Part 20: Yo Momma

Yo Momma



"The ship is ready, I better hurry to join with them!"

Suddenly, an arrow zips through the window...




"What the!? Why would someone shoot an arrow in my house!?"

"It's....a letter tied on the arrow."



"Hayami...Next time aim somewhere else~"

Since the girls are waiting at Lailai, I have a bit of time with Ryle alone. I use that and go to town on the Victory Point hunt. Since we're about to embark on a longer journey, I want to finish this sidequest. It's a bit ahead of the curve, but whatever. Thanks to vilkacis, I only had to grind a few minutes, instead of the whole god-damn day.


There we are. Everyone say thanks to vilkacis!

"I am expecting the same quality like last time."

"In that case...I'll give you THIS!"




"This one looks special."

"Good observation! The sword has an hidden attribute!"

"Hidden attribute!? What is it?"

"That's...please refer to the item window~ *wink*"

"........."

"Impressed by my killer pose?"

"I lost myself for seconds thanks to your incomprehensible stupidity~"

"What the-! How dare you *frown*"


Yeah, okay. Let's just look at the sword...


It's pretty powerful, but not as good in the other areas. Also, it's not a dragon killer, so what's the point? Well, it reduces the number of fights you need to do before you gain VPs. Not actually sure by how much, but I think it's like one fight less. Not that great, honestly. And since vilkacis is cool, I'm also never going to use it! Again, give him/her all the hugs and kisses. Cause otherwise I would have lost my will to LP while grinding.

"So what's next?"

"Hey! What's that attitude of yours! I'm gonna give you my most valuable collection you know!"

"Ok, I apologize. So please tell me what it is~"

"I see an ancient castle emerged from west of Southern Cray City."




"Where the hell is the ITEM!!"

"Humph! I just told you the location where the rest of my collections are hidden!"

"And I naturally assume that the place is full of "watch dogs"?.."

"BINGO-!"

"How in the world can a huge castle simply appear by some points!?"

"Don't forget you ARE in the game."

"That's not what I'm talking about!"

Welp, the second to last item isn't an item at all. It's an optional dungeon! And you can bet that we're going to raid it for all the treasures real soon.



"(Why being polite all of sudden? It just gives me a shiver~)"

"Awe- The time has come!!"

"It was a long journey...After countless fights..."

"So it's the last one, wanna trade?"

"Don't even think about pulling some final jokes or that sort."

"Man you just don't get it do ya! The magnificent world of comedy!"

"Ok~ I don't!"

"The last one is not an item."

"I knew it! Not again~"

"A girl is waiting for you somewhere!"




"What the...! Where's this girl?"

"Do you remember the "opening"?.."

"What are you talking about?"

"Just take my word for it. However, you can meet her only at the last stage!"

"So what is it?"

"My point is...you have to find out by yourself, the last treasure."

"Then what are these points for!?"

"Otherwise, there's no way you can meet her! You just earned the possibility!"

Yay!...or don't? Well, this is the end of the VP quest line, so definitely Yay! Remember the opening to the game? The demon girl told us that we could find her in the world, and you need to complete this quest to have her appear. However, it will take quite a while before we can meet her, so don't worry too much about it for now.

With that behind us, let's get back on the plot-track..


"Yo! You are all here!"

"So you finally got up."

"We were about to try Hayami's "Suijun" on you, too bad."

That's a water attack, jfyi.

"S, Sessha would have never allow that to happen!!"

"By the way, how did the ship go?"

"Oh yeah, about that..there's one problem."

"Problem? The ship can't hold all of us?"

"Hard for me to say this..."

"Come on, spit it out."

"Can it be?"

"Thanks to the El Metal coating, the propulsion improved to perfect. But the material is light, so..."

"Eek~ You mean?"

"In case of big wave, it will rock very hard."




"This is really BAD! Even the big ship could not prevent Lady Fina's horrible sea sick!"

"Is it really that BAD? Fina's sea sick...~"

"I told you it's not a regular sea sickness!"

"It's the "Hyper! SEA SICK"!! Got that!?"

"I don't care wether it's "super" or "hyper", I just want some solutions!"

"I think there's no other option. Sylph! I am sorry about asking this, could you use the wind to make the ship more stable?"

"Whaaat~ Do you have any idea how far from here to Cellen?"

"But I don't want the ship to get wrecked by Fina's sea sick in case out of control."

