Carl and Katia use their upgraded engineering and metalworking benches to build a fast, portable vehicle for crossing the desert. Donut names the unfinished machine the Royal Chariot, and Carl accepts the system label even though the vehicle is basically a crude ATV with an attachable cart. Metal tires prove too heavy for sand travel, so Carl and Katia redesign it with a rear tread system and two rubber front wheels. The result is small enough to store in Carl's inventory in two pieces, and Katia's potion-enhanced technical knowledge lets the pair finish it quickly. While working, Carl and Katia also talk about how unnatural skill and hobby potions feel and what that implies about the outside universe.

When Carl and Katia take the Royal Chariot outside Hump Town for a test, the machine climbs dunes well and runs almost silently, but it kicks up a large dust plume and still feels dangerous. During the test, Carl notices the flying gnome fortress Wasteland is moving at the wrong time and heading toward the Bactrian village instead of staying over the bowl's center. Flares rise from the south, Hump Town sounds an alarm, anti-air guns are uncovered on the wall, and more warning flares launch from town. Carl and Katia hurry back, disassemble the vehicle, and then watch bombs begin falling on the distant Bactrian settlement.

Later, as the recap show is about to start, Mordecai and Donut return from shopping with two dromedarian bazooka tubes and ten unguided rockets. Carl takes one missile apart so Mordecai can learn the drive mechanism and help Carl eventually make his own long-range rockets. While they wait, Mordecai explains saferoom rules: true saferooms protect crawlers and some former-crawler or off-world NPCs, but Borant-owned NPCs are usually not protected unless a crawler is present. That means many NPCs in the bombed town may have died unless they were sheltering with crawlers in the right locations.

The recap first revisits the previous floor. Carl's group watches Miriam Dom and Prepotente nearly neutralize a province boss before Quan Ch interferes and ruins their setup. The show then briefly covers Carl's fight with Grull before shifting to a memorial for Ifechi. The footage reveals that Ifechi was a healer woman who partnered with Florin, a heavily armed mercenary-turned-crocodilian crawler. Their teamwork had made them formidable: Ifechi's staff summoned leeches that killed enemies and created consumable buffs, and Florin benefited enormously from those effects.

The memorial then shows Ifechi's death in full. At a stairwell station, Lucia Mar confronts Florin and Ifechi, blocks their exit, and sends her dogs after them. Florin fires on Lucia and both dogs, but Lucia has cast a powerful reflected-damage spell on Ifechi, so Florin's attack destroys Ifechi's head instead of harming Lucia. After Ifechi dies, Lucia reflects damage onto Florin as well, survives another shot, and tumbles down the stairwell laughing while Florin receives kill credit for his partner's death. Mordecai identifies the spell as Rubber, explains why it is so dangerous, and hints it has a major weakness. The recap ends by showing new bubble assignments and the updated top ten, with Carl at number two, Katia off the list, and Florin falling to tenth. Shaken by what he has learned, Carl decides Lucia is not just unstable but too dangerous to leave alive.