Part 5: Page 5

I manage to raise some money and buy all the stuff I need, so I head out.

I run into Sealed Castle Kuzar on my way. I don't encounter any Exdeath Souls, but I do encounter a few of these guys.


Shield Dragons are normally pretty tough, but you can Control them and make them kill themselves with Flame, so just put it on all four people and go crazy.

And just look what you get for it!

Not bad, eh?

I go further into the castle and find this place.

Not only have they turned to stone, but they're also sealed by some mystic force, so we can't even take them and go around hitting people with stone weapons. Boo!

Well, I keep going and find a choke point.

Curses, a bottleneck! Now I'll have to go through some stupid forced plot event!


The forest quickly proves itself to be a forced plot event, and... wait, what's that thing over there?


I try to talk to this furry little fellow, but he freaks out and runs off, and then he falls in a hole.


Lenna and her crazy love of animals. Fine, I'll go in after it. Suppose I don't have any choice.


The monsters here are annoying, but they have elemental weaknesses that Faris as a Summoner can easily exploit. Oh yeah, I turned Faris into a Summoner, probably should've mentioned that.


I find the moogle being harassed by a skeleton, so I run up there and get ready to kick its pelvis.


This guy mostly just uses ???? on me, which would hurt me for however much damage he's taken. Which isn't that big a deal because I don't technically do any damage to him!


I'd say I just used a Phoenix Down on him, but really I combined a Phoenix Down and a Potion to use Resurrection on him. I guess I did this because I thought Resurrection is more accurate, but really I don't think it is. So whatever, I just used a Phoenix Down on him.


So I smote the evil creature harassing this moogle, but the little guy still doesn't trust me.


But Lenna works her crazy animal lover magic on him and he takes a liking to me.


Hey dude kupo follow me


Our moogle friend shows us the way around the desert filled with crazy powerful evil sandworms.

I easily follow him and reach

His hometown, where the occupants don't seem too fond of me.


In fact, the little guy himself freaks out a little, but then he remembers us.


The fellow thanks us by letting us raid his treasure room. Sweet.

I decide to go about town for a bit, where I find...

Aw, what the hell, I'll try anything once.

Lookin' snazzy in my new suit, I check out another house, where I find a chest!

Oh, come on. Nobody locks chests. I'll just have to talk to the owner about this.


Aw, how cute. The little guy is infatuated with me and opens up his treasure chest as a token of his affection. I grab the loot and get out of there before he tries anything funny. Yeah yeah, I know I broke the poor guy's heart, but I panicked! My cornhole was on the line, man!

I check back with my old friend, and he does something weird.

Dude's just climbing a tree is all.

Or is he???

Suddenly we cut to Cara and her moogle starts acting all funny.


Yeah, apparently all moogles can communicate with each other via some kind of psychic link, just like bartenders.


The Hiryuu is sick of everyone treating it like an old man, so it lets its hubris get the best of it and decides to fly anyway.

Meanwhile, back in the Moogle Village, the moogles are acting all funny.

The nose?


Meanwhile, Cara is circling around above the forest, trying to find a parking space. And what's all this nonsense about the nose???


Ohhhh, the nose. Yeah, I totally knew what they were talking about this whole time.


Cara shares a few words with the party, and they all fly back to Galuf's castle.


They arrive at Bal Castle, and naturally the Hiryuu isn't feeling too well, what with it being nearly dead and everything.


Galuf, or should I say King Galuf, is greeted by a cadre of soldiers. Mission accomplished!


Galuf and his men discuss politics and such. When will these people learn that it's not armies that win battles, but a handful of adventurers with all sorts of awesome abilities and stuff?


And, of course, no hero worth his weight in potions likes to be addressed formally. Why can't we just for once have a king that demands to be called a king?

I decide to check on the Hiryuu, and things aren't looking good, apparently.

So we once again seem all too eager to set off on a suicide mission. Jesus, I'm leading a party of crazy people.

But first, I explore the castle a bit. And I find...

The basement! There's a door here that won't open, but who cares about that when there are...

These guys!

Statues. They've got some nasty physical attacks, and I'm pretty sure they can turn people to stone too. Normally you could use a Soft on one of them and they'll die, but why bother with all that when you can do...

