Carl appears in a dark, old Victorian house in Monroe County, Florida, on December 24th, with 46 hours to collect the exit key. Donut panics because the selection UI glitched: it briefly claimed Iowa, then placed them in the Florida Keys, and the key marker initially stayed “in Iowa” on the map. After a short system pause and a small quake, the map corrects itself and the key marker relocates nearby.

Carl reviews new notifications. Emberus updates the quest about his dead son, warning that the primordial goddess Nekhebit has returned and instructing Carl to question a Nekhebit priestess at a temple. Huanxin (using the spider quest channel as Eileithyia) confirms she will honor their agreement, threatens Carl if he warned Odette, and the “Spiders” quest completes with instructions to visit an Eileithyia temple for a boon; Carl doubts they will get much from it. Carl messages Katia, who reports her own selection glitch: she was offered “Ukraine,” but arrived in Vietnam.

Zev contacts Carl and Donut to apologize and explains the selection system is malfunctioning across the crawl: some squads got four choices, some only one, some none, and one leader even chose the ocean. When Carl and Donut step outside, they find a quiet beach road populated only by memory ghosts. Donut launches an intensified Torch spell, revealing the key location is atop an enormous, unstable mound of dirt piled over the narrow island; Zev confirms they effectively transplanted the key location from Iowa to Florida to avoid further breakage.

As they move toward the mound, Donut explains the key’s rules: they must collect nine numbered tokens before they can fight the final opponent for the key, and token-bearing monsters with card decks form a path toward the mound. Imani demands a team check-in, and the group learns most crawlers are scattered worldwide due to the glitches: Florin is in eastern Nigeria (separated from Lucia Mar), Li Jun’s group (including Chris) is deeper in China, Elle’s squad is in Belgium while Imani is stuck in Detroit, and Prepotente is in northern Italy. Katia adds that her key location is tied to Da Nang, where it points to an apartment building connected to Tran’s ex-wife and estranged mother, reinforcing Elle’s warning that the floor may weaponize personal memories.

Carl and Donut engage their first local token-bearer: a level-45 Babababoon posed like a video-game encounter in a parking lot near a saferoom and a Desperado Club marked “Closed for emergency renovations.” Carl kills it instantly with a sticky hob-lobber before it can draw a card. Donut loots a “2” token and notes her earlier kill yielded token “1,” confirming a numbered progression, and she spots more red dots leading down the road toward the dirt mound.