Carl exits the booth into a humid jungle environment called the Selva. He approaches a dryad settlement guarded by high-level Funeral Bell mushroom guards, who are suddenly paralyzed and collapse. An invisible attacker strikes Carl’s Protective Shell. He uses gunpowder to briefly reveal the creature and casts Ping, a new spell that highlights all non-mob entities on his map (mobs are non-crawler entities whose purpose is to be killed for experience points or loot).

Donut arrives riding Mongo and fires Magic Missiles, revealing the attackers as Night Weasel Scouts belonging to a hunter named Zabit. Mongo and Chris dispatch the weasels. Chris carries the paralyzed Carl into a nearby safe room.

Inside the personal space, Carl sees Mordecai’s new form: a small, fuzzy Pocket Kuma with huge eyes and a monkey tail. Carl bursts into uncontrollable laughter. As the chapter ends, there’s a knock on the personal space door—a delivery of collateral.

In a flashback to the meeting with Orren, a Nullian attorney named Quasar appears as a hologram. He warns Carl that liaisons are untrustworthy and reveals that Orren was attempting to trick Carl into touching the gate under administrative hold, which would have deleted it. When Carl refuses to permanently surrender the gate, Quasar suggests demanding collateral in exchange for the loan.

Back in the present, four cretin mercenaries arrive as the negotiated collateral: Bomo, the Sledge, Clay-ton, and Very Sullen. They’re free for three floors and regenerate if killed, but not until the next floor. Two receive extra spells as insurance: Bomo gains Teleport to Stairwell, which can transport to any exit on the floor, and the Sledge receives Zerzura, which Quasar notes reliably leads to mass carnage.

Carl notices that Katia has jumped to level 52. He sleeps for two hours and then purchases the Advanced Bomb Maker’s Workshop and a magic training studio.

Katia, Chris, and their mercenaries depart to meet other crawler teams. Donut and Mordecai go shopping, particularly for an item with a Golden Throat enchantment to help Donut sing in key for her bard spells. Carl enters his Advanced Bomb Maker’s Workshop, which allows him to test explosives virtually and precisely tune them, and examines his Doomsday Scenario bomb using the simulator.

Mordecai returns and tells Carl that they need to gather special mushrooms at night. Instead, Carl orders Bomo to cast his teleportation spell, sending them to the stairwell in Zockau.

Carl equips the Ring of Divine Suffering, which allows him to mark targets and gain stat points for killing them but inflicts a healing-prevention debuff until the mark dies. Bomo’s spell teleports Carl, Donut, and an invisible Bomo to a park in Zockau. Carl directs Bomo toward a safe room while he and Donut place a missile launcher and four large barrel bombs near the Desperado Club entrance.

A drunk hunter stumbles out and leans against one of the bombs. A system message identifies him as Chin’Dua, a member of the Draconian race and the Striver class. A flare reveals that they’ve been spotted. Carl marks Chin’Dua with the ring and is infected with a debuff—an illness that weakens him (making him less buff). A message tells him that the debuff won’t clear until he defeats Chin’Dua. He then uses the ring’s Super Spreader ability to copy the debuff onto a flying-mantis hunter named Xindy. The missiles shoot down and kill Xindy; Carl beats Chin’Dua to death, clearing his debuff. They dive into a safe room as the barrel bombs detonate, destroying the block and collapsing the Desperado Club entrance. As they flee, an invisible hunter—the city’s mayor—attacks with crossbows, severely wounding Carl and inflicting mind-fogging debuffs. They escape the city limits, but Carl collapses. Fellow high-ranking crawlers Miriam Dom (a vampire) and Prepotente (a humanoid goat) find and save them.

Carl awakens in a cart being tended by Miriam Dom, now a vampire. He suffers from debuffs including Blood Trail, which causes slow health loss and allows tracking. Carl checks his notifications and discovers that he has leveled up to 54 and killed 34 hunters in the Zockau raid. He also receives an achievement for a Mass Casualty Event, having killed over 250 non-mobs—including many non-player characters, or NPCs—with his bombs.

