Double update is fun! Let's continue.
First we go rest, then we head to the room with the bridge that is overlooked by the entrance. We stand on the bridge and prove that there is indeed almost nothing Ring of Fire cannot solve.
Having cleared out those slimes, we now need to take a more personal approach. We head back to the maze corridors near the sewer entrance room, and rest up. We'll just rest up inside the dungeon from now on.
There's not a lot to be said for the method here...pull the slimes back and hit them with Fireball and Ice Bolt (depending on if they are grouped up or not), then do so until they are dead or we are out of spell points. If the former, we pull more. If the latter, we go rest.
It is extremely slow and tedious, but it gets the job done. While slimes aren't very damaging (a goblin king hits harder usually), their decent health pulls coupled with immunity to all physical damage makes this a long grind. Plus, they have a small chance to break your items (and Huaryu ends up with a broken ring due to this).
At one point we experience a new and annoying factor: enemies attacking when the party sleeps! In this case, a couple of thugs try to disrupt our naptime. Despite Huaryu somehow sleeping through the whole thing, we finish them off easily.
Eventually we stand, out of food and low on spell points...but the slimes are dead. All of them.
What now? We go back to town and grab some more food, of course! And then back to it for the final fight.
The final room has a group of thugs...and a Veteran. This is the elite soldier to end all elite soldiers. While later in the game we become better able to deal with them, right now this is a walking mountain of health and armor who can readily break you gear with blows, a lot more often than the slimes. He can also break us just as readily.
However, we can now show off the beauty of another spell: Sparks. While it normally isn't as effective against a single foe, if you can get an enemy into a narrow space such as, say, a doorway...it suddenly becomes more powerful.
That is basically the technique we use on the Veteran. Huaryu heals like a maniac, and Eno spams Sparks while Cate and Toblerone chip away at the enemy's health. The Veteran isn't stupid either...he focuses most of his attacks on Eno, trying to stop the damage flow.
Eventually, we prevail, and the Veteran falls. After that, the remaining thugs are easy to clean up.
Now we can claim the harp and...oh, one final puzzle awaits. The six chest roulette!
There are six chests in the final room. Five are fakes. One is the real deal. The fake ones teleport you each to a different part of the dungeon. See why we wanted to clear it?
While trial-and-error could solve it, my psychic powers make everything easier. The second chest from the left is the correct one.
We take the harp and the other stuff out of the chest. Excellent, and as we always declare...
Dragoons' Caverns complete!
We go fiddle the chest on the far right, which sends us to the maze corridors...which are much closer to the entrance than where we were. We exit and head for Ironfist.
We return the harp, and Besper is grateful. Specifically, 5000 gold worth of gratitude. He also mentions something about a rumor that the Shadow Guild working with the Dragoons...duh, we knew that! Oh, the mayor of New Sorpigal would be interested to find out? Let's go see him!
One carriage ride to New Sorpigal later, we are able to speak with the mayor, who is indeed interested, and grateful. Again, said gratitude takes the form of 5000 gold coins. Whee! Money!
Well, now that that's done, time to take care of some more mundane business...but not right now.