THIS

These guys give out hard cash money, and they're worth a lot of ABP, too! A group of two is worth 4, and a group of five is worth 8. I could spend some time grinding on these guys and get all-powerful if I really wanted. But then, it's not up to me.
From now on, all job masterations are going in one post. Also it is this post.





Butz has mastered Monk, Ninja, Hunter, and Mystic Knight. I've given him X-Fight and Sword Magic, and he's gonna mess people up with an Epee and a Slumber Sword. Butz is going to be a total asskicker, because he has the most HP, Strength, and Vitality of anybody.


Lenna has mastered Ninja, Samurai, and Hunter. She gets X-Fight and Slash, and I paired her up with two of the four Double Lances I managed to steal while grinding Statues. Normally one attack with a Double Lance will hit twice, but it doesn't work with X-Fight. However, they're more powerful than any other weapons I have access to, so I'm still using them. Most of her stats are pretty average.


Galuf has mastered Thief, Ninja, Hunter, Blue Mage, Mediator, and Geomancer. I gave him X-Fight and Capture, and he gets the other two Double Lances. Most of his stats are pretty average too.


Faris took a very different route from the others and mastered White Mage, Black Mage, Time Mage, Summoner, and Blue Mage. Her abilities will vary, but for now I've given her Summon Magic and Blue Magic. Her equipment isn't too terribly important, as she's mostly going to fling magicky death from the back row. She has the worst HP, Strength, Agility, and Vitality of anybody, but her MP and Magic Power are Redickulous. _{(LY GAY)}

I get ready to leave the castle, but since Exdeath's minions lurk outside, precautions must be taken.

Yes, please. If I have to spend five more minutes in this castle I swear to God I'm going to kill someone.


As soon as I step out, I get into a fight with a really weak piece of crap. He'd die to one X-Fight, but I have Lenna Slash him just for variety.


On my way to Kelb, I catch one of these frog fellows, because I'm gonna be the very best like no one ever was.


So I get to the town, and all the doors are locked, and so is the gate to Hiryuu Valley. Well, all the doors are locked but one, so I get pidgeonholed into there, where I find...

Another locked door.

Un-friggin'-believable. I'm outta h

FUCK WEREWOLVES

Goddamn, it's werewolves! Stand guard!

But

Bah! Werewolf lover!

The head werewolf comes out! If I kill him all of his werewolf henchmen will die, I read it in a book! Come on, let's go!

Oh, come on! I want to kill some werewolves!


No, man, we're fighting against Exd


Yeah, okay! He challenged me, I can't turn it down or I'm a coward! Finally, an excuse to kill some werewolves!

Everybody else gets out of the way and it's time for some good old fashioned claw-to-sword werewolf fighting!

Wait, what the fuck? What is this Dragonball Z bullshit? Just take a swing at him!


Kelgar quite literally runs circles around our friend Butz, until he remembers a technique passed down to him by his father and suddenly breaks out in a bad case of epiphanies!


And I guess the secret technique is just body checking him really hard and launching him through a doorway. Maybe his dad was a football player or something.


Kelgar stops being such a dickweed after he realizes that Butz could probably decapitate him with a sneeze (though this is assuming Butz was storing some kind of blade in his mouth before the sneeze took place, because I mean it's not like his mucus is going to take someone's head off, that's just crazy).


The topic of conversation drifts to Butz's dad, and Kelgar and Galuf seem shocked when they hear what his name is.

Hmmm...


Oho! So it turns out we have another hero on the team, or at least one by blood. As for Lenna and Faris, don't be silly, girls can't be heroes.


Dorgan was the Warrior of Dawn who was all like "no we can't seal him here you idiots" and they were like "dude he's regenerating it's not like we can just kill him and he'll stay dead we have to seal him" and he's like "uh okay fine whatever."


And then they were like "hey alty-lover if you love the alternate universe so much why don't you live there" and he was like "fine I will" and they were like "dude we were just kidding" but it was too late, the damage was done.


No man, he stayed there to get laid. You know it's true.


Bout fuckin' time. Why'd they close it, anyway? Hell, why did they all lock themselves in all the buildings? I think these guys have something to hide. We should kill them all.


This werewolf fellow teaches me a song and I quickly end his life and those of his two friends with a few well-placed silver bullets. Okay not really but let a man dream.


