Part 60: Chapter Forty Five: Body Harvest
Music: 14 Crazy DanceA judicious Warp spell brings the party back to Melodia.
: This mushroom has special properties that will shrink you all and allow me to teleport you into the Queens body.
: What.
: What?
: Meow?
: ?
: Oh, okay. Because its so simple, right? Just hop into the hambeast and whack her fat-monsters until she thins out. Yeah, sounds totally easy.
: More to the point, how do we, uh, get out again? I can think of two ways, neither of which are appealing in the slightest.
: Uh huh.
: Ah, so the mirror has magical properties. I see. Now it makes sense.
: Uh huh.
: Uh huh.
: Lin, you can stop trying to pretend you understand whats going on now.
: Oh, okay then.
: This might just be the craziest thing Ive ever done. And thats saying a lot. Sure, whatever, lets get this over with.
: Then lets get this show on the road! Haaaa!
Gedd does a sparkly thing on the party, who then vanish.
Music: 04 Dungeon
Well, here we are inside the Queens body. I guess the developers really liked their organic whale innard tileset because they decided to use it again here. The fuzzy purple web isnt a glitch, by the way. Its a rapidly scrolling background layer that gives the impression of moving blood cells or something.
The Magic Mirror is now an item that can be used from the main menu.
Choosing to look outside will cause Gedd to give you a progress report on how well youre doing. Choosing to go outside will transport the party out of the Queens body and choosing to do nothing will cancel the action.
Naturally there are monsters here, but this dungeon has a twist to its random encounters. There are a limited number of them in every room, and we have to defeat them all in order to heal the Queen of her obesity. Oh, and Stat-up items tend to drop from the enemies in here rather frequently, which is nice. This room has two specific encounters.
First we find a Pepsin. Pepsins have a powerful normal attack that deals 40+ damage and can also use Fire Breath to deal around 30 damage to the whole party. He goes down fairly easily.
The second encounter is a group of Leukocytes and Hemogluttons. Neither have any real gimmicks besides hitting fast and hard, although the Hemogluttons tend to run away if the battle drags on too long.
As we can see by the sleeping goblin, this room is now free of enemy encounters and will remain so forever.
This room shares its encounters with the previous one, so its now clear as well.
This next one does, though.
Three Hemogluttons are up first. They go down easily enough.
A single Leukocyte is the next opponent. We flatten him with ease. After the fight ends
We are shown an image of the world outside where our efforts have caused the Queen to literally deflate on one side like some monstrous, flesh-filled balloon.
The northern door leads to this long corridor that goes nowhere. As before, this room shares its encounters with the previous one, so theres nothing to do here now.
The second southern exit leads to another room with enemies.
Splat. At the end of the fight Rand levels up and learns Quake. Way to go, Rand!
Splat. Now this room is also free of enemies.
Hmm. You know, this is getting to be pretty redundant. All of the areas are roughly analogous to parts of the Queens body, but apart from that its pretty much all the same. Go to a new area, defeat enemies, rinse and repeat. Its pretty dull so I hope nobody minds if I skip most of it and just post Gedds status reports.
Just to briefly break up the status reports
The party will very occasionally run into these guys. Cellulites are amazing monsters because they give around 6500 experience points each when killed.
Oh, yeah, and certain parts of the Queens body have a blue tint instead of a red one. Anyway, back to Radio Gedd.
Finally, when the last enemies are defeated
: Hold on, Im pulling you out now.
: Thank god for that.
: Thanks to your efforts, the Queen has been cured. The transformation has been thwarted and her life is no longer in peril.
: Huh. Maybe I should get this guy to have a look at Bosch. Hes always complaining about how he needs to lay off fatty foods. On the other hand it might involve crawling into his guts and theres no way in hell Im doing that.
: Oh, ye of little faith. Lest you forget, youre in my capable hands!
: Haaaa!
: Everything should be fine now.
: Wait for it
: Called it.
: My dear old fish, go and boil your head!
: How dare you call me an old-timer! Wait I mean Im pardoned? Ah ha ha! Finally, I get to return to Melodia and all its women er, wonders!
: Yeah, sure, okay. Since we helped you out and all, itd be really nice if you could let us borrow the Therapy Pillow for a while.
: Id love to, but uh the only one with the authority to give it to you would be the old lady
: Excellent. Now we can cure the Elder Trees affliction and learn what is causing Gates forests to die.
To the vault!
You walk in here to see that the treasure chest inside the vault is already open. Your vision slowly takes on a red tint and your teeth begin to grind at the prospect of another inane thief-chasing sidequest.
Thankfully Breath of Fire II is (mostly) done jerking us around. Off to the Elder Tree!