Carl and Donut enter the safe room to find Mordecai wearing earmuffs: Samantha—a banished deity inhabiting the detached head of a sex doll—is screeching because Donut accidentally told her about Signet. Samantha demands to be taken to Signet, claiming that she’s her third cousin thrice removed and that Signet can restore her body. Carl agrees to bring Samantha to the assault on the naiad castle if she stops screaming.

Zev initiates the transfer to Odette’s show. Carl and Donut appear in a security checkpoint with a glass floor and near-zero gravity. Looking down through the transparent surface, Carl sees Earth below—the Indian Ocean and the edge of Madagascar—and is moved to tears. Donut becomes nauseated in the low gravity. After a brief search by armored guards, they’re teleported away.

Carl and Donut arrive in Odette’s greenroom. Zev is present in person. Odette appears as a hologram and reveals that Carl’s ex-girlfriend Beatrice is alive—she had Beatrice removed from Earth’s surface to prevent bounty hunters from selling her to Borant. She’s also using Beatrice’s existence to blackmail Borant for a higher revenue share, though Odette downplays this motivation. Another program plans to ambush Carl with the information, which is why Odette is revealing it now. She requests permission to bring Beatrice on the show for a reunion.

Carl angrily refuses, accusing Odette of manipulating the situation for ratings. Donut overrides him and agrees to do the interview, asking Carl to trust her. Zev whispers urgently to Carl that Donut is going to need him and urges him to stay quiet.

The interview begins without a studio audience. A censored video segment explains details about survivors on Earth’s surface and illegal bounty hunting, followed by Odette presenting a false narrative claiming that the Borant Corporation rescued Beatrice—Carl’s ex-girlfriend and the person who owned Princess Donut before the Collapse, when Donut was a normal, non-talking cat—from pirates.

Beatrice appears as a hologram—thin, shell-shocked, and visibly older, in a formal red gown. She seems confused and is surprised to realize that Donut can talk, and her vague responses contradict elements of Odette’s cover story. When she tries to hug Carl, her arms pass through him. Donut remains pointedly aloof throughout.

After the interview ends, Donut unleashes an emotional tirade: She accuses Beatrice of pretending to love her while planning to abandon her. She admits that she still loves and misses Beatrice but says that Beatrice doesn’t deserve her sadness. She declares that Carl is her person now and always has been. Carl supports Donut and tells Beatrice goodbye.

An Admin Notice announces that Carl and Donut have lost The Valtay Corporation as a sponsor due to a conflict of interest. A planet-wide message follows: The Valtay Corporation has acquired 51% of the Borant Corporation through a Syndicate court ruling. Borant remains in charge of the crawl, but regency has been granted to the Valtay. Donut makes the cryptic remark, “She did it” (181), confusing Carl.

In the greenroom, while surveillance systems are briefly offline during the Borant-to-Valtay transfer, Odette’s producer, Lexis, rapidly relays secret information from Odette. The people in charge of the Vengeance of the Daughter storyline are introducing a new character: Queen Imogen of the High Elves. She will be a country-level boss and most likely a repurposed human. They plan to reveal her at the Butcher’s Masquerade. The top 50 crawlers will be forcibly transferred to a party at the High Elf castle that will end in a massive battle designed to eliminate them. The Valtay want to install their own chosen crawlers at the top, making them dangerous despite having sponsored Carl.

Before the transfer ends, Donut accidentally confesses that she smuggled secret agents from the Valtay corporation to Zev and the Borant Emancipation Front, shocking both Carl and Lexis. She never expected that her efforts to bring down Borant would simply facilitate a corporate takeover by Valtay. Carl and Donut are immediately returned to the safe room.

Mordecai notes that the shop is still using kua-tin software, meaning the dungeon’s fantasy theme will remain consistent. Carl feels overwhelmed by the recent revelations, particularly Donut’s dangerous confession. He pauses at the Emberus shrine before they settle in to sleep.

After their rest, Carl and Donut watch the recap episode: Vrah and other mantis creatures killing crawlers, various jungle deaths, an abridged version of Mongo’s mating encounter, and Lucia Mar killing a boss using her Damage Reflect spell. The show then depicts Katia’s group raiding a dryad town while hunting Eva, who is thwarted by a counterspell from guildmaster Imani, one of Carl and Donut’s closest allies. Imani now has solid ethereal wings, glowing skull face paint, and can fly.

A planet-wide announcement confirms that the crawl will proceed normally despite new management. New rules are announced: Hunters can no longer communicate with anyone outside the dungeon, and the top 1,000 crawlers can now see their rankings.

