Carl enters a room to judge a children’s art contest alongside Hurk, a gleener in a water tank, and G’valt, a dour Bactrian camel. He judges honestly until he encounters Lix, the security guard’s grandchild. Honoring his bargain, Carl and Hurk award her drawing a perfect score despite its lack of artistic merit. Lix is declared the winner, to the displeasure of the Eyber faction, whose entry had won the previous day. After the panel ends, Hurk warns Carl that his next panel will be moderated by the mother of a hunter he killed. Audiences are expecting something dramatic to happen.

Carl returns to his greenroom, where Zev downplays the danger involved in meeting the mother of someone he killed. The moderator is Circe Took, a mantis hive queen whose daughter Xindy was killed by Carl, but Zev notes that Mantises have thousands of children and that Circe probably took little notice of Xindy’s death. Zev warns him to avoid discussing mantis government and departs. Two gnoll guards install a tier-three bed and a tier-four Ultimate Training Room.

The training room is an advanced facility combining multiple workshop types, with an AI trainer who can answer questions and provide guidance. Carl learns that he needs a hypnotist’s bench, necromancer’s altar, or spider nursery to complete his explosive minion weapon concept. The trainer helps him improve his sticky-bomb formula over a two-hour module. Carl then trains his Powerful Strike skill to level 10 before the guards collect him.

While walking through the facility, Carl briefly reads a panel above a door, confused that he can suddenly read Syndicate Standard text. The two gnolls settle in a corner and begin smoking illicit substances.

Carl virtually joins three panelists: Uptown Hal, a former game guide; Sydnee Iglacia, a crawl historian; and Drick, a scarred Moon Elf and former crawler. They can’t see him yet and don’t know that he can hear them as they talk about the likelihood that he will be killed during the panel. Circe Took arrives and immediately attempts to kill Carl, but her blade-arm passes through his virtual form. Carl taunts her about killing her daughter.

When Circe begins a tedious lecture on crawl history, Carl interrupts by banging his head on the table and declaring that she has bored him to death. He addresses the audience directly, sarcastically promotes Sydnee’s book, and proposes crowdsourcing strategies to kill Vrah and Circe’s remaining daughters. Circe orders Carl’s mic cut, but an Apothecary sponsor representative intervenes to let Carl continue. Circe begins to storm out after Carl promises to kill all her remaining daughters, but she stops short when she hears Carl ask the audience for ideas on how to kill Vrah.

Carl delivers an impassioned speech accusing the audience of complicity in the corporate system that turns the suffering and death of crawlers like him into mass entertainment. He spends the rest of the panel soliciting tactical advice from the audience and panelists on defeating mantis hunters, with Uptown Hal and Drick providing analysis while the crowd eagerly participates. Carl promises to return the next day with the heads of Circe’s daughters if successful. On the way back to his greenroom, he receives a message from Donut warning him not to go to the saferoom, as it’s a trap. In the greenroom, he finds an Automaton Table and an autographed copy of Dr. Ratchet’s Guide to Building Automatons for Fun and Profit waiting for him. He takes both, puts on the Ring of Divine Suffering, and prepares to return to the dungeon.

The narrative flashes back to the panel that just concluded, where Carl discusses strategies for defeating the mantis hunters with the audience. They suggest targeting the mantises’ unarmored necks, using fast-acting poison, and exploiting their vulnerability to loud sounds with alarm traps. Carl also learns that the Nebular Sin Patrol is a religious cult that views crawlers from seeded planets as abominations and that the Nebulars have a historical conflict with a mantis faction called the Burrowers.

In the greenroom, Zev tells him that the panel he’s just concluded is already fueling gossip throughout the conference. He learns that Donut is in the guildhall, while Lucia Mar waits in the safe room with teleportation traps set. Samantha reports that mantis and Nebular hunters are waiting outside, having learned Carl’s exact location from a dryad informant. Despite the danger, Carl feels a strange calm before teleporting back, asking Zev to watch over Donut if he dies.

