Part 118: Day 48 - Gameplay

Day 48: Gameplay

Music: neutral 2




I did a bit of weapon-swapping today. Notably, Medea and Mr.Black are using the Sound of a Star weapon with the Smile E.G.O suit. More importantly, though…



BICEPS has achieved his ultimate form.



You're seriously throwing the Red Mist at us again..?

She was right. We deserve to be destroyed.

I see… Tenebrais.

Yeah?

What're our odds against your boss, if we had to fight her again?

I beat her myself. Put a crew behind me and it's cake.

There you have it. We're not going to get destroyed by something like that. I don't have time for things like regrets.

That's alright… I brought enough for the both of us.

Let's get this over with.

Agreed.



Music: Dark Fantasy Scene


All we've done… all we can ever do is sow pain.



Looks like he's dragged Chesed back out to play. Middle Layer captains, can you confirm?



Yeah, I've got eyes on a weird glitch like the Uppers reported yesterday.



Tiphereth's here, too…

Hmph. What an unoriginal bastard.

Hey, that's me you're talking about. _{Not that I disagree…} Tenebrais, confirm Red Mist's position and we'll move in to-

She ain't here.

What.



There's nobody upstairs. Shame, I was looking forward to giving the boss's imposter a piece of my mind.

So for now it's just the two.

Two at once should be more than enough for us, who have never been able to manage this place properly even once. Now… sink with me.




Day 48's challenge is the Middle Layer, but like yesterday it doesn't all happen at once. We start off with Chesed active, and he'll be stuck in 2-color mode all day. The damage multiplier is the same as when we first fought with Chesed, so the same caution applies now as with his suppression. Meanwhile, Tiphereth… Well, she's supplied the background music? Arguably she's the reason that this day wouldn't end until Level 10 instead of Level 8, but day 48 rarely ever lasts that long in the first place. So, basically, it's just Chesed again for now.

I'm sorry, Tiphereth. Your suppression is just irrelevant here.

Our biggest problem for right now is the Pale damage boost making WhiteNight into a terror, but luckily we have a countermeasure for that.



Mizu.

Ooh! Manager! I was just thinking about you~

I'll try to avoid being terrified by that. Head up to safety, you're working with WhiteNight today.

Okee-dokie! Hold down the fort, you two! Or… uh… I won't haave to kill you~~

What was that?

I think it's supposed to be an impression of Binah...



Mizu's entire plan for the day is to sit up here in a corner and work WhiteNight whenever the opportunity arises. Since her armor is a 0.2x, Chesed's Pale mode will kick it back up to a 1x multiplier, and the CENSWORD's 40% damage refund will effectively let her survive no matter what.



We will have to use HP bullets between works on occasion, though. Chesed-boosted WhiteNight hurts.

So you've got a plan for that new monster…

All you're basically doing is throwing Chesed at me all over again. I couldn't even face you if I hadn't overcome his Suppression.

…

The downside of having to use one of our Paradise Lost Agents to handle things is that we only have Twee left over to handle any threats. However…



I made sure that Twee would be assigned to Chesed's department for 7 days before today, so that she can get her Captain bonus back. As a reminder, this bonus is a 0.8x multiplier to any damage she takes, stacking on top of every other bonus. Sending her to Knight of Despair will put her 0.5x multiplier on Twee's R/W/B defenses as well-and I was informed just last week that her debuff to Pale damage is only a 1.5x multiplier, instead of a 2x like the game tells us it should be.

This means that Twee's final defenses against attacks are 0.08/0.08/0.08/0.24. On top of this, her weapon recovers her HP/SP with each attack (further boosted by the E.G.O Gift she got from Nothing There), she negates any damage taken below 10, and at random she'll generate 100 point shields to protect her against anything strong enough to overcome her insane defenses.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Twee is functionally invincible. Outside of instant kills, she can take any hit in the game and heal it off before she has the opportunity to get hit again. Using this, we're going to break Day 48 wide open.