Carl receives his platinum fan box reward: a virtual fan booth at CrawlCon, including judging a juvenile art contest, a panel moderated by Circe Took of The Hive, and an autograph session. Carl isn’t interested in attending the con and suggests sending Donut instead. When Zev tells him that he must attend without Donut, he worries that Donut will be upset that she can’t attend. When Donut arrives and learns of the fan box, her reaction confirms Carl’s worry. At Katia’s suggestion, The Royal Court of Princess Donut joins Safehome Yolanda, controlled by Team Meadowlark with Imani as guildmaster. Their beds upgrade to the Instacot 60, providing a Great Rest bonus with a 15% stat increase. A distant explosion shakes the safe room, and Clint bangs on the door, warning that the town is under attack. Carl and Donut rush outside to find Clint transformed into a were-beaver. High Elf hunters from The Dream faction are lobbing poison-gas rocks at Point Mongo from a trebuchet in the distant woods.

The poison has no effect on Carl, Donut, the guards, or the were-beavers, but Mongo must be stored away, and the ursine take cover as buildings are destroyed.

Carl retrieves Samantha and duct-tapes a miniature seeking missile to her head. Since Samantha is immortal, she can sustain an infinite number of explosions without being harmed. After an initial failed test, Carl attaches two missiles to Samantha, takes a Levitation potion, and drinks an intelligence-boosting potion for better aim. He locates two hunters approximately 1.5 kilometers away and hurls Samantha toward them. She triggers the missiles and crashes into the woods. Carl receives an experience notification for one kill. Samantha returns via recall with an unconscious elf clamped in her mouth.

The elf, Akland, is a level-51 Moon Elf from The Dream faction. After Donut heals him, he pleads for his life and explains that he’s an accountant who won a spot on the faction’s team through a fantasy hunter camp and then was offered money to hunt in the Hunting Grounds, believing it would be safe. Carl uses the Ring of Divine Suffering to kill Akland despite his protests.

A system message congratulates Carl on leveling up the Ring of Divine Suffering, which now awards two stat points per kill instead of one. He has reached level 55 and gained one constitution point. While Holger and Clint watch in animal form, Carl loots Akland’s body.

Donut scolds Carl for his brutal execution, but he explains that he wanted to vent his anger once before killing cleanly going forward. He offers Donut an Enchanted Obsidian Bracelet looted from the elf, which grants stat boosts and allows the wearer to cast a level-10 Fireball once every 20 minutes. Carl warns Donut about using Fireball in confined spaces.

Samantha rolls away and insults a nearby ursine cleric. Donut expresses concern that Samantha is growing stronger than expected. Carl uneasily acknowledges this but notes that they still need Samantha for the upcoming naiad castle assault.

A crawler note from Drakea describes a strategy to financially harm the Naga (a race of cobra-headed aliens who controlled hunters and crawlers until Drakea bankrupted them 250 years ago) by engineering conflicts between hunters and elite beasts, exploiting the insurance system.

The time to level collapse is 11 days and eight hours, and Carl has collected 38 hunting trophies. Carl receives his first boon from the fire god Emberus—a 50% damage boost to fire spells for 30 hours—which is useless since Carl has no fire spells. In heavy rain, the group locates the second hunter’s decapitated corpse and loots it. They discover the hunters’ trebuchet, an Enchanted Venomous Elven Rock Chucker, which Carl claims and stores in a new Siege Equipment inventory tab. Carl mentally runs through his overwhelming schedule: securing another town, dealing with a quest involving a dinosaur named Kiwi, attending virtual CrawlCon events thanks to his fan box, and managing the Vengeance of the Daughter storyline. He suspects that the show’s producers will engineer a tragic ending for Signet before the floor’s main climax. As night falls, A sudden lightning flash erupts from their destination, and Donut’s map shows that Signet’s team has been attacked by hunters. Samantha rushes ahead—as a disembodied head, she moves by rolling along the ground like a ball. Since she can’t die, she often serves as a scout, investigating potentially dangerous situations ahead of the others. The group soon hears her shouting for help.

The group rushes toward the sound of Samantha’s shouting. Carl pulls her free of the mud she’s stuck in as Clint finds them and explains that three Skull Empire hunters ambushed the team near an outcropping of the all-tree—a surface manifestation of a single massive underground tree whose roots span the entire forest. The outcroppings reflected the hunters’ magic back at them, causing their attack to backfire and killing two of them, leaving one survivor. One of the dead Hunters, named The Talent, has more than 75,000 gold pieces, more than the team has ever found on a single person before. Donut loots his possessions, also finding a credit chit she doesn’t know what to do with. Signet explains that the hunters were preparing an ambush when Edgar—a member of her group who’s a giant tortoise—sensed their presence, forcing them to attack earlier than planned.

Samantha rushes up to Signet—a fellow withering spirit—and begins exclaiming excitedly about her body and breasts. She expects Signet to give up her body and die so that Samantha can take possession of it, leaving behind the sex-doll head she currently inhabits. Signet is both amused and annoyed, and Carl apologizes on Samantha’s behalf. As they prepare to invade Fort Freedom, Samantha nurses a grudge against Signet for refusing her demand.