Carl teleports into the village of Alucarda and immediately slams face-first into the safe room door. With Donut helping via remote chat, he tricks Lucia into absconding with a fake Donut instead of the real one. He then defeats most of the mantis warriors and Nebular priests in the area, losing half his health in the process.

Samantha reports that Vrah was waiting at Lucia’s teleport destination and that the two fought before Lucia escaped. Carl crashes through a temple roof into the desecrated Temple of Diwata. He runs toward the safe room as Vrah lands, now level 74 and covered with the heads of her victims. When Langley’s reanimated head bites Vrah’s exposed neck, Carl stabs her with the Arrow of Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea. Her shield activates, ejecting the heads and throwing Carl back. Donut, who had sneaked out invisibly, casts Second Chance spells on Carl. They dive into the safe room, where Carl finds a bomb. He kicks the bomb out toward the remaining mantises and slams the door before it detonates.

Vrah and Lucia both escaped, but the other mantis warriors are dead. Realizing that the only way Vrah can free herself of the magical gonorrhea infection is by passing it on to another mantis, Carl sends a note to the last mantis on the floor—a male merchant in Zockau—offering protection in exchange for all his gear.

Carl sends Bomo to Zockau with the note. The rest of Carl’s guild gathers: Katia, Elle, Imani, Bautista, Louis, Firas, Gwen, Tran, and Britney. Bautista reveals that he still has 500 Beanie Babies and has been training as a Swashbuckler with Tran. Louis demonstrates a new team move involving throwing armor onto Katia that auto-equips, with plans to drop giant pieces on her to make her grow larger. Katia privately messages Carl that Louis is insecure after learning that elves hunt him and that she’s building his confidence.

Carl opens his loot boxes and receives several achievements. Donut’s Platinum Box prize adds a vocal-coach training room that boosts her singing skill. Carl receives potions, a cloak for Firas, jacket patches, gold, and a bronze condom for infecting Vrah with a sexually transmitted infection. The Apostate Box awards him a tattoo—Enemy of the Church of Diwata—granting damage bonuses against her adherents but forcing him to avoid the goddess herself.

Carl assigns stat points, bringing his base Strength to 100. He is offered three permanent upgrades and chooses Swole, which grants two strength points for every one point assigned from level-ups.

Carl, Donut, Mordecai, and Mongo watch the recap episode. The show depicts Lucia entering Alucarda in her skeletal form, killing the mayor, and setting teleport traps at every pub. Lucia uses a spell called Loop-de-loop to swap places with Donut, putting Donut between her two massive rottweilers. Donut dodges their attack, injures one dog, and casts Wall of Fire. The fight continues in a tree-house pub, where Donut gets caught in a snare trap. She casts Fireball, injuring Lucia and setting the pub ablaze. Lucia begins acting erratically, demanding milk and talking to an unseen person she calls Alexandro, her youth assistant. When one of the rottweilers enters to attack the trapped Donut, she casts Hole, creating a magical hole that she closes when the dog’s head is through, decapitating it. Donut escapes to the safe room while a distraught Lucia vows revenge.

Mordecai explains that Youth Assistants are caretakers for underage crawlers and shouldn’t be in the dungeon. The daily announcement reveals that hunters are hiding in Zockau and that the top 50 crawlers will be invited to the Butcher’s Masquerade. Bomo returns with Edict, a male mantis merchant, who says that Vrah is coming for him.

Carl confronts Edict in the hallway. Bomo reports that Edict attacked him twice inside the safe room, getting frozen by the system each time. Edict explains that he’s just an accountant and that Vrah is coming to force him to mate with her to cure her infection. He explains his dilemma: Refusing Vrah means her family will ruin his, but mating with her violates mantis cultural law because their families belong to different organizations—such coupling requires licenses and psychological counseling, and the male knows he will have his head eaten during the act. Edict declares that the only way to protect his family’s honor is to die in battle.

As Vrah appears in the hallway, writhing in pain from the gonorrhea, Edict lunges at Carl, committing his third assault against a guild member in a safe zone. The system teleports Edict away naked to the nearest monster nest, and a massive pile of gold coins drops at Carl’s feet. Vrah shrieks, unable to cure herself. Carl and Donut slam their door, trapping most of the gold inside, and switch their portal back to the pub in Alucarda.

