Part 89: The Herald of Good Tidings
Last time when we left off, we were making our way through the All-seeing Eye area. As you may recall, there are barriers on the path and it's necessary to keep switching between the characters in order to deactivate them and progress.
At this point we'll switch to Araki, who is making his way on the rightmost path, together with Conor.
He also runs across one of those unreachable chests. The items in them better be good since they are hidden away like this!
Eventually he runs into a library with a few more things to read.
THE CREATOR AND THE DESTROYER
AMON AND NERON
Two beings of a higher order who continually clash against each other to give rise to new worlds. They are the end and the beginning. They propel the cycle ever onward.
The existence of each is rooted in his complement's mind. Only by his counterpart's recognition can either Amon or Neron exist and continue to create and destroy.
THE CREATION OF EARTH
In the aftermath of a clash between Amon and Neron, a great tremor was born in the dimensions. This tremor in turn tore apart space, giving birth to the present world.
When the clash had ended, the routed Neron was annihilated; by that action Amon should have also disappeared from the world. Amon refused his own destruction, however, and sealed Neron forcibly within the planet to which they had so recently given birth.
Amon this escaped his annihilation, but due to Neron's collapse, his own powers were also greatly reduced.
THE FORMER WORLD
CONVERGENCE OF NOTHINGNESS
It is clear that there was once a former world which was completely annihilated. The appearance of nothingness seems to have caused space to fragment, converge upon itself and then flicker out of existence.
THE WORLD BEFORE CONVERGENCE
Humanity existed on that world, just as it does in the present world. It has been observed that there existed advanced civilisations in that world as well. Shifting space, navigating time, immortalising life...
Humans appeared to use every available means to oppose the nothingness, but they could not stop the convergence.
HUMANITY
CREATION
Highly intelligent life forms with the power of Sopia appeared on the planet due to Neron's influence. Amon dubbed these life forms, "humankind", and determined that they would be capable of maintaining the necessary recognition of his being in Neron's place.
PRAYER
Humankind recognises the Creator through prayer. Each individual's prayers are negligible, but when all of the people in the world pray together, Amon can receive as much recognition of his existence as Neron offered. This is why Amon interferes with the world, constructing belief in himself as a god.
MAGIC
As humans have continually evolved, they have awoken to the possibility of using their own Sopia's power. This may also be an effect of the sealed-away Neron.
Humans named this ability "magic". After its discovery, it quickly became the central pillar upon which their civilisations were built.
THE CYCLICAL WORLD
Since the universe came into being, it has ever been expanding outward, splintering into countless branches and divisions. A multidimensional world limited only by the scope of human perception.
It is said that what waits beyond this expansion is only the fragmentation and convergence of the nothingness. The convergence of nothingness occurs, unchanging, on all planes of existence. For the sake of continued existence, there exists the infinite cycle of thought.
Wow, ok. Again some heavy stuff and food for thought.
Also, on a completely technical note, I wanted to say that whoever did the translation for these texts, did a really excellent job. I absolutely love the way they are written, almost in a style of some kind of scientific text.
But all roads lead to the next boss, really.
It's yet another recolour of that "tree with many eyes" boss.
Physical attacks do well enough here, really. To be honest, we are probably slightly overleveled, but that's ok because we'll need levels later.
Anyway, that's done.
Continuing onwards, we can deactivate the other half of that barrier from last time.
This means that Darwin can now continue a bit forward...
...towards the next boss fight. We've seen many variations on this enemy over the course of the game.
This one is Legion Praetor.
For some reason, he's actually holy-elemental, so dark attacks do pretty good damage as you can see.
So this is really over before it even begins.
Continuing onwards, we reach a chest...
It's a new weapon for Darwin, but its value is dubious. For a very slight attack increase, you lose 500 HP and 80 MP. In my opinion not worth it.
The chest on the other side, has a weapon for Marie.
Another decidedly "meh" weapon. Perhaps worth equipping if you think Marie is too slow, but otherwise, not really.
In any case, in order to continue, we need to switch to Li Hua...
...who soon finds herself in a library.
Unfortunately, no luck. It would be really interesting to be able to read this, but we can't. Notice however that there is a chest at the far end.
But it's just a set of clothes for either Li Hua or Marie. We already have at least one of these.
So we'll just keep going. This is a pretty cool view, I think.
One more boss.
It's just another variation on those punching apes.
Pretty much the only thing of note is that we can steal a useful item from him.
Now, this is an item that's actually worth equipping.
Other than that the battle is soon over.
This deactivates one half of the last barrier on Darwin's path. So you know what comes next.
Back to Araki for one final step!
He also finds a library, but alas, again no luck.
The item in the chest is an armour upgrade.
Also worth taking.
And one last mini-boss. Nothing much to be said here, either.
That's the last barrier deactivated, so all that's left is...
...is to switch back to Darwin and get him all the way to the end.
These guys again?
Oh. I remember this guy, that's Bachs's pet! We tried, unsuccessfully to fight him several times already, if I'm not mistaken!
And finally, the real boss of this area!
We get to start. That's ok damage I guess.
We can also steal from him another weapon for Darwin!
And then he does this...
We still keep attacking.
And now it should be obvious what's going on. Basically we have a limited amount of turns to defeat him. As you could guess, by the time he uses the Seventh Trumpet, our time will be up.
However, we won't even need half that much time. Take note that this is obviously a fire based attack.
He obeys the same rule as anybody else as far as elemental affinity goes. Therefore, we will counter with a water-based spell.
Marie is a bit overpowered at this point, not to mention his magic defence is not that good, it seems. In any case, this is the result.
That definitely looks to me like a water based attack.
Therefore, a wind spell solves that problem.
Sometimes he just uses a normal attack. So you actually have more than seven turns to defeat him (but, as I've said, you don't even need them really).
Wind attack...
...and a fire counter.
And we're done here.
Helpfully, the party switching nonsense is gone from this point, and the full dungeon is normally accessible.
Here is the weapon that we stole. A bit underwhelming, but there isn't any downside, so... I'll take it.
So in theory we could keep going forward, but we'll turn back for now and remember that we had some chests which were not accessible. Maybe that's now changed?
And indeed it has! We can get to them now--there is a total of four in the entire dungeon. Let's see what's in them. This is the first.
A weapon for Orlando.
Yeah, no, I don't think so.
Second chest has a sword for Araki.
Are you kidding me?
Third chest has a weapon for Conor.
No, seriously? Well, at least this one is a minimal upgrade.
And the last one is a set of knuckles for Li Hua.
I give up. Somebody's having a laugh here. Going back for those chests was a complete waste of time.
* * *
Well, that's all for now. Next time we'll take another break to do a couple of side-quests--finally a resolution to the Panda Gang story--and after that we'll see what else awaits us.