At the clearing, the group views Fort Freedom from within Edgar’s invisibility spell. The castle sits a quarter mile offshore in severe disrepair. The castle is surrounded by magical traps, but Signet’s Bush Elves set to work disarming them. Signet cries, remembering that the Confederacy killed her mother in a violent coup no real reason. If they had waited just a little longer, they could have assumed power peacefully, but they were too greedy. After her mother’s death, Signet fled and joined the circus. The goal of this invasion is to allow Signet to reclaim her rightful place as ruler of the naiads.

Carl interrogates the captured orc, Future Hunter, about hunting licenses and attack timing. A system message announces that the archer Langley and his entire team, who helped Carl and Donut greatly on the previous floor, have been killed. Future Hunter begs for her life, insisting that she’s a real person, not an NPC. Full of regret and angry at the violent, exploitative system that surrounds him, Carl sacrifices Future Hunter, gaining the magical power to fuel the assault on Fort Freedom by killing her. Signet summons her paper-monster battle squad, and the assault on Fort Freedom begins.

As the assault proceeds, the paper monsters begin floating into the castle from above. While speaking with the ogre Areson, Carl learns that the High Elves secretly assisted the naiad coup that killed Signet’s mother. The naiads currently holding power in Fort Freedom are indebted to the High Elves and largely do their bidding.

Bodies of dead naiads, from Signet’s team, begin floating down the river. Carl realizes that the castle is a trap. Miss Nadine, a giant caterpillar in Signet’s squad, rushes toward the water despite warnings. Carl prepares to teleport Samantha back to the crew, but Samantha begs for more time, shouting, “I almost have him!” (237).

The truck-sized frog-lizard boss Claude Sludgington the Fourth, a level-65 borough boss, materializes next to Carl, throwing everyone backward and shooting lightning from its eyes. When Carl teleported Samantha back to his crew, he didn’t realize that Samantha was already inside Claude’s stomach, thus bringing the monster with her. Miss Nadine attacks to draw Claude’s attention; Claude fires twin lightning bolts at her, and she explodes. Donut’s Fireball punches a hole through the boss’s stomach and sets it ablaze; Mongo dives into the wound as the creature falls directly on top of Carl. Carl finds himself inside Claude’s wounded belly, with Mongo’s claws accidentally tearing into his neck. He drinks a healing potion as the boss explodes in gore.

Carl receives an achievement for completing a quest prematurely but loses the associated reward. Signet’s assault team suffers heavy casualties, including Clint and Miss Nadine.

Holger grieves for Miss Nadine, who had cared for the were-castors like a mother. Samantha reports finding the bodies of the defensive team on the Southern Shore—all the ursine guards were killed by a massive three-toed creature, with pink feathers scattered everywhere. Areson identifies the attacker as Big Tina, a young but dangerous dinosaur who wears a pink feather boa and carries a depleted wand. She has anger issues, particularly toward ursine, and frequently runs away from her mongoliensis pack to attack nearby towns. Carl receives a new quest: to find Big Tina and either kill her or convince her to stop attacking the towns. Signet emerges from the water, frustrated at the unnecessary casualties—the castle was poorly defended, and the Confederacy had already lost control.

A quest update confirms that Vengeance of the Daughter Part One is complete and unlocks Part Two, tasking Carl with helping Signet kill Queen Imogen. Signet explains that she can’t rule because a curse prevents water from touching her skin. The group prepares to leave Fort Freedom and head toward a dryad settlement to the south.

Edgar the tortoise uses a silver needle and material from Miss Nadine’s remains to tattoo a new portrait of Miss Nadine on Signet’s skin. The tattoos on Signet’s body are living blood-and-ink elementals—portraits of fallen companions and worthy enemies. When complete, the Miss Nadine tattoo transforms into a young female Chee, the were-castors’ humanoid form, with a child Clint appearing beside her—his memory preserved within Miss Nadine’s love for him. The surviving were-castors pay their respects before returning to the water to build defenses around the castle.

While Carl and Donut travel, Donut warns Carl that Signet is romantically interested in him. According to the logic of game storylines, the producers will try to kill Carl right after he and Signet have sex for the first time. To prevent this, Donut forbids Carl from being alone with Signet, though Carl doesn’t take this prohibition seriously. Zev sends an urgent warning that Carl has two minutes to reach a safe room before his transfer. The view counter suddenly spikes. Upon entering the village of Alucarda, Carl notices that the town already has a name, suggesting another crawler is present.

At the entrance to a pub, a dryad reports that a new, dangerous woman with two beasts has taken control. The new mayor is Lucia Mar. Before Carl can react or ensure Donut’s safety, he transfers away to the security checkpoint, leaving Donut and Samantha in a town controlled by the volatile crawler.