But first, let's talk about some Abnormalities.



First up is -12, who is a nice old lady in a rocking chair.



Dearie, dearie, would you like to hear a story?

Apparently, I would.



This is also her Abnormality name: Old Lady. Old Lady deals White damage, and is generally easy to work with. She does have one quirk, though: She's rather needy. Every time we work with an Abnormality while she's not currently being worked, her QC will decrease by 1. When it hits 0…



Her room becomes filled by this black fog. Sending someone to work with her in this state will immediately end the work with a Bad, gathering 0 energy but clearing the darkness from the room.



The Agent sent in is covered in a dark aura, and takes White damage every few seconds. During this period, they cannot move.



That's all there is to Old Lady. She's completely safe to ignore.



Our other new Abnormality is -60. It is a collection of scribbles.



Being a TETH like Old Lady, it's no problem for anyone in the facility to work with it.



Its name is Fragment of the Universe, and when its QC hits 0 it will breach. As a TETH, this is completely nonthreatening. I'll give it a chance to wander around and kill things once everything's less busy.



As a final bit of trivia, its Work Preferences and Results data are the same as the ones on Apocalypse Bird's data reference. Neither Abnormality manages to do anything particularly unusual today.



So diligent, even like this… but I can see through you, you know. This room represents our mental state. You're crumbling.

Hold up. It seems to represent your mental state. Not mine.

We're the same person.

I don't think someone who gave up on something as small as the Middle Layer suppressions is the same as the me I am today.



Of course I gave up. You heard from them yourself as you helped the Upper Layer. The things we've done… how could we feel anything but guilt?

Ah… I get it. So that shook you up, and then you believed in the righteous fury and condemnation of the next set. And so we wound up like this. Tch.

Don't talk like you're better than me. Countless people have died under both of our watches, because of our plan.

Clerks, yeah, but I've managed to keep a hold on… just about everyone I can actually have any control over.



I'm a little amazed you can say that with a straight face while murdering your own clerks.

Okay, they're going to die anyways when you unleash Gebura. I'm just giving them a merciful out? And it keeps Queen of Hatred happy, so it works out.

You know, all you'd have to do to keep her happy is work her right before the Meltdown, and change it over at 17…

You did that every level, everyday?

I thought it'd be a start towards making amends… but even that failed in the end… No small act of kindness could make up for what we've done.

Starting to see why you went nuts.

Day 48's first three levels, outside of the WhiteNight issues I outlined a little bit ago, go more or less the same as during our Chesed suppression. We have to juggle 2 colors from the start, but the handling instructions are effectively all the same. It's actually about equal in difficulty to day 47's opening three levels unless we get very unlucky.



In preparation for the Dawn, I position our Agents in these three elevators for quick access to the entire facility. Honestly I came up with this method on the fly to deal with the day 46 Dusk, and it's proven much better than my old 'everyone in one elevator and pray you don't get a Black Fixer in Records' strategies from before this LP started. Funny how that works out, really.



You're smiling. How can you smile?

Well, you see, Punishing Bird makes a very funny noise when it-

Hurts them. Thoughtlessly enjoying their pain...

Dude, have you ever actually paid attention to our agents? They get by.

Ooh, this new beak massage technique is really something! My shoulder's perfectly fine now.

See? The bird's basically the Training team's mascot by now.

...this is a farce.

Are you just the shard of me that hates fun? Is that it?

That you can so shamelessly watch and laugh, knowing what we've done… the blood on our hands… knowing that this existence is meaningless. That we can't ever leave this place. That Carmen's desire is forever beyond us...



It's no wonder you could open the door… someone as cruel as we are shouldn't exist.



The game's just thrown us a curveball. Under normal circumstances the Red Fixer is the least threatening of the Fixers. However, we've happened to roll one alongside Chesed's Red damage boost. Unlike the White and Black Fixers, who can be reliably dealt with through heavy use of hit-and-run tactics or spamming Black shields, Red Fixers have that 70-100 damage beam. With Chesed's 5x damage multiplier, it becomes 350-500 Red damage. This means a hit from that thing is roughly equivalent to running through King of Greed during her breach.

