Carl and Donut are teleported to the Desperado Club, where they meet Orren, a Syndicate Liaison who investigates extreme circumstances. Orren explains that while 15 admins have been killed this season, Loita’s death is unique because the method is unclear. He presents an elaborate theory: the disco ball residue chemically reacted with the robot’s Zentix polymer panel, accelerated by moisture from Loita’s breathing device, causing it to fall off and trigger the explosion.

Orren offers Carl a deal—confess and possibly survive or reveal his outside information source for a legendary box—but Carl refuses both. The case is closed for lack of consensus, though Borant receives a punishment: no third-party teleports for crawlers for the remainder of the floor, canceling their next appearance on the show hosted by Odette. Orren reveals the fish-like Kua-Tin, who run the crawl, intervened to save Carl because he is too valuable.

They learn they have been held for five days. As Carl leaves, Orren’s hood slips, revealing he is a Valtay worm in a liquid-filled bowl. Carl thinks about how he actually just used a piece of his own thumbnail to shim the robot’s flimsy back panel.

After being held for five days following Loita’s death, Luis and Firas arrive in the flying house, which has had its top half crudely removed to detach the master bedroom stairwell. Firas explains that Katia briefly stored the house in her inventory until a patch—or a technical update—to the inventory system ejected it, nearly crushing them in a pub. In the dungeon system, an inventory has a predetermined size disproportionate to the size of carrier, hence why larger items can fit in it. The stairwell remains guarded in the desert by Langley’s men, the group of Finnish archers Carl met earlier.

They fly to the Land Quadrant, where Carl meets Gwendolyn Duet, a level 34 human fighter. Katia explains via chat her conflict with Gwen over strategy: Gwen wants to use the easy method of flooding the castle from the necropolis, which would destroy the winding box, a piece of the artifact they need. Katia’s method, insisted upon by Zev, requires using the towers as lightning rods to power a magical door during the sandstorm, creating a temporary glass hallway.

At the castle entrance, Carl notices one electrical cable is redundant and theorizes it connects to the drainage wheel. He has Tran, one of Gwen’s crawlers, run the cable to the wheel but leave it disconnected from the tower. When lightning strikes, the door transforms into a glowing glass hallway. Katia rushes inside, and the others follow.

The Land Quadrant fortress, called the Sandcastle, is entirely made of glass—walls, floors, furniture, and even a glass statue of Lika, a half-naad (water nymph) woman, in a fountain. When Mongo sniffs the statue, it topples and shatters. Carl messages Gwen to confirm the contingency: keep the tower connection off, with the cable staged at the drainage wheel.

They descend to the basement and find a normal wooden door leading to a messy chamber. Through a peephole, Carl sees Ghazi, a disheveled man in a bathrobe living atop a sandy floor. His system description reveals he came to summon the banished God of Lust, Yarilo, to make a fictional character he’s attracted to, Lika, real, but was tricked into summoning the banished lesser deity Psamathe instead.

When Donut knocks over magazines to lure Ghazi out, Katia pulls Carl back from the door as the sand begins oozing toward them. Carl casts Protective Shell just as the door explodes. Donut casts Wall of Fire, setting the room ablaze. Ghazi flees the flames, grabs a leather bag containing the winding box, and tells them the creature will not follow them upstairs. Carl lies that he is from the college, and when Ghazi confirms he has the winding box, Carl punches him unconscious, takes the bag, and the party flees upstairs with Katia carrying the mage.

The sand ooze is identified as an entity, Mrs. Ghazi, a level 52 borough boss and minion of Psamathe. Carl examines the bag and finds the winding box and a letter from the council of the Larracos College of Magecraft from the ninth floor. The letter confirms Ghazi summoned Psamathe, who has possessed the ghost of Queen Quetzalcoatlus, a pterodactyl known to haunt the necropolis, and orders him to banish everything to the Nothing using the winding box.

Under interrogation, Ghazi reveals the ooze is his wife, created when he was tricked by Psamathe. He consummated the marriage in the dark while drunk, not realizing it was sand. The real Lika is a personal-companion device (sex doll) that was turned to glass in the fountain, which the party had already shattered.

The party devises a plan to kill the ooze by attacking its core beneath Ghazi’s recliner. Carl uses his Sticky Feet ability to walk upside down on the ceiling while Katia distracts the ooze. He applies flammable gel to the recliner and ignites it, but the intense heat causes the ceiling to collapse, burying him and Donut in sand just as the boss dies.

To rescue the trapped Carl and Donut, Gwen has Tran partially open the necropolis drainage valve at Carl’s desperate urging. A violent torrent of water blasts through the collapsed castle, flushing Carl and Donut into the Water Quadrant. They survive the flush, though Donut is knocked unconscious and requires healing. They find themselves 150 meters below the ocean surface, surrounded by debris and corpses. A large predator is attracted by the blood. Donut awakens and begins to panic.