Carl teleports back into Alucarda exactly where the hunters expected him and barely avoids being torn apart. He drinks an invisibility potion, drops smoke, and survives a combined attack from a mantis and a group of nebular priests. As Donut reports that the decoy plan worked and Lucia teleported away after targeting a fake Donut on a clockwork Sledge, Carl triggers Tripper to set off the packed traps around the saferoom and throws an alarm trap to create confusion.

From the side of a temple, Carl watches the fight spiral. The alarm music unsettles the mantises, the nebular hunters and bugs start attacking one another, and Carl adds a hob-lobber explosion and a Bloodlust potion to push the violence even further. He uses his ring to mark dying nebulars for intelligence gains, notices that the village is now filled with dead NPCs, and learns from Samantha that Vrah intercepted Lucia at the preset teleport destination and is now coming for him. Carl realizes the public plan from the panel would have gotten him, Donut, and Lucia all teleported into Vrah’s trap, so he had replaced it with a riskier decoy scheme using two clockwork Sledges and a beanie-baby fake.

As the last hunters die, Carl loses his perch, crashes through the roof of the desecrated Temple of Diwata, and sees more bodies inside, evidence of Lucia’s massacre. He escapes the temple and rushes back toward the saferoom, but Vrah lands on the alarm trap, silencing the music, and strips away Carl’s invisibility. Vrah reveals she has tracked him the whole time, boasts about hunters culling crawlers like livestock, and threatens to finish him. Carl stalls by taunting her about her mother, her cheating, and her future as breeding stock.

Carl then thanks Langley, whose severed head is mounted on Vrah’s body. The reanimated heads of Langley and others suddenly bite into Vrah’s exposed neck, creating the opening Carl needs. He dodges Vrah’s shot, drives the Arrow of Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea into her neck just before her shield activates, and is thrown back into Donut, who had slipped out invisibly and spent her mana stacking Second Chance spells on him. Carl and Donut dive into the saferoom, and Carl kicks the huge wheeled bomb outside before slamming the door. The explosion devastates the area, killing the remaining mantises and other creatures nearby, but both Lucia and Vrah still escape with emergency defenses.

Back inside, Carl checks the aftermath. He confirms Lucia cleared out most of the town, accidentally killed the upside-down ursine prisoner in the blast, and escaped again. Vrah also survives, but Carl realizes the disease arrow gives him a new angle: since every other mantis warrior is dead, the only remaining male mantis on the floor is the salesman in Zockau, and Vrah may need him to get rid of the infection. Carl immediately writes a note offering the mantis representative protection in exchange for all his gear, intending to use Vrah’s desperation against her.