Part 74: 10/18/09 - 10/19/09: Tziah The Desert (Part Three)

So, we just had them there midterms last week. Glad they're in the past now. Got a bit of a respite now.

Iwatodai Dorm



First off, Tanaka's selling Indra Bracers which seems like a disappointment since we've been able to buy 'em from Be Blue V for ages. It's significantly cheaper here, though.



Oh yeah, and the shoes from before have a decent Evasion bonus but nothing else special.



Yes. It hasn't been repaired yet.
Well, we can't fix it if we don't know how it's malfunctioning.
I'll check it out later. If you have time, can you check it too, Makoto-kun?

Maybe I'm not the best person to send, since I can't find any issues either. I just get to snoop on things going on in private.





Well, I'm glad that temporary heel-turn from before was only one episode long. Back to weird tokusatsu shenanigans!



And, yeah, surprising no one, Akihiko telling us about the console means we have something new here.

Maid in Heaven

Silence





...Ummm....

"Welcome!"
"Are you ready to order?"



seriously what even is happening in this scene

Maybe I could just wear this around the dorm for the day?
......
"Sup, Yuka-tan? Hey, does that mean you gotta call me Master?"
"What's going on, Yukari? You're planning to work at Mitsuru's mansion or something?"
......
Ugh... forget it.
I haven't had a chance to return this yet, but now that I look at it, it's a real uniform, not just a costume.





I need your help with something...
Sure, one sec.
Yeah... I should drag Fuuka into this, too! Wouldn't wanna be the only one in the picture looking this way...



You just noticed now that you're in the middle of the room?

I've got a couple spare outfits, if you wanna try one on. How about it?
Huh?



W-Wait a second...!
Don't worry. Just hold still.
This is a little tricky to put on, so it'll be faster if I help.
Uh, wait... Yukari-chan! Oh...!



End

I'm somehow more perplexed by this than basically everything else to date. What even was that.

When the Moon's Reaching Out Stars (Reincarnation) / Way of Life -Deep Inside My Mind-



Let's get something more sensible and hang out with a sick man.

*cough* *wheeze* *wheeze*
*cough* *cough*

> Akinari seems to be ill.

Sorry... *pant* *pant*
If you... *pant* don't mind... *pant* please stay... until I've recovered my breath...
Okay.
Thank you...

Living With Determination



It's... starting to settle down, I think...
...Thank you for coming. It's better when I'm not alone.
Why do I have to face this alone? ...Other people don't have to deal with this sickness.



...All that's left is to draw my sheets around me and count the beats of my heart until they stop forever.
...Why is this only happening to me?
I don't know.
Of course not. No one knows. I don't even know.
I mean, I understand why I'm dying, but "why" am I dying?
There isn't any meaning to life that I can find, so perhaps I'm not missing all that much.



...I wish I could run away.
But if my body was capable of that, I wouldn't be here anyway...



...And there's nothing I can do!
*cough* *cough* *gasp*
*sigh*
Please don't leave... just yet...



Try not to talk so much.
I know, but-- *cough*
I'd like to talk... for a little bit longer.



I am feeling... a little better... ...So thank you.

> Your presence is comforting to Akinari.

> Your relationship is stronger now!





Don't worry, I'll be fine now... *cough* It was good seeing you.

> You decided to go back to the dorm.

Iwatodai Dorm



Not much in the dorm tonight. Akihiko'll let us know about the console, still, but everything else of note is upstairs.

I'll probably spend more time with the Archery Club.
Because of SEES, I haven't been as involved.



I was built solely to eliminate Shadows.
Once that mission has been fulfilled, there is no reason for me to remain active.
What happens next does not concern me.
Aigis...
That was really depressing...



Cuz you know how tiring it is fighting in Tartarus...
I wanna be able to rest peacefully for a change... A nice, deep sleep!
Sounds good. I could use some beauty sleep.
With a little maintenance, my body looks as good as new.
It must be difficult keeping one's skin looking healthy...
*sigh* Thanks for reminding me.