A Red shield won't protect us against that, and since its death attack is also a 70-100 damage beam… we've hit the one situation where a Red Fixer is actually a legitimate threat to us.



Since its beam will kill anything in its path, I move the team out of the Disciplinary elevator and over to the left side, and clear out the Training team of its Clerks. Under normal circumstances we'd want to closely micromanage engagements inside of an elevator, spam Red bullets after each attack it makes, retreat when it starts its beam, and finish off its last few hit points with Der Shooty in order to ensure that it doesn't hit anyone with its death beam.



Woah, I almost felt that one.

I have Twee, though, so instead I just have her solo it. The beam is the only attack Red Fixer has that can even scratch her, and only if her Paradise Lost shield is down.



It can't kill her, though-this is slightly over 25% of Twee's total HP, and she regenerates with every attack. Having a full-powered Paradise Lost Agent greatly simplifies the threat of day 48's Chesed-boosted Fixers.



With the Dawn done, I return everyone to their usual posts and get back to work.

Hey, y'know… Abram. Not to rub salt in your wounds or anything, but I don't think that you've really thought too hard about what you're trying to do or why.

What do you mean by that, you damned nameless bastard?

Tiphereth… she stopped you, and I understand that, but all she really wanted was to believe that everything we were doing had a point. She didn't have it in her to hurt our agents herself. You're really only throwing one thing at me today, and it's a trick I've seen before. You'd know that, if you paid attention to them.

I'm doing the only thing I can to make up for all I've done…

Without thinking for a minute if it's the right thing to do in the first place. That same Tiphereth put her trust in me-us-to show her that what would come at the end would be worth all of this.



We don't have the right to anyone's trust.

That's not something we get to decide. Since she offered it, I've responded in kind.

Even with all this blood on our hands?! You can't just-

I can, and I will. Like I said, I gave my word.

Carmen made us promise before she knew it was impossible. We had no idea what we were agreeing to. We shouldn't-

Carmen isn't the only one I promised. Before this all started, I promised everyone an ending. The Sephirot, the Agents, even the Clerks.

Then it's fine. We'll all sink together-and that'll be the ending we've promised.



No dice. That sounds like a shitty way to close things out.

It turns out that we're lucky today. On day 48, Gebura arrives at Meltdown Level 5. This means that 66.5% of the time, we'll see a Noon either on Level 4 or 5 and have to deal with it in addition to the rest of the day. However, we've landed on the 33.5% chance that the Noon will spawn in on the transition to Level 6. This means we only have to fight one Fixer today, which is a good timesaver if nothing else.



A meltdown lands on the Mirror, and I have Bishop use it.



It puts his Temperance back to where I can LOB it back up to EX, so this is basically just free stats for him. Nice.

It's the only way we can pay for what we've done.

Unless we just… y'know, finish the project.

And you think you can do that? We aren't capable of it. It took us tens, hundreds of tries starting over from scratch just to resolve the situation with the Upper Layer… With our sins crawling down our back, we lacked the resolve to carry on.

Seriously? I took care of them by day 30.

Aha… nice try. Which day 30?

The first one.

…how?



Since we won't be advancing the Meltdown Level any more after the next level, I use this opportunity to clear out the rest of the Clerks. Queen of Hatred shouldn't be a problem today.

I… did my job? I left parts of it to the agents, sure, but I just did what I was supposed to with each Abnormality.

This place is designed to prevent that. Every inch of ground needs to be fought for, every scrap of information built on the deaths of our employees. A single wrong Abnormality pick at the wrong time, and this facility becomes a place of death.

Oh, that would explain the gut feelings. Every now and then when I looked at a cell I just realized: "Nope. Not that one. That's death."

But… you don't have any memories.

