The Temple of Khepri is a divine sanctuary inside Club Vanquisher on the Ninth Floor of the dungeon. Its hall contains an apparently endless banquet table covered with insects. During Faction Wars, Princess Vinata of the Blood Sultanate uses the temple as a refuge for herself and her remaining companions. The sanctuary becomes the site of her trap for Carl, Katia Grim, and Prepotente: Vinata has pledged herself to Khepri, who can appear in his own temple even while ordinary deity summoning is restricted elsewhere on the floor.
The sanctuary and its entrance
Khepri's temple is one of the shrines reached through Club Vanquisher's shared temple portal. The Club entrance Carl's group uses lies inside the Temple of the Dagda in Shanty Town, outside Larracos. From there, they have to cross the guarded Club, reach a portal desk, and select Khepri's address. Rosetta identifies that address as 453, with 453.A as a possible variant; the portal dial accepts 453. The route matters because discovering Vinata's refuge alone gives Carl no direct way into it. The Club and the temple each impose a separate entry barrier.
The temple portal is gated by faith. When Carl examines it, the portal reports that he can pass through, subject to an entrance sequence restricted to Khepri's adherents and other entities allowed by dungeon rules. Carl cannot pull the door open himself. An admitted person can, however, leave it ajar long enough for others to enter. The group relies on Samantha, who has survived the Nothing and therefore qualifies for the dungeon's “Damned” exception. She grips the handle with her mouth and opens the door for Carl, Katia, and Prepotente.
The exception reflects a shelter rule described to Carl by Tipid: a person carrying the Damned status can enter a church for refuge and food, even without belonging to its faith. The rule is rooted in a wider religious custom but functions here as a concrete property of the portal. Li Na, who also has Damned status, is the group's fallback opener. Carl's own membership in another religion does not grant him the same access. Once Samantha opens the door, he must hold it before it shuts.
Beyond that threshold is a long hall whose banquet table extends into darkness. Its food and surface are alive with insects; the system later identifies 433 kinds on the feast. The temple is called endless, although Carl sees a single room organized around one long table rather than a sequence of chambers. Its narrow shape is consequential in the battle: an explosion travels down the hall like a blast through a barrel. What first appears to Carl through the portal as a beetle-headed cleric standing beside Vinata is Khepri himself.
Vinata's passage into the temple
Carl and Rosetta reconstruct how Vinata could leave the Blood Sultanate stronghold without using an ordinary, observable escape route. A new worshiper's connection to a deity runs through the strongest temple on the floor, usually a Club Vanquisher temple. Some light deities give adherents a travel spell that follows light, while a smaller group also grants a single-use return to the strongest connected temple. Khepri is one of the two candidates whose recruitment quest could carry additional people along with the new adherent. This explains how Vinata could take a party into a sanctuary that would otherwise admit only its faithful.
Khepri's prospect ritual turns would-be converts into beetles. A female new adherent swallows them, travels to the temple, and gives birth to the beetles at the center of the banquet; they then regain their previous forms. The prospects remain in the insect-filled room while the faith attempts to recruit them. Rosetta expects an enforced waiting period of at least an hour before they can ask the resident cleric to release them. That interval creates Carl's opportunity to attack, but also means the naga party can remain safely out of the Faction Wars fighting if nobody penetrates the temple.
Rosetta initially considers another refuge, the Temple of Theia, because its prospect ritual can similarly bring a group into Club Vanquisher. Theia has been sponsored this season by someone aligned with the Pacifist network, making her a poor hiding place for Vinata. Khepri, by contrast, cannot be sponsored this season. Carl's group therefore moves on the expectation that the Blood Sultanate party will appear in Khepri's temple. Their inference about the destination is correct; their assumption that an ordinary cleric will be its strongest defender is not.
The assault through Club Vanquisher
The assault begins before Vinata's party can complete its protected wait. Carl, Katia, Prepotente, and their allies enter through the Dagda temple and force the Club entrance. Bautista, Zhang, and Li Jun help keep the successive doors open. Their wire from Li Na's Extend Aura tower in Shanty Town must remain continuous across the portals for her dreads to affect the Club's interior. The tactic clears a route through guards toward the temple desk, but causes far more destruction within the Club than Carl had expected.
At the desk, Prepotente switches the dial out of automatic mode; otherwise the portal would send each member of the party toward a temple associated with that individual's faith. Carl's portal analysis confirms the Khepri address and shows Vinata among several nagas. The same image shows the apparently clerical insect figure. Carl calls Samantha over to open the faith-gated door while guards close in behind them. She performs the task and rolls away. Carl, Katia, and Prepotente enter together, leaving the wire behind; it snaps away when the door closes.