Several hours later, Carl, Donut, and Samantha travel south through the jungle. They have claimed two previous ursine settlements. Carl reflects on Edict’s last words and Lucia’s strange behavior. They approach a new town surrounded by a wall of living vines, eerily quiet with no guards. Samantha scouts ahead and reports that the town is filled with days-old corpses and pink feathers. They enter the town, named Prepotente Town Number Four.

Zev messages that the Odette interview was broadcast and that attention on Carl is surging. Carl asks for access to his attorney. They enter a deserted, hockey-themed pub that isn’t a true safe room. Inside, Carl finds a bloody bear claw embedded in the wall.

Carl teleports to a production facility greenroom for his final CrawlCon appearance. He meets Dmitri and Maxim Popov, fraternal twin brothers merged into a two-headed ogre body, ranked number five. Their Nodling race grants them an extra life—they will split into toddlers when they die. Zev informs Carl that his new sponsor will be revealed during the event.

Carl and the Popovs sign autographs for fans. Reporters arrive for a press conference. A disembodied announcer reveals that Carl’s new sponsor is The Plenty, represented by a giant black goat with red eyes that appears briefly and vanishes. A Naga reporter named Nihit aggressively confronts Carl, accusing him of cheating and receiving illegal help. Enraged, Carl stabs Nihit in the neck with the magical autograph pen.

Zev informs Carl that Nihit is fine but pressing charges. She explains the Syndicate’s criminal justice system, where convicted criminals can have their warrants bought out by corporations and are forced to work as indentured servants called franchisees. Carl would likely receive a light sentence that wealthy entities could buy out. Zev reveals that Nihit’s animosity stems from his belief in a conspiracy theory that Carl and Donut are harbingers of an apocalypse. Carl reflects on the danger posed by the “Crown of the Sepsis Whore” (373), which makes Donut a member of the Blood Sultanate’s royal line and will force her to kill all other royals before she can leave the ninth floor.

Carl recounts his CrawlCon experience to Donut and Mordecai. He unexpectedly receives a Silver Benefactor Box from the Apothecary. Donut’s box from the Apothecary contains a silver bracelet granting the same benefits as Carl’s patch: protection against vampirism, lycanthropy, and bonus damage to sapient undead. Mordecai notes that the matching prizes suggest that the Apothecary and The Plenty are working together. Carl’s silver box contains a recipe for a Charm Animal potion and a drawing of Mongo—a recipe that Mordecai has been trying to create for 50 cycles. It requires a liter of blood from the animal to be charmed, and Donut vehemently refuses to allow them to take blood from Mongo. Miriam Dom then sends a distress message: She’s trapped, Prepotente is paralyzed, and she will die at dawn without help.

Miriam explains that Prepotente is paralyzed for 15 more hours with his arm locked around her, and she’s running out of blood potions to survive the daylight. Mordecai warns Carl that helping the vampire might be a trap set by their sponsors. Carl refuses to abandon Miriam. He sews the anti-vampire patch onto his jacket, and Mordecai creates two holy water grenades in case Miriam attacks him.

Carl, Donut, and Mongo enter the dark, rainy pub, where they find a terrified ursine barmaid named Prudence hiding with her two cubs. Prudence tells them that Big Tina is outside and explains the dinosaur’s origin: Long ago, female ursines were transformed into dinosaurs by a cataclysm. Tina was a young bear whose cleric father forbade her from performing ballet; when he discovered a secret recital and attacked Tina’s mother on stage, the cataclysm struck, transforming Tina and other females into dinosaurs. Prudence also reveals that Tina’s mother is Kiwi—the dinosaur Mongo mated with.

Carl’s quest, The Recital, updates: He must either kill Tina or give her what she wants. Donut realizes that Tina wants to finish her dance performance. The bloody bear claw from the wall then reanimates and crawls out of the pub—it’s a Glamoured Fragment, a reanimated body part created by a vampire. The quest updates again with an ominous message: “Strap yourselves in. You don't know the half of it. It's about to get bumpy” (391). Outside, Tina roars.