During the panel, Carl keeps questioning the audience about how to fight the hunters targeting him. The crowd explains that poison works unusually fast on mantids, but Vrah likely carries antidote protection and is now immune to cloud-based poison, so only a nearly instant or uncurable poison would matter. Audience members also reveal that mantids are least armored at the neck and are vulnerable to loud noises, which makes alarm traps useful because the sound can drive them back long enough to secure a kill.

The discussion expands from tactics to hunter politics. Carl learns that mantids sometimes steal other hunters' kills and that most competitors are too afraid to resist the Dark Hive after Vrah once killed another hunter in the Hunting Grounds without consequence. The audience and panelists explain that the Nebular Sin Patrol has an old conflict with mantids, enters every crawl with new priest-trainees, and treats hunting seeded-world crawlers as a religious mission. Carl also hears that the nebulars have targeted other crawlers such as Prepotente and Miriam Dom and recently interfered with an attack on Lucia Mar, confirming Carl's suspicion that the agreement over who gets to hunt whom is already breaking down.

Drick and Uptown Hal turn the panel toward a broader point about scarcity and violence. Uptown Hal argues that competition inevitably produces bloodshed, while Drick quotes nebular doctrine about violence leading back to chaos. The exchange leaves the room uneasy, and the panel ends with the sense that the hunting alliances around Carl are becoming unstable and more dangerous.

Back in the green room, Zev tells Carl he stayed on the panel too long and lost the extra training time she had tried to get for him. She also reports that rumors about Carl's confrontation with Circe Took are spreading fast despite blocked live coverage. Carl raids a bowl of fruit for supplies, discovers he cannot remove inventory items or drink potions in this location, and hurriedly reorganizes his hotlist because he will have to act only after returning to the floor.

Carl then contacts Donut, Katia, and Samantha through chat to coordinate his return. Donut reports that Lucia Mar is inside the safe room in one of her altered forms, acting violently and using traps that can eject people from the supposedly protected area; Donut was already teleported into town once when trying to reenter. Donut also says groups of mantid and nebular hunters are waiting outside, while Katia, stuck at a guildhall, begins improvising a fake Donut decoy with a stuffed animal, crown, and sunglasses. Carl questions them to pin down Lucia's form and the hunters' behavior, trying to shape a plan before he arrives.

The most alarming revelation comes from Samantha, who admits the hunters tortured her for information. Samantha says she deliberately gave them a false reentry point five meters from the real one, but a dryad exposed the lie, meaning the hunters now know where Carl will appear. Carl tells everyone to get ready at the door and asks Zev if he can at least drink an invisibility potion before transfer, only to learn he cannot use consumables there either. Realizing he must reenter completely exposed, Carl steadies himself, asks Zev to look after Donut if he dies, and lets the teleportation pull him back toward the ambush.