The temple immediately treats the three as intruders. Carl receives a warning that he has been denied a place at the feast and marked for death by Khepri. He then discovers that the insect figure is the god, present in his own sanctuary. Vinata bears an Immortal status and multiple protections, while the other nagas also carry defensive blessings. The party has reached its intended target, but the refuge is simultaneously a prepared killing ground.
Vinata's trap and the temple battle
Inside, Carl counts six nagas: Vinata, two cousins whose deaths are needed to end the immediate succession threat, and three armed guards. Rishi, the husband of the smaller, dark-scaled cousin, is absent. Carl had expected a seventh member of the party and realizes Vinata herself is Khepri's worshiper. That choice breaks the pattern Rosetta had described, in which one of Vinata's guards would adopt the faith and transport the others as prospects. Carl concludes that Vinata anticipated pursuit, entered the sanctuary herself, and arranged for Khepri to be there when the crawlers arrived.
The dungeon suspends the action and presents the encounter as a special temple battle. Khepri is identified as a level-250 god of rebirth and the sunrise, invulnerable on this floor. The announcement also makes clear that appearances in a deity's own temple are allowed under temple rules even while the usual floor limits on summoning remain in force. Vinata's adjutant protests the summoning, but Victory says the Blood Sultanate has already invoked the god and that the temple rule governs the encounter. The protest does not remove him.
Khepri's presence gives Carl ninety seconds of temporary immortality, an effect of the god rather than a rescue devised by the dungeon. Vinata has already received the effect, but her timer began earlier and will expire twenty-seven seconds before Carl's. Katia and Prepotente receive no comparable protection. During the pause, Carl urges them to escape and proposes a way to remove them from the sanctuary. The timing of the two immortality effects becomes central to his choice of attack and to Vinata's eventual death.
When action resumes, Vinata and the guards advance, while the two cousins flee down the table's length using invisibility. Katia and Prepotente drink Black Nimbus potions, temporarily severing their divine affiliations. The temple ejects them, as the party had hoped. Carl remains with Khepri and the nagas. He summons Günter toward the god and detonates his Waffle Maker bomb within the narrow hall. The blast destroys the unprotected nagas, including both cousins, and drives fire along the banquet. Carl survives only because his temporary immortality prevents the explosion from killing him; recovery is excruciating and requires healing.
The insects on the feast prove immortal as well. The blast burns and crushes them without ending their lives, and many are carried out of the temple as the fight spreads. Carl expects Günter to strike Khepri farther down the hall with a second explosion. In the confusion, both Carl and Vinata are blown back through the temple entrance into Club Vanquisher. The sanctuary does not contain the fight: its own god and burning insects follow into the Club, adding to a larger outbreak of divine violence there.
Expulsion and consequences
Outside the temple, Vinata wraps herself around Carl and attacks him while both are still temporarily immortal. The Eye of the Bedlam Bride has driven her into a frenzy. Khepri emerges, but Hellik orders him away and the system reports that Khepri has left the realm. His insects remain. Hellik's intervention prevents Khepri from continuing the attack; it does not end Vinata's. She keeps crushing and stabbing Carl until her earlier immortality expires. Kandy “Bigs” Newton, emerging from Carl's slugpox infection, kills her with the hatchet on her head.
Vinata's death defeats the Blood Sultanate. The system credits Kandy with the kill and applies the prior arrangement that passes the Sultanate's assets through Donut and Katia to the Princess Posse. These results arise from the succession contest and the battle that began in Khepri's sanctuary; they are not rewards conferred by the temple. Rishi's later account confirms the deliberate risk: he says he warned Vinata and the others not to enter with her because he expected everyone inside to die, although he also acknowledges that her plan to use a god against Carl nearly succeeded.
Afterward, Carl, Katia, and Prepotente receive an achievement for confronting a god in that god's own temple. It grants no Celestial Box because Hellik's arrival saved them from Khepri. Carl also remains marked for death by Khepri. The temple's protection of its guests therefore works only up to the point where its own rules admit pursuers, permit the god's appearance, and allow the confrontation to spill back into Club Vanquisher. Vinata chose it as a refuge and a trap; the same setting exposed her companions to Carl's explosion and left her fighting outside the sanctuary when her protection ran out.