As elf artillery keeps bombarding Point Mongo with poison-gas rocks, Carl, Donut, the guards, and the were-beavers stay under cover while poison immunity protects some of them and forces Mongo to be put away. Carl decides to turn Samantha, the nearly indestructible sex-doll head, into a weapon by duct-taping one of his miniature seeking missiles to her and using her mouth to trigger it. The first attempt fails immediately when Samantha closes her mouth too soon, launches herself into the air, misses everything, and crashes back down still screaming.

After recovering Samantha, Carl upgrades the plan by attaching two missiles and moving to a new position before the next bombardment lands. To find the hidden attackers, Carl coordinates with Mordecai and drinks a levitation potion followed by a temporary intelligence-boosting potion that extends his Ping spell. Rising above the poison cloud, Carl scans the forest, spots two purple-tagged hunters in a clearing northeast of town, and hurls Samantha toward them with his xistera.

Samantha triggers the rockets almost over the target area, survives an attempted fireball counterattack, and disappears into the trees. A distant explosion gives Carl experience, confirming that one elf has been killed. When Carl recalls Samantha, she reappears covered in blood and dragging back the second elf, Akland, by the ankle; Clint puts out the elf’s burning leg, and Carl quickly loots a powerful bracelet before deciding not to use their immediate execution plan.

Carl instead has Donut heal Akland and shackles him for questioning while Donut, Clint, and Holger stand guard. Akland reveals that his team was not primarily hunting Carl at all: other factions have already claimed Carl’s group, the bridges are out, and Epitome Tagg mainly wants Louis for insulting Tagg’s mother’s honor. Akland also explains that he is really an accountant who came from a “fantasy hunter camp,” where people play at hunting crawlers for fun, and he took this assignment for money without expecting real danger.

Akland’s plea makes Carl think about the destroyed world and the ordinary life that was taken from him. Donut warns Carl that he is drifting into a villain-style speech, but Carl deliberately keeps talking for the audience while his anger builds. At the end of the chapter, Carl marks Akland and resolves to show him what Carl does now, signaling that Akland is about to become an example.