...Well, okay, there IS one thing back downstairs.



We're off out with Koromaru! No one else wants to come tonight, though.

Joy



Oh and I guess Yuko is here as well.

Whoa! What a cute pooch!
Awww, you're really lucky... We can't have any pets at our place...



Not got many more of these mini-scenes courtesy of Koromaru that we'll be seeing, unfortunately. It's a nice free +10 to a rank, but they're very few and far between.



But, hey, they're a very nice use of the evening at this point so...

During the Exam...



Nice and quick turnover on this. Let's see how well this exam went, then...



...exactly as expected. Perfect.



We'll definitely grab this whenever Mitsuru's around in the faculty corridor again.

Changing Seasons / Sun



On question 1, you had to use the formula we spent several days on to solve it. Remember?
The next question was a word problem about calendars.
Does anyone here buy a new calendar every year? If you do, you're wasting your money.
You see, calendars have only a set number of patterns.
After all, how many days can January 1st possibly fall on?
I'll pick a student mathematically. Let's see... Makoto.
How many calendar patterns are there?
Fourteen.
Correct! Well done!
Obviously, January 1st can only fall on seven days: Monday through Sunday.
But you must factor in the possibility of a leap day at the end of February.
Which gives you seven more patterns... Two variations based on seven days gives you fourteen patterns In all.
Any year you can name falls into one of these fourteen.

Alright, well, before we go and do anything else, there is one important thing to check.



...Aww, Aigis did really bad in the midterms! At least she did better than Junpei, though that's a low bar.

Well, we're here so let's go grab this helmet. Finally.



......welp

My darling's not home today, and I'm so samishii...
Hmm, maybe I should go to dinner with Ms. Toriumi... That restaurant with the interesting game...
What was it... A mahjong parlor...?
I hope I don't lose again... But I don't think I can win at all against Ms. Toriumi...



Ms. Toriumi isn't here. I was just looking for her myself, actually.
...Say, Makoto-san, do you play mahjong?

Never played, but I have watched and read Akagi and read The Legend of Koizumi! It, uh, almost certainly won't help.

...If anything, it maybe made mahjong seem even more confusing. I've yet to get a chance to use plutonium tiles while battling demons in hell.

It's very omoshiroi. The technical terms, in particular, are so interesting.
If I play too much, I can't get them out of my head for days.



I've said that stuff even in my sleep... My poor darling hasn't slept very well as a result.
Shall I teach you the other technical terms? I'm just repeating what Ms. Toriumi taught me, but...
Well, for beginners, there's "Only riichi!"
Then a few intermediate phrases... "I got a reverse dora!"
"Looks like you're waiting for one tile," or "You've gotta have more than two han."
Ooh, or advanced stuff... "You have a hand, don't you?"
"I have all the tiles you're waiting for," and "Mangan booyah!"
...So far, I've only had chances to use the beginners' phrases, though.
But Ms. Toriumi is a very patient teacher. She'll tell me, "You should throw this one away," or...
"You won't get many points if you call that one, so I wouldn't," and...
"I dropped that tile by accident, so you can't Ron it"...



...You don't say.

> You learned technical terms for mahjong...

But, yeah, we'll need to come back again. We should be just about done with this now though.



Anyway, let's spend one more day with ths guy. Hopefully he'll get interesting sooner or later. Hopefully.

Joy



...Think maybe I should buy some for them too?
Who do you mean?
My siblings, I mean. I've got four of 'em!



Our apartment's pretty small, though, so we have to pack 'em deep. Ha ha.
That must be tough.
Ha ha, yeah. You wouldn't believe how hot it gets over the summer.





I guess his car fell off a cliff.
I'm not fishing for sympathy or anything. I just thought you should know.

> Mamoru told you about his family situation.

> It seems like it's still troubling him.

> Your relationship is stronger now!





See ya later, Makoto.

> Mamoru jogged off.

> It was getting dark, so you decided to return to the dorm.

