Part 9: Vengeance! I wonder what he could do with a guitar?

Returning wrathfully to Davias' throne room, it seems that the villain has flown the coop but conveniently left his parrot behind.



It's an Amanda potion...



Rock doesn't waste any time after Lester has returned to a human state. He really does bear a strong resemblance to Amanda.



Amanda sacrificed herself to save you and all...

To save me? ... Oh, Amanda...



Oh

Thanks. Let's go, Rock!

Lester strums his lute, and a set of stairs appear...

Mystic tune?!

Yeah.



As an ally, Lester is kind of middle of the road. He's got a good ranged attack with his arrows, but his ASK command is...lackluster. At least it does something, even if it's only to change the background music. You can't make requests, though.



As you might expect, we get some new enemies with the new dungeon. I've got to say, the variety of enemies is something I really like in this game. The black mages are kind of squishy, but can be very dangerous if they can get around your shield or hit you from behind. Two or three hits is quite enough to kill us. The living flames and demons are less threatening, but the demons can cause Darkness. Both can only be killed with magic at this point, although it's rather difficult. A full charged Fire spell will take out a flame, but the demons can require two or three.



The loot, at least, is fairly nice. The Demons are a good source of crystals, which are worth 500 gold if you don't feel like you need their ability to fill your will gauge. Blizzard spells are nice to have just in case you're out of mp and come across a puzzle that requires ice.



A couple rooms in we stumble across this area. The top opening was created with a mattock, so you might find yourself wondering which way to go. The truth is that it doesn't matter. Let's say we go south:



We'll pass through this room (you can break the far wall, but it just leads to somewhere fairly unremarkable)...



And end up here. The stairs down meet up with the fork we were previously at. Interestingly enough, if we leave this room and come back the door to the south will disappear. Evidently it's a one way door?



I believe this came from a living flame, but can't remember for certain. It's certainly an improvement over a standard cure potion.



These square are a new element that we'll have to deal with in the future a few more times. They're only passable in one direction, and I'm sure you can guess which direction we'll have to go.



The stars in the center of this room are a new hazard. It's quite possible to pass through them, if you don't mind shredding your HP.



This is another rather interesting trick room. You have to step on the pressure plates in the right order to reveal the stairway, in this case counter-clockwise.



I don't understand why the last few dungeons have featured a room full of werewolves, but I'm not going to complain. At this point they're experience fodder.



This is a room that might be a stress hazard for some players of the game. We need to use ice magic to create a snowman for the pressure plate, but arrow-happy Lester here has an unfortunate tendency to shoot an arrow through your snowman. The trick is to make your snowman as close to the plate as possible, since Lester's AI will usually stick him behind the L shaped barrier near the top.



The end of this particular line of rooms is actually a place you don't have to go, but it's well worth it. Standard "kill them all and reveal a chest room."



Which chest includes an upgrade to our old battle axe that does more damage than our spear. Can't have without the axe!



The actual path we want to take is through this wall, which one might be tempted to walk right past thinking it's one of those rooms where a pattern is just a pattern.



The next couple of rooms are fairly unremarkable, although this one caught my eye just because of the weirdness of another room full of coffins. Davias is a bit hard on the help it seems..



The path ends on top of a tower which, I have to admit, is a rather novel and interesting place to have a battle.

Boss Battle: Davias


Battle with Davias

As you can probably see from the screen cap up there, Davias is surrounded by four spinning balls of fire and throws multiple flaming orbs at us for his main attack. I suppose you could try to learn his pattern and dodge his fireballs, but it's probably easier to just take the most approach possible. Smash through the orbs around him and start getting stuck in, healing when necessary. If you do it well enough, he won't have the endurance to outlast your cure spells.



After a decent fight he explodes, but it's not quite as simple as Lester seems to think...


Garuda is flying over Mt. Rocks (worst name for a mountain ever..) to Glaive...

You know, I'm getting a bit creeped out at how all the evil psychopaths keep calling me their "dear."



After giving us a helpful hint as to where we should go next, Davias expires.



We say our farewells outside near the pond, but there's still a bit of a problem.


Lester's Requiem

Luckily Lester's harp is the solution. I still don't know how it works, but I can't complain too much.

... I'll stay here and play requiem for my sister.

Okay, Lester. I'm going. ... Take care.

Take this book with you. It might help.



It won't. Mute is fairly useless all around, although I'll try to give it a bit more of a shake around some of the dungeons to see if I'm missing something. Generally it's just faster and easier to kill enemies.



This is what Lester has to say to us afterward.



Now that Lester is jamming on the streets of Jadd again, we can walk through the poison gas area. It's very similar to the cliff on the other side...kind of makes me wish there was a dungeon or something down there. The location is perfect.



We've reached the home of the mole-men and the gorillas, two utterly forgettable enemies that go down in a couple of hits at most.



I find this forest blocking our path much less annoying now that our strongest weapon is also an axe. Also, more werewolves. Thankfully they don't appear to spread by injury.



Interestingly enough, there's another waterfall nearby. Does this also connect to the Tree of Mana somehow, or was it that one specific waterfall near Topple/Wendel?



It's easy to miss here, but there's a hidden path down the vines here. What's really impressive is that Choco can climb down a vine. He is truly an inspiration to all chocobos.



Down at the bottom is a quaint little shop that features more magics and a few other miscellaneous supplies, in case you're a bit short.



I have a sense of foreboding about this cave.

Next time: The worst named mountain in history, and possibly two bosses.