tame the closest eligible monster for Donut for the remainder of the floor. The target will not become a bonded pet like Mongo but a minion. Carl realizes that if Donut can charm Kiwi, Kiwi's pack leadership may bring the other raptors with her and provide the missing route into the Recital quest.

Donut approaches Kiwi alone while Carl stays ready to deploy Protective Shell. The potion works: Kiwi becomes a level-60 Mongoliensis Pack Leader minion of Princess Donut. Her dot turns white with the green minion marker, and the rest of the pack's dots also turn white even though they do not become Donut's direct minions. Carl recognizes the distinction: Donut controls Kiwi, while Kiwi controls the rest of the pack. If Kiwi dies or ceases cooperating, Donut has no direct command over the others.

Several raptors carry a twenty-nine-hour Immortalized debuff from being cured of vampirism. Mordecai explains that in direct sunlight the debuff halves strength and mana and prevents healing, has no effect in shadow, and reverses under direct moonlight into +50 percent strength and mana with double healing speed. The overcast sky leaves them currently unaffected.

Donut then releases Mongo to meet the pack. Mongo and Kiwi initially snap and circle each other, while the other females crowd around him. Another female presents herself to Mongo, provoking Kiwi to drive her away. Kiwi then mates with Mongo again despite Donut's attempt to establish a rule against repeating the earlier encounter.

While Donut is occupied with the dinosaurs, Prepotente gathers Miriam's abandoned loot and uses a wand to create a one-meter-square temporary safe space lasting three minutes. He says the wand will have only one charge left afterward. Carl immediately recognizes the tactical value of a portable safe zone, but Prepotente uses it to open a large backlog of loot boxes.

The emergency benefactor box is legendary. It produces a magical spray applicator resembling an old-fashioned hand-pumped garden sprayer and a potion recipe. Prepotente explains that the recipe combines fine healing potion, blessed water, and weedkiller into an herbicide, but it works only when dispersed as a very fine mist through the new magical canister. He asks Carl for at least five more fine healing potions. When Carl hesitates, Prepotente pointedly treats them as payment for the Size Up potions Carl stole from Miriam. Carl hands over five.

The aerosol requirement reminds Carl of a bomb recipe in the Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook designed to convert chemicals into a mist. He messages Mordecai because he may be able to adapt that knowledge into another delivery system, though he still needs a plausible way to explain how he knows the recipe.

Prepotente then summons Bianca. She has grown from level 33 to level 40, now has full black smoking wings and a saddle, and can fly. Prepotente mounts her and says that because Miriam is dead, he intends to kill everyone even remotely responsible or die trying. He says he has enough herbicide applications to kill twenty Odious Creepers and intends not to waste any. Carl notices Prepotente is now level 57, one level above his own 56.

Before leaving, Prepotente thanks Carl and Donut for being with Miriam when she died and says he will see them at the party if not sooner. After he flies away, Donut asks whether the Plenty wanted Miriam to die. Carl says he believes they did and suspects Prepotente has reached the same conclusion.

Carl and Donut head back toward the saferoom with Kiwi and the pack. Carl tells Donut to determine why Kiwi sought her out because he now suspects the dinosaur alliance is more important to the Tina storyline than he previously understood. Donut remarks that at least Prepotente does not blame them for Miriam's death. The chapter ends with Carl privately doubting that assumption.

The chapter opens with Carl's trophy count at 52 and 673 hunters remaining. Back in the nearest saferoom, Carl finishes a brief session in the bomber's studio while Donut recounts Prepotente swallowing the Ring of Divine Suffering. Mordecai has no special explanation for the act and expects the ring may simply pass through Prepotente normally. Prudence, Randy, Todd, Samantha, Bomo, and the Sledge remain in the room while a dinosaur horror movie plays.

The adjoining pub, the Belching Termite, is not itself a true saferoom. Mongo, Kiwi, two clockwork Mongos, and two clockwork Kiwis are allowed inside while the rest of Kiwi's pack remains outside. Carl wants Mongo and Kiwi to become accustomed to each other and to the clockwork copies. The town belongs to Prepotente, so despite a Diwata temple, the guards do not automatically attack Carl.

A system announcement reports Prepotente's third Odious Creeper kill, leaving forty. Of the first ten Creepers killed, eight were credited to crawlers, one to a hunter named Fickler, and one to nobody by name, suggesting an NPC kill or accidental death. All observed Creepers are classified as city bosses at level 130 or higher.

Katia arrives with Louis. She is level 54 and reports that Gwen and others have two Creepers cornered in the large bush-elf village where Eva's group is also fighting. Katia fears much of the village population is already lost. She also reveals that Li Jun had secretly been infected with vampirism, telling only his sister and Zhang, and that Miriam's death cured him.

Mordecai has produced four large jugs of Uncle Morty's Insta Lawn-Kill and Undead Repellant, Extra-Strength Edition. He adapted an existing Odious Bloom weedkiller and added anti-undead enhancements similar to Carl's earlier holy grenade. Each jug should kill roughly two or three Creepers, possibly four if carefully rationed. The mixture is highly flammable, so it must soak into a Creeper before any ignition.

Louis's Extermination Professional class provides an ideal delivery method. His Tent the House ability can distribute a potion over a broad area, with still greater coverage when cast from the Twister. The ability has a six-hour cooldown, so he can use it only three times before dark if he begins almost immediately. Katia and Louis take two jugs for their own attacks.

Carl explains the improvised delivery system he built from hobgoblin smoke curtains. He replaces the smoke-producing liquid with Mordecai's weedkiller and swaps in a magical charge so the mixture will aerosolize without igniting. Each attack requires three large delivery packages, each made from four modified smoke curtains, for twelve smoke curtains total. The resulting devices are about trash-can sized. Because the system no longer classifies them as explosives, Carl loses the supernatural throwing benefit his explosive skill would normally provide.

Carl's design is derived from a more efficient aerosol-bomb recipe in the Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, though he conceals that source and pretends to have improvised the solution in only a few attempts. Mordecai is suspicious of how quickly Carl solved the problem.

Mordecai warns that attacks should begin from at least half a kilometer away, preferably farther. Odious Creepers can manipulate vegetation over a wide radius, and Carl's chat already reports three crawlers killed when vines squeezed them to death; the Creeper then incorporated their body parts and grew larger. The monsters can also fire poison darts, making Carl's Levitation potion a poor delivery option because even a minor impact could knock him from the sky.

Samantha volunteers to act as Carl's delivery system, but he refuses for now because the aerosol devices are too large to attach to her head. During the discussion, Eva receives credit for another Creeper kill, reducing the count to 39. Katia and Louis depart with their two jugs.

As Donut rushes into the pub to stop Kiwi from causing more trouble, Carl follows. A final system message announces another Odious Creeper death without naming the killer, leaving 38 remaining.

Carl discovers that his improvised aerosol bombs are unnecessary because the venomous elven rock chucker trebuchet taken from the Dream hunters already has a Poison Cloud enhancement. By pouring Mordecai's weedkiller into a side cup, Carl can substitute the cloud's poison while still launching an ordinary projectile. He realizes they had possessed an effective anti-Creeper delivery system all along.

Because Ping does not work on the Odious Creepers, Carl and Donut set up roughly a mile from the nearest target and use trial shots to calibrate the trebuchet. Donut climbs above the tree line with Mongo and Kiwi to spot for him. After six attempts, Carl lands a rock directly into the trees above the unseen monster and earns the B'sieging achievement plus a Silver Siege Master Box. He then loads Mordecai's weedkiller into the Poison Cloud system.

Before Carl fires the poisoned shot, Prepotente earns another Creeper kill, his sixth, leaving thirty-one. Carl notes that Prepotente can now move rapidly across the map on flying Bianca and worries about the two Creepers far north of Zockau, where crawlers cannot easily reach and hunters appear reluctant to participate. Eva's group has also suffered heavy losses, though Eva escaped again.

Carl fires the poisoned rock, and Donut confirms a direct hit. Rain disperses the green cloud but actually helps the treatment soak in. The Creeper dies within seconds, but the system credits the kill to Princess Donut because, as Mordecai later admits, the spotter receives most of the credit for siege attacks. Donut gains two levels to reach level 47 and receives +5 Strength, raising her base Strength to 58. Carl keeps the Siege Master box.

Louis's group then kills another Creeper. Firas reports that its thorns can fire like ballista bolts, and Elle identifies the target as level 173. Donut complains that her own Creeper was only level 138. Carl urges Louis's group toward another target and worries again about the two northern Creepers. Katia suggests the hunters may intentionally let the quest fail and shelter in saferooms. Carl asks Donut to persuade Prepotente to go north, but she says he no longer answers her.

Carl, Donut, Mongo, and Kiwi travel about twenty miles southeast toward another Creeper. Kiwi repeatedly tries to pull them directly east, and Carl realizes she is trying to lead them toward Big Tina. Midway through the trip, Kiwi howls and sends the rest of her mongoliensis pack away to protect Tina, leaving only Kiwi and Mongo with Carl and Donut. This gives Donut time to practice commanding both dinosaurs while the group resumes grinding ordinary forest monsters and Shambling Berserkers.

During the journey, fifteen more Creepers die. Louis reaches three kills, Prepotente reaches eight, and only fourteen remain. Prepotente has moved north, giving Carl hope that he may target the hunter-region Creepers. Li Jun, Li Na, Chris, and other crawlers enter the bush-elf town after Louis's second attack and discover that several members of Eva's mixed group have abandoned her following heavy casualties and her insistence on attacking another Creeper directly.

As Carl's group nears its next target, the map dot abruptly disappears and the global count drops to thirteen. The weather instantly clears around them, their viewer counts spike, and at least a hundred white NPC dots surround the area. A high-elf procession enters: two unnamed level-70 guards ride level-50 Moon Sambhur named Herschel and Hjort, while a level-75 white battle rhino named Simoom carries a shielded howdah containing Queen Imogen's intangible, invulnerable familiar.

The hidden familiar speaks for Queen Imogen. He says the trees still report to the queen, tells Carl that Imogen has placed him on her Masquerade dance program, and says Donut has been scheduled to dance with the familiar himself. He explains that the high elves killed the Creeper Carl was pursuing and are exterminating other Creepers in the Liana district south of the infested river, but refuse Carl's suggestion to help with the targets near Zockau.

The familiar then says Queen Imogen has a message for Signet. Instead of delivering it verbally, he fires a lightning bolt directly at Mongo. Donut dives into the attack and takes most of the blast. Her Cockroach skill saves her life, but she is knocked unconscious and hurled into a tree. Kiwi attacks the rhino's shield and is thrown back burning, while Mongo is also badly injured. The high elves leave laughing while their map dots remain white.

Carl interprets the attack as deliberate narrative escalation by the showrunners rather than random NPC behavior. Prepotente earns another Creeper kill, reducing the count to twelve. When Donut wakes, she immediately heals Mongo and Kiwi and then, still trembling, tells Carl what she saw when the howdah curtain opened: Queen Imogen's familiar is Ferdinand. Donut believes the dungeon altered Ferdinand's memory and personality and is setting up a future fight between them.

The chapter ends with the ominous line: the river roars.

The chapter opens with two Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook annotations. Crawler Ikicha warns that the dungeon's recreated versions of lost people are not truly the people who died, even when a corruption is cured, and says blind hope can become poisonous. Crawler Drakea identifies this as Ikicha's final entry and expands the warning: the dungeon is a fabricated stage populated by enemy-made puppets, so survival should not be confused with recovering the dead. She nevertheless holds onto a different kind of hope, imagining a future fire of resistance in Ikicha's memory.

With five days and twenty-one hours remaining, Carl tells the group chat that he intends to take Donut down the stairs early after Ferdinand's appearance. Katia objects that leaving now would take the Sledge with Donut and prevent him from using Zerzura for the changelings. Imani points out the unfinished Masquerade problem and the imminent failure of the Creeping Apocalypse quest, while Katia privately asks Carl not to leave because she needs his advice about something important that is not Eva. Carl finally agrees that Donut will decide.

Only two Odious Creepers remain before sunset. Prepotente has killed ten, Louis three, the elves and Ferdinand one, Lucia Mar one, and the one-armed Quan Ch one. As Carl, Donut, Mongo, and Kiwi move toward a conquered dryad settlement with a stairwell, Carl thinks about Ikicha's warning and the dungeon's practice of reusing the dead. Ferdinand is only Donut's former neighbor's cat, yet the encounter forces Carl to imagine what will happen when the show starts recreating crawlers' actual loved ones.

Donut refuses to leave the floor early. She says Ferdinand may have been her first love, but she now has responsibilities to Mongo and the others, and she will not let Carl abandon the group on her behalf. Carl then receives a Gold Benefactor Box from the Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network, Intergalactic NFC, but before he can open it the rest of Kiwi's pack returns with Big Tina.

