Chapter 69

Carl gathers his core team in the pet stables to discuss strategy for the final heats and the impending eleventh floor. The group debates the controversial plan for Carl to temporarily leave the party, addresses concerns about the Pineapple Cabaret escape, and discusses the mythological Scavenger storyline to understand potential threats ahead.

Carl meets with Prepotente, Donut, Imani, Elle, and Rosetta in the pet stables, a secondary guild room where gods cannot observe conversations. Imani is angry about Carl's eleventh-floor strategy and threatening to take a deal; her blood bar has only an hour left. Carl explains the situation: two races remain (heats six and seven), and they're trying to minimize crawler-on-crawler matchups by getting as many people as possible to take deals or escape via the Pineapple Cabaret. Only volunteers without god worship who remain human can attempt the Cabaret exit; flying races, fairies, and magically-dependent races like Louis, Chris, and Donut are excluded due to unknown dangers outside the dungeon. Donut is also angry because Carl's plan requires him to temporarily leave the party to deal with his Emberus problem and kill Hellik before the eleventh floor ends, or face a smite. The eleventh floor will start immediately after the final heat and is scheduled to last three hours, ending in an arena with a floor boss. Elle notes the volunteers total about two hundred, far fewer than the estimated fifteen hundred deals needed. Rosetta then explains the Scavenger mythology: the older gods were expelled by the new pantheon. Nekhebit, once a life-protector goddess depicted as a vulture (scavenger), was the last old god to fall, defeated when her daughter Apito absorbed her remaining worshippers. Nekhebit had three children: Apito, a centipede creature (Scolopendra, now at the dungeon's bottom), and a mysterious son. Myths diverge on whether Scolopendra or the son is called the Scavenger, but the Scavenger's Daughter is said to possess power equal to or exceeding Apito's—capable of erasing the current pantheon and absorbing divine powers. The war mages believe Samantha's sand-ooze offspring is this Scavenger's Daughter, though the group is uncertain how they know this. Carl expresses skepticism but acknowledges that in a world where anything is possible, such myths must be considered. He then asks Prepotente to show a memorial crystal.