Card combat is the defining contest of the eighth floor of the World Dungeon. A crawler squad assembles a deck around six active T’Ghee totems: captured creatures that can be summoned for a limited time. Other cards strengthen friendly totems, hinder enemy summons, affect a rival’s hand, or change the conditions of a fight. The squad leader operates the deck while the battle continues in real time. Consequently, a good collection of creatures offers no automatic protection. The leader must draw a usable card, deploy it quickly, and survive while the rest of the squad fights around the summons.
Making a totem
At the start of the floor, each squad leader receives twenty flags bearing the squad’s emblem. Planting one in a living monster whose health has fallen below five percent turns that creature into a T’Ghee totem. The rule also covers noncorporeal monsters. Flags are a limited capture resource: lost or exhausted flags are not replaced merely because a squad has empty totem positions. A crawler can collect more totems than there are active places in a deck, and totems can be traded or stolen, but unplaced captures are due to disappear when the floor’s second phase begins. The capture rule therefore rewards preparation without permitting an unlimited stockpile of unused creatures.
The flag’s team emblem determines the resulting card’s allegiance. Carl helps Sister Ines’s party capture the monk seal Yago, but the card belongs to her squad rather than to Carl, who receives it physically. It cannot be collected or traded until her squad leader activates it. Ines also reports that fixing a flag to a crossbow bolt did not work; the crawler who plants it must be holding it. These details prevent a squad from gaining another team’s capture simply by delivering the final attack and make the act of planting a flag a dangerous part of combat.
Capture does not erase a creature’s nature. The floor announcement says a totem follows its summoner’s orders only to an extent determined by its disposition and the level difference. Carl and Donut’s practice with Raul shows the practical consequence. The crab spends time preparing spells and responds to Donut with elaborate deference; he cannot deliver an instant attack merely because his card has been played. Shi Maria is immensely dangerous but has her own motives and cannot be evaluated as a passive weapon. The deckmaster summons an individual combatant, not an obedient effect with a fixed damage value.
The active deck and its five card types
Every functioning deck requires six active totems, and a squad can activate a deck consisting of those six cards alone. The announcement sets no fixed upper limit on additional utility, snare, mystic, or special cards. Utility cards target friendly totems already on the field. Snare cards require an enemy totem in play. Mystic cards work more like spells aimed at squads, leaders, or decks. Special cards vary in effect and are often consumable. These are rules about valid targets as well as labels: a useful snare can sit idle in a hand if the opponent has not summoned anything, and a buff cannot strengthen a totem still waiting in the deck.
The absence of a support-card limit creates a draw problem. Combat starts with four randomly drawn cards. Filling a deck with non-totems increases the chance that none of those four will be a creature. Carl and Donut initially settle on eighteen cards, including six totems, after hearing an estimate that this mix makes an opening summon likely. Carl does not certify the numerical estimate, but the tactical concern is real. Without an early totem, the leader lacks the usual protection against attacks from an opposing summon. Conversely, stripping away too many support cards leaves the squad with fewer ways to preserve, accelerate, or defend the creatures it does draw.
Donut’s first assembled eighteen-card deck illustrates the categories without making any category mandatory beyond totems. Its utilities include Time Extend, Stout, Blue Stuff, and Greased Lightning, which respectively address duration, strength, mana, and speed, along with a Combo card. Hobble, Hole in the Bag, and Damnation serve as snares. The Thief and Force Discard provide interference with an opposing deck, while Flee supplies an emergency exit. Carl keeps some opponent-dependent cards in the ready deck even when they are useless against a particular practice monster. An unexpected deck battle might begin before Donut can rebuild the lineup.
Draws, discards, and the boundaries of a fight
The squad leader can play any of the four cards drawn at the start, including several totems at once. After a card leaves the hand, its replacement arrives from the deck at a rate of one card every ten seconds. The leader may also discard one card at the start of combat, with another discard opportunity becoming available every thirty seconds. A discarded card goes to the discard pile and cannot be used again during that combat. The time between draws matters because a leader holding the wrong cards cannot simply cycle through the deck at will while enemies continue to move and attack.
Combat begins when a nearby monster becomes aggressive and actively hunts the squad. It ends when the opponents die, become neutral, or one side flees. Several overlapping fights count as one combat session, which is crucial for cards that have been killed or discarded. Eliminating one monster in a crowded area does not necessarily reset the deck before another attacks. A killed totem is unavailable for the rest of that combat; a surviving totem normally returns to the deck after its printed summoning period expires. Thus the same creature can reappear in a prolonged fight if it survives, but a squad cannot restore a dead summon merely by drawing again.
A returning card is not a fresh, unharmed version of its creature. Injuries and debuffs persist across summonings within the same combat. Most beneficial effects placed on a summoned totem also last for that combat, including after it is called again. This gives duration and healing utilities different jobs: Time Extend delays the moment when a creature leaves the field, whereas healing addresses damage it has actually taken. It also makes snares consequential after the target vanishes from sight. Damnation, for example, can send a totem to the discard pile when its summoning time ends, denying the ordinary return to the deck even if the creature survives.