Prepotente returns and reports traps ahead. Carl casts Tripper to set them all off, triggering an emotional outburst from Prepotente, who accuses Carl of insulting him. Miriam forces the two to apologize and hug.

The group arrives at a looted bugbear settlement and enters a safe room, where they find Katia with fellow crawlers Louis, Firas, and Britney. Donut preemptively ends Mordecai’s lecture about the Zockau raid, stating that she won’t leave Carl but insisting that he share plans with her beforehand. Mordecai tells them to open prize boxes and prepare for the recap.

Carl opens his prize boxes. The Gold Junkie’s Box gives him a spiderweb tattoo granting access to the Guild of Suffering, a cult for Divine Suffering artifact users. The 34 Gold Hunter-Killer Boxes contain nearly 600 thousand gold and 34 severed hands from the hunters he killed—revealed to be tickets for a prize counter at the upcoming Butcher’s Masquerade. The Platinum Asshole’s Box upgrades his Fear spell to level 10.

The recap show airs, detailing class specializations and showing heavily redacted footage of the Zockau raid. A system announcement introduces the guild system, limiting parties to 30 members while offering larger groups ways to cooperate through guild charters, and discontinues viewer access to private crawler messages. The Butcher’s Masquerade is officially announced for the top 50 crawlers, featuring contests including a pet beauty pageant that excites Donut.

Katia provides Carl with a map of the floor. Carl asks her to coordinate destroying all but one bridge over the central river to funnel hunters. He plants several hunter-specific mines along the road as they travel.

Donut argues against Carl’s plan to use Bomo as a suicide bomber to attack Zockau again. She proposes reclassifying Bomo as her personal minion so that she can use Clockwork Triplicate to create a disposable copy to deliver the bomb while the real Bomo remains safe. They agree to her plan, which requires her to be inside a safe room to cast the spell.

They arrive at a large wooden bridge crossing the river into an ursine settlement, where mushroom-shaped Funeral Bell guards enforce extensive town rules including a strict ban on dinosaurs. The ursines are bearlike creatures known for their dedication to rules and order. Their mayor, Elmer, refuses to make an exception to the dinosaur ban for Mongo. Carl lures Elmer outside the town border, and Donut uses her Astral Paw spell to push him down the steep riverbank, where he dies. A naiad snatches the corpse and vanishes.

Donut becomes the new mayor. The town guards turn hostile, forcing the group into a safe room. As they prepare to send a clockwork Bomo to bomb Zockau, the real Bomo finds a note on the personal space door. The note from Vrah warns that hunters are now protected from explosions, that the Zockau town guards have been ordered to worship Emberus—Carl’s own god—as a direct trap for him, and that her faction, the Hive, is hunting him. A system message announces that the hunters have been released.

Donut receives her Enchanted Collar Charm, officially making her mayor and granting stat bonuses, tax income, and a Snitch skill to summon guards. She renames the settlement Point Mongo.

Mongo is suddenly lured by an unknown force and bolts into the jungle with Donut riding him. Carl pursues them into a clearing surrounded by 40 high-level velociraptors. The pack leader, a level-60 mongoliensis named Kiwi, confronts Mongo. Instead of fighting, Mongo and Kiwi begin mating. Donut wants to intervene, but Carl convinces her to retreat, arguing that if they don’t escape, Kiwi will attack them once the mating is over and Mongo will be forced to fight to defend them. They return to Point Mongo, leaving Mongo with the pack.

Carl pulls Donut into Eegee’s, a pub in Point Mongo. Donut is trembling after Mongo runs off. As she insists with increasing urgency that they go back to rescue Mongo, Carl checks her for a magical debuff that might explain what he views as uncharacteristically irrational behavior, but he finds none. Donut confesses her escalating terror that Mongo won’t return, and when Carl presses further, she confesses that everyone always abandons her, that she fears Carl will die doing dangerous things, and that she fears Mongo will leave for another dinosaur.

