Part 18
“That’s grea… wait, are you guys even moving? I mean, these are snails.”
“We are waiting for the race to start.” “What’re you waiting for?” “The race official hasn’t shown up yet.”
“Yeah, they’re kind of waiting for you. The snails look impatient, and I didn’t even think that was possible.”
“GO!” “…I think I’m going to go watch the snow melt. I think it might be faster.”
At this point the snail racers line up and will follow a pattern around the area in a race with no apparent end and no apparent consequences. If somebody’s watched this and found a result, they’re a better person than I.
“You’d think that would mean you would have even more time to talk, since you’re going to lose anyway.”
“Does it bother you that those mushrooms talk, and seem to live longer than your people?” “A talking mushroom? Are you insane, or did you eat some of the funny mushrooms?” “…all of a sudden being able to talk to all living things is a lot more depressing than I ever thought possible.”
“This snail always wants me to walk with it. Where shall we go today?” “I think it just wants to spend time with you. Where doesn’t matter so much as the actual act.” “Don’t you mean he?” “Snail gender is… complicated.”Following the snail leads us to a snoring old man.
“Half a year, half a century… it all kind of starts to look the same after a while.”Off to the left…
“So you punish people without regard to whether they’re bad or good? I… wow. I thought you short lived guys were a bit better about this kind of thing.”
“Way ahead of you, torture gnome.”
“If you move too fast you may overlook things…” “Don’t worry, I’ve got time to go back and find anything.”
Next stop, dreamland. The Dream Rod is the gift that keeps on giving.
The treasure being discussed here is the Magic Armor, Medical Herb, and Gems that we already found when we were starting out. Still, it’s nice to actually have an explanation for some treasure chests.
“Or as some of us would call it, last winter.”
Now that we’ve cleared the areas here we can move on to the next area, which is actually a different access route to the area we were previously working with.
We’ve got three lairs to deal with before we can move on.
If you look at one of the images of the previous update, you’ll see these guys off on the edge. Wild slashing is the order of the day, and clearing the lair lets us move on to the next lair:
We can deal with these red mages and proceed to find a Strange Bottle…
While the third lair, which was so insignificant that I don’t even remember what was in there. The chest here has Rotator, a spell that lets you hold down the magic button to cause a magical attack to circle around your character. It’s great for dealing with bats. After that, downstairs we go.
The next floor is our first break from ice and snow, and introduces a new enemy. These are normal, non-lair enemies who are stationery but are often out of reach. You can defeat them with magic, and they’ll make spikes appear around you. If you stay put the spikes will disappear and then you can move on to deal with them. Clearing a nearby red wizard lair releases a boy.
Next up we’ve got an underground waterfall and a wizard lair, as well as a red wizard lair that has a significant occupant.
“There’s something a bit weird about a snail named Nome living in a gnome village. Also, what the hell did you do to get thrown into the punishment room?”
Pushing on, we’ve got a Green Slime lair that creates a new stairway to let us proceed. We’re starting to get a bit worn down at this point, just based on the number of enemies.
The next lair lets us proceed to the next floor, but something was actually missing at the top of the stairs…
A little bit to the west of the lair that let us down the stairs is another lair, which releases a fairy who’ll give us some EXP and a chance to teleport back and heal. With only one HP left, it’s definitely time to go back and check out the village before proceeding onward.
Next update: Emblems, a boss whose HP won’t even fit on the screen, the King, and the Phoenix.