Tina is still hostile on the map. She appears as an enormous level-80 Immortalized Allosaurus City Boss wearing the remnants of her ballerina costume and carrying an exhausted star wand. Her boss description explains that she was once Kiwi's ursine daughter, a timid child whose passion was dancing. Kiwi had eventually realized that Tina's life was her own story rather than an extension of her parents, while Tina's memories of losing the recital and watching her father abuse her mother hardened into centuries of rage after Scolopendra's transmutation. The description explicitly suggests that Tina might be reached by giving the child within her what she wants. Donut immediately concludes that they need to hold a dance recital for her. Tina remains focused on Mongo, however, and Kiwi tries to restrain her.

The Creeping Apocalypse quest then fails. The AI introduces a retroactive blood-bar system for both hunters and crawlers for the rest of the floor. Safe-room and personal-space access now follows lower-floor rules: a full bar permits ten Earth hours inside safe areas, the bar drains while sheltered, reaching zero causes a random teleport outside, and a zero bar prevents safe-area entry. Killing creatures refills it, so anyone who has killed nothing on the floor begins with an empty bar.

The actual punishment is Gehenna Bramble. Starting from the two surviving Odious Creepers, the spell spreads outward at an average of four and a half kilometers per hour, faster at night and slower in sunlight. Every plant it touches becomes a ten-meter-high mass of attacking thorn vines. A thorn prick boils away the victim's blood and causes the body to explode. The spell cannot be countered and the plants cannot be poisoned to death; they can only be beaten back temporarily. The brambles avoid a five-meter radius around stairwells but otherwise engulf towns, buildings, and terrain outside saferooms.

Immediately after the announcement, a hunter appears twenty feet away and is attacked by three raptors before Carl can identify him. One raptor tears off a leg. Donut orders Kiwi to intervene, and Kiwi forces the pack back. Tina then throws a noisy tantrum when the raptors prevent her from advancing on Carl, Donut, and Mongo. Mordecai warns Carl that Gehenna bramble toxin is valuable if harvested without touching the thorns. The chapter ends with Carl deciding to inspect the wounded hunter.

Carl and Donut approach the hunter who was randomly expelled from a saferoom at the end of the previous chapter. He is Iota, a level-50 Coin Tinker in the Crafter Alliance. He has already healed himself to full health, but one of the raptors has torn off his leg above the knee. Carl knows the Crafter Alliance was nominally hunting Elle and Eva, although aside from an early clash with Meadow Lark the group has mostly avoided combat. Donut urges Carl to kill Iota immediately, but Carl restrains and interrogates him because the sudden rule change makes information more valuable than speed.

Iota says the AI is "going primal." He explains that some hunter families challenged their contracts after the regime change, arguing that the environmental dangers on the floor violated the terms under which they entered. A mantis family pursuing relief for a daughter helped bring the suit, and the court had just ruled that affected participants could leave. Iota and the other crafters were celebrating in a bar when the AI nullified the judgment under its own authority, announced that it would finish the crawl by its own rules, and said everyone would remain trapped until the floor ended.

Iota then relays a rumor about why the process is happening unusually early. The mantises supposedly sold Borant a previously used AI under the table because the mudskippers could not afford a new one. After an earlier incident, mantis amusement-park AIs must be retired after each season, so Iota believes Borant acquired one that had already begun the lifecycle that eventually produces a primal AI. He says primalization normally becomes an issue only after the tenth floor.

According to Iota, the council is unlikely to stop the crawl. Replacing or shutting down the AI would destroy the financial value of the season, and there are established procedures for allowing a primal AI to keep running. The showrunners typically retreat from direct control while the AI begins following its own rules. If it becomes truly dangerous, the powerful people at Club Scolopendra on the eighteenth floor have security forces in orbit, but the usual expectation is that the AI will eventually let them leave with the dungeon modules and then be allowed to continue existing afterward. The crawlers and lower-level workers bear most of the actual risk.

Iota emphasizes that the change is usually gradual. At this point, the AI has mainly begun refusing court orders it dislikes, and sometimes the process goes no further. This AI, however, also appears unusually interested in drama and willing to bend nominally random systems. Iota points to his own teleport as evidence: he was supposed to be sent to a random location, yet the system placed a drunken, talkative Crafter directly in front of Carl.

Iota finally explains that he is not really a hunter. He is an accountant and broker who handles loot for the Crafter Alliance. More than thirty crafters have spent most of the floor drinking because Carl's attack on Zockau made it clear they were unlikely to make money from the season. Iota accepts that Carl will kill him and does not resist. Carl crushes his chest before he can finish speaking. Because Intelligence is Iota's highest stat, Carl gains three Intelligence through the Ring of Divine Suffering. The kill also levels the ring, increasing its future reward to four stat points per marked kill.

The chapter opens with a Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook note from Crawler Herot describing three castle types. The first is simply a fortified dungeon location that may contain monsters, a boss, or a quest but is not itself the central objective. The second is a governmental target whose throne room or boss must be conquered to transfer control of the associated territory. Herot explains that ninth-floor faction wars use this model: each faction receives a throne seed when the crawlers arrive, has one day to place it in a self-contained structure on its property, and loses its associated armies and dominion if the resulting castle is conquered. The third castle type functions like an owned village, with an NPC population, controllable guards, taxes, town defenses, and upgrade options.

Back in the forest, Donut criticizes Carl for interrogating Iota before killing him. Carl argues that the level-50 Crafter had never gained a level or any experience and was therefore unlikely to pose a serious threat. Carl removes the three remaining magical nipple rings and loots Iota's equipment. The haul includes 498 regular healing potions, twenty blitz sticks, 400 gold, more than forty kinds of alcohol, and the four magical rings. Mongo, Kiwi, and the other raptors then begin eating Iota's corpse.

Donut asks whether Iota's claim about a used AI could be true and worries about the AI ignoring court decisions. Carl does not know, but he is disturbed by the prospect of the system gaining more independent control, especially because it has taken a personal interest in him. He immediately alerts the other crawlers that hunters who accumulated no kills have been ejected from saferooms and cannot return until they fill their blood bars, creating a temporary opportunity to attack them.

Carl then realizes the Gehenna Bramble threatens the changeling settlement. Katia says the hideout is still some distance from the current infestation but will be reached within a few days. Because the Sledge cannot cast Zerzura until the final day of the floor, waiting for that plan will be too late. Someone will need to risk entering a Desperado Club soon to contact the changelings.

Katia's calculations suggest the bramble outbreak was timed to cover nearly the entire map as the floor timer expires, compressing survivors into the southeast corner around the High Elf castle. The Masquerade will automatically bring the top fifty crawlers there, while everyone else who stays on the floor will also have to move toward the same region. Carl suspects the elves will resist the brambles and may possess additional castle protections, but he is concerned about whether enough stairwells exist inside the shrinking safe area.

Carl postpones his plan to take Donut downstairs early. Instead, he tells Katia to move toward the southeast, map every known stairwell there, use Bomo to help, and prepare for their groups to work together for the remainder of the floor. Katia says her group is already moving that way while trying to rescue Britney, whose blood bar was empty because she had not killed anything on the sixth floor and who was therefore teleported out of safety.

Meanwhile, Tina cautiously returns. She hides partly behind a tree while Kiwi brings Mongo forward to meet her. Donut rides Mongo as the two dinosaurs lower their heads and sniff one another with Kiwi mediating between them. Tina's map dot finally changes from hostile red to friendly white. When Katia asks Carl what he plans to do next, he answers that they have a recital to prepare for.

Carl and Donut reach the settlement with the stairwell and find Signet, Holger, and Areson waiting nearby. Areson says Edgar is outside the High Elf castle preparing a large spell for the final battle and making a map. Signet notices the dinosaurs and warns Carl that Donut's control depends on the mongoliensis hierarchy: Donut controls Kiwi, Kiwi controls the pack, and killing the alpha could make the entire group hostile at once. Signet explicitly calls this a dangerous single point of failure.

Signet is not staying because the elves are hunting her group, but she stops to warn Carl about a second consequence of Gehenna Bramble. The forest and dryads are in pain and are attempting to summon Diwata, the forest protector. The spell will not stop the brambles, but Diwata could protect the forest from the worst effects. Because Carl has already become an apostate of Diwata, Signet warns that the deity will be especially dangerous to him. She tells him to avoid all-trees because they can reveal his location to Diwata.

Inside the settlement, Carl and Donut examine the four magical nipple rings looted from Iota. The largest gives +5 to Drink Mixing and is mainly valuable for resale. The second reveals the average selling price of a non-unique item without physical contact and is also slated for sale. The third, a gold ring about the size of a half dollar, grants Quarter Fall, reducing falling speed to one quarter of normal and giving Carl a potentially survivable alternative to half-splat potions. The fourth, small enough for Donut, grants +10 Constitution plus an additional five percent Constitution. Donut strongly refuses to wear it because it must be manually pierced the first time.

Carl offers Donut his new benefactor prize if she accepts the Constitution ring. His ordinary loot has been unremarkable except for the Odious Creeper boss box, which produced satchel bombs roughly equivalent to three sticks of hobgoblin dynamite each. The benefactor box contains Pawna's Cries, a limited-shelf-life potion that adds +3 to any spell or skill and must be used before the end of the floor. Carl already possesses the stronger Pawna's Tears, which adds +5 and has no time restriction.

The Pawna's Cries box also contains the short note "Save the toraline," referring to the remaining yam-like ingredient previously used to help remove Maggie from Chris. Mordecai explains that sponsor notes are expensive and must remain sufficiently cryptic or the AI will automatically translate them into an even more coded form.

Carl's Escape Plan skill then activates and reveals additional hidden text in the note. The concealed message says that Circe sponsored Diwata, orders Carl to give the +3 potion to Donut, says they "need 15" and should keep the reason secret, and suggests using temporary boosts from Prepotente, Imani, and Samantha together, with the stronger Pawna potion as a fallback that the sender promises to replace. Carl realizes Circe Took, Vrah's mother, had sponsored Diwata before the Creeping Apocalypse quest failed, meaning she was already preparing to come after him despite the favorable court ruling.

Carl privately asks Imani whether she can raise a spell's level. She confirms that her Smart Juice aura adds one level to a spell but also adds an extra cooldown, making it undesirable in normal combat. Carl then gives Pawna's Cries to Donut under the cover story that she can use it once Magic Missile reaches level 12 to push the spell higher. Mordecai notices something unusual in the exchange, but Carl silently signals him not to question it.

Donut finally agrees to wear the Constitution ring if Carl pierces himself first with the Quarter Fall ring. Carl does so, immediately receiving the AI's Sex Pervert achievement and no reward. The chapter ends before Donut's own piercing is completed, with Carl preparing to count to three and attach her ring while trying not to waste blood-bar time.

The chapter opens with a Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook note from Crawler Herot about breaking people out of imposed patterns. Herot argues that even a deeply worn mental path can be disrupted by exposing a small contradiction, like placing a pebble on a rail and letting the target's own momentum derail the false path.

The narrative then jumps back fifteen days to Carl's discussion with Quasar about Zerzura. Quasar explains that the spell transfers an entire town or city, including buildings and friendly NPCs, one dungeon floor downward while excluding hostile mobs, red-tagged NPCs, stairwells, and special rooms. On Scolopendra floors, however, the spell skips levels. Remex discovered this after moving his forces from the fourth to fifth and fifth to sixth floors, only for the next cast to jump past the seventh and eighth and land directly on the ninth.

Zerzura can be cast only at the end of a floor, takes roughly five minutes to complete, and cannot be retried after a miscast. The caster does not need to be the town's mayor, allowing Carl's negotiated cretin mercenary to carry the spell. The destination cannot be steered. Although nominally random, Quasar says it tends to place the transferred settlement in an especially dangerous location such as a monster nest or boss area.

The spell's real danger comes from what the arriving town kills. Creatures crushed by the settlement are immediately resurrected as Children of Inpewt, powerful revenants that retain their former spells and abilities. Every person in the transported town plus the caster is marked, and the revenants hunt those marked targets. Anyone killed by a revenant becomes another revenant, and the creatures persist until every marked villager and the caster are dead. Quasar warns that a sixth-floor cast would send the changelings directly to the ninth floor, probably into faction territory, where both the resurrected monsters and surviving faction forces could attack them. Carl considers using the Twister and even planting a bomb but remains disturbed by the danger to children such as Bonnie and Ruby. Quasar also explains that the spell is politically attractive because each faction hopes the chaos will damage a rival.

The flashback also restores the negotiation behind Carl's mercenaries. Quasar expects to ask for six, be countered with two, and settle on four, including one mercenary with Teleport to Stairwell and another with Zerzura. He also discusses Carl's new legal status as a taxpaying stockholder and hopes to secure a ninth-floor extension connected to the Vengeance of the Daughter contract. Carl ends the flashback by saying he has another idea for protecting the changelings.

