Carl faces Heather the Bear, a level 19 neighborhood boss, while Tsarina Signet watches from a nearby building and continues her ritual. After Mordecai warns Carl to avoid a bear’s hug and use Protective Shell, Heather attacks with long worm-claws that wrap around Carl, burrow into his skin, and speak directly into his mind about feeding him to the clowns. Carl activates Protective Shell, which severs the worms and blasts Heather backward, then realizes he must end the fight quickly before those parasites can reach him again.

Carl counterattacks by scattering junk to trip Heather, smashing a jug of moonshine onto her, and setting her on fire. Even burning, Heather keeps coming, so Carl uses his Fireball or Custard lottery ticket and gets the bad result: a giant ball of strawberry custard. Instead of simply healing the boss, the custard destroys the worms controlling Heather and restores the real, elderly bear for a brief moment. Seeing that Heather is dying anyway and wants the suffering ended, Carl kills her cleanly, wins the solo boss fight, gains a level, and watches Heather’s blood rise through the air into Signet’s spell.

While Signet’s ritual completes inside a shell of smoke, Mordecai congratulates Carl, confirms Donut is still alive but asleep, and reports that the mysterious program is likely called Vengeance of the Daughter. Carl loots Heather’s body, receives a neighborhood map upgrade, and sees the circus defenses massed nearby. When Signet emerges, she is accompanied by a huge host of summoned blood-and-ink elementals: enormous tattoo monsters that look like paper cutouts but are powerful enough to fight. Signet explains that Heather’s blood let her summon her full retinue, thanks Carl for freeing Heather, and says Carl only needs to help with the final barrier.

Carl follows Signet’s army toward the circus under heavy attack from artillery, lemurs, mold lions, and clowns. Mordecai explains that Signet is using Ink Marauder, a blood-magic summoning spell that animates drawn or tattooed monsters, and later learns the cure for Donut’s Water Lily sleep curse requires Satch Toad extract mixed with a healing potion, but he cannot get it in this town. Carl also contacts Zev, who says the producers and the Syndicate referee will allow help only under strict conditions, so Carl tells her to stay ready for later. As the battle continues, Carl sees that the paper elementals are far more effective than he expected and quickly break the circus’s outer defenses.

The summoned army overruns the smaller tents and drives the remaining defenders into the big top, but Signet carefully avoids destroying the circus fabric. At the main tent, Signet stops the calliope and tries to break the big top’s exterior protection with a giant sea serpent elemental, but ancient magic blocks the attack. Signet then reveals the real problem: because she has been banished, neither she nor her minions can enter, even though the interior can be damaged. Carl must use a magical big top ticket for safe passage through the public areas, go inside alone, destroy the three support poles located in the rings, and then reach the vine in the center ring to bring the tent down.