Chapter 94

The epilogue begins with Carl, Donut, and Prepotente arriving on the seventh floor in a sealed glass pod. Prepotente deduces the floor's mechanics using his mother's boots and deliberately shatters the entire starting chamber using the Enchanted Stick of Cascadia's Screams, forcing all crawlers into the stairwell to the eighth floor. Meanwhile, Katia finally confronts and kills Eva, but Eva's dying act places the Crown of the Sepsis Whore on Katia's head, with dire consequences.

Carl, Donut, and Prepotente materialize in a glass pod on the seventh floor called "The Great Race." The space resembles a giant fish tank with other crawlers in similar pods arranged in a spiral pattern around central stairwell portals. Cascadia begins announcing the race rules—crawlers must navigate a massive maze of tunnels with hundreds of kilometers of twisting paths, nodes with multiple branches, and restricted paths that close after use. Prepotente reveals he deduced the floor's design from his mother's boots, which contained lore connecting the level to a fairytale about a boy in an inescapable maze. He takes the hammer and Enchanted Stick of Cascadia's Screams and deliberately cracks the glass wall, causing the entire chamber and all pod walls to shatter simultaneously. All crawlers are sucked into the stairwell portals at once. Carl and Donut emerge in a marble chamber between floors where they must select their starting location on the eighth floor using a holographic globe. Despite Carl's preference for the western United States and the Bahamas book he purchased, Donut chooses the Caribbean—selecting what turns out to be Cuba instead of the Bahamas. In a parallel scene, Katia locates the unconscious Eva among the rubble of the sixth floor. With Li Na's help, she cuts Eva's escape ring and weapons from her body. When Eva awakens, Katia kills her with Eva's own sword. However, as Eva dies, she pulls the Crown of the Sepsis Whore—a unique item lost by Donut on the third floor—from her armor and it equips itself on Katia's head. The crown carries a restriction: only one of Donut or Katia can proceed to the tenth floor.