Part 13: My Kingdom For a Ranged Attack

We pick up having moved a few feet forward after fighting Bill and Ben.



"Oh, you're still alive? Hahaha… 'Isabella'. That was a fun alias, wasn't it?"

"I really shouldn't be giving you pointers on this kind of thing, but if you didn't brainwash your soldiers to the point where they can barely talk they'd be a LOT better about reporting back to you. We walked by a good dozen of your soldiers in Palo and none of them recognized Hawk."

"Really? I'll have to tweak their mind control a bit…"

"…Who are you!? And why did you take over Navarre and Rolante?"



"Never heard of the guy."

"Lord of the Outer Night? King of the Evil Kingdom? Father of Lies? Any of this ringing a bell?"

"Nah, but don't let that bother you. I'm mostly interested in things I can stab. Like chatty bitches sitting on thrones in front of me."



"Ooh, be careful with those sharp knives! Someone could get… killed!"

"…The curse… Jessica…"



Difficult to capture, but while laughing evilly Bigieu vanishes whilst moving backward. We cut forward a bit, since this is the end of the enemy presence in the castle.



"But… it won't bring back Father…"

"Although I am technically a Queen now…"



"Now, even those two are under Isabella's… I mean Bigieu's… spell."

"Speaking of her, what kept you from killing her a few minutes ago?"

"I'm more than a bit curious about that as well."



"If you kill her, Jessica will die too. Please… I need some time to get rid of the curse."

"The Sword of Mana… if only I had had that… I could save Jessica…"



"Not that I care, or anything, who you might have been seeing or anything like that.."

"I don't have time to worry about Bigieu anymore. I need to rebuild my kingdom."

"Rolante, restored to its former glory… that's the best revenge I think I could get."

"I think it's right up there with launching a counter-invasion of Navarre and burning the entire place to the ground."



"She took my kingdom, my father, and my brother… she will never be forgiven…"

"I don't like Bigieu! What if she attacks again?"



"Okay, I want to hear what you think those were."



"Miss Lise.. please stay. We need your guidance…"

"Wait wait wait… you mean you weren't even sending out patrols? And the reason for this was because of flowers that only work on a person once?"

"…"



"Miss Lise.. leader of the Amazon army… would never sit by while Eliott is in enemy hands!"



"Thanks for covering for me Eliza."



"Until I get back.. take care."

"Miss Lise! Be careful!"

"I think I'm safer out there than here."



Now that we're done, I have to confess.. I didn't even think to check to see if they put the cannon back by the Amazon hideout. That's okay, though, because there's something to see back in Palo.



"Nikita!!"



"You remember me?"

"Course I do, bro.. although I don't remember how I got here.."



"How do we know YOU'RE not one of them too?"

"Aw, to hell with them both. Let's go!"

"Getting beaten by a bunch of idiot villagers… interesting strategy…"



"…and you're going to tell us all about it, aren't you?"




"Wait, in the same cell? The one you blew up to get me out?"

"Yeah bro, they had a couple of bricklayers in there to patch up the hole. I think she was kind of pissed about it."

"They fortified the walls. I couldn't do anything about it… They put me under the spell too."



"It's not your fault… And don't even think about going back for her! Too dangerous!"

"We're going to get the Sword of Mana, so we can break Jessica's curse…"

"Nikita, you'll have to stay in Rolante until then. Try not to get in trouble…"

"You be careful too, bro…"

"Besides, the people in Rolante don't really know me. I'm just a friend of yours to them.. evidently the people around here have reasons to be a bit pissed off."



The departure of Navarre's army also gives us a pretty convenient excuse for some new gear.. we'll just not ask any questions about why the common soldiers had better gear than Hawk.




And it's definitely better gear. New weapons and armor for everybody, with all of the boosts being in this area. Interestingly enough, the icon for Hawk's next weapon looks a lot like the swallow weapons from Chrono Cross.



"Don't you mean never?"

"Talk to me again after you've lived in a fishing village for 20 years. It gets incredibly boring here."



There's no cannon in town (and there probably wasn't one up by the hideout) because we can get out of here pretty easily by ship.



"Hey, a free boat ride!"

"Uh.. Hawk.. there's something about this boat I don't like."



"Oh, it's perfectly fine. Don't look a free boat ride in the mouth."

"Is it just me, or have we passed this coastline once already?"



"And it's starting to get pretty late.. don't think the trip took so long last time."



"I told you so!"



"Waaah! I'm scared!"

"Is this… the Ghost Ship?"

"I don't like this anymore! I want to go home!!"