Seventy hours before the Butcher's Masquerade, the system announces that sixth-floor crawler casualties are proportionally among the lowest in Dungeon Crawler World history, while hunter casualties have risen from a roughly two-percent norm to more than twenty-five percent. Hunters are told they will receive a separate message promising help. The system also confirms the floor restructuring: the originally planned seventh floor has been moved to the eighth and made harder, while the newly completed seventh floor will be the Great Race, finished with financing and assistance from the Valtay Corporation. Crawlers are warned that descending early will put them at a disadvantage.

The Masquerade announcement grants each top-fifty crawler a plus-one token that becomes invalid if the crawler dies or leaves the top fifty before the event. The party begins thirty hours before floor collapse, is expected to last four to five hours, and teleports participants directly into the High Elf castle. Because of the brambles, crawlers will not be returned afterward and must exit through the southern side of the castle, while hunters leave through the north.

Hunters and crawlers will appear together but actually occupy different goodwill ballrooms inside the castle. They cannot physically harm one another, magic and inventory use are prohibited, and weapons, explosives, traps, and other instruments of violence cannot be brought into the ballrooms. The event includes a pet beauty contest, a talent competition with remote celebrity judges, a catered buffet, and a prize booth accepting Hunter hands or Crawler scalps. Pets and NPC companions may participate only through assistant staging areas. Queen Imogen guarantees safe passage during the event. The system also reports that the normal patch update has been delayed by technical difficulties.

Four hours later, Donut announces that both her beauty-contest and talent-show applications were accepted. Since the talent competition requires a crawler or hunter to be the primary performer, Donut plans to sing while Kiwi, Tina, and the other dinosaurs serve as backup dancers, with Mongo entering the beauty contest. Louis reports that his blood bar has fallen to half because he has spent too long inside the guild; Firas is already helping Britney refill hers. Elle reaches the Desperado Club but reports that she cannot get through to the changelings.

The group studies Edgar's detailed castle map. The crawler ballroom is on the fourth floor near the south side, while the hunter ballroom is on the second floor near the north. Samantha identifies them as goodwill ballrooms, which can project participants together closely enough for light contact without allowing normal physical access. The white High Elf castle is roughly 150 meters across, divided into crawler, hunter, and central High Elf sections, with additional underground levels, a dungeon, and a secret entrance. The two servant staging areas are both on the first floor beneath the respective ballrooms. Carl also notes that Queen Imogen is a country boss, so defeating her would create a stairwell.

Louis estimates that roughly six hundred hunters may attend. Carl decides the number must be reduced below 250 before the party ends and both groups emerge from opposite sides of the castle. The chapter ends when Donut reports that Prepotente is on his way with a present for her and sounds angry. Carl remembers Prepotente's promise to destroy everyone remotely responsible for Miriam's death, but Donut has already told him where they are.

With sixty-five hours remaining before the Butcher's Masquerade, Carl and Donut wait for Prepotente in Team Katia's personal space. Bautista, currently ranked twenty-third and therefore likely to attend the Masquerade, is sorting his large collection of Jaxbrin beanie toys for rare physical variants that do not appear in their item descriptions. Carl confirms that the group expects fighting around the party and mentions that they are buying personal-space upgrades before the floor ends in case those options disappear on the next level.

Carl openly acknowledges Bautista and Katia's developing relationship and says he approves. Donut is shocked that Katia is involved with Bautista and asks whether Carl intends to "allow" it, while Bautista admits he had worried Carl might have romantic feelings for Katia. Carl says he thinks of Katia as a sister. Donut responds by mocking Carl's romantic history and recent nipple ring until Carl changes the subject.

Among Bautista's toys is a large batch of Stuffed Slate Butterfly Figures. Bautista explains that they did not come from dungeon loot. His sponsor pulled him out for a commercial, and he stole the sample box afterward. The butterflies are harmless and do not attack; when activated, they fly to the nearest light source and drain its energy. Bautista offers Carl several of them.

An hour later, Prepotente enters the pub at level 70 with fifteen hunter-killer marks. Bianca waits outside, now looking almost dragon-like. Prepotente is exhausted but refuses Carl and Donut's invitation to rest or inspect the guild's bathroom upgrade. He says he wants no part in whatever they are planning and explicitly assures them that he means them no harm. After a brief hostile exchange with Elle, he says he has come only to deliver a package.

Prepotente places a black, bubbling potion in front of Donut. He says it came from his benefactor even though it is clearly intended for her. The item is the I Take It All Back potion, which removes the effects of Scolopendra's Transmutation spell. Its attached tag instructs them to give it to Princess Donut, use it when the time is right, and specifically not give it to Tina.

Carl recognizes that this is now the second benefactor item routed through another person for Donut. He tells Donut not to use the potion without his approval and not to tell Signet about it because Signet would likely want to use it on Grimaldi, while Carl suspects that is not its intended purpose.

The pattern immediately expands. Elle says she has just received a benefactor box from the Apothecary, and Imani has messaged that she received one as well. Imani has already opened hers and reports that it is also meant for Donut. Donut realizes Carl's earlier nipple-ring bargain probably concealed the fact that he had already been instructed to give her Pawna's Cries. Carl avoids explaining and ends the chapter by directing them to go speak with the changelings before sorting out what all the coordinated benefactor boxes mean.

With sixty-three hours remaining before the Butcher's Masquerade, Carl and Donut enter the Desperado Club and meet Clarabelle. She explains that management changed the club after Carl's earlier attacks trapped hunters on both the Hunting Grounds and Larracos levels. Crawlers now enter the top floor while hunters are confined to the Hunting Grounds level. Several trapped hunters have already died there, while the Larracos patrons remain stranded because the flooded city still has not fully drained.

Clarabelle also clarifies how the new blood-bar rule interacts with the club. Hunters already inside are not expelled, and the blood bar does not drain while they remain there, but anyone entering must have a full bar. Ordinary NPCs with valid credentials enter the club on the floor corresponding to their dungeon level and cannot move between club floors. That matters because the Hump Town changelings can emulate membership passes and enter the Hunting Grounds level, while Carl, Donut, Elle, and Mordecai are routed to the crawler floor.

Carl asks Clarabelle to let them reach the Hunting Grounds level so they can meet the changelings. She refuses to risk her job. Donut then pressures her by producing the ledger from their first Desperado visit: they paid Clarabelle 500 gold for private security but later received only a 400-gold refund after Astrid promised the security payment back. Donut makes clear that they are now privately addressing the unexplained 100-gold discrepancy.

Clarabelle does not simply change their entrance. Instead, she reveals a hidden stairwell behind the last stall in the women's restroom. Removing the toilet tank lid and pulling a concealed latch opens a metal staircase to the corresponding restroom on the Hunting Grounds level. The stairs continue toward Larracos, but the system blocks Carl from descending farther.

The Hunting Grounds club is cleaner and more elaborate than the crawler level. Carl and Donut try to move quickly toward the main bar before guards notice them, but Haxor the Destroyer, a level-50 Dreadnought Merchant and unaffiliated hunter, walks out of the men's room directly into Carl. Haxor starts to shout. Carl reflexively kicks him in the groin, follows him into the restroom, crushes his chest, and breaks his neck before any guard sees the fight. Carl inventories the body and finds another intergalactic credit chit. He notes that Haxor's unaffiliated status is unusual because the Dreadnought Clan had been a faction-war participant before withdrawing after the flooding of Larracos.

Carl and Donut then identify two changelings disguised as elves at the bar. One briefly reveals a dromedarian face as a signal. The pair distract nearby guards and lead Carl and Donut into the skill-guild hallway, where a Hunting Grounds crocodilian guard begins trying to force the door open.

Pearson, currently disguised as a cretin, helps Carl brace the door. He is the same changeling who had appeared as a dromedarian bartender on the previous floor. Carl explains that he promised Juice Box to keep helping the changelings descend and that guild recruitment can save only a small fraction of them. Zerzura offers a way to move the entire population directly to the ninth floor, but the spell works on a town rather than a loose group and cannot be cast for another two days.

Because the Gehenna brambles will destroy Hump Town before Zerzura becomes available, Carl gives Pearson a hand-drawn map and asks the changelings to move their children toward Carl's safe area. The larger evacuation requires everyone to gather in an intact settlement. The High Elves have destroyed every nearby forest town except their own castle, so Carl's emerging plan requires getting the changelings inside the High Elf castle and using it as the town from which Zerzura will eventually be cast. Pearson remains wary because Juice Box warned the changelings to be careful of Carl, but Carl insists she still trusted him and says the plan will require their cooperation.

The guard outside abruptly stops pounding. Donut warns that someone smaller has arrived. Carl is immediately struck by cardiovascular magic: his skin bubbles, his vision turns red, and the system warns that his blood has been set to boil. Astrid, the level-125 Bloodlust Sprite assistant manager, orders them to open the door if they ever want club access again. Carl realizes she is angry rather than trying to kill him outright. As his health collapses, he tells Pearson to change back into an elf, open the door, and try to touch Astrid. The chapter ends with Astrid glaring at them while Carl loses consciousness.

With sixty-two hours remaining before the Butcher's Masquerade, Carl wakes in Orren's office after Astrid's blood-magic attack. He has been healed enough to survive but still carries dozens of painful debuffs, and Donut tells him he was unconscious for forty-five minutes. The two changelings are gone. Orren says both were ejected from the Desperado Club and barred from returning, but one of them took responsibility for blocking the door and cracking the sink, preventing worse consequences for Carl and Donut.

Orren tells them he will leave his in-game office when the sixth floor collapses and does not expect to return until the ninth-floor faction-war segment, assuming that segment still occurs. One of his liaison duties has recently become unnecessary, although his people will remain on Earth and their services will still be available if needed. Orren disagrees with the decision to pull him from the dungeon but cannot overrule it.

He then explains a hidden qualification for Syndicate liaisons. A liaison must care about keeping the crawl functioning, but the role also deliberately favors people who fundamentally disagree with the goals and philosophy of their own nation. Host nations such as the Valtay often run crawls for objectives that conflict with what Orren calls the game's intended purpose, so institutional dissent is built into the position. Orren notes that he technically should have lost his job when the Valtay took control of Borant, but his seniority and open disagreements with his own people helped keep him in place.

Orren warns that he is not the only liaison operating this way. Different liaisons apply the rules with different tactics and philosophies, and some satisfy the anti-home-nation requirement too strongly. Donut realizes he is trying to warn them without saying something forbidden. Orren admits he now likes Carl and Donut and enjoys watching them bend rules until systems break, though he still considers them dangerous. He refuses to identify the specific threat and instead compares liaisons to Wild West sheriffs: some are good, some bad, and some become dangerous because they are too zealous about their duties. Carl privately thinks of the mysterious caprid liaison associated with Chris and the Skull Empire, but the connection remains only his suspicion.

Orren's second subject is the legal freeze surrounding the crawl. Courts have halted almost all crawl-related litigation, including categories the AI would normally ignore, while officials wait to see how stable this particular AI remains through the floor transition. Quasar is now required to obtain a court order before sending Carl a message, but the litigation freeze prevents him from even requesting that order.

Orren says they have decided to bypass that restriction one time, provided he remains present for the conversation. He summons Quasar into the office. Quasar is accompanied by an unidentified woman wearing a scrolling "Goddamnit, Donut!" shirt and a flesh-colored tentacled creature growing from her head, complete with a jagged mouth and small bow. The chapter ends when both the woman and the tentacled creature burst into tears upon seeing Donut.

With sixty hours remaining before the Butcher's Masquerade, Carl reviews his stolen level-five Automaton table. Although he copied the recipe manual into both his scratchpad and the Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook as insurance against losing the table, most recipes remain unusable because he lacks complete component sets. He has finally gathered enough parts to build Spider Stalkers, essentially mechanical rot stickers, after obtaining a case of their rare main driveshafts while leaving the Desperado Club.

Carl now considers reducing the hunter population before the Masquerade mandatory rather than optional. Hunters are scattered, increasingly vulnerable, and being killed in small groups across the floor. Because all surviving hunters and the invited crawlers will converge on the High Elf castle, Carl and Donut plan to join Katia's group and hunt aggressively while continuing Masquerade preparations.

Mordecai and Zev are stunned by the unprecedented hunter death toll. Zev tells them that once Gehenna Bramble reached Zockau, several lawsuits were filed and immediately failed. The full Syndicate Council, rather than only the crawl oversight subcommittee, then ruled that no new lawsuits could name the AI as a defendant in an effort to slow its deterioration. That decision itself generated new litigation challenging the Council's authority. None of this has appeared on the recap show, which continues pretending the crawl is operating normally.

Mordecai explains that the financial pattern has reversed from the disastrous Naga season. Other parties are losing money, but much of that loss is currently flowing into Borant. Zev agrees that the Valtay partners appear unconcerned by the financial results, while the Council and the liaisons are increasingly nervous, and she tells Mordecai to stop discussing it.

