Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark Part #68 - Teratoma II: The Final Battle

Part 68: Teratoma II: The Final Battle

Update 68: Teratoma II: The Final Battle

Hello and welcome back! It’s been a while since we last did a story mission, but it’s finally time to return to the Teratoma and take down The Maw for good.

Entering the area gets the same dialogue as before, with the reminder to try and get an Energy Shard during the battle.

The fight itself is also the same focused battle, just with the enemies leveled up to match us.

This time I’ll be bringing Kyrie, Reiner, Bobby, Sophia, Anadine, and Hannah. Hannah has the Thief secondary class so that she can steal an Energy Fragment from The Maw if the Viscerawyrms refuse to drop one.

The Maw starts off with another Sacrifice to buff itself.

The battle goes pretty quickly, my damage was boosted by quite a bit over the Ancient Path and other side quests.

A notable time where the Steal Buffs skill would be crazy useful. Sadly, it misses.

Anadine pretty quickly kills one of the Viscerawyrms but it just drops a piece of thread.

But after a bit more fighting Hannah takes out the other one and gets the Energy Fragment. This could also have been stolen from The Maw itself, but I always seem to fail to steal things even though it has a solid chance of success.

With that done, I take out the Aeoths, leaving just The Maw.

With no enemies to boost its resistance, The Maw takes quite a bit of damage from Hannah.

It puts out a good chunk of damage as it spams Immortal Souls a bunch and manages to take out both Reiner and Anadine.

But it’s not enough and Hannah finishes it off.

Overall a pretty easy fight. My damage is high enough to typically one or 2 shot most of the enemies, though they can still hit decently hard as well.

After the fight, everyone surrounds The Maw, restraining it.

It roars.

And then teleports back to its own realm.

Let’s head for Lodestarhenge right away.

There’s a smash cut and we appear in front of the gate in Lodestarhenge.

Here goes nothing!

Everything flashes purple and the Henge fragments glow red.

The sky darkens and lighting strikes all around.

The portal waves towards the party and then teleports them away.

And we teleport to an area that looks sort of like the moon (and not very much like the craziness that The Maw was transforming Teora into).

The party appears and looks around.

All accounted for!

So, this is The Maw’s bolt-hole.

That sounded like… Primus?

A ghostly shade of Primus fades in.

Yes. But I am… lucid, now. I see now that my arrogance gave The Maw a way into my mind. My old nemesis bested me, in the end.

But… why are you here now? What are you?

A remnant, I suppose. Whatever small part of me that The Maw has not already consumed. I believe it is the fate of all Immortals to end up here, after they pass. Fueling the beast with our spirit, as it fueled us with its energy in life. But now that you’re here… Please show me one small mercy, however undeserved.

End our suffering. Do what I could not. Destroy The Maw!

At that, The Maw fades in to the center of the area.

That’s what we’re here to do.

My thanks. And my apologies for what I am about to do, as The Maw has control of us in here.

I understand, Primus.

Primus goes off to the side and Kyrie turns to address the group.

Everyone! Let’s finish The Maw once and for all, before it can recuperate and return to Teora!

And it’s time for the final battle!

In the center is The Maw, with a slightly different HP count. Its current HP is its max HP from its Teora form, but here we can see that it’s merely been wounded. The Maw has one new ability as well, which I’ll go over shortly, but is otherwise unchanged. The Viscerawyrms are the same too.

The real gimmick for this fight is the presence of the Immortals as Corrupted Souls. In each of the four corners there is an Immortal. Going clockwise, there are Primus, Secunda, Septimus, and then Sekstus who had previously only been mentioned as having been slaughtered by Primus.
They all have solid stats, a different set of elemental resistances, and are vulnerable to all debuffs except for Charm and Berserk.

For abilities, they have the same ones from their Immortal classes, so Primus has his teleports and assorted other ones, Septimus has his vampire things, Secunda has Warmage and Wizard abilities, and Sekstus has some basic healing and buffing abilities from the Mender and Alchemystic.

On their own, these wouldn’t be too bad. But their passives and specifically the Counter are very nasty. Ecdysis and Immortal Mind combine to make all debuffs only last one turn and only get applied half as often.

And then their counter is Shackled Soul, which counters the character dying by doing a massive unavoidable attack to all of my characters. It can be prevented by afflicting the character with a specific debuff when they die, but it’s very fiddly and I never managed to stop it. Each Immortal requires a different debuff to stop the attack.

To start the fight itself, I have Hannah pop over and start whacking The Maw. With all of the enemies back on the field, her damage is cut down by just about half thanks to The Maw’s Broodmaster passive.

And on The Maw’s turn it uses its new move, Drain Souls. This hurts every enemy except for The Maw for 200 damage and then heals The Maw for the total amount it deals. This can kill the Corrupted Souls and will still trigger their Shackled Soul attack.

Because of this attack, The Maw is much more difficult to rush down. Additionally, unexpected or consecutive Shackled Souls could absolutely wipe your party.

What I’ve found to be the best strategy is to take out at least 2 of the Immortals on your own. That’ll both reduce your incoming damage and increase the damage you can do to The Maw, especially if you take out the Viscerawyrms too. Primus and Secunda are the most threatening of the four and are the closest to the main party so I’d recommend focusing on them. Sekstus will then typically focus on healing himself and Septimus, so you shouldn’t necessarily need to deal with another Shackled Soul.

Reiner killed one of the Viscerawyrms and Sophia takes out the other.

And Primus goes after Anadine with his fall damage attack.