"You mean… there's a spirit on this ship?"

"Seriously, what did I just say?"

"Hey! Something's here! Look out!"




The Ghost Ship, appropriately enough, is stuffed full of undead type enemies. Ghouls are like Zombies, only more bitty.



Believe it or not, this seemingly random creepiness does have a purpose. We can't go any further here, though, so we have to go back and head in the other direction.



There's a bedroom you can rest in, but the results are pretty mixed.



The real meaning behind the gibberish is right here. If you guessed that the books to the right and left are the Book of Blood and Book of Death respectively, you win a prize. Reading the books in the order on the notice opens up a secret passage way that allows us to continue.




"Charming."

"Eeek! What's going on!?"



"Can you believe it!? I'm really a ghost now! And I'm on the Ghost Ship!"

"I've been waiting for this my whole life! Wait till I tell the guys back home…"

"I think you're missing something about this whole 'being a ghost' thing."



"!?!"



"Hmm… it looks as if he's transferred his curse over to you."

"In order to leave the ship, you have to pass it on to someone else…"

"Someone… else?"



"Oh, come back here you idiots. Besides, as a ghost I'm pretty sure I can walk through walls or something like that."

"You weren't thinking of sacrificing your friend here, were you?"

"Um…"



"Please, if you get tired of searching, I'll trade places with you!"

"You won't trick us that easily!"

"Don't worry about it Lise, between the two of us we should be able to break your curse."



Thus, the gimmick of this dungeon: You only get 2 people. If you want to go back and switch you have to fight your way back. As Hawk and Lise have essentially the same speciality (kicking ass at close range) it's really six of one and half a dozen of the other at this point. Also, looking out this window reveals a wonderfully creepy skeleton face looking in.



There's a couple of ghost merchants who will sell you the weapon and armor upgrades from Palo if you missed them, but there's no ghost merchant who sells you items. Eventually we can keep on heading up and find the reason behind the curse on the deck.



"Break the curse on my friend, and let us go!"

"There is only one way out…"

Boss Fight: Gorva



Boss Battle: Gorva (22 minutes of pain)

If you feel like watching me suffer for 22 minutes, the video is above. That's right, 22 minutes.. because this boss battle is a HUGE dick move. Allow me to explain.




First off, Gorva uses Dark Element Magic. This in and of itself wouldn't be so bad, except that one of his spells debuffs four of your stats including attack and defense power. At some points in this battle Hawk was hitting for 2-3 damage.




He's also got several area of effect spells, and the nastiest thing about him is that if you notice he's a fair distance above our characters. When he's up there you can't attack him with melee weapons and we have no distance attacks. Distance attack items can be used, but you can only carry a single stack of each item.



He can also tear off any buffs you have (we don't) but this is a general dispel so it'll also occasionally remove the debuffs he's put on you.



Eventually you can triumph if you stick with it, but this fight can be incredibly tedious. I can only imagine it's a lot easier with Angela around. At any rate, once he's gone...



"Thanks, everyone! I'm back to normal!"

"If Shade is here, then the Mana Stone of Darkness is on this ship as well?"

"I don't see how we couldn't have seen it if it were here. Those things are pretty huge and hard to miss."

"No, that Stone is lost… It doesn't exist anymore."

"What do you mean doesn't exist? It's one of the foundations of the world.. and I think it's the source of Dark Magic, which I know people can use."



"Then war erupted, and the seal on the Mana Stone of Darkness was released."



"It wandered across the land, from country to country, like a dark plague.."

"…subverting the peaceful energy of the other Mana Stones, using them as instruments of death."



"He did? I'm pretty sure all he did was talk about terrible portents and bad omens."

"I'm pretty sure he did, anyway. Or maybe I heard it somewhere else. Nevermind."

"The world had never seen such a catastrophe… civilization fell, countless lives were lost…"

"The Mana Stone of Darkness has never existed since. I've spent my days on this ghost ship…"



"Difficult to say… One day, the God-Beast simply vanished."

"You mean one of the eight unstoppable God-Beasts we're supposed to be terrified just got bored and wandered off on its own?"

"Perhaps it left somewhere, satisfied that its job was done."



"Perhaps it is planning another disaster for this world. Nobody knows."

"Maybe it's responsible for the recent loss of Mana…"

"Maybe it's the Dark Prince. Trying to gain possession of the Mana Stones and using people as tools sounds kind of like what the Mana Beast did."



"I think the ship's starting to disappear!"

"Oh no!!"



A slow pan to the nearby volcanic island…