The Butcher's Masquerade is the sixth floor of the murderous World Dungeon that killed Earth: The Hunting Grounds, a jungle where alien hunters pay to stalk the crawlers for the universe's entertainment. Carl and his charisma-goddess cat Princess Donut top the leaderboard and lead the crawlers' rebellion. Across the floor they gather allies and grief — the transformed dancer-allosaurus Big Tina and her raptor-mother Kiwi; the grief-driven raider Florin, hunting the killer of his love Ifechi; the doll-head goddess Samantha; and the naiad wildcard Signet. The book's principal hunter, the mantis Vrah, sponsored by her mother Circe Took, pursues Carl relentlessly; Carl curses her, and Circe binds the forest god Diwata to cure her and flood the floor with mantis young. Everything funnels into high-elf Queen Imogen's Butcher's Masquerade — a peace-sealed party for the goddess Apito, where any first strike feeds the offender into the Nothing, and where Imogen means to end the night bloodless to win a boon that has never once been granted, then murder her half-sister Signet. Carl turns the trap inside out, running a dozen operations while the castle is besieged; Donut charms Imogen's familiar Ferdinand into her minion, and Samantha detonates the castle's soul crystals to knock out Diwata. When every plan collapses and allies die, Signet sacrifices herself — cutting her own throat to break the seal — and the party erupts into the AI's four-team 'Cage Fight Extreme.' Donut's raptors and Mongo dismember Vrah; Donut's maxed Laundry Day strips the god off Circe, who is devoured by her own children; Carl kills the last hunter with his own trap; and Prepotente finishes the battered Imogen. The cost is brutal — Firas, Gwen, the Popovs (who escape, freed as ineligible children), Gideon, and Signet all lost — and Carl teaches a numb Donut about the protective 'mask' she wears until she finally weeps. Victorious, Carl and Donut enter Faction Wars as Co-Warlords of the Princess Posse, and Carl hijacks the live feed to indict the cowardly sponsor-teams. In a rushing epilogue, Prepotente shatters the seventh-floor maze like a Prince Rupert's drop, vaulting everyone to the eighth floor, where the crew scatters into squads. Katia executes her nemesis Eva — but Eva's dying trick clamps Donut's lost Crown of the Sepsis Whore onto Katia's head, meaning only one of them can ever climb from the ninth floor to the tenth.