Part 52: Update 51

Update 51



: Emil was alive after that! I remember it now, it was in the history books that the Elven Storyteller showed me. Emil went on to...
: Yes. Emil Castagnier did continue living on.
: Wait. Are you telling me that...
: Decus didn't stab the original Emil to death. He threw him into a fire.
: Ouch.
: Emil was so badly burned that he could not move or speak, and it was impossible to identify him. Even with the assistance of powerful healers, he didn't recover until two years after the attack. On the plus side, the healing magic did prevent any permanent disfiguration.
: That still sounds pretty gruesome.
: It took a while for Marta to accept that he wasn't the Emil she knew when she saw him after his recovery. They ended up going on an adventure together for reasons that don't really matter.
: Because Marta was pushy?
: Well, that's why Marta was part of it at least. Emil was a pretty decent swordsman in his own right, with a style that was also rather coincidentally similar to the one Ratatosk was using. The Heroes of Regeneration were otherwise engaged, so I had to bring in some ringers. They did pretty damn well though.
: Ringers?
: Two people from another, "nearby" world. They were quite powerful and generally heroic types, so I made them an offer to help out briefly before being sent back. One of them accepted in exchange for the Indignation spell and the chance to go through a wormhole. The other went along because she was his friend. I didn't even get the chance to offer him anything! It was amazing how much she liked wormhole travel.
: Why'd you do airquotes on "nearby"?
: Well, that's a tricky thing. If you have time you can sit around and get a cosmology lesson afterwards. Anyway, since Marta wasn't 100% sure Emil Castagnier wasn't the Emil she knew, I had them wear monster illusions to accompany them.




Special thanks to Blackbelt Bobman for providing his save file so I don't have to deal with any tedious bullshit that isn't absolutely necessary. Because there's a lot of "necessary" tedious bullshit.

Ravenous in particular is important because it's the best caster in the game, due to its "Artes" strategy. This strategy setting (which most monsters do not have, even other casters) causes it to nonstop spam spells. Which means that it's far and away the best monster because it does what it's supposed to do. Lovely. It also has some fairly useful skills and a decent spell selection but seriously the Artes strategy thing overrides those easily. He also got a Meteor Storm book for it.





Yes, it looks exactly the same as the Otherworldly Gate. Laziness, in this game?



Narrator: A voice that is not a voice resonates in the mind. To the owners of lost souls that gaze into the abyss, defeat the four guardian pillars to proceed to the next world. When ten worlds are conquered you and I shall meet.




Ok so this dungeon sucks balls. All of the balls. It's got nine floors of randomly generated maze made from an 8x8 grid of identical room segments. I mean really identical, it gets to the point where you can see the random encounter in front of you and know what the room is based on that alone. To save time I mapped out each area by hand on graph paper.



: Holy shit that's a powerful Meteor Storm! Mine isn't nearly that good.


: Well, it is her signature spell.


: She was a little annoyed by the illusion though.





Anyway, the way the dungeon works is that you have magic circles that hold a monster in each room. In most rooms it's this guy, an Archdemon.


But there are four magic circles that have something else. When you defeat those, a teleporter spawns in to take you to the next level.




By the way, have I mentioned I'm using a very overpowered party for this?




In case anyone is crazy enough to watch them, I uploaded videos of each level. You might want to watch a single one for a bit, so you can see how it goes. I also included high-res pictures of the maps I made for each floor, so you can see how much fun the "maze" aspect is.



Map of Floor 1
Video for Floor 1: 38:18 (I was still getting used to this, not recommended)



Map of Floor 2
Video for Floor 2: 22:03



Map of Floor 3
Video for Floor 3: 23:14



Map of Floor 4
Video for Floor 4: 27:01



Map of Floor 5
Video for Floor 5: 15:56



Map of Floor 6
Video for Floor 6: 16:41
By the way, I should point out that there are save points at the beginning of floor 3 and the beginning of floor 6. So if you die on floor 10, you have to redo floors 6-9 first.



Map of Floor 7
Video for Floor 7: 20:04



Map of Floor 8
Video for Floor 8: 18:03



Map of Floor 9
Video for Floor 9: 22:14



Total Time 3 hours, 23 minutes, 34 seconds.





Floor 10 is a little different. You don't have any maze, every teleport off the entrance leads to more or less the same place.


It's him again, Album Atrum.

Watch this, you'll like it.


Nice framing there.
Album Atrum: Welcome, child of man. Now, let's enjoy this momentary feast.






So last time we fought AA he had five or so buddies, this time he's alone.


Oh and I'm also about 120 levels higher. Upping the difficulty back to Mania didn't really help things for him.


Honestly I'm not even remotely trying to be fair.


When you consider that if it wasn't for Blackbelt Bobman's donating his save file, I'd have massive difficulty in this endeavor, fuck this game I'm not giving it a fair chance. We've already seen me fight fair against this EXACT FUCKING BOSS. Oh, they changed his elemental attribute to Dark instead of Light for some reason, that makes all the difference.


Fuck you. I do not respect you.


OK, see that "Kismet" there? That's Marta's ultimate weapon. It has a 5% drop chance to drop from Album Atrum here. Yes, really. If it doesn't drop, you can either reload from level 6 or repeat the entire dungeon again. Yes, this dungeon is 100% repeatable. I'd call getting it here super-lucky except BB's save file had Marta using it already.

Narrator: With the disappearance of the monster, the fog and darkness dissipated. However, much deeper presence is felt from the abyss. Another monster like it may appear. Now, let's go back above ground.
I have no idea why they bothered with a dumb narrator for this.



: So what happened between the real Emil and Marta?
: Well, eventually the fact that the real Emil fancied men and only men managed to make it through the layers of denial and ignorance in Marta's psyche, and the shock actually managed to reconfigure her into a half-decent human being after she rebuilt her life.
: Really?
: Yes, I must confess I was surprised as well.
: So, that's it, huh?
: No, I really do need to teach you cosmology, miss "the Big Bang spell is AWESOME and I will bust it out CONTINUOUSLY and..."
: Oh boy.



Skit Video: Kismet
Trigger: Receive the Weapon "Kismet" from Album Atrum - I missed this since the file I was using already had Kismet.
: Kismet, come to mama!
: C-Could it be?!
: What?
: In the age of darkness, the bride of the fell-god Nether, took up this weapon to quell her husband's rage.
: Yeah, okay, whatever. I was never really a big history buff. I'm just thrilled to have found something so rare!<3
: To quell him, she offered up her life to heaven, and--Oh, fine, never mind.
This skit is "part two" of the skit from earlier where we got the sword "Nether Traitor" for Emil. I don't have any video for this because this save file had already gotten one.
Thanks for the skit Admiral H. Curtiss!



That's all, folks. I'll be editing the thread and maybe repost some of the skits that were posted for me (I'd love to have the Kismet skit as well). Then this POS will be done and dusted.
For our outro, let's spend a little time with our old buds and see the Original Symphonia characters do Mystic Artes and chat with each other after battles.