Part 30: ALL MY FRIENDS DIE IN THIS UPDATE

Right...this one's going to be a doozy, so hang on tight!



General fact: where there's a dungeon, there's traps _{(wow my Prince of Persia reference is getting more correct all the time...)}.



Thank you, MegaMan! Note that since this is a kid's RPG, you can't actually kill Lan by running him into traps. He'll just go 'whoah' again and back out. Kid's got skills for dodging traps, apparently.



Hmm. Guess it wasn't that good a comparison after all.



Cyber solutions for every problem!





Don't ask why an 'old' switch would have a jack-in port. Because obviously it is in case of this exact situation occurring.





So here's the computer-dungeon we're going to need to crawl to get out of the real-dungeon! It's definitely got a cool vibe to it, the tileset suits it really well.





Boring Mr Prog, though.



Oh yeah! This happened at some point! Er, some point apparently a while ago, wow look at that background.



While I'm at it, here's vaguely Mega's current stats (OK he has more HP than that now, but the rest of it should be accurate). I'd really recommend when you get PowerUps that you first put them into Charge. It shortens your charge time, and once you've got a Style charge attacks are fantastically useful (some more than others).

Anyway. Where was I?



Good thing these are computer-controlled traps, or we'd have to find some *gasp* real-world contrivance to sort this out.

...Not that I think there's anything in this world not controlled by computer.





So here's the dungeon's gimmick. Well, part of the dungeon's gimmick.



That's right. This dungeon-computer is haunted.





That would be the aforementioned vampire! He's not that bad, really. He just cruises along and if he finds you, he'll drain your HP. He kind of follows a path, there's areas where they can be and areas they can't be, but if there's a fork and he sees you then he'll go after you instead of following his 'path'.



The viruses in this area are more of a concern than the vampires. But they're not that bad either.



Anyway, in each section with vampires patrolling you need to find a "CyberKey" to open a doorway to advance. Easy-peasy!



I think this is where the pathway was?? It has skulls, that's pretty



I'm not sure if Shrimpy2's fit the theme of this dungeon that well. Prawns are too delicious to serve to prisoners, c'mon.



Also this happened.



This dungeon also has these guys:



Which is excellent because





...What? Like the ghosts that navi earlier mentioned that at this point I can only assume are related to the vampires?





...OK? Maybe not. Maybe ...a virus? WHAT A MYSTERY.





Yyyyep. I'm sure that this is something I should keep in mind, even if I have no idea wtf. After all, when have Mr Progs ever steered me wrong?

I mean apart from that one who failed to explain how the BombComps worked back in Okuden valley. Or there was that one in the timetable board in the airport that was fucking with people for shits and giggles. ANYWAY.

_{but seriously this is a weird but helpful hint for something you can run into in these computers... which we may see! later!}



Aww oh no Mr Prog!

Wait, there are zombies?!





Wait. It occurs to me that I'm not entirely sure what these Mr Progs mean when they say 'Ghosts'.... Possibly Vampires and Zombies are both under the umbrella of 'Ghost'? But that doesn't entirely make sense either, because I've seen Vampires go around corners specifically to chase me (not that I ever use savestates for anything but testing, I assure you).



Here's our first zombie sighting! How horrifying.



Zombies are the absolute arses of this scenario. Like the Mr Prog earlier indicated, if they catch you, they'll return you to the coffin at the start of their patrolling area. They don't move terribly fast at least.



That's it for this first dungeon though. A nice, short introduction to concepts that I'm sure will get at least slightly more menacing later.





Let's test this with our body



Safety first! Anyway, that seemed to have worked, so what next?













OK, I'll fully admit that looks like a really stupid sound effect to use. I'd make fun of it, but it comes on bit-by-bit while deep beeps play, so it does actually work.

...



JOHNSOOOOON







Crap. Guess we'd better not play around with this, we've gotta get the hell out of here before



...that would be bad. SO LET'S ROLL





Oh dear. That's never a good sign...





How cliché HORRIFYING!



Oh no! The Princess of Canada is stuck in here too!



Oh! ...Oh. Ewwww.

...I wonder if Johnson was a robot though, because there doesn't appear to be much of a mess.











...Really? Somebody underestimated Gospel? Oh no, wait, I'm thinking of the World Three, Gospel has some margin of competence, they did destroy YumLand's net after all.



Let's go!



'nother dungeon computer, slightly different tileset.







Hm, I gueeess Ghosts are Zombies and Vampires? Man, I don't know. But there you go. THANKS MR. PROG.



Pathways with zombies. Not too hard yet!



I'm not entirely sure how I got stuck behind that Vampire, he didn't get me. Must be where he spawns.



Ah yes, here's the best trick to these sections: get behind the ghosties. They can't turn around, so whatcha gonna do?





Well... it can be kind of annoying when they go down paths that you're not sure are dead-ends or not. Still easier than being ahead of them, generally.





This is... a problem. I'm standing on a dead-end...



But just facing the vampire is fine. Zombies are the worst because having to start over is a giant pain, but just losing some health is no problem.





One gate down!



And our last sort of monstery thing. Zombies and vampires move the same speed as Mega's walk. Bandits are much faster. They'll match Mega's run.



Here's your hint for avoiding them (thanks Mr Prog!)



And here's your first bandit! Also my hint for avoiding them: it takes them a little while to spawn, so once you see them start to appear if you run behind them you're golden.



Bandits are annoying because they'll nick all your money if you hit you.



Not too bad though. You can pick up what they steal in chests like this, which are usually near the end of the section anyway.



This is just above that chest, and it's the end of the dungeon!

Well the end of the net dungeon, anyway. Lan's still stuck in the real dungeon.







Problem solved! That's kind of weird that Gospel would attack the top netbattlers in the world with something solved so easily by stuffing around on the net.

...and even weirder that the world's top netbattlers would fail to escape, huh.







Um. OK then, that story checks out. We'll go on ahead and maybe clear the way or something.





....fffffffffff that don't look good.



I hope that's the Princess, saying that she's fine everything's fine we're all going to be fine

















Guess she can't hear us.







...OH DEAR.





Freakin hell, our new friends are dropping off like flies....















I don't care who did this I am going to punch them right in their face you just watch me!





This staircase is crazy long, by the way. How the hell did we survive that fall from the conference room, anyway? Oh. Unless I guess by now we're actually far above the conference room somehow. Or alternately, the trapdoors dropped into funslides.

It was probably funslides.



!!!









Holy crap Jennifer's probably our best friend ever for like the past however many minutes we've known her! No really, she's awesome, she's gotta pull through, right?? RIGHT??









And then Lan seriously walks into the next room without any comment or hesitation or emotion whatsoever.

THANKS CAPCOM





Oh. This does not look good. I... think I'm beginning to see how the other netbattlers were got! Cutting us off from computers we can use to save ourselves: dick move.





Yeah, let's just wait it out.





It's all the way over therrrre. The fire's definitely in the way. NO SOLUTION POSSIBLE. NO WAY OUT



Except for our dead friends. Maybe we'll see them again...

I mean except for Mega, who is our dead friend/brother who is also a computer program.







Mayl..?



Oh yeah like I could forget


_{(my avatar, at time of posting)}





STRIKE A POSE!









LET'S KICK SOME ARSE or possibly just save ourselves. And then lay down some beatdowns after that.



Maaaan. This update is kind of long already. But is this the last dungeon in the dungeon? All signs point to "maybe not, but maybe something interesting happens afterward", so let's rock!



....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa



OK then nevermind. See you next time!