After a long day of traveling south, Carl and Donut talk about Edict, with Donut feeling sorry for him while Carl remains bothered by Edict’s views. The group has been avoiding hostile dryad settlements, and they recover Samantha from under a log after earlier losing track of her. Carl, Donut, and Samantha spend hours grinding against venomous plant mobs, taking advantage of Carl and Donut’s poison immunity; Donut reaches level 45, while Carl stays at 56. They also seize two more ursine towns by killing their mayors, while Carl tries unsuccessfully to reach his attorney for a legal answer related to his unusual new crafting opportunities, following Mordecai’s advice to keep preparing in the meantime.

As they travel, Zev reminds Carl that he still owes one more appearance and needs to reach a saferoom on time. Carl also learns that hunters across the floor seem to be withdrawing after what happened to the Dark Hive. Lucia remains missing, and Mordecai believes her escape spell may have sent her to the far side of the map. Carl keeps replaying the earlier fight with Lucia in his head, especially her strange words and the sense that she perceives reality differently from everyone else. Even so, Carl concludes that Lucia is still too dangerous to leave alone, while also realizing Donut understands perfectly well that her own victory over Lucia depended in part on luck.

The group heads toward another small ursine settlement, hoping to bed down for the night, find a saferoom, and possibly kill the mayor if the chance presents itself. This town is enclosed by a huge wall of living Jericho Bush vines, but the dead growth near the entrance and total lack of guards or traffic make Carl suspicious before they even enter. Samantha scouts ahead and reports a large number of old corpses, pink feathers, and signs of a dinosaur attack. Her report alarms Carl because corpses older than a day usually mean the dungeon is deliberately leaving a scene in place instead of cleaning it up normally.

Inside the settlement, they discover it is called Prepotente Town Number Four and that it is drenched in rot and gore. Carl messages Miriam to ask whether her group is there, but she does not answer. The streets are strewn with butchered ursine bodies and body parts, while at least one surviving resident appears to be hiding inside a building. Carl confirms from a corpse marker that Big Tina killed at least some of the victims, linking the slaughter to the still-active dinosaur quest. Zev contacts Carl again to push him toward the saferoom, warns that Odette’s interview with Carl, Donut, and Beatrice has tunneled and drawn even more attention to him, and says she wants to discuss something in person. At a nearby pub, Carl notices a severed bear claw embedded in the wall beside dried blood, and the sight leaves him with a strong sense that this dinosaur situation is about to become even worse.