Alone with Donut in the crafting room, Carl opens two new loot boxes. Ruckus’s boss box gives him more surefire guidance modules and a Jellyfish Salve that only removes a jelly sting’s pain, not its healing block. His delayed silver fan box finally pays off with an enchanted roll of never-ending duct tape, which Carl immediately uses to improve the team’s infiltration setup.

With about forty-five minutes left, the group leaves the safe room and rolls into the desert with the Royal Chariot, archers, copied potions from Mordecai, and a bound, apparently living Wynne as bait. Carl deliberately lets the gnomes on the flying fortress see them through the farseer, drawing down a shielded diplomatic balloon while armed aircraft circle overhead. As the Wasteland moves toward bombing Hump Town, Carl reflects on the gnomes’ lost peaceful past and accepts that he may soon have to kill everyone aboard to protect the town.

The balloon carries a pilot, the negotiator Leon, and a heavily armed Sniper Captain. Donut takes the lead, posing as a healer and demanding passage onto the Wasteland in exchange for curing Wynne, while Firas performs the planned killing of apparent Henrik to reinforce the story. Leon remains suspicious, warns that the town is full of changelings, and insists on checking Wynne and several party members himself before agreeing to anything.

Leon casts a changeling-detection spell on Louis, Donut, and Carl, and all pass. He then examines Wynne, who is actually a temporary resurrection maintained by Donut’s spell, and accepts Donut’s lie that a rare potion can fix Wynne’s ghoul-like condition. The bluff nearly collapses when the resurrection times out and Wynne’s head disintegrates, but Katia covertly replaces it before anyone notices. Leon also searches Henrik’s remains, finds Svern’s corpse underneath, and concludes changelings had seized the town; Carl salvages the negotiation by producing a fake watch the gnomes apparently want.

That combination finally satisfies Leon. He agrees to take Carl, Donut, and Wynne aboard the balloon now and promises to send transport for the others later. Carl pours Mountain Dew down the fake Wynne as the supposed medicine, Donut forces Mongo back into his carrier, and Carl carries the oversized, duct-taped captive toward the basket while quietly ordering the rest of the group to be ready for a fight or emergency escape if the infiltration goes wrong.