So I check this well and OH MY GOD THERE'S A DUDE


He proposes that if I give him my frog and 10,000 GP, he will give me a4:14 AM 2/3/2007 jar. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this trade and agree. But it turns out this particular jar allows me to Catch stuff when it's at half its normal HP, when normally I'd have to reduce it to 12.5%. A winning trade, especially considering I really wasn't going to use the frog and I have enough money to buy God. To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause.

I actually got farther than that, but I somehow managed to make 94 pictures, and Imageshack is being an annoying piece of shit, so I'm breaking it up. What the fuck does "This document contains no data" even mean, and why does it continue to pop up when the apparent lack of data interferes with me in no way but popping up an annoying error message?
Hiryuu Valley!

This place would be kind of tough, except that three people are capable of inflicting around 3200 damage with one command, so everyone dies.

Except for this guy!

Every now and then I run into this jerk, who hits me once and runs away. What the fuck, cheater.


I find the Bone Mail, a piece of armor with a very high defense rating, but it makes the user undead which means I can't heal them unless I cast Death on them, or use a Death Potion. The worst part about it, really, is that its really high defense means it always gets equipped when I change somebody's abilities around, which is really really fucking annoying.

But what the hell's going on here?

Oh yeah, now that this annoying asshole realizes he's surrounded by undead dragons who despise all living things, he's come crawling back to beg my forgiveness. I really should've killed him, but I didn't. He got lucky.


Sure, man. I could use a fifth party member. Here, take this sword and... oh, you want to join me as a summon. Okay, fine, but I liked my idea better.

I find the Hiryuu plant.

Great, let's grab some and get out of hACKGRGK


Well, since this healing plant has turned into a giant monster, I guess we better kill it and then feed its corpse to our dragon. I mean, just because it's been corrupted by some dark force to kill everything doesn't necessarily mean it's lost its healing powers, does it?


So the HiryuuPlant has a bunch of little flowers that do all of its attacking for it, and they regenerate and it's pretty annoying. Or it would be, if the whole troupe weren't vulnerable to instant death. Lenna kills them all with her mad Kyuzo skills.


There, mission accomplished. Now let's get back to the Hiryuu so we can shove this monster down its throat.

I arrive at Bal Castle to a warm reception.

What? Come on, man, you didn't even look. Somebody's gotta install a peephole in that door or something.


So we all hop in the moat and get eaten by the monster.

Except no not really.

Yeah, okay, that's cool. Oh, by the way, you are so fucking fired.

So I go up to heal the H

Huh? Oh fine.


Sup mang this is Guido where's my money mang


So they all agree to hold off on studying for their trig mid-term so they can chase after Guido the killer pimp.

Now where were we? Ah yes, the Hiryuu.

Of course he's not gonna eat it. I mean, it turned into an evil dragon-killing monster, so maybe it's not safe to eat. I mean, would you eat a komodo dragon? Those things can kill you by coughing on you, because they've got like a thousand poisons in their saliva. I'd be a little hesitant to eat one too (but then I'd probably still eat it just so I could say I ate a dragon).


So Lenna does like she always does around dragons and does something really stupid and gets poisoned.


Fortunately, her little ruse works, and it turns out that, in a really stupid move on the dark corrupting force's part, the evil death weed did not in fact lose its healing powers. It's like all those stupid monsters that drop Potions, except that this monster is the Potion.


So then Lenna passes out again, but Cara comes to the rescue because it turns out she has an antidote to the Hiryuu plant's awfully specific poison.


Thank you.


Except it turns out Cara is crazy too. Everybody in this damn game is crazy. If you told these guys that the only way to defeat Exdeath is to jump in a pool of lava, they'd be like, "Let's go!" And then they'd jump in and start burning alive, but then the Hiryuu or one of Faris's pirates or some dude they talked to once in some town a few months ago would come and rescue them somehow and then they'd probably set out to find some amulet or something that let them walk around in lava so they could defeat Exdeath once and for all.


I'd crack some kind of joke here, but I already used the Risky Business joke so I'm kind of at a loss here.


And we have liftoff! I can go all sorts of places on my dragonplane, except for all of the places I haven't already been to that are inconveniently surrounded by mountains. Oh, except this one castle, but whatever.