Carl and Donut approach the quadrant containing the stairwell, planning to test the local monsters, locate the boss room, and then escort Meadow Lark’s group downstairs if the route proves manageable. Their social numbers have surged overnight, with Donut especially favored, but Carl tries to keep focus on survival. As they move through the rougher second-floor terrain, Carl notes that Imani helped him use his pedicure kit, activating the AI’s foot-related buffs.

Near the stairwell, Carl and Donut find three level-three unvaccinated clurichaun Rev-Up consultants: sickly, fairy-class humanoids armed with slingshots. Because they seem toxic and ranged, Carl has Donut kill all three from a distance with magic missiles. Donut then tests her new Second Chance spell, raising one corpse as a temporary undead minion; the zombie obeys a command to mutilate another corpse, horrifying Donut and disgusting Carl before collapsing again.

Donut loots the clurichauns without touching them and finds slingshots, stones, dice, and jugs of Rev-Up toilet-grade moonshine. Carl practices with a slingshot while Donut clears more clurichauns around the quadrant, raising zombies after fights so Carl can train safely. They also discover a Rev-Up pamphlet revealing the moonshine operation as a parody of a pyramid-style consultant scheme, with Krakaren mentioned as a higher figure in the operation.

During one fight, Donut misses, and a clurichaun rushes Carl. Carl kills it by punching it, but contact infects him with the Taint, a five-minute debuff that prevents all healing. The incident convinces Carl that the low-level mobs are dangerous because they likely combine the Taint with other health-draining attacks, so he stops treating them casually.

Examining the moonshine reveals it is valuable, highly flammable, and dangerous to drink, with possible links to deeper floors and establishments that buy it. Carl converts a jug into a torch-stoppered incendiary weapon, which the system names Carl’s Jug O’ Boom. After testing it successfully on corpses, Carl’s Incendiary Device Handling rises sharply, and Carl and Donut make more while balancing their use against the loss of loot from burned bodies.

Carl and Donut continue toward the boss room, sometimes burning rooms and sometimes preserving bodies for loot. Outside the boss chamber, they find a filling room packed with clurichauns, moonshine jugs, a pipe leading from the boss chamber, and two level-six winged Laminak Rev-Up Consultant Elites guarding a doorway. Because the room contains valuable moonshine and potentially useful elite corpses, Carl decides they need a more precise plan than explosives and asks whether Donut can magically leap near the fairies.