Yeah, so? Doesn't mean my instincts are any worse.

...Ah. I see. All is lost. Truly, there is no hope. Please, let us sink together.



I do keep the Clerks in Safety around, just to make sure our regenerators are healing as much as possible. It's fine, since 5 Clerks won't cause any breaches. I also wait to ensure we go into the next level with a WhiteNight work, to maximize the time I have to handle things.

I don't know what you're on about now, but we're not doing that. Come on, we're stronger than this. Let's move on.

I cannot escape from this place. Neither can you. That is the unfortunate truth. It's best we sink now before we inevitably spread even more suffering through this place.

You're not listening to me. _{Was I always this stubborn?} Whatever. I'll just force my way through.

Music: Insignia Decay


Agreed. There's no point in talking to you anymore.


At level 5, two very important things happen.



Boss, she's here! Ready to engage on your order!

Stand by, Tenebrais. I've got an idea.

The first is that our glitchy Gebura finally shows up. Defeating her is one way to end the day, and it's easily the simpler option.



This is because of the second thing: Chesed turns off. If we continue to go through the day, he'll turn back on at level 8. We don't want that, because he'll be boosting 3 damage types like he did at the end of his suppression-and there's a firm possibility we'd be dealing with both a White Dusk and a White Midnight under the damage boost.

Suppressing The Red Mist is definitely the better option, here.



I have everyone in the facility hide in my favorite elevator, and send Twee to pick a fight with the Red Mist. While we could have everyone go after her and kite around (and it'd certainly be faster)...



My primary goal today is safety, and Twee is basically invincible. None of Red's attacks will hurt her in Phase 1.



After soloing this fight with Tenebrais before, I have to say this feels quite relaxing to watch.

She can't even hurt me through this E.G.O, sir!

Hmph. A tool that shouldn't exist… I've never seen anything like that WhiteNight beast before.

Don't get mad just because I have better toys than you. Tenebrais, are you seeing this?

Yeah. That's definitely not the boss. She's a pale imitation, like the others.

Like a... Pinkish Mist?

Yeah. Pink Mist there's a lot weaker.

On day 48, The Red Mist also spawns with fewer HP than normal-60% of its total, or 1800 per phase instead of 3000. This makes fighting her much faster than the first go-around.

Pink's on the move!



Part of it is because she has fewer HP than she did before, but it's also faster because she's coded to use Road of Gold every time she loses 1000 HP. This means she'll be able to move one fewer time per phase.



She still can't actually hurt Twee, and as the fastest agent in the facility it doesn't take her long to catch up and knock the Red Mist into Phase 2.



This can't be possible…

Oh, it's quite possible. I won't say I haven't felt despair before, but I'm not the kind of guy who'd give in to it. Not as long as I have everyone here to rely on.



Phase 2 is just more White and Red damage than Phase 1, but since none of it is enough to scratch Twee…



Man, it's too bad we didn't have this suit around for the first fight, huh? Your job would have been so much easier.

Don't forget that the only reason you're able to be that powerful is because we're keeping Mizu glued to that freaky bird-bean.

Things go more or less the same way.



Her Legato sends her to Safety, the one department we still had Clerks in.



And she quickly removes them.



One thing I hadn't had the chance to show off yet: Her spear will actually leave people that it kills splayed out on a strange red tree. It's a cool visual effect.



She still can't actually touch Twee, though, so we push her through to Phase 3.



Twee takes no damage from the sword toss, as well-this is from her yellow shield, though.

You don't understand anything.

I understand that everyone here has put their trust in us to see this through to the end. You're the one that doesn't understand.

You degraded fool… you're going to ruin yourself. At least the end I seek is painless.

All you're doing now is running away! Take responsibility for the stupid shit we've done! Dying? That's easy. Anyone can die. Living? Finishing what you started? That's something not everyone can do.

That desire is exactly why we've hurt everyone over and over, countless times.