Carl realizes that something on the social-media board triggered her distress. Donut’s friend Zev, an entry-level employee of the Borant Corporation who works to coordinate crawlers’ television appearances, interrupts with a message changing their meeting time and encouraging Donut—an uncharacteristic nudge that Carl reads as a warning to drop his questioning. Donut brings up the curse that will trap her on the ninth floor until the entire Blood Sultanate royal family is dead. Carl cups Donut’s face and makes a solemn promise: He won’t leave her on the ninth or any other floor. Donut begins to recover.

Mongo’s location appears on the map. Donut rushes outside to find him stumbling drunkenly back to town, where he collapses with full health. The female dinosaurs at the forest edge now show as white dots, except for Kiwi, who remains hostile to Carl. Carl receives the achievement Double-Billed! with a Platinum Fan Box reward. A missile detonation sounds in the distance, and they prepare to return to work.

Carl and Donut find Mordecai at Point Mongo’s northern gate during heavy rain. A guard has shot down a hunter who was using a Levitation spell, trapping the hunter in a tree across the river, with seven white dots (signifying non-hunters) and two elites hidden nearby.

A flashback shows Quasar, Carl’s appointed attorney, negotiating with an administrator from the Borant Corporation: He secures four bodyguards and two spells for Carl and Donut and arranges for the secondary program Vengeance of the Daughter to have an extension license allowing its elites to reach the ninth floor. He bluffs that Sensation Entertainment has already agreed, though they remain unavailable. Back in the present, Carl messages Quasar but receives only an automated reply.

Carl decides to confront the elites. Near the bridge, Tsarina Signet emerges with an ogre named Areson the Wise and six small, stout warriors—one of whom Carl identifies as Clint Smashgrab, a were-kin. A giant yellow caterpillar named Nadine climbs down from the tree, revealing that she’s been holding the hunter—Bravvo, an unaffiliated level-50 yenk—in place. Signet asks Carl what he would like to do with Bravvo, and Carl says, “Heal him.” Nonetheless, he slips the Ring of Divine Suffering onto his finger and kills him.

Killing Bravvo gains Carl only one dexterity point. He loots the body, collecting potions, an enchanted sword, and various gear. Donut asks Signet about her rain-repelling effect, which Signet reveals is a curse.

Signet explains that Areson is helping defend them from invaders from Zockau and that Nadine was originally a teacher from the peaceful Chee race before her transformation into a were-kin. Signet shares her history: Her naiad princess mother was killed in a revolution; her father, King Finian, is also dead; and her half-sister Imogen now rules the High Elves. Exiled by both peoples as a child, Signet offers to help Donut reclaim her own crown, but Donut explains that she has already conquered Cleveland and secured the Grand Champion title.

Signet reveals that the six warriors are were-castors—Chee was transformed by a younger Imogen, who also attacked their village, transforming the schoolchildren and their instructor Nadine. These six have spent their entire lives fighting for survival. Signet’s goal is to destroy both the Naiad Confederacy and the High Elves.

Donut complains to Carl about the predictable revenge storyline they have become involved in. Donut and Zev discuss the ratings for the show Vengeance of the Daughter, which were strong when Carl and Donut were involved on the third floor but have since lagged. Zev notes that fans worry that Carl and Donut’s return might overshadow the main storyline.

Areson returns carrying the corpse of a hunter from The Dream faction. Carl loots the body, finding a crude map showing the Hunting Grounds divided into territories claimed by factions including The Hive, The Dream, Skull Empire, and others. It lists specific crawlers claimed by each group—Carl and Donut are claimed by both The Hive and the Skull Empire, while The Dream has only one target: Louis. Carl sends a group message warning other crawlers; Louis responds dismissively.

They arrive at Signet’s camp, where about 70 allies have gathered. Quasar sends an update: Sensation Entertainment has agreed to the ninth-floor extension but hasn’t yet signed, and he warns Carl not to upstage Signet, or they might eliminate him. The 150-million-credit bribe remains likely impossible to solve.

A new quest appears: the Vengeance of the Daughter, Part One of Two, requiring them to help Signet assault Fort Freedom and assassinate the leaders of the Naiad Confederacy.