Part 5: Toxa Episode 6 Chapter 3 - Seeking the path Pt.2

NOTICE For the faint of heart, this update is gonna contain the death of someone we love dearly. If you cannot handle emotional stress, please skip this update.

Toxa Episode 6 Chapter 3 Pt.2 Electric Boogaloo

Last time, before Misty told Duran and Alana about the possibility of Mona being in danger, Ele seemed pretty alarmed about something and now Toxa is checking it out.
Hopefully Ele just saw a good deal on roastbeef sandwiches, and even she had to admit those are better than her sour tangerines. But just in case, let's check out what really happened.

MUSIC: Feel Uneasy



Wait, hold on. Did Garum show up with the same amount of thieves as last time we beat him? We'll Toxa and Ele is seperated so it could work out I guess.

"What about you?"
"I'll stay here and stop them."


"If I surrender now, they'll..."
"I won't allow that. Miss Ele, take Mona to safety..."


"Toxa..."
"Miss Ele, go! Now!"



Uh oh. I'm feeling a Heroic Sacrifice coming up. Was nice knowing you Toxa. Kind of a twist that Toxa ISN*T the protagonist.
Kind of decent of him to atleast acknowledge when he has nothing to contribute to the story. I'm looking at you Vaan.




MUSIC:Divine Protection


So this is our starting position. Right now we have a Shadow Miles from the start, and the Doll Miles we created last time.
Now let's check out the opposition shall we?

(The pots contain the 'Chrysanthemum' Text and some Mithril)



Level 4 Beheads!




Mordere is the new phantom this update. They are largely different from past phantoms in that they are ranged units.
They can only attack enemies that are 2 squares away from them. They cannot counter attack, nor can they attack units that are 1 square away from them.
They also cannot wear any equipment except a head armor piece.


Lastly there are the lvl 4 thieves and Garum, who is identical from the last fight.


The objective is a filthy liar. Filthy filthy liar. You actually have to completely annihilate every enemy on the map. Not just the enemy humans.

Well shit, you guys. This may be the hardest fight yet. But don't worry we can pull this off. I have the FIRE ARM!

Which I've left on Alana, and thusly I cannot equip it on Toxa...
Alright. Fine game. You win. I'll finally have to use Phantoms!
So I'll just create some Beheads of my own!


Actually, let's NOT do any of that silly Behead business. This is a Heroic Sacrifice, so we can't have anyone steal the spotlight.
Toxa charges towards the horde of Behead phantoms.


His loyal friend Doll Phantom, follows him in his last hours. What cameraderie.


But the Behead horde is too strong! Doll Phantom is the first to fall! Toxa will surely follow the fate of his friend.


The vile Shadow Behead viciously attacks Toxa with it's axe and he takes... No damage


Okey, So what happened? I mean Toxa is a full level below these guys, That's just so unfair! He should be dead!
Well it's that 21 defense stat at work. Combined with the fact that the Phantoms are using weak weapons, with a terrain penalty
means that only two of the phantoms that is actually smart enough to wield swords, could concievably damage Toxa.
But I neutered them with my Doll Phantom and Toxa, bringing their hp down enough that they too deal 0 damage.
So now it's just clean up duty. Still the humans are quite troublesome as they can circumvent his defences with Kartia.
So I mean Toxa is still gonna die.


And now, it's just a matter of time before Toxa's end. Sure he can take some phantoms with him. But that won't really change things.


Except the Goddess of Exploding Death, shows up in the nick of time! Oh and Misty and Duran are there too I guess.


"It's party time!"


So Misty starts at lvl 1. From now on, expect new people to start at lvl 1.
Misty is objectively better than Ele in just about any stat worth anything.
She has higher equip rank and 3 Kartia Combo. Although her elemental defenses are abit worrying.
12 fire defense is a whole lot of nothing.
I failed to get a screen shot of the equipment I deck her out in. But I do give her something better.


I missed the explosion


Here is when things can get dangerious fast. If the thieves decide to gang up on one character it's very possible to get a game over.
Don't take thieves lightly.


A full barrage of attacks later from 2 thieves, Garum, and a Mordere later and Duran is in some serious trouble.


Worse still is that Misty gets a Stone spell in the face too.
I get this feeling that Toxa could be in trouble too!


Nah he is doing just fine.


He started at level 3.
But anyways the party is facing seriously trouble. It's time.
To let out a secret technique.


So whenever you get new text, the game would automatically update any possible combos of text that would result in a unique spell name.
So it would tell you about Fire Needle or Twist Thunder.
But that only happens if you have the "Grammar" for those spells.
Think of it like formulaes for spells.
Right now we only have Basic Grammar, but what I'm about to pull off is an Advanced Grammar spell.

You see, while I need the Advanced Grammar to see the combo for Chrysan Water, I don't need it to actually cast the spell.
So if I were to manually input the texts then I can still cast that spell.

Chrysan Water is a fairly good healing spell. It heals for 50 hp to each character in the cross shape. You can heal 5 people for 50 hp each.
For only 1 Mithril and 1 Silk. I decided to give it another Silk to +1 because why the hell not! More dakka!
This ofcourse also goes for equipment and Phantoms.



With my party now almost fully healed. (Duran is at 83) I take out a thief.


The AI priorities healing wounded humans it seems. I use that exploit by having Alanas phantoms wound this thief.
Garum then moves in to heal the thief.


The last thief, decides that right now he hates this phantom. Instead of going for Misty.


These Mordere can be quite annoying so Alana neuters this one. It has 2 hp left.


My phantom had wounded the thief and it was enough to make Garum heal him again.


