They leave the office. On the way out, Carl spots something shining in the rubble. It is one of the glass boxes containing Quill’s dolls. He is surprised that it survived the explosion completely unscathed and pulls it into his inventory. Outside the office building, a crowd gathers. A tiger-faced crawler named Daniel Bautista 2 approaches them. Carl recognizes him as the crawler who killed the neighborhood boss they found in the ruins. He also has the same last name as the three dead crawlers the lemurs used as a trap, the ones Donut got the enchanted anklet from.

Baustista was also on a quest, which he failed because Carl killed Quill. Carl apologizes, but Bautista does not appear to mind. Bautista says he saw Carl and Donut on the recap episode, killing lemurs and fighting at the circus. He thanks them for killing the lemurs responsible for the deaths of his sisters and cousins. He is the only one of his family left. He regrets choosing to give up his humanity and believes they will all die soon. He adds that he owes Carl a debt and will come if they call him.

Carl and Donut decide to finish the quest, believing that Quill’s undead husband, Remex, must be the final piece. Mordecai assumes Remex is a necromancer or lich and warns that he will be dangerous. He recommends simply blowing up the building he is hiding in, even if it means not completing the quest. Carl and Donut prepare for that eventuality by planting bombs around the building. Carl gives the detonator to Katia, instructing her to blow up the building if the lich defeats them and leave her outside. Meanwhile, the crowd grows larger and larger.

Finally, Carl and Donut enter the building. On the bottom floor, the town’s guards stand in a kind of stasis, a yellow aura swirling around them that leads to a soul crystal. Mordecai previously told them the lich would be hiding near the soul crystal, a power source that fuels the guards. They follow the glow upstairs and find Remex hiding in the corner of a room. shouts: “Not a lich, Mordecai. Not a fucking lich!” (314).

The game text calls Remex a “Soul Leech Capacitor. Level 1. This is the Bereft Minion of Miss Quill” (315). The description adds that this undead creature is fragile but can rip a soul from its body and store that soul power inside itself. Over the chat, Mordecai confirms that Quill must have been the “head bad guy” (316), and Remex is all that is left of her scheme. They will need to get an explanation out of him to complete the quest.

Remex is rambling and semi-incoherent as Carl and Donut ask questions and try to understand Quill’s schemes. Remex says he needs to tell the whole story, and then he will be free. Remex was the previous Magistrate. After he retired, Featherfall asked Quill to help with his plans to turn Remex into a capacitor that could absorb soul power to use to control the guards. But his plans were too small for Quill, who wanted to restore power to the skyfowl who once ruled the entire Over City. She manipulated things so that Featherfall would die when he cast the spell, making Quill the secret magistrate who controls Remex the capacitor.

She was the granddaughter of the former royal family and had plans to build an army. To do so, she tricked the city elves into believing she was a messenger from their god and ordered them to bring her women to turn into krasue. However, the transformation does not always work. Sometimes, the women simply die, which is why they left dead bodies around the settlement at night, attracting GumGum’s notice. Quill used the capacitor to prepare a three-part spell called Final War, which would destroy anyone whose essence she did not protect. She needed the krasue to collect feathers from every skyfowl in the settlement to protect them from her spell. She had already completed the first part of the spell before Carl killed her.

Carl and Donut receive notice that they have completed their quest. Then, a new quest appears that reads: “The Fools Who Broke the Glass. This is a group quest. All crawlers currently within the 45-square-kilometer blast radius will receive this quest” (322). This quest announces that by interrupting Quill’s spell, Carl and Donut have set off a second catastrophe. First, every skyfowl attached to the protective part of the spell has now fallen into coma or death. Second, the soul crystal will explode, killing everyone in the radius, including NPCs and crawlers, who have seven minutes to run. Any crawlers who survive will receive a Platinum Quest box. The quest adds that Carl and Donut are to blame for this new quest.

Over a public quest chat, other crawlers curse at them. Meanwhile, Mordecai tells them to run, but Carl has a sudden idea. He asks Donut if she wants to try to save themselves or everyone else. Donut agrees to stay and try to save the others. Carl pulls Quill’s glass display box from his inventory. It is called a “Sheol Glass Reaper Case” (326) and will protect almost anything placed inside it. He carefully slides it around the soul crystal, sealing it inside.

