Carl announces that he wants to take Donut down the stairs early and leave the sixth floor before the Masquerade and the rest of the floor’s remaining dangers can hurt her further. Katia, Imani, and the others argue that leaving now would wreck several plans at once: the Sledge would leave with Carl, the changelings and Bonnie would have been brought up for nothing, the Desperado Club allies are still waiting for Carl’s instructions, and Carl would later hate himself for abandoning the group. In a private message, Katia also asks Carl not to leave because she needs to discuss something important with him in person, and Carl finally says he will let Donut decide.

As Carl, Donut, Mongo, and Kiwi head through the dark woods toward a stairwell in a conquered dryad settlement, Carl reflects on Ikicha’s warning in the cookbook about the cruelty of false returns. He realizes Ferdinand’s reappearance has shaken him more than he expected, not only because of what it is doing to Donut, but because it proves the showrunners will weaponize dead or lost loved ones against the crawlers. When Carl tries to talk to Donut, Donut reveals that Imani and Louis already told her about Carl’s plan. Donut firmly refuses to leave early, insists Carl is not abandoning everyone for her sake, and tries to reframe Ferdinand’s return as heartbreak she can eventually turn into a song.

A new benefactor box arrives, and Donut’s torch spell lights the woods just as Kiwi’s raptor pack returns with Big Tina. Tina appears as a massive, blood-smeared allosaurus city boss wearing a tiara, boa, and tutu, and her aggression is focused on Mongo. Carl reads Tina’s entry and learns that she is Kiwi’s daughter, transformed and traumatized by the destruction of her childhood dream and by memories of her father abusing her mother. The entry makes clear that Tina might be killed, but she might also be reached by giving her the dance recital she lost. Donut immediately embraces the recital idea while Carl focuses on preventing Tina from eating Mongo, and Kiwi steps between them and her daughter.

Before they can act, the world quest to kill fifty Odious Creepers fails. The system mocks everyone, introduces a new blood bar that now controls saferoom and personal space access, and explains that players must keep killing things to earn time in safe areas; anyone with an empty bar can be thrown back outside and cannot reenter. As punishment, the spell Gehenna Bramble begins spreading outward from the final two surviving creepers, turning the floor’s plant life into unstoppable lethal thorn walls that avoid only stairwells and saferooms. Almost immediately, a hunter with an empty bar is teleported into the woods nearby and mauled by raptors until Kiwi intervenes. At the same time, Tina reacts to Kiwi’s scolding with a tantrum, and Carl decides to investigate the suddenly displaced hunter while the new floorwide disaster begins.