Part 23

Here it is, folks. The living end.

We step into the teleporter and find ourselves face to face with a greater nightmare.

We're in a teleporter maze. There are 4 rooms, with 4 teleporters each. One of them leads to the next level, the rest just lead to each other. This is the last teleporter.

This should provide adequate sustenance for the Dr. Who marathon!

We step through...

AHHHHHH

A blast from the green crystal kills most of them, and the AK-47 finishes the job.

This guy is standing motionless in a cloud of churning smoke in the center of the room, not attacking but invulnerable to everything I hit him with.

Over three kilometers down

When we kill the last of the headless, a teleporter appears at the end of the room. There's no other choice, so...

AIEEEEE

Same deal with the smokey dude and the teleporter.

WAAAAUUUUGH

This is what firing the violet crystal looks like. Phantasms are immune to the physical attack of the green one.

GAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

GLAAAAAAARG

Nightmares are immune to earthquakes because they float in midair The violet crystal can't hit them all at once.

They shoot pretty frequently, their shots move fast, and they cause damage if they die too near you, so this is the first room I take damage in

EWWWWWWWW

Oozes are tough enough that one green crystal blast doesn't kill them, so this is an especially dangerous room. However-

Gwah?

Oh, right, the goggles.

AAAAIIIEEEUUURRGH

HUUUUUUUHHHHH

This is a very annoying fight because they hurt you (and flash the screen) just by standing nearby, and I can't use crystals at all because none of them work on spheres.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGLE

These guys had me worried for a while, but then I used a bubbling red potion

SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE

There are fewer of these than of the lesser monsters. Ghasts hit hard enough that if the room was full and the majority of them all attacked at once, they could easily kill the player in one "combo".

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOM

A pale violet potion protects me from getting poisoned.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALT

The Black Crystal petrifies about 10 of them and then shatters. I finish the rest off in bullet time (red potion) with the AK-47.

If they're turned to stone, why are they still floating?

But what's missing from this picture?

Looks like you've run out of monsters to throw at me.

One burst of fire from just about anything, and the demon dissolves into smoke and fades away. And it leaves something behind.

The alien gemstone, which the last corpse told me could be used to escape the pyramid. It's worth $54,000 and an unprecedented 5 points, so I get kicked up to 26 health just for picking it up.

This is good because while I hold the gemstone in my inventory my health starts decreasing It must be radioactive or something.

Much better.

IT'S STILL GOING DOWN

Ah... we have to close the box

I'm pretty sure we won't get any further down than this, so let's do what we came here to do.

Get ready to eat fallout,

Well, there goes a month of work. Sorry, everyone. Thanks for reading the thread.

With the updated code we got from Steven, the bomb arms. Let's allow 1 hour to get back to the surface (we have a stop to make along the way), 1 hour to get extracted (way more than the game says we need, but just in case), and 1 hour to be on the safe side.

Time, now, to break for the door.

The teleporter drops us way, way back on I'd Rather Be Surfing...

...but behind the locked door we found and then left behind.

The clock is ticking, so we run as fast as our little legs can carry us to the ladder back up to that level with the funny name.

Ah, yes, that was it.

The odd monster that we forgot to kill or got randomly spawned behind us gets in our way.

Still going up, still going as fast as we can.

The Labyrinth is reset again. We're trying to get to the northeast from the southeast.

The Labyrinth is also still full of

We leave The Labyrinth behind forever.

Back on Beware of Low-Flying Nightmares. But now they should beware of me :jihad:

At the far south end of the level is the gold door. We couldn't open it the last time we were here.

Inside is the gold we were promised. And one last German, Walter's anonymous friend.

It's not like he'd really have anything we desperately need by now vv

Let's find out how the Germans' story ends.

The Germans may have come to the pyramid to win the war, but it was simple greed that killed them.

(OK, greed and )

We obey his final wish. There are 11 gold ingots in here.

Back to running for the exit. The monsters try to make it difficult.

Just two levels to go.

Back on A Plague of Demons. Looks like clear sailing.

Oh, right, this place is full invisible guys.

The second to last ladder.

Our last chance to feel the power

The very last ladder we will ever see. I'll miss them.

We're nearly there.

We walk back down the length of the very first hall we walked through when the game started.

This door (presumably) closed behind us when we entered the pyramid, and it's been closed ever since.

We give the door a peek at the Alien Gemstone, then close the lead box because it's draining our health again

Our reward for opening the door? MOTHERFUCKING GHOULS.

Goodbye, all you wild and crazy dead guys. Perhaps the nuke will wipe away whatever magic is holding you in limbo here, and you can finally be free.

We take a few more steps forward.

[fade to black]

[sfx: The extraction team's helicopter flies away into the dawn]

[sfx: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

Our final stats for the game.

Not shown here are the fact that it's 1:13 AM on Wednesday, we have 42 out of 41 points(!), $889,400 worth of treasure, and are carrying 306.43 kilograms (675.56 lbs) of items, including 156kg of solid gold. Oof. The "mission bonus" and "survival bonus" we earn because we got the best ending- we can lose the survival bonus by getting killed by the bomb between leaving the pyramid and being extracted, and we can lose the mission bonus because the game will not remind you to set the bomb on the last level and will let you leave without doing so. Nice.

What about the Marathon connection? Most of it is in the fact that the Jjaro are involved; they appear in Marathon 2 and Infinity. The dreaming god is generally believed to be a W'rkncacnter, which also appears in those two games. As for the player and his magical items, he voluntarily vanishes from the timeline shortly after the game ends (the encyclopedic pid.bungie.org has more information on this).

And now I have a phone call to make

(Thanks for reading, everyone! And special thanks to 2 and 2 make 5 for assistance with the GIF.)