Carl and Princess Donut examine their pre-made squad flag: a tiny pair of heart-covered boxers with “The Royal Court of Princess Donut” patches and Carl’s bomb emblem. While Donut fumes about how tacky it is, Carl notes the flag’s enchanted spike can tag any creature under 5% health. Carl has Bomo and Mordecai try to sketch the local layout and stairwell placement, then plans to use Samantha for recon and to eventually find help for her desired body.

Before leaving, Carl traps the exit stairwell in and around the capitol saferoom with alarms and teleports keyed against non–Safehome Yolanda crawlers. He insists Mongo stays locked up because the outside is a modern city full of dangerous traffic. When they step into the replayed “Old Havana,” Carl is hit by how real Earth looks and smells, even as Donut notices the date and heat feel wrong and her map doesn’t list the crowds.

Carl sends Samantha south to observe and report monsters, warning her to float above traffic, but she immediately ignores instructions and loudly tries to talk to illusion-people. Carl and Donut learn how hazardous the “ghost” pedestrians are when a tourist’s clothing knocks Donut down the stairs, leaving behind real, lootable items (phone, wallet, cash, cards, clothes) that Carl scoops up to minimize traces near the saferoom. Ping reveals only a few NPC dots, and travel toward the second stairwell looks slow because the streets are jammed with moving illusions and vehicles.

As Carl and Donut push toward the coast highway, group chat confirms growing chain-reaction crashes across other regions, including Katia’s area where cars block entrances and trap Louis and Britney. Carl realizes it will become impossible to move without causing more chaos, and he starts jogging, brushing through illusion-people as more crashes and smoke echo through the city. Samantha’s updates remain unreliable, but suggest monsters scale up farther from the saferoom.

On the coastal highway, Carl and Donut encounter their first hostile mob in a park: a level 55 “Experience,” a wolf-bodied creature with a comically large, Che-like human head and a magical red beret that “barks” like a person. Donut overwhelms it with magic, uses Carl’s new Mute to block spells, then lands Why are you Hitting Yourself?, making it maul itself until it dies. Donut loots the beret and a very rare utility combo consumable, a T’Ghee Card that temporarily fuses two monster cards, but Carl learns only the squad leader can hold cards. As they finish, three unfamiliar crawlers approach—two human men and a cat-girl—prompting Donut’s immediate disgust and Carl’s wary amusement.