The narrative then jumps forward to one day and ten hours before floor collapse, only ten hours before the Masquerade. There are 290 hunters remaining and Carl's group has collected sixty-six trophies. Donut reports that the dinosaur costumes are ready for the talent show, though several animals dislike their outfits. She is still angry that Carl pierced her without completing his promised count to three, which earned her a saferoom strike when the room froze her reaction.

The crawlers approach another hunter-held town with Gehenna Bramble only about two hours behind them. Li Na scouts ten hunters openly positioned on the south side, including a level-53 Dreadnought with a rifle and a level-63 hunter in magical plate, plus an anti-air gun and five surviving mushroom guards. Roughly five additional hunters may be inside the non-saferoom pub. Vrah is absent.

Carl must avoid personally killing Emberus worshipers. During an earlier coordinated raid, a hunter he killed from range turned out to worship Emberus, causing Carl to lose his +15 percent Strength boon, enter Penitence for fifteen hours, suffer doubled tithes for thirty hours, and receive a warning that two more such kills during probation would trigger a smite. The visible Shunned status has ended, but hunters who saw Emberus during Vrah's earlier summoning can still protect themselves from Carl by worshiping the god. Li Na's Changbi racial trait lets her detect divine affiliation from range, making her scouting important.

The stranded hunters are also receiving increasingly strong gear despite remaining near level 50. Katia concludes that hunter families are now allowed to sponsor them. Florin has already killed two Goriffs equipped with pulse rifles and electric armor, but their equipment is bound to the original recipients and cannot normally be equipped by others. Donut's sunglasses carry the same restriction. Mordecai says a rare Cracker Jack scroll can remove this ownership lock, so the crawlers continue collecting captured gear in case they can free it later.

The new anti-air guns are intended to counter airborne threats such as Elle, Carl's missiles, mounted Prepotente, and the Twister. Pulse rifles function like rapid, full-strength magic-missile weapons but are considered nonmagical, allowing ordinary shield spells to stop their shots. Their electric armor is durable until overloaded, then becomes brittle and shatters. Recent attacks nearly killed Bautista and punched a large hole through Gwen before she was healed.

For the coming assault, Carl plans to trigger traps with Tripper, expose targets with Ping, have Imani cast Dread, and send seekers in only after the exploding automatons finish. Because one hunter may worship Emberus, Carl gives Donut control of twenty programmed Spider Stalkers. Each automaton is assigned to a different untargeted hunter, so any kill it scores will be credited to Donut rather than Carl. Carl also programs two additional spiders to target Samantha and explode five seconds after acquiring her, apparently as part of the attack plan. The chapter ends with Carl announcing that he is casting and Elle comparing the coming barrage to the Fourth of July.

The chapter opens with a Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook note from Crawler Milk warning about country bosses and their persistent Treasure Map loot. Milk recounts a country-boss fight in a cramped cave where more than four hundred crawlers entered and fewer than fifty survived. The boss's mass-kill attacks, limited space, and competition to land hits turned crawlers against one another. After the victory, the Treasure Map revealed the location and quality of nearby magical gear, triggering a second slaughter among the survivors and giving Milk his first player-killer skull. Milk concludes that the map is deliberately designed to turn a nominal victory into internal collapse.

Carl has now collected sixty-six trophies. He has managed to mark and kill three more hunters with the Ring of Divine Suffering, all of whom had Constitution as their highest stat, raising Carl's base Constitution by twelve points. The Ring has also leveled again and now grants five stat points per marked kill. Donut has gained two additional hunter kills for a total of three trophies.

The hunters have been reduced by more than half. Carl recognizes that Gehenna Bramble and the blood-bar system, initially disastrous for everyone, have disproportionately hurt the poorly organized and poorly trained hunters. Carl reaches player level 59 and Donut reaches level 50. Carl spends all nine of his new level-up points on Strength, which his Agent Provocateur class doubles to eighteen points, while the class also adds one Intelligence. His unenhanced base-stat total reaches 254, compared with Donut's 278. Because party control belongs to the member with the higher base-stat total, Carl is closing in on Donut's long-standing lead, which has put her in a bad mood since Firas pointed it out.

The chapter then returns to the coordinated raid begun previously. Carl's Tripper spell detonates the growing number of traps around the target town, and Ping reveals fifteen hunters. Chris immediately eliminates one hunter with Lava and destroys a gun. Donut activates the programmed Spider Stalkers, while Samantha rolls toward the anti-air weapon with two additional spiders pursuing her.

Samantha is the workaround for the anti-air gun's anti-seeking enchantment. Carl has learned not to throw her directly at an active gun because a previous attempt launched her five kilometers into the brambles. Instead, she rolls into position and allows the two spiders targeting her to catch up and explode next to the emplacement. Imani sends the main crawler force forward while Louis and Firas hold back until the gun is destroyed, and the shielded Twister waits overhead with enough explosives to level the town if necessary.

The hunters respond chaotically rather than as a coordinated unit. Donut's seeker spiders begin detonating among them. Li Na reports that the five hunters emerging from the pub are all Emberus worshipers and warns Carl to avoid them while Florin moves to intercept. Samantha reaches the anti-air gun, the two pursuing spiders detonate, and the emplacement is destroyed, with Samantha launched away on fire but safely clear of the brambles.

The level-63 hunter separately runs toward the central temple. Once the anti-air gun is confirmed dead, Imani clears aerial support, Elle takes flight, Katia's team moves toward the temple, and Li Na prepares to distract the activated mushroom guards. Two other hunters then try to escape toward Carl while being chased by explosive spiders. Before Carl can disable the automatons, Kiwi and Mongo pounce on the two Saccathian hunters and kill them, causing the spiders to stop and seek new targets instead of exploding near Carl.

Within six or seven minutes, nearly every hunter is dead except the level-63 hunter inside the temple. Donut has received five kills from the automaton attack. The raid is the first of four attempts to execute the plan almost exactly as intended and will likely be their last before the crawlers are forced into High Elf territory.

Katia positions herself and Tran at the temple's front entrance while Daniel and Gwen cover the rear. Imani orders everyone to surround the building rather than rush it, and Firas offers to bomb the structure. Before they act, Donut notices a large pulsing red X made of antlers above Carl's head. The system announces that Diwata has entered the realm, marked Carl for death, knows his location, and is actively hunting him. Carl immediately orders everyone to abort and flee the temple area. The chapter ends as a massive eruption rocks the center of town.

Immediately after Diwata marks Carl, Donut urges him to flee. Carl calls Imani to him and orders Donut to take both prepared potions at once, but Donut refuses because they are not ready and says her potion cooldown would leave them waiting another minute and forty-five seconds. Before Carl can force the issue, Diwata's red god marker races away from him at extreme speed and disappears from map range.

The battlefield remains unstable. Li Na incapacitates several mushroom guards with a glowing spore effect, and Zhang extends their short unconscious timers from one minute to ten. Carl still bears the large antler-shaped death mark and remains uneasy because Diwata entered the realm specifically hunting him yet immediately fled. Donut admits she never took the potions, prompting another argument about whether she must obey Carl instantly in emergencies.

Elle then describes what happened at the temple. The explosion was magical rather than one of Carl's explosives and briefly granted her fire and poison protection. Five or six dryad-like figures were torn apart in the blast. Their blood, bark, and remains swirled around a massive hedge and red flower that appeared where the church had stood. When the flower opened, the level-63 hunter was inside. The gore flowed into him, making his body swell against his unchanged armor until the transformation burst outward into a deranged antlered squirrel roughly Elle's size.

The creature was Diwata, sponsored by Circe Took, and it appeared with a five-minute timer. Instead of attacking Carl, Diwata immediately launched into the sky and flew away. Carl has not yet received a notification that the god has left the realm. Mordecai tells Elle to harvest the flower before it disappears; she retrieves several enormous petals for Donut but refuses to collect pollen from the gore-covered site.

Samantha explains that Diwata is one of Apito's brood, though not a direct child, and can change sex and form. More importantly, Diwata can reproduce with different creatures and then give birth to ordinary examples of whatever species it most recently mated with, regardless of the partner's gender. Samantha says this ability angers other gods because creating normal new life is an unusually dangerous divine power normally associated with the head of the Ascendency rather than ordinary gods.

Samantha also tells Katia that Katia carries the scent of someone Samantha remembers, though she does not fully explain the connection. As Samantha continues describing Diwata's reproductive abilities, Carl and Katia independently reach the same conclusion: Diwata probably ignored Carl because its five-minute manifestation gave it only enough time to reach Circe's daughter. Katia adds that killing Carl directly might also undermine Vrah by making her appear weak.

Carl concludes that Circe sponsored Diwata so the god could reach Vrah and cure the gonorrhea Carl inflicted on her. Donut remembers that the known cure involved decapitating the male participant and wonders whether Vrah will have to tear off her own mother's head. Carl acknowledges that the earlier mantis accountant believed the decapitation was necessary but says they do not know whether the same requirement applies when the donor is a god. What matters operationally is that they must assume Vrah is active again and likely furious.

The chapter ends on another disruption. Big Tina has broken away from Kiwi, entered the town, and begun eating the still-unconscious mushroom guards. Kiwi and the other dinosaurs surround her and protest while Tina roars back. After Elle remarks that the game is sometimes deeply disturbing, Carl answers, "Sometimes?"

With eight hours remaining before the Butcher's Masquerade, Carl and Donut reach the large settlement Li Na has taken near the High Elf border, where the crawler groups are converging. Gehenna Bramble will overtake the town in four and a half hours. Carl finds Signet alone outside and asks Donut to continue without him so he can speak privately with her.

Signet is exhausted and unusually vulnerable. She rests her head on Carl's shoulder and says the aggressive brambles make the situation feel like the end of days. When Carl asks about Grimaldi, Signet says he was planted beside an all-tree node when he entered this world, that his roots intertwined with the tree, and that he became one with it. The tree has survived previous infestations and should outlast this one. Carl cannot tell whether this means Grimaldi is alive, dead, or something in between, and the source leaves the question unresolved.

Signet says her soldiers are already hidden in position. The brambles will reach the elven border within hours, forcing the elves to spend the day fighting them back, and she plans to launch her assault on Queen Imogen when night falls and the Masquerade begins. Carl tells her that this timing is itself a trap. Thinking of Herot's claims that elite NPCs can sometimes be made to recognize the artificial structure around them, Carl tries to explain that unseen controllers are shaping Signet's story so her climactic assault cannot interfere with the crawl's main event.

Zev immediately warns Carl through chat to stop. Signet does not understand what Carl means and insists that defeating Imogen is the culmination of everything she has worked toward. She also reveals that she placed a tracking effect on Carl long ago, allowing her to find Carl and Donut wherever they are. Carl proposes a modified plan: Signet should enter the castle, hold her forces in reserve, and wait for Carl's signal so she can attack Imogen at the same time as Carl's allies, likely near the end of the party rather than the beginning.

Zev warns Carl again that the production will not allow events to unfold the way he is suggesting. Carl privately admits the proposal is partly a lie. His real goal is to keep Signet from dragging him into an uncontrolled side battle and to preserve her as a distraction for the moment his own plan needs her. He still wants Signet to face Imogen and believes delaying the confrontation improves her chances of surviving. Signet finally asks him to explain the idea.

Three hours later, with five hours remaining before the Masquerade, Carl and Mordecai examine a coordinated set of sponsor gifts. Five separate Apothecary boxes were sent to different crawlers, all with instructions that their contents be given to Donut. This is in addition to Carl's Pawna's Cries from the Open Intellect Pacifist Network and Prepotente's I Take It All Back potion, both likewise intended for Donut.

Katia is the only Apothecary-sponsored crawler whose new box was meant for herself. She received a knitted beanie that raises all of her stats by three percent and grants I Need My Personal Space, a powerful knockback spell that affects allies as well as enemies. Carl still has not managed to speak with Katia privately because both the public plan and the secret plan on the bathroom message board keep changing; Katia tells him to wait until they see whether they can take the castle.

Because Carl's group is bringing attendants, including pets, dinosaurs, two cretins, and Samantha, they will not be teleported into the Masquerade. Instead, an escort caravan will collect them at the invisible High Elf border. The current town will be swallowed by brambles in an hour and a half, and thousands of crawlers are already descending through its stairwell. Imani and Elle are saying goodbye to the remaining Meadowlark members as those crawlers leave the floor.

Bomo has identified three stairwells around the High Elf castle. Two stand independently in the woods and should remain accessible almost until collapse. The third lies in the castle's basement and is locked, confirming Queen Imogen's boss status. Crawler groups are already guarding the two exterior stairwells inside elven territory. Carl still has not received any notification that Diwata has left the realm, and the antler-shaped death mark remains over him.

The sponsor items themselves include an understood recharge-wand scroll, tiara, and sheet music, plus two inexplicable objects. Imani's box contained the Enchanted Hammer of Fast Forward, a small ball-peen hammer that is magical but has no stated magical effect. Borant filed a dangerous appeal trying to block that gift, but the appeal was immediately denied. Dmitri Popov received the Enchanted Stick of Cascadia's Screams, a thin metal rod described as not being a wand but capable of doing something magical when used correctly. Mordecai cannot identify which Cascadia the name refers to.

