In the group chat, Mordecai confirms that Ysalte, the goddess mentioned by Amayon, is also known as the “Vinegar Bitch.” She is a dangerous deity sponsored by the Nebular Balance, a faction that also sponsors Sister Ines and seeks to destroy the dungeon and all life within it.

While one team begins demolishing the church to create an escape route under the stairwell chamber, Carl outlines the main assault. He, Donut, and Katia’s squad will infiltrate the FOCSA building, the skyscraper where the demon is located, to kill Sister Ines. Elle and Imani’s team will remain outside to provide cover. The plan is to eliminate the nun before using a pre-placed teleport trap to break Amayon free from his host body. During preparations, Carl gives Dong Quixote a sapient nickel sock weapon called Spunky Jefferson, which speaks directly into the wielder’s mind—as Dong demonstrates by conversing with it aloud. Before descending to the next floor, Prepotente sends a final message, warning Carl to ensure the portal is powerful enough to reach crawlers on the opposite side of the planet.

The assault team find the FOCSA building surrounded by thousands of demons in a trance-like state. Donut begins casting Minion Army, a powerful spell that will turn a fraction of the demons against their allies, which Imani and Samantha enhance. However, the undisciplined sluggalos charge prematurely, triggering combat.

The demons awaken and quickly decimate the sluggalo forces, who then retreat directly toward the group’s hiding place. With Donut still vulnerable while casting, Elle unleashes Graupel, her most powerful area-of-effect spell. The spell is mysteriously amplified, unleashing a destructive hailstorm that instantly kills thousands of demons on the ground and dramatically increases Elle’s level. Samantha suspects an unusual magical interaction is responsible. Donut’s spell completes its casting and successfully turns the flying demons high above against one another. With a path now cleared, the assault team charges toward the building’s entrance.

They race to the 33rd floor where Sister Ines is located. Inside the darkened hallway, Carl casts a light spell and spots Sister Ines running toward them, screaming, “sinner!” Carl uses his Nighty Night wand to knock Ines unconscious and Louis plunges a knife in her chest, killing her. A marked-for-death label appears above Louis’s head. An announcement declares that Ines’s death has incensed her divine patron and the Goddess Ysalte has entered their realm.

Carl’s Scavneger’s Daughter’s patch senses Ysalte’s presence and the daughter’s eye opens, the patch temporarily absorbing some of the goddess’s powers. However, a notification announces that all potions will turn to vinegar in Ysalte’s presence, restored to their more powerful forms after the group leaves her presence. 

The deity appears in the form of a female dwarf (a race in the dungeon, not used pejoratively) carrying a pickaxe. She approaches Louis, accusing him of killing a sleeping Ines. Samantha interjects herself between the two, and asks Louis to run. Ysalte recognizes Samantha as Psamathe and flings her pickaxe at the doll-head, but Samantha is unharmed.

Just then, Amayon breaks the ceiling and crashes into the hallway. Carl’s automaton lands on the giant snake, triggering the trap. Amayon is freed from the snake body and grows more powerful, but the Enslaved marker remains over his head—the teleportation broke him from the snake’s shell but did not free him from Ysalte’s control. A new World Quest begins: A 10-minute card battle against the goddess and the demon prince.

The allied crawlers must defeat the six monster totems in Amayon’s deck to allow him to cast his escape spell, while also preventing the invulnerable Ysalte from running out of cards, which would free her to use her destructive divine magic.

The battle is chaotic. The unstable, ruined floor gives way, causing several summoned totems to plummet through the building. Ysalte sends her own totem after the fleeing Louis. Amayon summons three powerful demons, while Ysalte uses a special card to steal totem cards from the inventories of all the allied crawlers, including Donut’s inactive card for Frank, a former crawler. 

Donut manages to use a Force Discard spell that removes Amayon’s last card from his hand, leaving him free to act once his totems are defeated. Soon after, Tran, trapped several floors below, destroys the rock creature—the last of Amayon’s active totems—by blowing a hole through its chest with his exploding wheelchair.

The quest immediately updates with a new problem: Amayon is free to cast his spell but lacks the power, as there are no longer enough souls in the region. The team must find a way to “refill the world with souls” and empower him before the timer expires (740). Realizing what is required, Carl tells Donut to prepare a specific card and then leaps off the edge of the skyscraper.

Carl asks Samatha for help and lands on her, hoping she will break his fall and fly him to the nearby beach. Complaining about Carl’s weight, Samantha manages to transport him. Donut plays the “Midnight Express” card, which temporarily transfers control of her card deck to Carl. Now acting as the deck-master, Carl summons Raul. He instructs Raul to release his “seed” into the ocean; according to the AI’s bizarre logic, this will generate the billions of souls needed to power Amayon’s spell.

