Carl, Donut, Mongo, Rend, and the guard arrive at the southern front as the Dream’s artillery hammers the Princess Posse defenses. Carl surveys the trench system built from scrolls and protected by layers of mage spells, noting that the southern front has already suffered casualties from enemy magic, sabotage, snipers, and scouts. Carl’s orders are pragmatic: preserve unconscious NPC prisoners for possible conversion, separate mercenaries, and kill and loot enemies who cannot be safely held.

The southern battlefield is a fog-choked stalemate of protection spells, counterspells, artillery, traps, and hidden defenses. Carl prepares to integrate the incoming 106th Bloody Leeches with Tran’s 102nd Bulwark defenders, while Louis reports being ready for a planned move and Elle reports Reaver robots, trucks, and more than one hundred invisible Madness mercenaries near the enemy trenches. Carl decides to wait only until reinforcements are in position.

The enemy abruptly stops firing artillery, and Carl sees roughly a thousand orange pet markers rushing from the enemy side. The attackers are huge rot sticker behemoths, abused Reaver pets infected with the Gurgles, insanity, rabies, and an enlargement debuff. Carl realizes they are biological explosive missiles, and Donut is horrified by the Reavers’ cruelty while discovering her usual spells are largely useless against pets.

Carl and the defenders respond with shields, weapons, dynamite, and earth magic. Some rot stickers detonate on traps, while a mage-made dirt wall stops much of the charge and launches others into the air. Tran orders the Frothing Tunnel Moles to trigger buried explosives early, destroying the line of dirt and gore-covered attackers but forcing the defenders to withstand a violent blast and falling infected debris.

After the artillery resumes, the Gurgles reaches part of the trench. Infected veterans rush forward bleeding from their mouths and eyes, and Kristen Cronin burns a magically filled-in section of trench to stop the outbreak, leaving dead soldiers behind. Baroness Victory appears and explains that the Gurgles is a non-curable contagious debuff banned by faction agreement, but the Reavers exploited the rules by infecting their pets before the magic ban. With the rot sticker attack halted for the moment and worse enemy assets still waiting, Carl tells Tran it is time for their side to attack.