Carl's unease turns into a darker inference: perhaps the sponsors are funneling these tools to Donut because they expect everyone around her to die and believe she is the most likely survivor. He connects this thought to Quasar putting Donut on the board of their corporation, Everly's final Cookbook warning about sponsors steering crawlers toward memorable deaths, and Orren's recent attempt to warn him.

Carl notices a small raised symbol on the metal rod that he thinks is the number seven. He then checks the hammer and finds a similar mark. The scroll, tiara, and sheet music have no comparable symbol. Carl wonders whether the sevens refer to the seventh floor, but the source does not explain their meaning yet.

Although a stairwell is immediately available and more than twenty top-fifty crawlers are nearby, Carl rejects the safer option of descending early. He thinks of Bonnie and the other changeling children and concludes that abandoning the plan would sacrifice people they may need to survive the ninth floor. Mordecai reminds him that if the operation collapses, the escape plan is still to reach the Twister and fly away.

The chapter closes amid the mingled crawler and changeling children in the guildhall. Randy antagonizes Bonnie and the other changelings, Skarn defends them, Samantha suggests a fight to the death, and the Sledge introduces one child to Grand Theft Auto while the others watch cartoons. Donut finally tells Carl it is time to leave. He gives her the sponsor items one by one, confirms that she brushed her teeth and passed the tube to Katia, and then tells Samantha, "Let's party."

The chapter opens with three Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook notes from Crawler Everly and a response from Drakea. Everly first describes receiving a sponsor box meant for a mercenary and deciding that, although she does not trust her sponsors, she trusts their financial incentive to keep her alive. On the eighth floor she receives a valuable shortcut tool and briefly allows herself to hope. Her final entry reverses that belief completely: she concludes her sponsor deliberately steered her toward a memorable, painful death. Drakea identifies it as Everly's last entry and urges future Cookbook authors to document dangerous plans in detail.

Carl then adds his own first formal planning entry to the Cookbook. Using the hidden coffee-shop author system, he records that the Butcher's Masquerade is a trap and that survival is the primary objective. He lists six secondary goals in increasing importance: complete Big Tina's dance quest, kill Eva if possible, save the changelings, take the High Elf castle by defeating Queen Imogen so Zerzura can move the changelings, kill Lucia Mar before she destabilizes the operation, and fulfill his promise that no hunter leaves the sixth floor alive.

Carl also records the problem created by Signet's elite quest. He believes Signet's production is being steered toward a confrontation with Imogen that the main show will not allow to interfere with the Masquerade. His note explicitly says he wants to avoid being dragged into Signet's climax while still finding a way to use her presence. Katia, Imani, Elle, Donut, Florin, Louis, Firas, Li Na, Bautista, and Chris sign the hidden planning page, with several adding comments about Carl's plan or their own priorities.

One hour before the Masquerade, with thirty-one hours remaining until floor collapse, the system count shows 59,259 crawlers alive, 23,385 still on the sixth floor, seventy-three crawlers attending the party, and 264 hunters attending. Carl and Britney ride in the third wagon of the High Elf escort caravan while Big Tina and the mongoliensis follow outside. A level-35 High Elf Footman named Theobold explains the event procedures.

The party group must enter through the attendant entrance and undergo another security sweep of themselves and their supplies. Attendants will be placed in a servant ballroom, while crawlers and invited guests are escorted to the main ballroom. Performers receive backstage anteroom access during the pet and talent events, but Queen Imogen will not attend either performance. Guests receive access to a boudoir to change before entering the ballroom.

Theobold reiterates the ballroom restrictions. Weapons and magic are prohibited except for limited performance use on stage, magical storage cannot be accessed inside, and performers may not interact physically with anyone outside their act. Once cleared into the designated ballroom, guests come under Queen Imogen's formal protection. Hunters and crawlers occupy different goodwill ballrooms, so physical attacks between the two sides have almost no effect. Theobold says deeper protections were put in place by the goddess Apito, while Imogen and her personal guard will occupy a third central ballroom. Carl notes that the queen's guards could physically attack protected guests even though the guests could not respond normally.

Carl tests how broad the protection is by naming Quan Ch, Lucia Mar, and Eva as likely sources of violence. Theobold insists that an attack on a protected guest is treated as an attack on the queen and that the protection cannot be circumvented. He also confirms that Sir Ferdinand is merely Imogen's familiar rather than a knight or royal figure, despite the title embedded in his name, and says Ferdinand is normally inseparable from the queen.

Theobold explains that the Masquerade prize counter can extract Carl's collected hunter hands directly from inventory, so Carl does not need to remove them in advance. After Theobold leaves, Britney worries about the multiple security checks. Carl verifies that she has taken her dinosaur-repellent potion and that her Shield spell is ready. Her shield can block magic and physical attacks for thirty seconds but has a four-hour cooldown.

Carl surveys the escort formation. Li Jun, Li Na, and Zhang are in the second wagon as a juggling team; Carl and Britney are in the third; Imani and Elle are in the fourth for a skit. Tserendolgor, now ranked thirty-eighth and commonly called Ren, rides in the fifth wagon with her plus-one and her new level-20 Tummy Acher pet, Garret, a large one-toothed blob creature she received for attending Crawl Con.

Donut warns that additional guards in black jackets are joining the caravan. Carl tells her to put on the new tiara, and Donut says it improves her control over the dinosaurs but does not calm the guards. She suspects the extra tension centers on the final supply wagon.

The last wagon carries all props and costumes, which the elves required the crawlers to remove from inventory for inspection, along with Samantha, Clay-ton, Very Sullen, and a robed woman everyone is meant to believe is Signet. The woman is actually Pearson disguised as Signet. The decoy is deliberate: Carl and the others want to test Signet's claim that Imogen has ordered her guards not to kill Signet directly because the queen intends to confront her personally. The guards hesitate at the disguised Pearson but initially allow the wagon to continue.

Bomo and the Sledge remain behind in the saferoom to perform separate tasks once the party begins. Carl also knows that roughly fifteen party crawlers are strangers to him, adding another uncontrolled element to the operation.

Donut then reports that the new guards have entered the final wagon. A minute later, Queen Imogen suddenly fades into existence inside Carl and Britney's wagon. Britney reflexively casts Shield as the white-tagged queen appears. Imogen asks whether Carl is really attempting to smuggle someone who looks like her half-sister into the castle. Carl immediately messages Katia that their bait worked and delivers the chapter's central revelation: Queen Imogen is Ifechi, Florin's dead girlfriend.

A Cookbook note preserves the current Masquerade plan. Edgar's map places the control room for the four ballrooms on the castle's third floor, with one small soul crystal for each ballroom and a fifth crystal controlling the goodwill overlay that lets people in the separate rooms interact. The two main ballrooms suppress spellcasting and inventory access, while the attendant rooms do not; Queen Imogen's own ballroom has no comparable protections. Carl's group needs someone to reach the control room and disable the protections without shutting down the goodwill overlay, knowing the switch will generate a notification. They plan to use the Gideon distraction to draw guards away, and they are considering Donut's charm as part of the infiltration. Carl also records his suspicion that Imogen will wear the appearance of someone one of them knows, perhaps Bea, and the group has agreed to protect whichever crawler is targeted by that choice.

Queen Imogen is already in Carl and Britney's wagon when Carl examines her. She is a level-145 High Elf Cleric Sorceress and Country Boss who is currently intangible. Katia immediately corrects Carl's first assumption: Imogen is not Ifechi, but Ifechi's twin sister. Carl warns Florin and tells him to take the stairwell under the group's rule for bosses who assume the form of a loved one, but Florin refuses. At the same time, Donut unexpectedly receives her plus-one token back, leading Carl to infer that Britney, previously ranked fifty-eighth, has entered the top fifty and now has her own invitation.

Imogen questions Carl about Pearson, who is disguised to resemble Signet closely enough to draw the elves' attention. Carl denies smuggling anyone and claims Pearson is part of Donut's act. Imogen then explains the origin and rules of the Butcher's Masquerade. The first celebration was held in the Halls of Ascendency by Taranis and Apito as a temporary peace among their contentious family. After Yarilo violated that peace and Apito banished him to the Nothing, the gathering collapsed into violence. The event later became a holy sacrament named for the spell that creates it. Only selected divine figures may cast the spell, only once in their lives, and the goddess herself determines the guest list.

Imogen says the elves are forbidden to harm invited attendants before the party unless attacked first, and she admits that Ferdinand's earlier attack nearly ruined the ritual because he acted without her order. If the party ends without violence, Apito grants the host a boon, while the guest list is intentionally chosen to place enemies together and test the peace. Imogen wants that boon and warns Carl that the active celestial seal will send anyone involved in breaking the peace into the Nothing. She cannot simply bar or kill him while the protection applies, despite knowing he is working with her half-sister.

Imogen appears ready to attack Britney, but stops after recognizing that Britney has just become an invited top-fifty crawler. She then warns Carl that if someone else breaks the peace and frees her to act, or if her ritual is otherwise disrupted, he will be her first target. She departs by dissolving into drifting particles. Carl concludes that the party has not even begun and their plan is already compromised, while Britney says Imogen reminds her of her mother.

A Cookbook planning note maps the Sugar Cube's internal layout. Ballroom A for the crawlers is on the fourth floor, Ballroom B for the hunters is on the second, the two attendant ballrooms sit on opposite sides of the first floor, and Queen Imogen's private ballroom and quarters occupy the restricted seventh floor. Carl emphasizes that the group must never fight Imogen while she remains in her own ballroom because its protections favor her even if the crawlers restore their own magic and inventory access. The goodwill system also links the rooms in unusual ways: performers on the main stage can manipulate approved objects placed on the attendant-room stages, fixed furnishings can exist across multiple ballroom iterations, and color coding shows which food and objects are physically available. Donut can use certain approved stage magic, wands, scrolls, and sheet music, but she cannot drink a potion stored elsewhere, so the charm potion must be smuggled inside.

After Imogen's warning, Carl tells the group that the original ballroom attack cannot proceed. Assuming she told the truth, they cannot make the first violent move without triggering the celestial seal. The new plan is to attend normally, continue all operations outside the party, set up the intended contingencies, and act only if forced. Britney keeps her special jacket on and is warned not to trigger it prematurely.

At the castle's freight entrance, Carl studies the white wooden structure and its four narrow defensive towers. He also confirms that Signet is secretly intended to enter through the basement caves and hide there. Zev has repeatedly warned him that bringing Signet into the main event would violate production-rights rules and force her secondary production to push her toward a premature, likely fatal action. Carl truthfully says he has no intention of smuggling her into the party, while privately having told her to wait below the castle for an opportunity. Pearson's Signet disguise succeeds in drawing the elves' attention, but Queen Imogen has him expelled from the territory. Carl quietly directs Pearson to the cave and to continue the plan.

The elves insist that Donut's dinosaurs be caged before their performance. Kibben, a level-50 High Elf Stablemancer, assures her that the animals will be separated and safe. Donut maneuvers him into placing the dinosaurs in the otherwise unused second attendant ballroom, away from Garret and the other animals. She reports that the Apothecary tiara's charm upgrade seems ineffective, but Carl concludes that it is working as well as it can against high elves whose prejudice and prior experience with Ferdinand make them resistant.

Upon entering Ballroom A, Carl and the others are muted, peace-bonded against inventory access, warned that violence will result in banishment to the Nothing, and told invited guests cannot leave until the party ends or the seal breaks. The system also states that once the host arrives, the party chambers will be sealed from outside influence. That destroys the usefulness of the planned guard-diversion escape, so Carl switches to escape plan C: if necessary, Donut will use Hole after magic access returns to drop the group to the third floor, where they will fight their way out.

Security makes the crawlers store weapons and repeatedly checks them, including using a snail to sniff Carl for explosives. In the boudoir, Carl leaves dinosaur-repellent and half-splat potions for later arrivals, telling everyone to drink the repellent and keep a half-splat ready in case the dinosaurs are released during an escape. The first fifteen crawlers then enter the enormous protected ballroom, where Carl sees the stage, paired color-coded buffet lines, a ceiling mosaic of the sleeping Scolopendra twisted around a hanging white tree, and the still-covered prize counter. Behind it stands Chaco, the prize-carousel attendant Mordecai once attacked.

Three production figures teleport into the room, including Donut's sponsor D'Nadia. Donut learns that D'Nadia's father has retired and that her sponsor is now Empress D'Nadia. D'Nadia is judging the talent and pet contests because participating in production is a requirement tied to her buy-in, and she tells Carl that his attorney and new corporation nearly disrupted her bid. Katia reports from the security line that Eva and Lucia Mar have arrived and that Florin's condition worries her. Eva then steals the potions Carl staged in the boudoir, but Carl reminds Katia that she has replacements in inventory for distribution once access is restored.

