With 3.5 hours left before the hunt begins, Carl watches the hunter count rise to 1,013 and notes that the crawler count has dropped below 84,000. Katia and her group have already left to help Team Meadow Lark after trouble on the road, and Carl realizes he and Donut must move quickly before hunters start pouring out of Zockau and spreading across the map. Their immediate goal is to head south, reach the river, and cross it, even though many crawlers are fleeing deeper into dangerous high elf territory to avoid the hunters.

Carl reviews Katia’s hand-drawn map, which matches the coordinates he copied from the cookbook, and fully grasps how large the floor is. Katia explains that the floor is roughly the size of Iceland, with a long river cutting diagonally across it, and that the crawler community is building a shared map by reporting roads, bridges, and settlements as they discover them. Thinking ahead about how to control hunter movement, Carl asks Katia to help organize the destruction of every bridge except one, intending to force traffic toward a single crossing.

Carl then contacts Miriam for current road conditions. Miriam tells him that she has already left and is traveling south on the main caravan road, which is mostly trap-free because merchant bodyguards regularly cast anti-trap spells along the route. Carl recognizes this as valuable intelligence, sends it to Katia so the community can map caravan paths, and asks whether there is a town near the bridge ahead. Miriam confirms there is a large Ursine settlement just across the river, warns that its inhabitants are peculiar, and notes that Bianca must be hidden when entering. Carl marks the town as a possible base of operations.

At the same time, Carl keeps working on a more aggressive plan to strike the hunters in Zockau. He intends to send Bomo out of personal space carrying a huge wheeled bomb timed to detonate near the end of the safe-period countdown, though he admits the plan may fail if the hunters anticipate the exit point. The bomb, built with Nitro Sludge Mordecai left him and a salvaged live-ammo casing, is a powerful thermobaric explosive designed to devastate a large area. Donut objects to using Bomo this way and proposes making a clockwork Bomo instead, but says she must be inside a saferoom to do it. Carl agrees to prepare the original bomb as a backup while he and Donut race south in the royal chariot dune buggy, hoping to reach the next town in time to use Donut’s safer alternative.