Part 6

A short one this time, since it reaches a natural breaking point pretty quickly. I’ll make up for it later!



“Whatever, kid. You’ve probably got a ’No Girls Allowed’ sign too. Let me tell you how that one’s going to work out for you.”

We’ll get to this later, but the pass is what the tulip is covering up.



“He’s trapped in a painting called ‘The World of Evil.’ How happy did you think he was going to be?”

“You’re giving him a lot of credit by assuming that he wouldn’t be happy there.”



With that we’re here in the final set of lairs in the Painting. One is for the metal octopuses, octopi, or what have you, and the other is for the spearman you can see wandering around. Clearing the spearmen opens a pathway to…



Our first boss, the Metal Mantis. It’s a popular choice for first bosses. You can see him using his main attack here, firing three fireballs straight down the screen at us. I actually had to retry this one a couple of times, because although he’s VERY boring he is pretty tough until you get the hang of it.



Take a look at that HP bar as compared to ours. All he’ll do is move back and forth to follow you and launch fireballs, so you have to exploit the fact that he pauses slightly when he shoots fireballs. The easiest way is to hang out in front of one slide and bait him into firing, then run up the next one over and get in a couple of attacks when he comes over to attack you.



A clever player might think that they’d just run behind him and beat the crap out of him from behind, but his other attack is the almighty bitch-slap, which will pretty quickly wear you down. It’s a long hit and run battle, since we’re still fairly low level and have just a basic sword.



After a long time he’ll explode, but he actually has a lair that we have to walk over to and clear. Also, the prize for this battle is a whole 50 exp.



The lair is holding the village Chief, who can’t be bothered to talk to us until we get out of the painting and come visit him in…

“Hey wait a second! That’s MY room, you jerk!”

“Hehehe… awfully possessive, aren’t you? Besides, his wife is making him sleep in a separate room. Have a little pity on the poor guy.”



“In that darkness I heard my best friend Leo. He told me to give this Brown Stone to a person named Metatron.”

“And this didn’t strike you as at all strange?”

“I don’t know what the Brown Stone looks like but this is a stone that I received from him the day before he disappeared.”

“I’d think it’d be a… brown… stone? I mean, what else would it look like?”



“The Brown Stone you have is a key to open the World of Evil. This is where Deathtoll lives! Come back to me with the stone.”

“Of course, Sir GodJesus. But… I have a few things to take care of here.”

“Hmph. Well hurry up, or else you’re off the job!”



“I will ask my wife to look after her until Dr. Leo returns.”

“She certainly does need someone to look after her…I’d better make sure this is going to be alright.”



“It is kind of rough, but I’m sure we can fix this… well, except for the whole her mother being dead thing…”

“Some believe after a person dies, they will return in the form of a different creature. If this is true, I wonder what my mother is doing now?”

“You have no idea… and you know what, you probably REALLY don’t want to know the answer to that question. I’ll just be leaving now!”



“The Brown Stone you received is one of six stones in this world. When all six of these stones are gathered, the gate leading to the World of Evil shall be opened.”

“I just can’t wait for that to happen.”

“Now you must go to GreenWood, where the next stone awaits you.”

“One last check around the village, my lord.”



“Possessed painting. Long story. The fact that it was named ‘The World of Evil’ should have clued you in.”



“Okay, I’m done here.”



Now that we’ve gotten the option to move on, we have a new option in the Sky Palace. The mechanism for this is kind of familiar….



We’re under the blue diamond. No way to check, but I’ll bet that the village would have looked different if we could have zoomed out like this before. That said, this is a very strange layout for a world.

“I was going through an experimental phase. You try designing hundreds of worlds and see how it works out for you.”



Our next destination is this forest, near the Ghost Ship from Super Mario World. If you think that’s a bit of a strange place to put a village…. well, you’re right.



“How… bucolic.”

Next update: You think the only people who are people…