Part 17: What an a-maze-ing castle.

Welcome back to Sonic-maru wandering blindly through a castle, folks.



After passing through an empty hallway, we come to yet more doors. It’s no wonder that someone voted to do this chapter first because they had gotten lost and wanted guidance.

We came out of the left-hand door, and this next one just connects to the room with ladies inside. So we want the larger southern door at the end.



Inside, Namano Yadazo the samurai and Daikokuya the merchant await their executioner. They had a pair of Castella in the nearby boxes, which are stronger healing items than the couple of Tenmusu Sonic starts the chapter with.





The north exit leads out toward a storehouse, Boei Shichiro the ronin and…



Sukezo and Kinji, who are guarding a locked door. We can’t get into either of these yet, so it’s back inside we go.



The next door we want is at the south end, furthest right.



Echigoya here is our 22nd kill, for those of you keeping score.



He manages to randomly drop this thing, the evilness of which I feel justifies his murder.



Man, this place is lousy with secret doors.



... I’ve never seen you before… What’s the password!

Now this is the one time where you need to know the current password even on the violent route, because this guy won’t accept the two phony options. He’ll say “Isn’t that my favourite dish?!” or “Isn’t that the name of our leader?!” and make you choose again. (...To potato and Ode Iou respectively, obviously.)

If you choose the right password:

Aha, a new recruit? Then you can patrol the attic. If you see anyone suspicious, report to me immediately!

And of course, if you choose the wrong one…



The predictable thing happens. Murderers can now safely ignore the bells for the remainder of the chapter.



Hey, here’s a move we haven’t seen since King Mammoth! Good thing this guy isn’t as threatening as they were.

(No music.)

As you may have gathered, the ladder behind our ninja friend leads up into the attic again. Although it seems that there are other folks up here…



Shhhh…! Keep your voice down! They might hear us! We’ve come so far. It’d be a shame if they caught us now!

But, Dad…



I know. Not only will it restore our family’s honor, but we’ll be big hits in town after we spread the wealth around a bit…

C’mon, let’s hurry!

Wait a sec! This place is probably littered with traps. I’ll go first…



What…?

Good luck…

Thanks…

-------



Ha, I see you, thief!



No looking back now!



Go for it, Dad!

Haahaha!



-------

(Music stops.)

...And that’s why we only killed one of the two men down in that room! The other guy would have vanished if we hadn’t killed him before this scene.

Also there’s that name again, and another boy crying for dead-father-related reasons. (Even the sub-antenna in Cube’s chapter had the main one go down first.) The Watanabe name seems to be cursed.



Oh well, waste not want not.



As for this hole in the roof… Let’s do a little spying.



Mountain!!

Oh...... Dammit, wait a sec, just wait a sec… What time is it again…? Oh, right! Origin!

OK!!



If you happen to lose track of the current password, say by loading a save partway through the chapter, this is how you can find out what it is again.



The rats up here are harmless… at present. And these two holes are for spying on other conversations; the bottom one is just chatter between the samurai and merchant we murdered earlier (only if they’re still alive, obviously).


The northern spyhole, however…





This is certainly more interesting information. And also quite bad practice on the guards’ part.



Now, trying to move to the northwest corner of the attic causes this dude to pop up. Stealthy folks will have to be pretty quick with their cloaks here.



Yeah, yeah. We’ve heard it all before, Azusa.



At least that pushed Sonic up to level 5.



The silent attic has one more chest with another Castella inside, and one last peephole.



…





Okay, I need to go ask that old man what the hell he’s doing.



Uhhh…



Well, this certainly was a thing. And you’re actually not allowed to kill either of these two right now if you’re going for 100 kills, because killing only one makes the other flee, and remember: Don’t kill women (yet).





But again, I don’t care about that nonsense. The old man is extremely weak.



Sorry, lady. I have to give you one more spin to resist the murder urges.

...That sounded worse than I wanted it to.



While I’m down here, I’ll go ahead and avenge the Watanabes.



Yowa Izo gets a nice lungful of poisonous powders, though they don’t seem terribly effective.



Oops, almost forgot. Next door to the spinning parlour…





This jerk had the forethought to have ninjas guarding him.



