Part 83: The Only Way Out is In

Let me just see here for a moment...













Ah. As I thought.





Yes. As a seasoned Chaos Rings player might expect, reloading the game allows us to continue with the plot. We are placed just before the big decision (although the failure branch we saw last time still counts for 100% completion--you get a chance to save the game immediately after, which you should take as reloading will bring you back here.

To be completely precise, I will say that in typical Japanese game terms, what we saw last time was the bad ending. I'll leave it to you to ponder the implications of that sentence.

















...and so on, this conversation is the same as before.



But this time...



...we'll choose to sacrifice the whole world.




So the conversations goes on a different path this time...





An empty house. No one to answer when I called out...
The one who reached out to me in all this was Marie.
No matter how cruelly I treated her, she always responded with a smile. I remembered how warm people could be.
Then Orlando made me part of his family.
Someone to greet me when I came home. No more dinners spent eating alone. How happy I was...!
I wanted to keep all of that safe. So I took up the sword.
I wanted the power of protection, so I would never again lose that warmth.

















Is that a smile?

























So it's a fight with Lessica to prove that we are strong enough.



That thing to the left of her is her weapon (whatever it is).



This is not difficult, especially since we are a few levels above her.



Elemental affinity works in our favour as you can see.



























YES! Generally this will come quite unexpectedly, because there is no real reason to think that Lessica is actually a playable character! Still, she is and not a bad one at that.





And finally at this point we get the location title. Japanese title means simply some variation of "hell", so nothing special there.

Obviously, before moving on, we need to check with Piu-Piu.





























This conversation is probably about Lessica's weapon, which you can see here:



Nevertheless, returning to Abbadon leads us down a funky staircase...





Pretty cool.







...towards one of those patented Chaos Rings lifts...



...and then down still more stairs.







I hope this is not what it looks like...

































Ame no nuhoko (天之瓊矛)--heavenly jewelled spear--is a thing from Shinto mythology (I guess it's been a while since we've had one of those references). In this case, it refers to one of Lessica's limit break attacks.



Like I said.















This is the same thing she used on Darwin in the bad ending, it deals holy damage to all enemies. Gives us a bit of a start here in this fight.



In case it was not clear, yes we have to fight the horsemen AGAIN, but this time they come in pairs! This definitely makes for a more difficult fight, although this one is not too bad.



As usual, we'll make sure we steal the items they have--this one is from War, but I can't yet show you what it is.







It is better to focus on War first, as Conquest will often use various support spells instead of attacking.



Lessica's first limit break is Brahmastra and apart from damage it also causes guaranteed blind on any enemy not 100% immune. The game does not tell you this.



But we already know that War is not immune, so we can use it on him.



Right, forgot that Conquest can do this...





Welp.



Get up! Incidentally, at this point Darwin has equipped a skill that doubles all healing, so when he revives Lessica she comes back with full health instead of normal half.



Unfortunately...



Oh for...



Eh. Whatever...



Finally we can use this!









Not bad, War is close to finished.



Lessica can, on the other hand, do this nifty trick!



One more time!





And War is finally done. Now, let's focus on Conquest.



First, of course, we'll steal his item. I will demonstrate it a bit later.

Now that there is only one of them left, this battle is easy and goes the same as previous two times, so...







































"We need to go deeper!"



And this finally brings to the planet's core!



























The "Legion" that she mentions are simply some enemies that we'll encounter in random battles, similar to the two Legion bosses seen at the very beginning of the game. They are nothing special.



Let's check the map for a second. As you can see the whole thing is completely linear. The bit on the left is the area with the stairs and lifts that we just went through.



Along the way...



...a slightly better weapon for Lessica. The upgrade is small, but there is no downside, so why not, right?





Oh, there are the other two, Death and Famine.















We'll try the old trusty Necrosis again.



I hate this attack.



It reduces your HP to 1, so it won't kill you, but it leaves you wide open, especially now there are two enemies and we do not have an overpowered healer among us. Well technically we do I guess, if we do pair item with Darwin but still... Because of this it's probably best not to use Pair actions in this battle, at least while Death is still alive (tee hee).



Need to remember to steal his item.



In any case, soon he's done.



As for Famine, we'll steal his item too.



But once he's alone, he does not take long to die.



So. Guess we're done with the Horsemen, for the THIRD time. Hey, at least we're not fighting the Firedrake!



The exclamation mark beckons us.