"Whew~ I got it. Sometimes you're too demanding."

"Thank you very much! I love you Sylph!!"

"You better get that fixed. I can't be doing this every time!!"

"Mine is herditary condition, so can't be cured~"

"You try to kill me or what~"

"Hey! You guys can chat later! There's another issue to take care of!"

"Another problem?"

"We can't have the meeting on the ship because Fina can't last any second."

"That's right."

"Once we start our long trip, we need a new gathering place other than inns...out there."

"Since we can't use Lavas any more, better find a new place. I was thinking of Volcana as one of possible spots."

"But that means twice the distance from my house to the capital of Factoria...I will die for sure~"

"I'll die before she does!!!"

"But, there's no other good spots..."

"How about Dear Fina's home?"

"M....My house?"

"Your house is located at the halfway from here to Cellen right?"

"I see. Not only that, less workload for Sylph as well..."

"But, my house is not big enough to host all of you~"

"As long as we can gather there, then no problem. We can rest on the ship if need to."

"Mmmm~ Can't guarantee you, but I'll try my best convincing my mom."

"Yoshi, then let's go!!"


This is kinda pointless, but thanks anyway.


Ah, now things get more interesting...




Now I can finally change my party at will! For the mere cost of 6Mp, I can bring up the change menu pretty much anywhere I want to. This also means that I can hold votes on my own terms, instead of being restricted by the game.


And I also can have a full party now.

Let's talk about this for a moment. From now on, I'll be flying somewhat blind when it comes to the romantic and optional scenes. They were pretty much restricted by which girls were available at the given time, but now that doesn't apply anymore. So it's likely that I miss a scene, just because I don't know which girl may trigger it. Not too much of a problem to me, but I just wanted to bring it up. Also, we're rapidly moving towards the point where the attraction scores of the girls will have a tiny bit of meaning. See, there is a point in the game where some scenes will only feature whatever girl has the highest score. It's mostly romantic stuff, but it may matter to you readers. I'm not sure when it'll happen, but you may want to keep that in mind for future votes. I'll start to include the current standings after the next one or two updates.

Okay, let's get out on the high seas!

If you have Fina in your active party, she will periodically lose Hp/Mp. It goes really slow though. If you leave her in the nether realm of the party menu, she's totally fine. So I like to think that she's sitting in a ship cabin filled with tears and vomit.

Navigating the new area can be a bit annoying at first. You're still mostly walled-in, but there is a bit of space between landmarks and you can get lost at first. Also, the map will repeat when you just sail in the same direction, which doesn't help with mapping the place in your head. But if you sail around for a bit, you'll find out that there is only a small amount of places that you can actually reach.


This is the next big barrier, roughly to the south from where we started. To the north-east, is Fina's house and Cellen is just a bit past that.

While sailing around, you may also meet a new enemy.



The Kraken has a ton of Hp, but isn't really dangerous otherwise. He can cast a strong water spell, but is mostly a nuisance.

After sailing a bit, we reach Fina's house.

But let's not go there quite yet. Remember how a random NPC mentioned the Island of the Slimes? Probably not.


But here it is, just east from Fina's house.

As you may expect, you'll randomly encounter different Slimes here.

These Slimes have water powers, and are a decent upgrade from the green ones we saw before.


Red Slimes are dicks.

They have decent Hp, can spew fire everywhere, and will heal all damage at the beginning of each turn for free. So you need to kill them in a single turn, and I admit that I had the first dead party member while fighting these fuckers.


And this is the big Whoop, a Queen.

She has high Hp, strong ice spells, can cast some status effects, and heals 95Hp at the beginning of each round. If she also decides to use her action to heal, that turns into 200Hp. Yeah, she is quite tough. But I brought my maximum-murder party, which contains Caris, Hayami and Fina. Since all of them have fire skills, she didn't last too long.

And for beating her...

...you get nothing special.

As far as I know, there is nothing more to the island. I used X-ray vision and walked all over the place, but found nothing else.

Well, let's finally visit Fina's house.

There's also more stuff in the area for later.


This is actually a neat house.


Kinda weird that Fina doesn't have a reaction here. But it would probably be


Good thing that we are legal intruders.



"Welcome back Fina. Everyone nice to meet you and thank you for taking care of my daughter. Let me introduce myself: My name is Flare Delstar, I'm Fina's mother."

"So she is THE..Flare Delstar."