Then Carl and Donut sit down to wait, unsure if it will contain the explosion or not. Remex still hides in the corner, waiting to die. Carl surmises that he was a crawler who became an NPC after reaching the 10th floor. Donut says she would rather die than become an NPC. Carl says he is proud of her. Donut admits that she is “not as dumb as [she] pretend[s] to be” (328) and knows Beatrice is dead. Then they close their eyes and wait for the explosion.

Light bursts from the glass box, but it contains the explosion. Carl pulls the box into his inventory, becoming a new item, “Carl’s Doomsday Scenario” (330). This device is powerful enough “to rattle the teeth of a god to level” (330) and level an entire city.

However, the quest does not end. Instead, the AI announces that Carl successfully stopped one explosion, but a second is imminent. This explosion, emanating from Remex, will have “precursor burst[s]” as it builds up, releasing wild magic into the area with unpredictable effects. They now have 20 minutes to save themselves.

An EMP-like burst explodes from Remex, deactivating the guards. Mordecai orders Carl and Donut to remove all their magical items and put them in inventory and keep Mongo in storage for his own safety. For Carl, this means stripping entirely, as even his underwear is magical now. They agree that Donut should keep her tiara on. Then, they run.

Outside, they meet up with Katia, Bautista, and other crawlers. They head to the stairwell in the circus ruins, though they have three days until the next floor opens. Another blast hits them. Crawlers who did not remove their gear explode and die. Carl and Donut now decide it is best to remove the tiara after all, but it disappears before she can. They keep running until they reach the stairwell.

Carl sends the other crawlers through. Over chat, Mordecai says he will meet them on the next floor. Carl and Donut realize that once they reach the fourth floor, Mordecai officially earns his freedom. Just before they enter the stairwell, Carl tells Katia to use the detonator to activate the bombs they left around the building. It may give them experience points before the quest ends. Katia presses the detonator button, and they dive for the stairs. At the last second, Donut remarks that they are due to be on Odette’s interview show, and Carl is still naked.

Carl and Donut appear in a production trailer. Carl retreats to the bathroom to make a loincloth with toilet paper. The reality of the situation hits him, and he freezes, overwhelmed. Donut comforts him. Finally, they enter the interview. Odette says they should have died during the encounter with Remex, a famous crawler from an earlier dungeon. The first precursor blast should have deactivated Carl’s detonators, causing all his bombs to blow immediately, but the AI exempted the detonator from the effects. When Katia pressed the detonator button, the resulting explosion killed multiple guards and Remex, and canceled out much of the wild magic explosion, saving thousands of NPCs and several dozen crawlers.

Carl and every other crawler should, therefore, receive major achievement boxes, including a Celestial Prize box. However, the dungeon host gets one veto vote each season. They usually save this vote for deeper floors but have used it now to prevent Carl and Donut from receiving their awards. A complicated series of rules involving payouts and taxes means that every celestial box rewarded in the dungeon costs the host enormous amounts of money. The record for most celestial boxes ever rewarded in a single dungeon crawler season was 18, and the total rewarded in the entire history of the dungeons is 2,145 because they are so expensive.

Donut objects that the Borant would be so stingy about giving three Celestial boxes to Carl, Donut, and Katia, but Odette reveals that every single crawler who survived the explosion was due to receive a Celestial box, not just their team. That would have resulted in an astonishing record of 83 celestial boxes won at once. Borant’s veto kept this from happening.

Carl laughs bitterly, remarking that it does not matter how hard they work. He has learned his lesson and will not get involved in any more quests. He intends to keep his head down and grind to progress only. He laments the three days of training they missed because they had to enter the stairwell early. Odette reveals their level upgrades: Donut has gone from 19 to 26, Carl from 21 to 27, and Katia from 9 to 21. She also reveals an unofficial crawler ranking, which lists the top 10 crawlers by a combination of power and popularity. Lucia Mar is one and Hekla is two. Carl and Donut are six and seven, respectively.

Katia and Donut return to the production trailer. Odette speaks to Carl alone to warn him that Hekla has seen the usefulness of having Mordecai as a manager and is making plans to poach Donut, even if it means killing him. She does not believe Katia is in on this plan but warns him to be careful. Lastly, Carl asks about the string of numbers at the end of each crawler’s ranking means. Odette states: “That’s just the bounty. […] It’s how much other crawlers get if they kill you” (351), and leaves.