Unfortunately my Shadow Miles, is about to hit the floor. Oh well


Alana and Toxa murders the thief, and Misty casts Glacier on Garum.
My lazyness rears it's ugly head and I don't gif the spell, because it's honestly visually boring.

It's time. Garum, I'm sick of your crap. You spam your heals, and create new phantoms all the time. You exist to only prolong an already long battle.
I banish you to the Shadow Realm.






The mission doesn't actually end here, because there is still that 2hp Mordere running around somewhere. So I have to clean up.
But for your sanity, let's just pretend it ends here.


"Alana is right. Thank you, Misty."
"I don't deserve this... But can I ask for a favor?"
"What is it?"
"Let me talk to Garum."
He is not dead. Merely unconcious! I hit him with the flat end of my exploding sword!


10 frigging turns. 3 of them were hunting down wounded Mordereds atleast. 14 dudes defeated, and 3 lost phantoms.
Just be glad I'm not summoning you. You'd probaly end up dead.


The Texts are "Cylinder" and "Intense". Both of them are Mithril. That's 3 new Mithrils this map.

Toxa Episode 6 Chapter 3 Epilogue
MUSIC:Ominous


Time to get some answers... Well for Misty to get some answers. We won't learn anything new we couldnt have deducted so far. But just in case I'll explain things.




The screen begins to pan away from the party.


Oh! An encrypter! This is what encrypters typically look like. I wonder what one of them is doing here.


Uh oh! That's a Fire Kartia. Those things are never good news.


The camera pans back to the party.

Last update, Misty was thinking about who could possibly want her dead. One of those people she thought about was Asty. Yes, surprise! Asty is Misty's sister.
Well with names like those, it seems kind of obvious doesn't it? The game also immediatedly shifts to Misty after Asty talks about wanting to kill her sister.
So the game isn't exactly subtle about it.


Several Fireballs appear from the sky. All of them hitting Garum.
All the explosions are mushroom clouds... Come on Japan.


Well if getting impaled by a giant rock or exploded by a sword didn't kill Garum. Then this surely did. Garum is officially dead. No coming back from this one.
Notable Characters dead: 1
Total Human casualties: 7 (3 thieves from last update, another 3 thieves this update and now Garum.
Should I keep a Phantom death tally too?


"From where?"
"There he is, Toxa!"


This could be alarming news, as Cross could potentially be an Encrypter. And you certainly don't want those against you.
Especially not since this one can throw nuke fireballs at us.


Toxa and Duran starts to chase, but Cross has already left.

"Who the hell is that guy? Was he one of the thieves?"
"I don't think so... He was dressed as an Encrypter"
"One thing is for sure, he is our enemy."
"That seems to be the case..."






Misty backs away from Garums corpse.


Fade out

MUSIC: Unknown Title VIII
From now on, thanks to EggsAisle, I'll be able to provide links to the tracks that weren't on the soundtrack disc. Unfortunately this means I don't know the titles of each track.
Thanks alot EggsAisle.


"Don't thank me..."
"But thanks to you, we were able to protect Mona."
"I just paid back what I owed you..."

What about when they took you hostage though? Duran even locked the door and turned of the light. Well I guess that's water under the bridge.

"You did more than that. We have to give you a chance. Don't we guys?"

Everyone nods


"Besides, you honorably used the chance Alana gave.
"That's nice of you to say... But I am a Rebel thief..."
"That was until yesterday... Today, You're Misty, the one who protected Mona and our comrades..."
Earlier I wrote that an indecernable amount of time had passed between this update and the last. Turns out it was a single day.


Toxa is secretly a Shounen Jump protagonist.
"I wish I was as simple-minded as you are."
"Ha, ha, ha! You can say that again!
"What was that!? Alana, you don't have to agree with her!"


"I don't think I'm worthy, but... I will join your group."


Toxa produces a mug, and so does Alana.


Party time!

My browser kind of crapped out on me a bit here so I lost some progress. I'm kind of upset at this as I was almost done writing the update. Just venting some frustration here.







I'm gonna cut this short so here is the condenced version of the last part of this scene.
Count Shinon "Nope, go to your room."
""


Fade out






The music stops here.

MUSIC: Unknown Title XV


Aw nuts, I have to make a portrait of this guy? I... really don't want to look at that face more than I have to. Let's just.. err bold his name shall we?




Zakuro "Ah, so your mission with the Druid didn't go as planned."
"You soldiers don't need to know suck details"
You'll be selling me bridges, before you convince me this thing is a soldier.




About time some action took place somewhere else from the Shinon estate.
Zakuro "Cross is the one who gave the order. I can finally get my revenge..."
Interesting. Though we have never fought this guy before. I wonder who he wants revenge against. Hmm...
"Do you think you can win?"


"I guess..."


Zakuro is refering to Misty's failure to move Mona to a safe place. Not how Akueldo wants her dead. (Or rather how Asty wants her dead)






After a moment of doubt, Misty moves towards Duran.

Episode 6 Chapter 3 Epilogue End.

Kinda rushed through the last bit there, because I wanted to be done. Seriously, just looking at Zakuro gives me mild nausea.
R.I.P Doll Phantom. You only lived to lvl 2.

Party Status
Toxa Lvl 5
Alana Lvl 4
Duran Lvl 4
Misty lvl 2
Ele banished to her room.

Phantoms
1 Kyau
2 Common Miles

Dead Humans: 7
Notables Dead: Garum.

Next time. The first crossing point in the game. Meaning we will see some new faces from Lacryma's story. And boy do I hate the next mission.