Iwatodai Dorm



Mmhmm. Makes me wonder if we can get anything from Mitsuru here, actually.



Guess not.

Great.
C'est magnifique! Congratulations.



I was obviously affected by what happened to Shinjiro-senpai.
*sigh* I'm so ashamed. I shouldn't use that as my excuse.
I just have to study harder...



so let's turn our focus back to Tartarus.
We are almost done.

Does seem like it at this point. There is just the one last Full Moon shadow remaining.



Now I don't have to go to Shinjiro-san's grave and tell him I failed.



She must save her concentration for battle...

I expected that she would've done better, sure, but at least it also could've been so much worse...



My concentration is reserved for battle.



I need to work on my strength.
Time spent worrying about grades should be spent training.

At this point, yeah, sure. Absolutely. We can definitely do that.

The Voice Someone Calls



So, we'll be off to Tartarus tonight then! This is the team we're going with tonight.



It's honestly a pretty good team for this stretch, so I'm completely okay with that.

Maya's Theme
i am ten billion percent sure that this is a proclick



So, now we've got the second stretch of Tziah to contend with.



Fitting the pattern at this point, we can get rank 7 cards from shuffle time now. This gives ~20-30k in raw money from Coins, 2.4x EXP from Wands (if its not a stat boost), more HP for Makoto/everyone and... outdated weapons from Sword. I coulda swore Sword gave good stuff at some point but clearly I was wrong.

In Portable it does! Kinda. Because you can get 'em from Gold Shadows at higher ranks than normal.



For reasons that'll make sense later, maybe, I've been dragging around a Narcissus with Growth 2 (thanks Thoth) so that this could happen.



I'm generally kinda bad at making Heart items, not gonna lie. What doesn't help is that the odds of getting a Heart in the first place are lower than you'd think.



But I grabbed this as a precaution. Narcissus Flowers are very good, for obvious reasons. There's better stuff we can get later, of course.

Mass Destruction / Wiping All Out



Speaking of which, though, how about those new shadows! Visceral Mayas are, uh, Mayas alright. At least they're immune to Physical attacks which... sure is something I guess.



Liberating Idols are a weird thing. They're weak to Ice so naturally the cast Mabufula. They repel Wind, just to inconvenience the Gae Bolg for a moment. They also have Evil Touch/Ghastly Wail just to be actually effective if they ever get a chance to even set it up.



Flowing Sand is a pretty clear gimmick, but it's also got no real chance of ever happening. I don't even know why they have other spells since they'll only really cast Tetrakarn if they ever get turns.

Which, obviously, they don't.



Order Giants are really boring, honestly. It's nice for them that they want to hit everyone at once with Heat Wave, but that's all they can do. Yawn.



Death Seekers are very, very focused on just killing people with Curse magic huh. Maragion is a weird outlier.

Oh, uh, if you're wondering about the damage and HP bar sorry. That's a necessary evil to see the actual head.



Once that's gone, it reverts to its default appearance which is invisible and just a buncha floating eyes.



So, hey, that red shadow's pretty small for once.



Because Scarlet Turrets come alone here. Matarukaja seems weird, but they are from further up Tartarus so that makes sense. Conversely, Agilao and Maragion seem bizarrely outdated at this point.



They also drop these plates. These are one of the things that Elizabeth wants this time around. Gotta grab 2 of 'em.



This came really late, but I was mostly dragging around Nandi so he can learn this thing. Cool Breeze restores some of Makoto's HP and SP at the end of a fight (but only Makoto's) which is nice. We could've gotten it forever ago, but it takes some trying for and this was more convenient at this point.



...And from running through Tartarus a couple times and fighting a buncha Gold Shadows offscreen, Makoto gets tired for the first time in what feels like forever.

Maya's Theme



Fuuka finally finds where the boss is. When we're on floor 144. Yes, really. She knows there IS a boss fight before then, but she can only tell you its on 146 when you get to 144. Goddammit, Fuuka.



Good news is that we managed to get a buncha new equipment for a change.