The discard pile is consequently more than a record of cards already played. It marks resources unavailable until the combat session ends. A long fight can remove the squad’s useful options through killed totems, discarded hands, and effects that prevent cards from returning. Conversely, the announcement says the leader regains ordinary spells and inventory access after all cards in the deck have been played or discarded. Running out of cards may therefore change what the leader can do, even while it leaves the squad without its normal deck options. During the encounter with Ysalte and Amayon, the crawlers need to keep Ysalte’s deck from running dry precisely because her ordinary spellcasting would become available again.
The deckmaster and the rest of the squad
When deck combat begins, the squad leader loses access to normal magic and the inventory interface. The leader can still make melee attacks and use potions, wands, scrolls, or other objects already physically available. The restriction makes advance preparation important for a spellcaster such as Donut: an item left inside inventory is different from one she has taken out before the deck appears. If the leader dies during deck combat, control transfers to the next squad member in line rather than making the cards ownerless.
Most totems cannot attack the opposing squad leader directly while that leader has a totem on the field. This is a limited protection for the deckmaster, not a general shield around the whole party. Carl, Mongo, and other squad members can still attack an opposing leader, and enemy summons can attack them. A leader who fails to put a defender into play can be struck by a totem as well. Carl exploits the distinction in practice by hitting an opposing deckmaster with an explosive before the enemy can build a defense. Later, Jola kills a nightgaunt deckmaster who has neglected to summon a protective totem. In either case, the cards left in the opponent’s deck cannot compensate for a leader already defeated.
The deck is optional against the ordinary monsters encountered during the floor’s collection phase. Once an opponent has enough cards to field a deck, however, deck-versus-deck combat activates automatically. The distinction is a threat to parties hoping to rely solely on ordinary attacks or spells: meeting an equipped enemy can impose the leader’s spell and inventory restrictions at once. It also makes other squads valuable targets, since killing one allows its cards to be claimed. Card ownership and survival become intertwined as soon as the collection phase gives way to opponents carrying their own decks.
Timing, counters, and altered cards
Card effects can modify one another rather than merely adding attacks. A Time Extend card increases a summoned creature’s remaining presence; a protective Temporary Shield can stop one snare aimed at a friendly totem. Hole in the Bag drains a totem’s mana, threatening a creature that relies on spells without necessarily killing it. Force Discard removes a card from an opponent’s hand. The Thief goes further by moving a card from an enemy’s hand into Donut’s deck. Such effects change the resources available to the rival leader and can prevent a dangerous card from ever being played at the intended moment.
One-use cards present a different calculation because spending them has a cost beyond the current fight. Combo joins two summoned creatures into a new totem; Donut uses it on Uzi Jesus and Asojano to create Lazarus-A-Bang-Bang. Glow-Up can permanently make an active card reflect its current modified state. Carl recognizes that using it after a temporary enhancement could preserve an improved summoning duration for later battles. A later Lazarus-A-Bang-Bang card identifies both Combo and Glow-Up in its altered state, while also noting fewer available utility slots. Permanent improvement therefore comes with particular card terms rather than an unlimited ability to stack benefits.
The mock arenas in saferooms let squads learn these interactions before the assault. They permit an incomplete deck, but practice costs gold, and a consumable used there is spent for good. A card with a cooldown does not have that cooldown reset merely because the exercise ends. The ordinary simulated opponents have no decks and cannot directly injure crawlers, although the environment can still be hazardous. Carl and Donut’s later challenge fights expose the difference between testing a summon against a simple monster and meeting an opponent whose snares, draws, and creature choices reinforce one another. Their experience makes timing and coordinated counters as important as the listed power of any single totem.
Control of the hand can decide a battle without destroying an opposing creature. Quan sees Sister Ines’s cards and uses Force Play to trigger the Flee card she is holding. Her squad leaves the fight and loses its key. He later manipulates Donut’s hand and forces another Flee, taking her squad’s key as well. Flee is useful when the leader chooses escape; in Quan’s hands, the same rule becomes a way to remove an opponent from an objective. The episode demonstrates why even a defensive card can be dangerous when an enemy can inspect the hand and dictate when a card is played.
Card control can also be transferred deliberately. Midnight Express makes Carl the deckmaster for three minutes during the confrontation involving Amayon. While the cards pass to him, Donut can again use her spells and inventory. The transferred card remains in one of Carl’s hand slots until its duration ends, leaving fewer immediate choices while giving the squad access to Donut’s ordinary abilities. The exchange is a specific tactical use of the leader restriction, not a permanent change of squad leadership.
The floor’s rewards can increase a squad’s reserve without changing the six active totem requirement. The Champion Pack gained after the keymaster provides two extra backup slots, allowing Donut to carry eight totems while keeping only six in the active deck. A reserve creature broadens the choices available between fights; it does not add two more simultaneous starting summons. Across the floor, that distinction holds the system together: collecting cards expands potential responses, but each combat is governed by the active deck, the four-card hand, the timers, and the deckmaster’s ability to stay alive long enough to use them.