Though they have a lot of HP, the Corrupted Souls’ defenses aren’t crazy so I can do a good chunk of damage to them.

Anadine helps out as well.

But to demonstrate that the Immortals are still threatening, Secunda straight up 1-shots Reiner with an Infused Edge Combo. I was hoping that he’d survive, but it just shows that I really need to take her out quickly.

Hannah gets to work on her and crits, which is actually a mixed blessing. More damage is good, but Secunda also has the Bloodlust passive so if I don’t kill her quickly then she’ll 1-shot people even more easily.

Now here I get a little greedy. Primus and Secunda are the real damage sources of the fight, so I just think to take them out ASAP. What I’m not thinking about is how strong Shackled Soul is and how a few of my people are low on health.

Primus gets eaten by an Earthwyrm.

And then retaliates with a Shackled Soul that nearly kills everyone except for Kyrie.

I have Anadine heal Sophia to full as well. As long as she’s alive then I can just revive people with no trouble, since The Maw only deals about 120 damage to her per attack.

And then, I for some reason decide that it’s a better idea to kill Secunda and trigger the counter than just let her kill one person.

It wasn’t a good idea.

Sophia heals back to full with a potion and Kyrie revives Hannah with some Phoenix Ashes.

She then moves to kill one of the respawned Viscerawyrms and heals a bit from the Leech Life passive.

Septimus does a little bit of damage to her, but is overall pretty negligible.

Still, he annoys me so I have Hannah kill him too.

That was entirely unnecessary and ends up getting Sophia killed by the other Viscerawyrm. Thankfully both Kyrie and Hannah have revival options so it doesn’t really matter that much.

So I revive her and bring Anadine back as well.

At this point, Sekstus keeps putting regen on The Maw, which is actually really annoying with The Maw’s giant HP pool, so I decide to kill it as well.

The Maw also keeps stealing Anadine’s buffs, which is almost as annoying.

On Kyrie’s next turn, she’s able to kill Sekstus, and I eat one more Shackled Soul, though this doesn’t end up killing anyone.

With all of the Immortals dead, the fight is pretty much in cleanup mode. The Maw doesn’t do much damage to me so I can basically take it out at leisure.

Without the damage reduction, Hannah can just tear through The Maw, though this attempt to steal its buffs also misses.

It does use a neat attack that I hadn’t previously shown. The Forsaken One sets all of your part members’ HP to 1 and could be really nasty if there was anything else in the fight to take advantage of it.

Everyone keeps whacking at The Maw.

And Hannah gets an absolutely absurd crit.

And before The Maw gets another turn Kyrie kills it.

No crazy rewards, but it is the final fight so what could you expect?

Even though I did at one point end up with only 2 low health people on the field, this fight was supremely unthreatening after the Ancient Path. The Shackled Souls definitely hurt, but their damage was almost self-inflicted and I could’ve definitely prepared a bit better for them. But I never felt like I was actually in danger of losing.

After the fight, everyone surrounds The Maw again.

Kyrie moves in and slices it.

And The Maw burns away into nothing.

Kyrie! Your Mark! It’s gone!

You’re right! I can feel its power ebbing away.

It’s really over, then.

Let’s go home.

The screen fades out and the party somehow leaves the area.

The credits start to roll but are quickly interrupted by Quintus.

In a comparison to the bad end, we pan down through the Immortal Council chambers, though this time without a Relic beating at the top.

It pans down to show the party, Quintus, and Tertia (also sans Marks).

A pretty good run all in all, I’d say.

Too true, Captain Reiner.

Do you think you’ll retire now, Quintus? Err… should I still be calling you Quintus, by the way?

Ho ho. I have been Quintus for so long, I think I can endure a few more years of my Immortal title. As for retirement, I do wish I could take a rest from all this. But it is not to be.

Too much work to do, right?

As de facto interim ministers, Quintus and I must establish a new system of governance for the land. Before all hell breaks loose.

Primus was always the one who excelled at these things, before the corruption took his mind. No use dwelling on that, though.

Arbiters. Tertia is right about what is to come. I realize that you’ve done so much for the realm already… not to mention that an ex-Immortal can hardly claim authority over you. But can we count on your aid during the chaotic times ahead?

Of course! But why all the doom and gloom? Didn’t we restore order when we destroyed The Maw?

We did, for a time. But a new storm is on the horizon, now. When word gets out that the Immortals have lost their powers, there will be all manner of scavengers looking to take advantage and wrest control.

From both within and without. We Arbiters need to be ready.

How exciting!

This means I’ll get to bug you for even longer, Reiner! Aren’t you glad?

It’s an honor Bzaro.

There’s another fade out.

Which cuts to the group leaving the Council Chambers and meeting back up with Katja and Kairu.

The slightest spark can ignite a war, right now.

Aye aye, Captain.

Umm… I don’t agree with Katja’s “friendly advice,” Kyrie, but… she does have a point buried in there. Are Quintus and Tertia really the best people to lead us right now?

I know Quintus is a good peson and all… He did vote against my mother’s death sentence. But he won’t be around much longer. And he did help set up the Council and Marked Pilgrimage in the first place, which got us all into this mess.

And Tertia… she dodged my questions when I asked her how she voted. I’m not sure I can ever be at ease with her in charge.

Old dodderers who’ve had naught but a demon ‘tween their ears for too long, the lot o’ them.

Kyrie pauses for a second.

I do share some of your concerns, Anadine. Tertia’s evasiveness is deeply unsettling. But she and Quintus are still our best option for keeping the peace at the moment. At the end of the day, that’s what being an Arbiter is all about, isn’t it?