...Some of it is just the game being a bit cruel and giving stuff that is functionally Makoto exclusive. At least he finally got his own unique weapon set...



There's also yet another two-handed sword in a gold case that's from the Tenka-Goken. Elizabeth wants to see this one as well, of course.



All that remains now is to fight the boss while Makoto's knackered. But first!

The Poem For Everyone's Soul



To defeat Shadows carrying this type of item must have been difficult.
By the way... Occasionally, you may encounter Shadows that resemble things In your world.
Be aware that they may share other similarities beyond their appearance.
Please accept your reward.



These gives Endure. First time someone would get dropped, they keep 1 HP instead. Honestly not all that great; there's better stuff you can get for Makoto if you really want it.



There are several legends surrounding the Outenta, but a couple of them are especially interesting.
The Maeda family's daughter grew ill, and no one knew what caused it.
So her father borrowed the Outenta from Hidetoshi Toyotomi and left it by her pillow. Her sickness was cured.
But once he returned the Outenta, her sickness returned. So he went back to borrow the Outenta again...
This happened time and time again, until Hideyoshi told him to keep the Outenta.
The Maeda family may have faked their daughter's sickness to obtain the Outenta...
But now that I see the katana... It's so beautiful that if this was their plan, I can't blame them.
Please accept your reward.



To say this just required finding one sword, getting 3x +4 Magic cards is pretty damn nice. Might use these at some point or another. Might.



But, hey, Makoto hit 52 right before we finished floor 145 so let's make a Surt. If we weren't Tired, Deathbound combined with his high Strength would be really good. (Mar)Agidyne with that over-50 magic is also absurd.

Ragnarok is a special, unique spell that can only be gotten from Surt. It's single-target Fire damage that costs 30SP to use. It has a base power of 650 and is even more accurate as well with 99% hit rate. It's pretty ridiculous, honestly. His skill after that is Fire Amp. Yeesh.



Also available at level 52 is Barong. He's not super-fancy or anything but he is an easy source of Auto-Marakukaja to give everyone Rakukaja for free by default. Immunity to Elec is also nice.



Noteworthy is that being Barong, he's used in a special two-demon fusion with Rangda. As per series tradition. Normally this would make a Temperance persona, and Tower would only be available via triple fusion but Rangda and Barong almost always make Shiva.



I'm basically pointing this out now because, well, he's level 82. We're probably going to beat the game well before getting close to the 80s without intentionally grinding for it.



Barong and Surt in hand, let's go fight some knights!

Emperor Hell Knight x3 (Portable)

Master of Tartarus / Danger Zone



I'unno. It's a little harder than normal because Makoto is Tired, but that's all.



So, the Hell Knights have... regular old Mudo for some reason. And they only have 18 Luck so I really don't get it.



Despite being Emperors and Strength being their highest stat, they really like using Zio spells instead of anything else. They have 27 Magic, by the way.



If it hits a weakness, they can follow up with Poison Mist. Because obviously, right.



Being primary spellcasters, of course the Hell Knights have Mind Charge.



They mainly follow it up with Maziodyne. It might be tempting to Magic Mirror this back, but they Drain elec by default so you'd need to Elec Break it first.



Not really all that threatening... provided you're not Tired.



Whenever they remember that they have 37 Strength, their primary means of offense is Heat Wave. Sure, okay.



They could also use Torrent Shot to attempt to really harm someone, but uh... it's targetting Aigis. Good job there, Hell Knight.



Since they like to use MT attacks, having something that can heal multiple folks at once is probably a good idea.



Umugi Water heals 165 across the board, so it's pretty much the equivalent to Mediarama.



Bizarrely, the Hell Knights resist Fire, Ice and Wind and are neutral to Slash, Strike and Pierce. They really think they're spellcasters!

Oh and also they're susceptible to Charm. That's fun.

End



I'm not really gonna complain about getting another free Precious Egg, since getting the gems to buy 'em is a pain.

Anyway, Makoto's tired so we need to stop here. We'll be back sometime later to finish Tziah.