"She was expecting us."

"I only heard from the stories, it's first time to see her in person!"

"Hm~ not as I expected. She's just a regular OLD lady."

Haha, that's fucking rude!

"!! *petrified for 0.1 seconds*"

"Lady Caris!"

"Uh, Um~ The dinner is ready. You all must be tired from a long trip in the ocean."

"(She knows we came here by ships!?)"

"Stop that mom!! Not that human radar trick!"

"Oh come on, I was able to prepare the meals on time you know."

"But if you suddenly show that kind of "super" human ability, they might be too shocked to have any appetite!"

"Oh really? Then we'll eat without you."

"Arrrrrrg-! Why you always treat me like that!"

"You said you don't have any appetite, no?"

"I didn't say I won't. But they will!"

"What are they arguing about?"

"Ryle, you better stop them~ Things like this never stop unless there's 3rd person to intervene..."

"You do it!"

"How could you ask such a fragile lady, moi, to stop the fight among the world's strongest family!?"

"And I don't want getting hit by their Victory Buster!"

"So you are fragile ONLY during these times huh?"

"You'll be alright. Since you were able to survive from the rock showers back in elven mine."

"Then what about you being the heir of Shisho? I bet you're much tougher than them!"


I like how Fina's outfit makes it look like Ryle has cat-ears.

"Hey! Cut it out! You gonna make a hole to their ceiling~"

"We might make them really angry! Please stop it!"

"Oh!"

"Oh she's right!"


Saved by the transition..



"So we want to use here as our temporary headquarter until the case is finished."

"Of course it's up to you ma'am."

"(Too gentle as usual)"

"Since this location is right between Lavas and Cellen."

"Sessha too begging for your permission."

"....."

"Mom, Mahzoks are also involved into this case. Since I already became the High Valkyrie, I can't just ignore the current situation."

"..I'll help you. You can use here anytime you want...under one condition."

"There's a...condition?"

"You have to pursue the mission without me."

"But mom! Why not?"

"Why didn't the prince sent his army, instead a group of gals like you? I bet he does not want the public to know about this. Correct?"

"Mm~"

"Once people notice me getting involved, the mission is no longer a secret! My public influence is that big."

"(She's right. She forsees every possible outcomes...)"

"Then you gonna just sit there and do nothing about this!?"

"I think that's the best decision."

"Ryle!?"

"We now have our new place. It would be too much to ask her for further help. And like Lady Flare said, we have to keep this mission as secret as possible."

"Mm! I agree. That's the reason why Dear Ryle was picked to do the job."

"By the way...why do you girls try to go with him? It's very dangerous you know?"

"Of course we know the risk, but we just can't let him face the danger alone."

"Not only that, he always try to sneak out on us."

"Because he's born with total recklessness you know."

"Whew..~ Sessha can't deny that either."

"I know~"

"Hey hey! You guys-! What'S that all about? As if I'm a macho idiot!!"




"...~"

"What kind of leader are you~"



"Ack~ *tripped*"

As usual, Ryle can't catch a break


Yeeeeees. Your time has come, That Person!

"Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that."

"..."

"But once you know the name, you can't pull out from the mission. You better take it seriously."

"How about those who are not in the mission get out of the house now?"

"And then go back to Lavas."

"Why?"

"Depend on the situation, things might get hairy..?"

"Come on. Don't scare her like that. So anyone who won't come with us, go ahead step out of house now."

Ugh, stop beating this dead horse and get on with it! Nobody will suddenly go away, so just say it for fucks sake! It honestly annoys me, how long this super-secret plot point gets stretched out. Also, please imagine a round of "..." from everyone present here.

"Everyone...You all sure about this!?"

"I am here because I already know the name of the person."

"I can't just ignore all these because it deals with not just the Kingdom of Factoria."


I seriously have no idea what the last part of that sentence should tell us.

"Since I am already in, I can't just be selfish."

"You go girl!"

"Everyone was thinking about the same thing."

"Well then, Ryle. You can tell us the name of that person."





...who?

Oh yeah, the Queen that appeared after we beat Xaktor and who only had one insignificant line of dialog. Did I even show her? Probably not. Surprise, I guess? It's pretty awkward how a little and easily missable character, suddenly becomes the focus of the story. I mean, it explains why Ryle was so overly secretive, but it's still kinda dumb. Well, here we are, so let's roll along with it.

