Part 8: Samuel

So this place is a fun little, um, area. I do mean little, unfortunately... the entire thing is basically a straight line with one turn. There's a few side rooms (three!) but I'm reticent to call it a dungeon. The place's name is even less fitting;



Somehow this is a castle. Don't ask me "how," it just is. Let's assume that I banked the Emblem for inventory saving reasons since there's no indication of when it's going to be needed.



You'd think you'd have to fight him or whatever if you didn't have it, but nope. Coming back with it lets you enter the dungeon proper, but I take this opportunity to grind a little so that boss fights don't drag on.



Fortunately, you finally get great EXP/money from combat so this place is actually really good to grind in. Maybe it's just me being insane, but I could easily stay here and just grind up to like level 70 from now before even getting bored. I don't do that, because that'd make the fun parts less fun but I do get Uranus Kali her one offensive spell;



Oh, and Enkidu gains the ability to heal everyone. Heal All 2 is one of the two spells Kali started with, which says something about how much more efficient she's meant to be. Impact 3 is a spell Atlas had, but you'd never use it there because his MP and Intelligence both sucked. It hits every enemy for quite good damage but you're better off using the Fire Staff for random encounters since they do about the same amount only the Fire Staff is free.



Once you have the Emblem in someone's possession, you're just let in. This isn't the worst security I've seen, but it IS close.



Going off to the first side path lets you get this (the other chest just had a Light Charm). Mana are quite nice things; remember how Mana Seeds were HP restoration? This is similar, only it fully restores HP. Quite nice, and you can buy them too!



A little bit further ahead we finally manage to catch up with Zodia! Here's hoping he comes up with a justification for why he's commanding a hoard of evil jerks that kidnapped someone.

: I couldn't recognize you. This is hard for me to say, but Kali, your father, the Ramuh priest,



...Um, I wasn't expecting that. But... how could it have happened? I mean, the Gaia Masters were RIGHT THERE! They should've been able to stop the intruder, right? Unless they must have sneaked in through the back door. There's only one person behind the shrine who could've done it...



I wonder what the plants tell her. Do they tell her... to kill?



In a less antagonist-revealed-to-be-a-child note... I somehow made this thing. The game says it's a Unicorn but I'm quite inclined to not believe it.



It has almost natural max Endurance though. I have never actually made this thing before, mainly since it's around now I just stop fusing altogether and don't bother recruiting anything else because of it (Hangman is a demon you can find in this dungeon). It's also around this point you're going to benefit from any fusion accidents that occur rather than just curse the game for giving you a Slime or whatever.



In the second side-path, there's quite the nice haul of treasure.

: Obtained Magnetite
: Obtained Dew of Lete
: Obtained Wind Charm
: Obtained Magnetite

There's two other chests of note in this haul:



This one is obvious, since it means we have 2 Dragon bones now as well as 2 Kirin bones. The other...?



...Well, there's always the last side room, right?



: Obtained Mana Seed ()
: Obtained Earth Charm

The chest open already just had even more Magnetite. We'll be able to finally use all that soon, honest!

More importantly, we now have 3 Kirin Bones! Time to quickly backtrack to Tilmun to grab the other two and finally use these things.



As you'd expect, you need all three bones in your possession to do this. This can be done at any Mt of Sages, but the one next to Tilmun is the only one available so far, and it's the closest so it'll do.



You have to talk to the second sage you come to, here anyway, in order to use the Kirin bones to... make a zombie... wait, what?



Well, um, it kind of beat Pokémon to the resurrecting dead things from its bones... though, um, not quite like this.



I find it quite ironic that the zombie has Revive 1. That said, its stats are pretty bad, but then again it IS a shambling corpse so its Speed makes sense and it must have been quite unlucky to have died and then been scattered around the world so that makes sense too. Having a decent endurance and a useful strength? Uh, not so much... that said, it does make quite a nice tank (due to the HP), can revive other demons if they cops it (repeatedly at that, due to the MP) and can deal quite nice damage too, so it's going in the party.

Also, much like Orthrus it is a unique demon so it can't be fused with anything.



Back at the Zord Castle, Zodia is trying his damnedest to retcon the Zord into good guys but... um... some of the things he says are quite worrying...



: Samuel, you are going to fight Morgan first.



Okay, so he may or may not be named after the bastard child of an old king but who cares? It's sorta fitting, I guess. Anyway, Morgan is... not much of a threat. He's quite the step down from the previous real bosses (Orthrus doesn't count) since his magic is single target again and it's not going to dent anyone and his physical attacks don't even deal much damage to Kali and she's got horrible armour. I decide to just play around with him and use him to show off both why Chanting magic is awesome and why it is completely useless. It takes several turns to cast, and you have to reselect it every turn... each turn you choose to use it costs MP (though the charges only cost 1 MP each). This makes it pointless for random encounters, and a waste of turns for bosses but Orthrus regular attack barely deals about 15% of the same damage Holy 1 does. 2 turns for over 200 damage is way more appealing than spamming attacks for maybe 70 damage and taking much longer to kill things. It's also noticably more powerful than even Samuel's physical attacks are (but two of his attacks are about equal with it... assuming he doesn't miss of course), and it can't miss, because it's magic, unless you either forget to charge or Orthrus somehow dies. Chanting spells are awesome, but incredibly pointless for most fights.

Note how Kali deals crap damage here... her physical attacks would be worse since she's a mage naturally. Even with the fact that, yes the Diaster is a better weapon than the Tangaloia... 35 attack compared to 32. Not worth the hassle if you ask me. Impact 3/Fire Staff is consistently more useful anyway.



Oh and Kali learned Cure Paralyse, which means you'll never have to spend money on Mona Branches again. Unicorn has it too, and there's almost no chance of either of them both being paralysed simultaneusly.



: Samuel, the Gaia Masters know the secret of the Monsters. Go to Atlantis! They should all be there for the meeting of the Gods.