The hunters finally begin entering Ballroom B. Vrah charges into the shared overlay toward Carl, visibly cured of the condition that had previously incapacitated her. The wall light flashes to show that both rooms are active and the protection system is fully engaged. Carl immediately orders Bomo and the Sledge to begin their outside operation, tells the Sledge to mobilize the changelings, and instructs Britney to execute her part of the plan. Empress D'Nadia watches Vrah approach and says she is looking forward to what happens next.

Vrah charges straight at Carl as soon as the hunters enter the linked ballroom and threatens him with a coming surprise from the Dark Hive. While Carl keeps her attention, Britney executes her assigned move. Her jacket is covered with stuffed Slate Butterflies whose special ability is nonmagical; she removes one while distracting the spear-bearing guard. The summoned butterfly flies to the ballroom's warning light, smothers its glow until the powered light shuts off, then returns to stuffed form and drops back into Britney's hand. The guard notices nothing. The light that would visibly signal changes to the ballroom protections has now been neutralized.

Vrah promises to decapitate Carl and his friends before the night ends, while Empress D'Nadia openly enjoys the confrontation. After Vrah leaves, Carl finds a different crisis behind him. Katia is lunging at Eva while Florin and Bautista restrain her. Eva is now level 55, still missing the hand lost in the Iron Tangle, has more than fifty player-killer skulls, and carries four hunter-killer marks. Katia calls her a traitor for killing other crawlers, while Eva deliberately attacks Katia's insecurities about Fannar and motherhood. Carl and Donut help calm Katia, and Bautista silently signals that he will keep watching her.

Lucia Mar is also present in her adult woman form, but instead of acting aggressive she appears frightened, disoriented, and childlike. When Florin starts toward her, Carl initially assumes he intends revenge for Ifechi. Florin insists he only wants to talk. Carl reminds him that Lucia is unpredictable and could break the peace seal, then chooses to trust Florin after he acknowledges his role in the plan. Florin ultimately backs off because he too notices that something is wrong with Lucia. She flees to a corner beside the stage, sits on the floor, and hugs herself while shaking. Carl decides the hunters must also be kept away from her because she is the most unpredictable person in the room.

Prepotente then asks Carl to let him join Carl's party for the rest of the floor so they can travel together into the next one. Carl refuses because Prepotente is level 70 and would automatically become party leader, instead suggesting Katia's group or a new party formed from crawlers who abandoned Eva. Prepotente explains that he has been collecting clues and is interested in Donut's enchanted hammer and stick, but their discussion is interrupted by the formal opening of the Masquerade.

Theobold welcomes the guests, explains the gold and black buffet system for the two linked ballrooms, announces the talent show, pet contest, later dancing, and Queen Imogen's expected arrival, and opens the prize booth for hunter hands and crawler scalps. He again frames violence as blasphemy against Apito and explicitly encourages the enemies in the two rooms to mingle. Donut and Prepotente head backstage for the pet program while the hunters remain clustered near their buffet.

Carl uses the remaining setup time to review the operation outside the ballroom. The Sledge is leading half of the changelings through the secret underground entrance guarded by Signet's people. Once inside, they are to impersonate elves, infiltrate the four sentinel towers, eliminate the tower guards, and create docking points for the Twister, which will deliver the remaining changelings. Gideon's team waits in the woods to observe and attack the castle front if necessary, while Bomo begins his looting mission. The original plan had been to reveal Signet at a chosen moment so Imogen would leave the ballroom to confront her, but the new host-sealing rule means that tactic no longer works. Whether Signet should appear before Imogen arrives or be held until after the seal breaks now depends on the changelings' progress in the towers.

Zev suddenly contacts Carl in alarm, saying Signet is not supposed to be inside the party and that her presence will create a logistical nightmare. Carl does not understand until Signet herself walks into Ballroom A, physically present rather than an overlay. She tells Carl that while she was waiting in the dark basement as instructed, Apito personally appeared, invited her to the party, and instantly transported her into the ballroom. Carl immediately tells Zev that he did not cause this development: the AI did.

Imani immediately challenges Carl over Signet's unexpected presence in Ballroom A. Carl says he feared this outcome as soon as Queen Imogen explained that Apito personally selects the guest list: the real purpose of the spell is to test the host by placing enemies together, so inviting one of Imogen's greatest enemies is exactly what the ritual would do. Imani worries that the group has been consistently outmaneuvered and reminds Carl that others are depending on them. Carl argues that Signet's presence may still help because if the seal breaks, Imogen will likely target Signet first, giving the others a few extra seconds to escape.

Signet tells Carl that she had not realized this was a genuine Butcher's Masquerade. Imitation versions exist, but authentic ones are rare enough that she would not have believed it without Apito appearing personally. She is relieved to stop running and prefers being inside the party, though she wishes she had known she would be transported directly so she could have dressed for it. Queen Imogen's black-clad guards gather at the entrance to watch her but then retreat, unable to touch an invited guest without breaking the seal. Signet takes satisfaction in the reversal and says Imogen is now effectively at her mercy.

Carl asks what boon Imogen expects if the party succeeds. Signet says even Imogen does not know. The traditional story suggests some form of immortality, but no authentic Masquerade has ever completed successfully: before the night ends, the Nothing is always fed, the cleric is killed or disgraced, and Apito grants no boon.

Signet then notices Chaco and the three contest judges, whose auras strike her as strange. An ethereal hand appears to deliver a drink to Empress D'Nadia, reinforcing that the judges are not physically present in the ordinary sense. Carl uses the moment to tell Signet again that these figures come from the outside world that controls her reality and watches it for entertainment. Signet's tattoos turn toward the judges along with her, and she decides to speak with the off-worlders while waiting for Imogen. Zev immediately curses Carl for encouraging the interaction, and Carl laughs.

Carl approaches Chaco at the newly opened prize counter and finds hunter Zabit, the level-66 Atoll Beastmaster whose Night Weasel pets attacked Carl at the start of the floor. Zabit admits that the failed ambush destroyed most of his earning potential and says he has collected only twenty-five crawler scalps. When Carl challenges him over hunting frightened, weaker people for sport, Zabit explains that he hunts to keep the Atoll alive. His people are not citizens, must pay for oxygen and habitat space, and have few employment options; without the money he brings home, they risk becoming indentured to another system. Zabit does not claim moral superiority and says he would object too if their positions were reversed. The exchange leaves Carl angry but without an easy answer.

Zabit spends twenty scalps on a drop shield and three on invisibility supplies. Chaco explains that hunter purchases go into a prize box because hunters lack crawler-style unlimited inventory. Hunters can keep only what fits in their inventory when the floor ends, and unsold gear is converted to gold at a poor exchange rate. After Zabit leaves, Carl asks Chaco again why Mordecai hates him. Chaco says he is still forbidden to reveal the details, but insists that the action Mordecai resents was necessary to save their party, including Mordecai and his brother. He warns Carl that the dungeon eventually forces long-surviving crawlers to turn on their own parties, leaving survivors isolated and broken by their choices.

Carl has sixty-six hunter hands. Chaco allows him to examine the prize list while Mordecai advises him remotely. Low-cost options include bulk healing and mana potions, one-time percentage stat upgrades, and random combat-skill or spell increases. Donut has eight hands, so Carl and Mordecai agree she should spend two on a ten-percent increase to her lowest base stat and five on a random spellbook. Higher tiers include specialized potions, scrolls, spellbooks, wands, and bard sheet music. Chaco recommends the ten-hand Song of Skedaddle for Donut as a weaker but currently usable counterpart to Mordecai's old escape song, Wings of the Pyxie.

The prize counter also offers two future-floor boons at thirty hands. Seventh Floor Pole Position is already sold out because Prepotente, who had thirty-three hands, bought it immediately along with a skill upgrade and mana potions. The other is an Eighth Floor Book of Lore whose full title and random starting-location effect will only be revealed after purchase. At fifty hands are full equipment sets and powerful spellbooks, but none fit Carl's needs.

The most expensive prize is a one-hundred-hand memorial crystal. Mordecai immediately tells Carl to prioritize it if possible. He explains that ordinary soul crystals are associated with deaths filtered through Scolopendra, while memorial crystals are created from fallen gods or demigods and can contain god-tier spells or knowledge. Their contents are unlocked by charging the crystal through kills while it is mounted on equipment or worn. Chaco adds that this particular crystal was found during a High Elf mining expedition, normally hangs around Queen Imogen's neck, is her most prized possession, and had to be offered because the Masquerade requires the host to place their most valuable item among the prizes. Carl recognizes the pendant he saw on Imogen but cannot afford it. Chaco also confirms that new hunter hands earned later would arrive boxed and unusable until opened in a saferoom, and that he will teleport away the moment the protection seal breaks.

During the pet show, an unnamed Team Flamengo crawler introduces his stone hawk Gimli, which can petrify enemies. Elle, holding seven hands of her own, abandons the prize counter to question a nervous Crest hunter. Vrah argues with other hunters who want to abandon the feud and simply go home. Prepotente later walks onstage with Bianca, screams once, and leaves after Bianca's black fire scorches the stage badly enough that elves have to extinguish it.

Carl ultimately spends his sixty-six hands on a shrink wand, the Eighth Floor Book of Lore, the Song of Skedaddle, twenty-four Feather Fall potions, and a case of healing potions. The Feather Fall supply is partly driven by Eva stealing the staged escape potions, leaving the group seven short. Carl then returns to the stage for Mongo's pet-show turn. He had explicitly told Donut to keep the presentation understated so they would not reveal how elaborate her later talent act would be. Instead, the ballroom lights dim, red light and smoke fill the stage, and Louis begins an extravagant introduction. Carl realizes Donut ignored the low-key instruction.

Donut ignores Carl's instruction to keep Mongo's pet-show appearance understated. Colored lights sweep the stage, Louis triggers Carl's trap-module boombox, two expensive colored smoke bombs detonate, and Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" blasts through the ballroom. Mongo emerges through the smoke, performs a choreographed showcase with Donut, fake female Mongos, pyrotechnics, and a full moonwalk across the stage. Even several hunters applaud. Carl is furious about the wasted trap modules and the loss of surprise, but Donut insists the act was low-key compared with her real talent-show routine. Garret and Tserendolgor follow with a simpler demonstration after the smoke finally clears.

While the show continues, Carl checks the external operation. Bomo reports that Zockau is full of abandoned equipment. The remaining hunters had used the saferoom to survive the encroaching brambles, leaving piles of excess gear because hunter inventory is limited. Once the Masquerade teleported those hunters away, Zockau effectively became a ghost town and their abandoned items became legal to take because saferoom theft restrictions no longer applied after the owners left. Carl sends Bomo to strip the place, and Mordecai confirms Bomo is returning with armor, weapons, guns, and race-restricted power armor.

The Sledge's infiltration mission immediately runs into a new problem: large numbers of level-20 mantis nymphs are appearing around stairwells and other locations. Instead of forcing the changelings through the lower tunnels, the Sledge decides to be picked up by airship and enter from above. Carl approves but warns that the sentinel towers are still armed, authorizing bombs against the towers if necessary while forbidding strikes on the main castle. Louis emphasizes that Skarn must moor the ship to a tower because the docking step is essential to the plan.

Carl realizes the new mantises mean Diwata is still present on the floor. He infers that the god transformed into a male mantis, cured Vrah, then became female and began producing mantis offspring. Samantha says Diwata can continue producing babies indefinitely if she chooses. Elle then reports what she learned from the hairless Crest hunter: Vrah's people tricked his brother into entering the temple and submitting to the ritual that used him as the vessel for Diwata's manifestation, effectively killing another hunter merely to cure Vrah's venereal disease.

Mordecai explains the loophole that allows Diwata to remain past the normal five-minute divine manifestation limit. If a god begins a spell before the limit expires, the god remains until that spell finishes. Diwata reached Vrah in time, performed the mating cure, transformed into a female mantis, and immediately began the birthing process. As long as that birth spell continues, Diwata can remain on the floor. Mordecai expects her to be immortal but temporarily restricted to a weakened, gonorrhea-infected female mantis form that cannot cast other spells and lacks normal god-strength while giving birth.

Carl sends Donut to Chaco's counter to buy the upgrades they previously selected. The chapter then shifts abruptly when Firas asks whether the group was supposed to be keeping Florin away from Lucia, signaling that another crisis is developing inside the ballroom.

Carl, Imani, Katia, and Elle rush toward Florin when they see him standing over a sobbing Lucia with his hands on her shoulders, but the apparent confrontation reverses immediately. Lucia throws herself into Florin's arms, and he comforts her while telling the others that they must protect her. In a different accent, Lucia says she wants her mother. Then her entire demeanor changes in an instant: she pushes Florin away, regains her usual swagger and hostility, threatens to kill him as she killed Ifechi, renews her blood-for-blood threat against Donut for killing Cici, and walks toward the buffet demanding tequila.