"Ehh?"

"The queen!?"

"...!!"

"Th, That means the prince ordered us to investigate his own mother!?"

"...That's a tough one to deal with, indeed."

"Just like I thought. There's no way for him to ask the guards to go after Her Highness."

"Correct, the queen promoted Xaktor as the High Chancellor. She is the real mastermind."

"Waitta sec! It might be the exact opposite! What if Xaktor brainwashed her?"

"If that's the case, there are certain contradictions."

"Contradictions?"

"First one would be the queen visiting the town of Cellen."

"How is that strange?"

"It wouldn't matter where she went, the fact that she traveled somewhere far away, that is the problem. What if her brainwashed subjects awakes while she's gone? That would jeopardize everything."

"I can see that. Even we were able to free the ninjas from the Marionette Song."

"Xaktor didn't have to worry since he could trust her 100% without brainwashing."

"Not only that if the queen is the true boss, Xaktor would never be able to control her."

"Second thing is she didn't return to the castle, when the prince officially took over Factoria. All royal members must participate in the important events especially when a new leader is announced."

"She should have returned when the king was too ill to keep the throne, but she remained at Cellen."

"I think she didn't come back on purpose, so the public will blame on the king not inviting her."

"Also because she knew that she wouldn't have to be bothered with all the complaints from the public."

"And the next is that she returned to the castle without any notice right after we defeated Xaktor."

"Maybe it was just a coincidence."

"She even missed the prince's crowning ceremony for her own good, but now returned so quick...When Xaktor got overthrown. Don't you think the timing is too good to be true?"

"I think she never expected Xaktor would be defeated by someone. Which was her miscalculation. Because of that, the queen had to come back no matter what."

"She lost Xaktor as well as all the means to regain Factoria, her plan must got hindered in great deal."

"That's right. Her army of 1000 men was destroyed by mere 6 people."

"All the facts so far are enough to rule out the queen as the real mastermind, and here's the extra tip!"

"It's about those Green Dragons we fought back in that elven mine.."


Oh yeah, that was also a thing...

"Not human?"

"And there's a saying left by that Mahzok Raymah. "I was just following my orders...to control the dragons"..."

"Then it must be!!"

"!!"

"To be able to order around that Mahzok Raymah, the queen must be a Mahzok as well."

Say whaaaaaaaat?

"Just hold on for sec! Why did the Mahzok have to monitor around our Factoria?"

"We are going to find out at Cellen!"

"Ah, right."

"You're still willing to continue the mission, despite the fact that we're dealing with the Mahzoks?"

"Once I found out the Mahzoks are behind all the troubles, I can't just let them ruin our Factoria!"

"Young man, you must not take the Mahzoks lightly."

"Mom it's not that. Ryle is..."


#Secretprince4lyfe

"Isn't it better to tell her now?"

"Lady Flare is not in this mission. And I prefer not to tell her."

"Ryle..."

"Anyway, I won't let the Mahzoks run free like this!"

"I don't think they'll let us pass that easily."

"No they wouldn't."

"Since we gonna fight them, we better come out the plans to deal with them...."

"You girls..."

"Lady Flare, you too began fighting the Mahzoks at the age of 17! It's our turn now."

"...."

"That's right!"



Oh boy! That sure were a lot of words to say that the Queen is a demon. I said it many times before, but this game just milks its plot points way too hard. I mean, maybe it just appears to me that way because I have to type all this stuff out? Dunno, but this game sure is wordy.

Anyway, we now have our next goal clear before us - reach Cellen and investigate the hell out of it. But, we don't need to do that straight away. There are a few other things we can do first, like that optional dungeon.

!Vote!

Please choose three girls that will follow Ryle into the Ancient Castle, to battle the monsters inside and grab all the riches. You really are free to choose, as everyone has a good range of attacks and some form of healing skill. Voting ends when the posts stop coming, I guess.

Note

I still haven't gotten a new drive. Recording on my laptop also didn't work out, cause the game runs at a tiny resolution. So I bit the bullet and recorded on my old drive, while praying that it wouldn't get worse. I still had some lag issues, but it worked out okay. Though I have to say that I'm legit afraid that recording could actually brick my drive. And I really don't want that to happen before I have a new one! Dunno, maybe I'm too paranoid? I'm no educated PC-wizard after all. Anyway, I just want to say that the service in here will stay irregular for a bit longer.