For Phase 3 we have to change our strategy. Twee's outgoing damage determines how much she regenerates, and Red Mist has a 0.2x Pale resist in this phase. Additionally, she gains access to Justita. If it hits Twee, even its weakest attack will still deal ~12 HP damage to her, enough to make her bleed. This is where Medea and Mr.Black come in. As I mentioned earlier, they're both wielding Blue Star's weapon and wearing the Smile suit.



The two of them get hit by a spear while getting into position-but their suit makes the damage they take much more manageable.

We're properly prepared!

Everyone just stay back and let us take care of this.



That spear is the only damage they'll be taking this phase.

You see, Gebura's AI is a little bit buggy in Phase 3. As long as a target is in the room, she will pick a direction, pick an attack, and attack in that direction. However, she never checks to see if the target is actually in range of her attack. Because of this, Very Long range weapons like Blue Star can target her from outside of her maximum range.



The two of them proceed to melt Red Mist's HP bar.



Then, after avoiding a Gold Rush, they do it again. Phase 3 is much easier when we aren't trying to do the entire thing with a single melee weapon.

Tenebrais, we've done our part!

She'll likely be headed your way next! Try to catch her in the act! HAHAHAHAHA!



I finally got a gif of her breaking the Smile E.G.O! Anyways, we're on to Phase 4, which works the same as it did on day 40 as well.

I see that you're strong. I acknowledge that you have power, even if it's stolen from others…

Then get out of my way, Abram.

I won't. All my regret, my determination to pay for our crimes… I'll put it all into this one attack. I have to stop you. I must stop you, before you damn us to an eternity of this endless hell..!

Then we'll stop you and move on towards tomorrow.



Red Mist goes for a run, and I burn our first Slow bullet and order our Agents to run like hell.



This is closer than I would normally like, but we should be fine. It takes her a bit of time to go down each elevator.



I fire the second slow bullet at the bottom of the elevator, but it turns out I didn't need to bother.



She takes a knee in the same elevator while trying to leave.

She's down. Everyone, you know what to do!



Aww hell yeah!



With only 60% of her original HP, our facility can take her from 100% to dead in seconds. It's over.

A fake like this could never stand up to the real thing. Let alone the woman who beat her!

And the backup helps too, I'm sure!

Don't get cocky, mosshead.

...my greatest effort, and it wasn't enough.

Are you going to let me pass now?!

I must. You've beaten me. I see now that this oncoming disaster cannot be stopped. Ah… woe unto this world…



...I've done some terrible things in the past, I can't argue with that. I just can't afford to let it all come to nothing.

How difficult day 48 is comes down to a combination of how well we handle damage-boosted Fixers and how good we are at fighting Gebura. Because of this, I consider it a breather between the more difficult days 47 and 49. It's very possible to lose someone to Gebura if we're not careful, though, as she hits very hard throughout.

There's that quiet again. It's unsettling.

...Sooner I pick the next Abnormalities, the sooner we'll be out of here. Let's get to it.

Music: never frozen bottom flows


Our first pick of the day is -76, a HE Abnormality with an ability that makes it somewhat hard to show off properly. It's relatively low-risk as long as it's handled properly and is a good earlygame Justice trainer, though, so I can give this one a strong recommendation to anyone playing through the game-its suit, especially, is fairly versatile early on.



Our second pick, -18, is a TETH Abnormality that's kind of hard to place. It deals White damage, but the most reliable training with it is Instinct, and while it can do Attachment we generally don't want to do Attachment work with it. I don't like it very much, but it's a nice stable Abnormality we can take to round out the department.

Next time, on Lobotomy Corporation: Never go full anime.

New Guidelines

Old Lady
Fragment of the Universe

New Gear


Requirements: None


Requirements: None


Requirements: None


Requirements: None

New Story

Old Lady
Fragment of the Universe (Part 1)
Fragment of the Universe (Part 2)
Fragment of the Universe (Part 3)

Bonus

VIDEO: Day 48