Florin moves the explanation into chat. He says there are multiple real people inside Lucia, mostly children. The child he was just speaking with is Jill, a ten-year-old Dutch girl whose knowledge convinced him she is not simply Lucia running a deception. Florin does not understand the entire mechanism, but says it involves the dog and someone named Alexandro. Most importantly, he believes the dog can control Lucia remotely, though only in short bursts, and that removing the dog is the key rather than attacking Lucia herself.

Carl is stunned by the implication that real children may be trapped inside Lucia despite prior assurances that children were not allowed to become crawlers. He confronts Zev, who only says the situation is complicated, refuses to discuss it, and warns Carl to pay attention.

The warning comes just before Ferdinand lands heavily on Carl's shoulder opposite Donut. The cat mockingly repeats Florin's question about whether Carl is feeling all right. Carl immediately recognizes the opening and messages Samantha that Ferdinand is distracted, ordering her to begin her move.

A Cookbook planning note records Louis's discovery that the castle's small passages are not ventilation ducts but cat tunnels built for Ferdinand. The routes snake around private rooms, use short switchback climbs suited to a cat, and include a path into the third-floor security room. Katia proposes exploiting them, while Imani objects that Samantha is too unreliable for an escape plan to depend on her. Carl nevertheless maps a route for Samantha from the attendant level to the security room. Samantha then reveals that she has discovered the hidden planning notes herself because the crawlers' repeated bathroom trips were obvious, and she volunteers for the mission.

Ferdinand remains overlaid into Ballroom A from Queen Imogen's separate ballroom, able to touch Carl even though Carl cannot meaningfully touch him. His enormous magical turban makes the crawlers laugh, provoking a tantrum. Katia uses one of Miriam's Size-Up potions to obtain his exact combat information: Ferdinand is a level-100 Province Boss and minion with Constitution 100, Charisma 75, Dexterity 125, other stats at 100, a level-10 lightning spell from the hat, invisibility, Phase Jump, and powerful claws. The group had prepared for this because Mistress Tiatha's charm rule says a crawler's Charisma must exceed a normal NPC's Constitution plus Charisma, with a province boss requiring an additional one-hundred-point margin. Donut's base Charisma of 138 is doubled by the Apothecary tiara to 276 before her other buffs, putting her just over the necessary threshold against Ferdinand's combined 175.

Donut suppresses her anger over Ferdinand's earlier attack on Mongo and begins flattering him. The charm takes hold. Ferdinand becomes increasingly casual and boastful, admits Imogen ordered him to watch Signet and plans to kill her after the party, and says he came partly to see whether Mongo survived. Elsewhere in the ballroom, Eva and Vrah confer while indicating Signet and Lucia, prompting Li Jun, Li Na, Gwen, Katia, and Imani to position themselves against any attempt to manipulate Lucia into breaking the peace seal.

The outside operation deteriorates rapidly. Gideon reports that roughly two hundred mounted elves leave the castle after spotting the approaching Twister. A bomb misses them, mantis nymphs join the fight, and the sentinel towers begin firing rapid magic missiles. The Sledge and the changelings are forced into an aerial battle; the changelings transform into birds and mantises to attack the towers, while the Sledge jumps to the castle roof with the Twister controller. Two towers are taken, two remain active, and the Sledge proposes crashing the captured, mantis-covered Twister into the remaining turrets. Louis protests because the airship is central to their escape, but Carl authorizes the crash and tells the Sledge to prioritize his own safety.

Samantha finally enters Ferdinand's tunnel but admits she never memorized the route. Because Louis is occupied directing the Twister crisis, Firas takes over and talks Samantha toward the security room. At the same time, the talent show begins. Cleiton, a nervous human crawler from Team Flamengo, opens with unsuccessful knock-knock comedy. Donut learns she will perform last and is delighted to be the headliner, but Carl orders her to omit the dangerous velociraptor-hop finale and to escape immediately if the seal breaks. Donut points out that Carl's newly purchased Feather Fall potions are trapped inside a prize box until inventory access returns.

The charm plan then creates a new problem. Ferdinand proposes leaving the queen's ballroom and coming physically into Ballroom A so he can get closer to Donut. Carl warns her not to let him move, but Ferdinand departs before she can stop him. Carl urgently warns Samantha that Ferdinand is entering the same tunnel network. Ferdinand runs past her without seeing her because he must remove the oversized turban in the tunnel and carries it in his mouth, obscuring his view. He soon arrives in Ballroom A and demands vodka while waiting for Donut's act.

Samantha reaches a position above the security room and reports five elves inside. Carl tells her to use the sleeping-potion ball they had hidden with her, only to learn she gave it to Clay-ton because it made noise while she moved. Carl orders her to retrieve it, but Samantha abruptly discovers that all five security-room guards are already dead. Before Carl can determine who killed them or exploit the opening, Queen Imogen suddenly appears in Ballroom A and calls for Ferdinand. The system immediately announces that the room is sealed: nobody may enter or leave until the party concludes, and the guests are now protected from outside influence and spells.

A Cookbook planning note distinguishes Donut merely enchanting Ferdinand from fully charming him. Enchantment would make him eager to please her but leave his agency intact; a true Charm Animal effect would make him Donut's official minion, enable chat and saferoom access, permit Clockwork Triplicate, and make him obey almost any command. Mordecai can create the necessary potion from a liter of cat blood, and because the charm is line-of-sight, Donut can drink it onstage even if Ferdinand is still in Queen Imogen's separate ballroom. Carl's original plan is to wait until Donut's talent act, then convert Ferdinand into a minion and use him against Imogen if necessary.

Queen Imogen's arrival immediately disrupts that timing. She appears in Ballroom A with blood running down the front of her gown and orders Ferdinand back to her, revealing that she has been fighting outside. Ferdinand tries to jump to her shoulder but falls through because he is physically trapped in the crawler ballroom while Imogen is only overlaid there. Imogen realizes the party seal now prevents him from leaving. She turns on Signet, taunting her over the peace rules, then uses a non-damaging telekinetic effect to drag Carl across the room and accuses him of besieging her castle. Katia's Size-Up reading shows Imogen at 201 in every stat except Intelligence 300, with temporarily unlimited mana, immunity to poison and curses, magical-fire reflection, susceptibility to blunt attacks, and several pages of spells.

When Imogen cites the changelings and Carl's allies outside, Carl messages Gideon to run and receives an immediate system notice that Gideon is dead and removed from his address book. Carl realizes the blood on Imogen likely came from the fighting that killed Gideon's hidden force. Moments later the castle shakes under major explosions. The Sledge reports that he successfully destroyed the remaining guard turrets by sacrificing the Twister. Imogen briefly loses control of Carl but cannot leave the sealed party to respond. Carl understands that once she entered, the castle could be attacked from every direction while she remained trapped inside so long as nobody broke the peace seal.

After Imani and Elle finish their skit, Samantha follows Carl's instructions and removes the two right-side soul crystals from the security console. The crawler ballroom's mute and inventory locks disappear without the warning light flashing because Britney disabled it earlier. Samantha then reports that the two left-side crystals controlling Ballroom B had already been pulled before she arrived, and the goodwill-interface crystal had also been removed even though its capacitor kept the linked-room overlay functioning. The dead security guards are still seated at their stations with their heads severed, surrounded by blood and mantis fluids.

Carl deduces the enemy plan. Diwata, under Circe Took's control, entered the castle among the mantis swarm and tried first to disable the goodwill link entirely. When the capacitor prevented that, she left Ballroom B's magic and inventory restrictions disabled so Vrah and her allies could prepare to provoke someone into breaking the seal. Once the peace failed, Imogen would likely attack Carl, Signet, and the crawlers first while Vrah escaped through a castle filled with mantis nymphs. Carl orders Samantha to reinstall the hunter-room crystals, both to remove the hunters' restored powers and to lure Diwata back to the control room. The effect is immediate: a draconian preparing a spell near Lucia loses it when Samantha restores the protections.

Outside conditions worsen simultaneously. The brambles advance faster than expected as retreating elves draw them toward the castle, outside crawlers are being forced toward stairwells, and the Sledge remains trapped amid rubble, elves, mantises, Bonnie, and the bear cubs. The only stairwell inside the castle is locked until Imogen dies. Carl sees no clean escape and briefly considers the nuclear option, Carl's Doomsday Scenario, knowing it would also kill his friends. Instead he decides that if necessary he will kill Eva himself to break the seal, sacrificing his own safety so Donut and the others can escape. Imani volunteers to do it instead, Elle objects, and Carl insists that he already has the plan in motion.

Signet, meanwhile, has learned far more from Empress D'Nadia about the artificial nature of her world and the audience watching the Masquerade. She tells Carl that his failures are not solely his responsibility because he is being manipulated by the same larger system as everyone else. She also corrects Carl's understanding of Big Tina's quest. Tina does not fundamentally want a dance recital; like Signet, she wants her mother back. Kiwi has been beside Tina all along, but Tina's damaged mind does not recognize her. Carl tells Signet that if time permits, Donut can use the performance to reunite them properly.

Horton begins playing "Wonderwall" as the situation collapses further. Samantha reports that Diwata has reached the security room and broken through the door. Acting on Carl's instruction to "lose big" if necessary, Samantha uses the soul crystals themselves as weapons. She puts the crystals in her mouth and bites down on them while attacking Diwata, detonating them. The blast tears through the third floor, exposes the overlapping ballroom illusion, knocks Diwata unconscious, and leaves her still producing mantis babies in the cramped wreckage. Despite the destroyed controls, the goodwill ballroom remains active.

Carl prepares to proceed with his self-sacrifice plan, but Signet intervenes. After D'Nadia tells her that her mother, friends, and fallen family were never real, Signet decides to prove otherwise. She takes one of the white acorns fallen from the inverted tree, gains Magical Fervor, and prepares Ink Marauder. Normally the spell requires Signet as caster, a sacrifice as the blood source, and a third person to kill the sacrifice. Carl realizes it can instead be cast by a single person who fulfills all three roles. Signet asks Carl to have Donut enhance the effect with a moon-powered Torch and tells him to show the audience how real her family is.

Carl asks if she is certain. Signet tells him only to give the signal. At the same time, the Sledge reports that the mantises in front of him were actually changelings, freeing his group for the moment. Carl abandons the Eva-sacrifice plan and announces that they are back in business. He orders **Stage Plan A** and **Escape Plan D**, tells anyone lacking Feather Fall to come to him, and urgently summons Prepotente.

Donut begins the final talent act alone onstage after taking the Charm Animal potion. It works immediately: Sir Ferdinand becomes Princess Donut's official minion and joins the party. Donut then performs "All Eyes on Me," the same song Beatrice used to sing to her, with Britney accompanying on guitar. Donut's Charisma is high enough that the spell affects nearly everyone in both linked ballrooms, including crawlers, hunters, and Queen Imogen, focusing their attention on the subject Donut chooses.

The spotlight shifts to Big Tina. Donut recharges Tina's performance wand, and Tina uses it while dancing. The wand casts The Recital, a stronger emotional charm that makes the audience feel happy to be present and eager to watch. Clay-ton and Very Sullen raise a painted sail backdrop, then reveal Mongo, Kiwi, and roughly thirty velociraptors in improvised sea-creature costumes behind Tina. The entire act keeps the room's attention locked onstage while Signet's Ink Marauder preparation intensifies unnoticed at the edge of the ballroom.

Vrah is the first hunter to recognize that something is wrong and begins pushing toward the stage. Carl uses the distraction to activate the next phase outside the room. He orders the Sledge to begin casting Zerzura, warning that because the Sledge is physically inside the castle he will be transported to the ninth floor with the changelings and other affected inhabitants. Carl also warns him about Ferdinand, possible revenants after arrival, and the one-day sickness caused by the spell. The Sledge begins the one-minute chant followed by the five-minute cast.

As Tina and the dinosaurs continue the recital, Carl orders Britney away from backstage and the crawlers quietly reposition onto intact floor tiles. Signet, now glowing intensely and nearly rigid from the spell preparation, asks Carl for a knife. Carl gives her one while the crawlers retrieve weapons from inventory. Signet tells Carl to protect his family and watch over hers.

Signet then sits beside Imogen and tells her that one regret is never saying goodbye to Grimaldi and the other is that she will not personally kill Imogen. She recalls the life she and her mother once planned to escape into, then deliberately cuts her own throat. The act makes Signet simultaneously the caster, sacrifice, and killer required for Ink Marauder. The floor opens beneath her and drags her into the Nothing as Imogen tries to grab her. A distant voice from below calls to Psamathe before the opening closes.

Signet's body is gone, but her blood and tattoo forms remain in the ballroom as a growing supernatural vortex, showing that Ink Marauder has begun. The system announces that Apito has turned away, the peace seal is broken, the Butcher's Masquerade has failed to cast, and all chamber protections have ended. The three remote judges and Chaco immediately disappear.