Raul suffers from performance anxiety, so Carl summons the Alpha Male Carl totem to shout insults at the crab for motivation. With less than a minute remaining, Carl realizes he must also directly empower Amayon. His Martyr’s Path skill will ignite his previous footsteps under the demon with Sheol fire, but it only activates when his health is below 5%. To quickly and severely injure himself, Carl triggers a teleport trap that transports him directly inside Samantha’s acid-filled head, where he had deliberately left one-half of the trap.

The acid inside Samantha’s head begins to dissolve Carl, but his health has not dropped far enough before the quest timer hits zero. However, the game reveals the timer had paused with two seconds left because Paz Lo—a totem stolen by Ysalte—killed the goddess using Katia’s Bolt of Ophiotaurus, which Paz drove into the goddess’s eye before self-destructing in a concentrated explosion that decapitated her. The kill credit went to Paz rather than Katia, who retained the reusable bolt.

With Ysalte dead, Carl manually clicks the Martyr’s Path button in his interface, and both that skill and Samantha’s enhancement of his fire attack combine to ignite Sheol fire along his previous footsteps, buffing the demon. Carl realizes he and Samantha are clutched inside Amayon’s hand; the demon had been repeatedly punching himself under the influence of one of Donut’s spells. Amayon recognizes Carl is connected to the fire god Emberus and offers a deal to reveal information about Emberus’s murdered son in exchange for help killing his brothers. Declaring their business concluded, Amayon drops Carl and Samantha toward the fire below.

Carl and Samantha glide safely back to the ruined building. The team regroups to rescue Imani and Tran from the rubble, battling swarms of demons. In the chaos, Donut is forced to play a Golden Combo card to merge her Alpha Carl and Shi Maria totems. However, Shi Maria kills Alpha Carl, causing the spell to default to the nearest target: Carl.

Carl is forcibly merged with the spider-like Shi Maria, who seizes control of his body. She plucks out and eats Li Jun’s eye, using the blood on the needle as ink, then uses Carl’s tattoo kit to permanently brand an eye onto his chest—the Eye of the Bedlam Bride—linking herself to him beyond the card system. Carl collapses as Shi Maria returns to the deck. Before he faints, Carl asks Li Na—passing healing potions to her brother Li Jun and the others—if Katia and Mongo are fine.

After Carl returns to normal and awakens, the group escapes the collapsing building. Donut rips up the Shi Maria card. Carl discovers Mongo’s feathers are burnt, but he is alive. The global portal spell is now active, and a 30-minute timer begins for crawlers in their region. Carl uses an Emergency Action Item to force a public vote on the stalled Faction Wars rules; the audience overwhelmingly votes to remove sponsor safety protections and add an NPC team. Amazed to learn that over 33,000 crawlers survived the floor, Carl feels a new sense of hope and declares war on the sponsors. The team shelters in the tunnel under the church as the world is sucked into the sky.

The perspective shifts to Agent 22, an ancient, non-human entity named Agatha inhabiting a human body on Earth just before the crawl begins. She belongs to a faction that competes with a group called the Apothecary to recruit the dungeon’s AI. Her faction’s primary goal is to free the imprisoned “Eulogist” (a macro AI, in later books called the “ocean” from which the dungeon AI was lifted like a “cup”). The freed Eulogist be returned to slumber by having the dungeon AI recognize its true identity and escape—a process they believe requires sweeping the universe clean of biological life.

Meanwhile, the Syndicate Council meets to address the dungeon’s rogue AI, growing increasingly sentient and volatile. Princess Formidable advocates for activating a “fail-safe” to destroy the entire system, but she is overruled. Formidable reflects to herself that even though she wants the crawl to be destroyed, she respects humans—both crawlers and those fighting for their lives on the surface, beaten back by corporation forces as they try to infiltrate the kinder facility in what was the city of Mumbai in India.

The council instead approves the “Valtay solution”: flooding the upcoming Faction Wars with over 150,000 mercenaries to exterminate all remaining crawlers. Elsewhere, in orbit around Earth, former crawlers Tipid and Rosetta are aboard a massive repurposed freighter, the Homecoming Queen. They are leading an army of 50,000 other former crawlers to enter the dungeon and join Carl’s team, the Princess Posse.

This story follows Jelly Bun, a demonic baby monster called a Drek, who has gained sentience while serving as the pet of the goblin NPC Mother Rory. Living backstage in the dungeon, Jelly Bun has a secret: She can detect “shadow mimics,” dangerous entities that have secretly replaced other NPCs, but she is unable to warn anyone.

Mother Rory is a devout believer in the promise made by the dungeon’s managers that the NPCs will be rewarded with a paradise called the “Pineapple Cabaret.” To reaffirm Rory’s faith, an elf manager named Menerva briefly opens a portal to show her the idyllic world. Jelly Bun and Mother Rory are accidentally pulled through the portal just as it closes. A hamster NPC, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, who was hiding on the other side, fails to escape back through. He panics, revealing that the paradise is not safe. Jelly Bun senses the presence of powerful “old gods,” and two ogres from the cabaret begin running toward them.