The extra level helps make taking Shimofuri Suzume and White Moth down simpler than if we’d tackled them earlier.







Oh, I should point out that the Candles in the corners will attack if you hit them with magic. So watch your fire.



Alright, we’ve finally cleared out this building. Now to crawl out of the attic…



And out onto the castle wall.



Our first password check was just down there to the right, for those of you who might be getting lost by this point. Oh, and guess what? There’s a secret entrance on the left side of this little corner building, hidden beneath the awning.



This chapter has a lot of hidden stuff and sneaky surprises, if you hadn’t noticed.



Speaking of which.



This is a silly game sometimes.



Goninja is a dangerous opponent, though the battle intro gives away his gimmick. Defeat the one furthest back, and the rest will Break Down.



This fight can very easily get Sonic killed, so don’t be afraid to start using some healing items.



It does help push him to a new level though.



I shouldn’t have tried to divide myself into five parts…

Well, duh.



One chest has more Money, and the other holds this item of dubious value. +2 defence for -8 speed? Ehhhh.



Hey, there’s the gate where we entered the castle.



...You might find yourself getting an express trip right back there if you’re not careful.



If you avoid the single trapped tile and keep following the wall, we can get to the storehouse that was just north of the second building.



Along with another Castella and an empty chest, we can find the key we need to get in at ground level. There’s also a path further north in this crawlspace, but we’ll leave that for later.

--------



Alright, so this building that Goninja was hiding in?



It has another entrance that’s also obscured from view. It apparently counts as a storehouse, according to our shiny new key working on it.



Why yes, this is as incredibly suspect as it looks.



How did you find our secret meeting place!?



Whoa, hey there.



So the gimmick of this room is that when you beat up Shiosai, Yamamayu and ‘Japanese Moth’ hop down. And then… Well, you get the idea.



Kinugasa, Benitengu, Dokusasako and Shoro are just the same enemy four times, so here’s Sonic’s new attack instead. It’s basically his ‘normal’ attack, but with a range of six (and a range shadow of one). It’s pretty handy.



Our prize for fending off seven ninja is the basement key, which is a very handy thing to have.



But before we get to that, we have the real storehouse to raid.



It has quite a few items for us, and something that is perhaps even more valuable. See those wisps?



These are Lost Souls, and so long as you don’t kill the ghostly lady in the corner, they will respawn every time you enter the room. They also don’t count for our kill total, so this is the pacifist’s chance to level up. (Their EXP value is 6, so that’s a good stopping point for now.)

...Wait, that’s not the right music. Oh well; see if you can figure out what other game I’ve been playing lately.



As you may imagine, elemental attacks are the way to go here.



The treasure they’re guarding consists of a pair of Tenmusu, an Ode Shuriken (consumable attack item), a Topknot (which we lucked into earlier), Money, Izanagi’s Scroll (another attack item), and another questionable armour upgrade.



We still can’t enter this third building, so we need to find another route. And to do that, we need to go almost all the way back around to the upper storehouse entrance…



And just before we get there, hop down this tree and open a secret entrance. What, you didn’t think you could interact with either of those things? Then you’re going north through the crawlspace instead, which we will get to later.





An important note for later: As Sonic walks down the long north/south corridor here, there are a pair of faint clicks. There’s a secret within a secret here, but, well… We’re not strong enough to investigate it just yet. So keep that in mind for later.



The door at the end of the passage leads to the moat for some godforsaken reason, so let’s take a dip.



...Man, being rostered to swim underwater in the freezing moat all night in case of intruders must suck.



Kodama, this guy and another named Hokuto are all swimming about out here. The background’s a nice change.



So, uh… This might be hard to see, but there’s a shadow in the water two spaces north and three east of where Sonic is. It follows you, so try your best not to touch it.



Both the secret in the corridor and that shadow are bonus bosses, you see. Ayla and Sonic’s chapters are the only two of the seven to have any, IIRC.





We’ll come back to deal with them later; for now, we seem to have found the castle jail.



And after dispatching Harai Taizo, Sonic can start poking around and trying to figure out who he’s supposed to be rescuing… next time.