Carl responds without hesitation. He equips the Ring of Divine Suffering, marks Vrah, throws two smoke curtains into the room, and sends the command for everyone to act.

The instant the Masquerade's protection fails, Donut orders the dinosaurs to attack. The costumed velociraptors leap from the stage into Ballroom B's overlaid hunters, while Mongo and Kiwi tear into Vrah. Samantha drops into the room riding a flood of mantis gore from the shattered level above and joins the attack on Vrah. At the same time, living mantis nymphs spill into the ballroom from both above and below. Big Tina jumps from the stage and disappears into Attendant Ballroom B, where she can still intermittently appear through the stage link to kill elf handlers.

Signet's Ink Marauder begins taking physical form around Imogen. The manifestations are smaller and less stable than Signet's normal tattoo creatures, but they are real enough to affect the battlefield. A three-headed nodling named Di-Wi forms as a Memory Golem, along with a huge hammerhead shark and a small dragon that destroys part of the Scolopendra mosaic before flying away. The constructs cannot directly injure Imogen while she remains partially protected by the overlapping ballroom state, but they occupy and harass her. Imogen answers with an area-wide burst of red lightning that damages nearly every creature in the room.

Mongo and Kiwi have already dismembered Vrah by the time Carl reaches her. Kiwi presses her head to Mongo's in a brief goodbye, then returns to the stage as Carl orders Mongo to finish Vrah. Mongo kills her, completing Carl's Ring of Divine Suffering mark and awarding him Vrah's highest stat, Dexterity. Carl removes the ring because no other full-health valid target is immediately available.

Carl warns Samantha that Zerzura is about to move everyone physically inside the castle to the ninth floor. Samantha instead demands to know where Signet is, still expecting Signet to restore her body. Carl tells her that Signet sacrificed herself. The Ink Marauder manifestations then reveal that not all of Signet's memories are warriors. The child chee Clint and Miss Nadine appear alive in flesh-like form, frightened but persistent; Carl gives the badly injured Clint a healing potion and discovers that it works.

A third figure lies nearby: Princess Lunette, Signet's mother, manifested as an Incomplete Flesh Golem. Nadine explains that Signet took the memory with her but left the body, that the new constructs can persist indefinitely, and that Carl should take Lunette's empty form, help Samantha, and find a Pulpmancer. Carl puts Lunette's weightless body into his inventory. Samantha refuses to wait for the ninth-floor transfer and suddenly flies down through a hole in the floor under her own power.

Imogen then breaks through the remaining tattoo constructs. She magically snaps Carl's arm and drags him toward her, but Ferdinand, now Donut's minion, Phase Jumps into Imogen's head and interrupts the attack. Imogen brutally backhands him away, and Ferdinand disappears after hitting the floor. Carl heals his shattered arm while Donut prepares the final part of Tina's recital.

Donut has Kiwi lower her head and crushes the hidden I Take It All Back potion ball embedded in Kiwi's paper-bubble costume. The potion instantly reverses Scolopendra's Transmutation: Kiwi changes from a mongoliensis back into an ursine. The other raptors' map dots immediately turn hostile red as their alpha hierarchy breaks. Big Tina reappears onstage, sees the transformed bear, and begins calling her "Mommy." The system announces completion of The Recital. Tina remains an allosaurus, but she finally recognizes her mother.

With Zerzura seconds from completion, Carl orders everyone to use Feather Fall. He has already retrieved the potion case and other boxed prizes by briefly standing on Prepotente's personal saferoom cube, which had one activation remaining; in return, Carl agreed to let Prepotente take over the party for roughly a day. Carl drinks a Feather Fall potion despite having Quarter Fall as backup.

The Sledge counts down the final seconds of Zerzura. A mechanical-sounding "Vroom" follows, and the chapter ends as everything freezes.

Zerzura completes, and the half-destroyed elf castle vanishes to the ninth floor with the changelings, Ferdinand, Kiwi, Big Tina, Signet's memory constructs, and other qualifying occupants. The crawlers, hunters, remaining elves, dinosaurs, corpses, and huge numbers of mantis nymphs are left frozen in midair over the empty castle footprint. Gehenna Bramble has already swallowed almost the entire surrounding area.

The AI abruptly turns the aftermath into a four-team boss battle, complete with music and individual portraits. Team one is the surviving crawlers, team two the final seventy-five hunters, team three Queen Imogen and her remaining elite elves, and team four Diwata. Diwata is visibly manifesting as Circe Took in flaming mantis form, still giving birth. The AI emphasizes that she is immortal rather than conventionally killable, but suggests that stopping the birth condition can remove her from the fight. Carl assigns most of the crawlers to blunt-force attacks against Imogen while he takes Katia, Imani, and Donut toward Diwata.

The brambles rise into a dome, the fight resumes, and everyone drops into the deep crater left by the vanished castle. Hunters splatter against the ground while crawlers descend under Feather Fall and other effects. Mantis nymphs swarm in the air, Imogen crashes into the pit like a projectile, and the battlefield fills with smoke, poison, fire, elves, dinosaurs, summoned attacks, and overlapping debuffs. Carl deploys Smoke Daddy while Donut adds Fear smoke. Imani works continuously to strip hostile effects and maintain buffs.

Carl uses Protective Shell to create temporary breathing room, but casualties mount quickly. A flaming sambhur hurled through the chaos impales Dmitri and Maxim Popov. Dmitri dies after saying he misses his cat. Katia then gives Carl the Apothecary beanie so he can use I Need My Personal Space to punch through the mantis mass protecting Diwata.

Donut's high Charisma has also finally made Love Vampire effective, charming several elves into fighting for her, but a stronger pulse of Imogen's red lightning kills those new allies. Donut's potion cooldown expires, and she drinks Carl's Pawna's Tears. Her Laundry Day spell had been trained naturally to level 9, boosted to 12 with Pawna's Cries, and now reaches level 17 with Pawna's Tears, exceeding the level-15 threshold Carl believes is necessary for the plan.

Carl clears the last nymphs with I Need My Personal Space, giving Donut line of sight on Diwata. Laundry Day cannot strip the god itself, but Carl's research suggested it can target the mortal driver inside divine soul armor. The spell succeeds. Diwata shifts through an antlered bear form and disappears back to the Halls of Ascendency, leaving Circe Took exposed, soaked, and covered in soap bubbles. Before Carl can attack, Circe's own mantis children swarm and tear her apart. Team four is eliminated.

Imogen's next area attack is stronger and drops Donut to zero health, forcing Cockroach to save her. Nearly all remaining mantis nymphs die as well. Only one hunter remains: Zabit. Carl recognizes that Zabit's trap bandolier makes his invisibility play suspicious and casts Tripper. Zabit immediately triggers his own mines and is torn in half, eliminating team two.

Carl finds Gwen dead beside Cleiton, while Tran survives nearby with both legs gone. A healing scroll stabilizes Tran but does not restore his legs. The surviving crawlers continue coordinated blunt-force volleys against Imogen, timing alternating strikes to the beat while her repeated shield fails under the volume of physical attacks.

As Imogen's health reaches its final sliver, she begins another massive lightning attack. Britney lies nearby with Louis and Firas. Carl throws a hobgoblin disco ball and shouts for Britney to use her jacket. Carl intends the summoned Slate Butterflies to mob the light source around Imogen, but the lightning instead locks onto the growing butterfly swarm and detonates it overhead. The blast throws Carl, Donut, Mongo, and Britney across the pit and destroys Carl's hearing. Carl loses consciousness.

As he fades, Carl sees Bianca fly overhead with Prepotente on her back. Prepotente jumps toward the fight carrying two bubbling potions. Carl then receives only the final system results: **Winner**, followed by **Quest Complete: The Vengeance of the Daughter**.

Carl regains consciousness beneath the collapsing Gehenna Bramble dome, buried partly under a dead Dreadnought and covered in dozens of debuffs. Donut is on his chest, frantically recounting the aftermath. Firas, Gwen, Horton, Dmitri and Maxim Popov, Gideon, Signet, and many dinosaurs are believed dead; Tran has lost both legs; Britney's face is badly burned and does not fully heal; Louis is unconscious but alive. Ferdinand still appears in the party interface, confirming he survived the ninth-floor transfer, though Donut cannot message him.

Nearby, Prepotente is in a furious dispute over the memorial crystal recovered from Queen Imogen. The crawler who took it is Osvaldo, a level-60 Curupira ranger from Team Flamengo and Gimli's owner. Prepotente argues that he dealt twenty-two percent of the damage to Imogen, landed the killing blow, and received first loot choice, while Osvaldo insists the crystal was physically on Imogen's body and was marked on the shared treasure map. Carl realizes that because nobody bought the crystal at the prize counter, it reverted to Imogen before her death.

Donut explains how Imogen died. Already nearly defeated, Imogen was struck when Prepotente leaped from Bianca and smashed a potion into her face while the disco-ball residue obscured her vision. Florin broke down afterward because Imogen wore the form of Ifechi's twin. Lucia escaped before the boss battle using one of her preplaced teleport routes. Eva survived the fight but was buried and injured after being bitten by a dinosaur. Katia, Li Na, and Li Jun search for her.

A system message soon announces that a champion has fallen and a bounty has been claimed. Katia walks past Carl with a second golden player-killer skull and simply says, "It's done," confirming that she found and killed Eva. Li Jun is visibly shaken by the aftermath.

Donut then admits something that frightens her more than the battle itself: despite losing so many friends, she does not feel as devastated as she thinks she should. She lists Firas, Gwen, the Popovs, Gideon, Signet, and the dinosaurs and worries that something inside her has broken. Carl tells her the emotional numbness is a protective mask. He reframes the Butcher's Masquerade: they are not putting on masks to pretend they are monsters, but using masks so they can survive being forced to act like monsters. He tells Donut that one day, when she is finally safe, the mask will fall away and the grief will come. Donut finally begins to cry in his arms.

Carl then remembers the nodling death mechanic and urgently calls Katia. Using Find Crawler, they dig through the battlefield and discover two unconscious baby ogres: Maxim and Dmitri Popov, now separate Nodling Yearlings. When the twins awaken, the system marks them Ineligible and teleports them away. Zev explains that child and pregnant crawlers are prohibited; the Popovs' game guide deliberately chose their race knowing their death would split them into child forms and trigger transfer to the kinder facility on the surface. They have escaped the crawl alive.

The survivors then receive a major new notification. Carl and Donut are named co-warlords of The Princess Posse, occupying the faction-war slot vacated by the Burrowers and inheriting no mercenaries. The team is formally sponsored by The Society for the Eradication of Cocker Spaniels, doing business as Princess Posse Enterprises. Carl and Donut receive equal administrative and voting authority, while Donut's Blood Sultanate royal succession status is flagged as a future complication. One of fifteen pending action items is the contractual proposal to remove safety protections for faction sponsors.

Carl immediately turns the remaining live feed into a political pressure campaign against the other faction-war teams. He boasts that the hunters are dead and the Princess Posse's troops have arrived, then explains that the Dreadnoughts and Burrowers withdrew while Empress D'Nadia's Prism Kingdom and the Princess Posse filled the open slots. Carl argues that faction-war sponsors should face the same mortal risk as the crawlers and notes that the Skull Empire already votes with the Princess Posse to remove protections. He specifically points out that citizens of the Operatic Collective, Lemig Sortition, and Viceroys can influence their governments' spending and therefore potentially force a vote change. Zev eventually reports that Carl has been muted, but Carl believes he got the essential message out.

During the same aftermath, Donut finally explains the apparent dinosaur trick from the Masquerade. Because Attendant Ballroom B was directly below hunter Ballroom B and stage effects propagated across linked stages, she cast a deep Hole in the ceiling behind the curtain. The protected main ballroom prevented the hole from opening there, but the corresponding attendant-stage version connected into the hunter space, enabling the dinosaurs to enter when the seal failed.

A final contest notification reveals that Tserendolgor's pet Garret, not Mongo, won the Masquerade pet show and received Best in Show. Donut is outraged; Carl laughs until he cries.

Prepotente, now temporarily leading Carl and Donut's party as part of their earlier saferoom bargain, insists they descend immediately rather than wait for the six-hour threshold. On the way to the stairs, Carl asks why Prepotente wants the memorial crystal. Prepotente says it is specifically a memorial crystal of the goddess Apito, which should be impossible if Apito is still alive, and that he has a quest involving it. Carl then receives his own Emberus quest update: **Find Out Who Killed My Son** now requires obtaining **Memorial Crystal: Apito** to determine whether it bears on Geyrun's murder, while still requiring a conversation with the high cleric at the Emberus Shrine in Club Vanquisher.

Prepotente warns everyone to store their pets before descent because the next floor will be dangerous. Katia, still dazed, finally notices that Carl, Donut, and Prepotente are in one party. Prepotente explains that the arrangement is temporary and that he needs Donut's help, while Carl is included only because Donut insists on keeping him. Carl responds with an insult, and Prepotente screams in his face.