At the Lollipop, Carl learns from Splash Zone that the croupier running the casino option is violent and that the games have been altered, making the plan look even worse. Splash Zone also reveals that Dong has apparently been sent toward the bar under false pretenses, which alarms Carl because they had wanted Dong kept away from Porky. As Carl watches the room, Dwight the unicorn arrives drunk, shoves Prepotente, and nearly starts a fight before Imani intervenes.

While that tension unfolds, Splash Zone tells Carl that he, Gluteus, and Doctor Bones are going to meet Hamed in hopes of finding Splash Zone's wife. Then Mordecai reports that a crucial test has worked, though Samantha's unusual condition made the first result unreliable, and Rosetta warns that important parts of the larger scheme still cannot be tested. Carl answers that the group cannot force Li Na into anything, but he believes she may accept the risk if they explain that the plan could keep her and Zhang alive, stop her from killing more crawlers, and test Herot's theory.

Once Prepotente is pulled back to the table, Carl tells the others, "It’s a go," and the group reacts with visible relief. The decision matters because they have lacked any workable alternative, and even a dangerous, uncertain option is better than waiting for Li Na's poison to kill her or for Zhang to sacrifice himself. Carl accepts that the idea is far outside normal dungeon rules, but he is willing to gamble on it.

Carl then reflects on how the plan came together. Crawlers had noticed that cleaner bots had vanished from the personal-space shop, and the group had assumed faction leaders were buying them out, but the real reason is that Herot has a standing order to purchase every cleaner bot that appears. Menerva is on the seventeenth floor managing NPCs in the hidden Backstage Death Maze, while Herot is trapped inside the Pineapple Cabaret, a secret refuge dimension for NPCs where he still has limited control and access to a shop interface.

Akuma's information suggests the Pineapple Cabaret is now overrun by threats including the Ogre Imperium and shadow mimics, and the war mages want crawler help clearing it out. Because the casino approach now appears to have failed, Carl's group commits to the cleaner-bot plan instead. Mordecai and Rosetta believe it may be feasible if Akuma told the truth about Herot.

The urgency centers on Li Na. Her Left to Fester poison is killing her, and moving to the next floor would only worsen the problem because her health would refill while the debuff remained. If Li Na can be moved into the Pineapple Cabaret, that progression would stop, and there may even be an exit from the Cabaret to Earth's surface that could cure her completely. Carl decides they must ask Li Na immediately, before the next race begins, so they can test whether the idea works before attempting to move several crawlers after the fifth heat.