Part 23: Dragon In A Half-Shell

I believe last time, we ran through a volcano, killed a dragon and found an egg. More importantly, we found two of the best accessories just from treasure chests conveniently found in said volcano. Sadly, there was no Firestone so let's head back to town to gather some information.



: Something's not right, don't you think?
?: Roarr!!
: Did you hear that!?
: That's a dragon's cry! Let's go check it out!

This is code for "run back through the entire volcano to the room with the egg in it." Nothing interesting happens on the way, sadly.



Old Man: In return, I will give you the stone that the dragon was carrying.



Old Man: We finally did it! We will have peace again.
Braggart: It was my blow that struck in down. I'll be a hero!
Civilian: Guardian? Hah! It was the harbinger of disaster. It deserved no better!
Man: Mayor! We'll bring the egg back to the village and destroy it! We don't want any more dragons!

Suddenly the screen shakes. Usually this would mean an "earthquake" in video game terms, but we're in a volcano so it should mean something even worse...

Civilian: Ohhh, nooo!!! This must be the curse of the dragon! Let's get out of here!
: Cornet! We should get out of here, too!



: But, the egg!
: What do you have in mind?
: This horn will grant our wishes, right?
: Cornet!



: Let's hurry!

I'm sure you can guess what's going to happen mere moments from now. We fought Gau before and we know Crowdia's in the area...



: ...FIRESTONE. Now, give it to me.
: There's no time for this!



I'm sure everyone was expecting this fight from the moment we bumped into Crowdia during the first trip here. It's presumably expected that Crowdia would be a simple fight, but... not quite THAT simple. Even if I didn't toss her aside within mere seconds, she wouldn't have lasted that long either; she only has 500 HP and that's pretty much nothing for a "boss" at this point. If this doesn't prove that the "proper" order, insofar as there could be one at least, consists of coming here first then I'm not sure what would.

Besides, being ridiculously easy makes it nice and cathartic to pound her face in effortlessly just for being such a smug bitch all the time.



: I don't know about you Cornet, but I can fly...
: Quickly, hold onto me!



: Why did you save me?
: Because you have some unfinished business. Look behind you... Live, and pay for your crimes against nature. I'll let you keep the FIRESTONE to remind you of your shame.
: My shame?
: Until we meet again...



: I think it's our responsibility to raise that baby dragon. It's the least we can do. Let's take it with us.




...We have a baby dragon. Between Spawn, sentient armour and now a dragon we could make one of the most pure awesome parties ever, in idea if not actually in fighting skill. Granted, Knightspawn and Duke are both awesome as hell in a fight as well, but Flare isn't that great.



On the plus side, he's Wind elemental. Tornado is the multi-target version of the elemental spell, Wind Heal is just a HP restorative spell as you may have figured and Wind Speed raises the speed of one person (Trick Wind is the debuff equivalent).

This probably seems a bit short for the latter part of the Firestone portion of the chapter but we're not actually done yet! There's something else we can do that we need Flare in the first place; yep, it's his optional quest. This can be done at any time after now; his level is irrelevant. Since we're running through the volcano for the third time now, and we have to boot someone out let's make it a bit more fun and stick KnightSpawn in as well. He's not that great right now but it doesn't even really matter.



Upgraded multi-target Dark spell. Nothing fancy.





Flare's quest is simple enough; it's just a gauntlet of fights. They get "harder" insofar as adding a bit more HP each time constitutes as being more difficult; they also change elemental weakness too.

Griffins are the same as in the fight against Crowdia; low HP and pretty much forgettable.



The second fight, which barely even qualifies as a palette swap, is against some Cockatrice. Unlike in every other RPG created, they don't petrify you here... namely because Petrification doesn't exist. They're also Earth elemental, so Flare is halfway useful here! This one fight is the reason why I bothered to give him a Genius Cap.




The Tiger's Paw is a +7 increase to attack. More importantly Laevateinn is, in a fun inversion, just as overpowered when you have it as it was when the AI used it against you. Even better; Duke has enough SP to use it when he learns it, unlike with Excalibur! It costs 30 SP to use and at level 30, he's got exactly 30 SP. The only real downside to Laevateinn, in addition to being usable only once per fight (twice if you want to give him the Holy Charm which isn't that bad an idea, but it's not optimal either), is that it's Fire elemental so it gets resisted by a fair few things. It's also Duke's final skill which is pretty interesting; Duke himself is Water elemental but he has no Water skills and his best attack is Fire elemental.

Oh and I didn't bother mentioning it for Excalibur, because everyone knows what sword that is anyway (and if you don't, it's the sword Vivianne gave King Arthur), but Laevateinn is a flaming sword from Nordic mythology and was Freyr's until he traded it away. Rather ironically, Surt ended up killing him with it during the Ragnarok War before destroying Yggdrasil and ending all of creation. And as the ultimate kicker, if Freyr kept it he could've defeated Surt (because the sword makes the wieder invincible), rather than the otherway around, thereby preventing the eradication of all of existance.



The final fight during this quest is against White Winds. As the name implies, they are Holy elemental (which is why I brought KnightSpawn!) and they can heal but not for much.



Laevateinn kicks their arses effortlessly. Seriously, look at that. I purposely avoided hitting that one with anything else, and it died from one hit. That dealt over 200 damage to a target with a neutral affinity to Fire. Anything Water elemental is going to be vaporised by this thing.



The other 2 dragons are always lurking just partially off-screen; the white circle thing is supposed to be Flare's spirit/soul/whatever, that leaves the puppet once their quest is done.



: I'm happy for you, too. I know what it feels like to miss your parents.
: ...Yes...



And the reward for finishing the quest is substantially better than what we got from L's quest despite costing the same amount of SP. Thunder Punch is single target and can only be resisted (albeit by a small fraction of targets). Family Breath is multi target and can be resisted by a few targets but it can exploit elemental weaknesses as well. Thunder Punch is better if you just have the one enemy that is neither Thunder nor Earth but in most of those cases, just Auto'ing the fight is more than sufficient.

Anyway, with this quest done we're officially finished here at last! Though without going to speak with one last guy in town we can't actually go anywhere other than to the Earthstone.



Man: He taught me everything! He even taught me how to operate the bridge! First, turn on the second and sixth switches from the top. You'll hear a sound when you've done it correctly. After that, turn off the second and sixth switches. Then flip the first, fifth and sixth switches.

With this information, we can now go anywhere we want, essentially. All three remaining stones are available at this point!

Next time: But one question remains... which of the stones is next; is it Earth, Wind or Thunder?