Carl escapes the collapsing municipal building by pulling his rope back into his inventory and dropping onto the rubble. As he and Donut flee, Carl spots an apparently enchanted glass display case from Miss Quill's collection and takes it with him. Outside, they watch the rest of the building cave in and conclude they still have not completed the quest: they now understand how the dead women were falling into the alleys, but not the full reason why. Carl senses Remex across the street in the Swordsmen depot and decides they must go there to finish the job.

In the street, Carl and Donut are approached by Daniel Bautista 2, the crawler whose quest they accidentally disrupted by killing Miss Quill first. Bautista confirms Quill's home was packed with stuffed figures, then asks about the circus victims from his family. Carl tells him the lemurs are dead and his relatives have been avenged. Bautista, grieving as the last survivor of his family group, shares his despair and gives Carl his contact information, offering to repay the debt if needed.

After Bautista leaves, Carl and Donut briefly talk about what they would have wanted from life outside the dungeon. Carl admits he would have preferred working alone in the woods as a forester, while Donut says she wants to write television with Zev and create something better than the deadly spectacle surrounding them. The conversation ends when Donut asks whether they are stopping for the night or fighting the lich, and Carl chooses to press on.

Carl and Donut prepare an assault on the Swordsmen depot before dawn, while the town's inactive armored guardians remain in stasis below. Following Mordecai's advice about liches being talkative, cowardly narcissists, Carl decides to threaten the entire building with destruction in order to force information out of Remex. He plants ten sticks of goblin dynamite around the structure, while Fitz's alarm draws a large crowd of armed NPCs to the scene. Because of the risk of mind control, Carl gives Katia the detonator and orders her to blow the building if he dies or gives the word.

With sunrise approaching and the armor soon to reactivate, Carl and Donut enter the depot and climb toward the upper room where Remex is supposedly hiding. Donut reports that the creature inside is moving away rather than preparing to attack. Carl announces that killing him will also doom the thing inside because of the explosives, then reaches the room and finally sees the monster cowering in the corner. The sight instantly overturns their assumptions: Carl realizes the enemy waiting for them is not a lich at all.