Hi everybody! Today, we've got another rock that will attempt to get us lost, and for once has a boss fight. First stop is Yallam again, where our Sylph Feather becomes a Floating Hat.
On the way to our main destination for today, Sheba reaches level 26 and learns Potent Cure.
Our destination is far north of where we were before, the island chain of Nihan, which is pretty obviously Japan.
We head straight for the town right next to the beach, Izumo. People here are talking about a sacrifice or something. We also find the Festival Coat, which we give to Sheba.
We get a bit of background info. There's some evil serpent god thing in Mt. Mikage. To prevent the serpent from killing everyone and/or stealing the town's food, the people of Izumo have to sacrifice a woman to it every year.
Anyway, this time around, Kushinada, who is implied to be an Adept, has been picked. Her boyfriend, Susa, who is also implied to be an Adept, wants to kill the serpent before the sacrifice happens. He's taken some Dragonsbane (actually sake) to help him.
This entire thing, except some of the names and the censorship of the fact that Susa fought the serpent by getting it drunk, is drawn from the Japanese legend of Yamata no Orochi
. I'm pretty sure there isn't a giant orange rock or four magicians running around looking for new spells either, but whatever. Accuracy in mythology is not this games strong point.
We try to talk to Kushinada, but she's become a nervous wreck. Maybe we should go to Mt. Mikage.
Mt. Mikage is in reality Gaia Rock. We could go straight to the Serpent, but without completing a few puzzles, it's ridiculously strong.
First, we climb up the side of the wall. Somewhere along the line, we see an Air's Rock style statue shoot wind at a vine to make it rock back and forth. We can do the same with Whirlwind (Or Gale, but that'd involve messing around with our Djinn a lot).
A couple of screens later, we encounter a really weird puzzle. It's a climbing wall, but if we take the wrong path, a statue pops out of the wall and knocks us off. That's just strange. After that, we navigate a maze and find an Apple. Sheba gets the Attack Boost.
Taking another path through the maze takes us to an altar. We use Reveal here to make the Dancing Idol appear. We take it.
With that done, we head into Gaia Rock. We use the Dancing Idol to open up some alternate paths. Here, we want to find some shafts of light that we can redirect towards the Serpent. You see, it hates sunlight, so the more we can point at it, the weaker it'll be.
We start by heading east. At one point, we find a group of bushes. We use Cyclone to reveal some platforms we can use later.
We then take the west path. This takes us to the platforms, which we use to reach a huge room. From here, we head west and encounter a Mad Plant. Yawn.
We reach another altar, and using the Dancing Idol here opens up one of the four beams of light, hitting the Serpent square in the face.
Further on, an altar is being held up by a cobweb. We use Cyclone to knock it down. We follow it down, which takes us to some bushes which we Cyclone to reveal the second beam, then use the Dancing Idol on the two altars here to open the last two beams.
The Serpent is now at its weakest, and we're ready to go after it. We head back to the start and take the north path. Here we reach a maze with some plants. We can use Gowth and the plants will tell us which way to go. On the way we fight a Mimic. On the way we also find a Rusty Mace.
We finally reach the middle of the rock.
Susa: At last... The serpent has finally had its fill. This is the chance I'd hoped for. I will defeat you before the next full moon and rescue Kushinada myself!
Susa fails pretty badly. Well, it's up to us to kill the serpent. Serpent has a lot of Venus attacks, can Poison and knows Cure Well. It also attacks twice and heals 30 HP a turn. It could be worse, if we didn't activate any lights, it'd be 3 turns and 2430 HP. Ouch. It's weak to Jupiter, and will take a while to wear down.
We finally defeat him.
Kraden: It looks like the dragon is in bad shape, but it doesn't seem like it's close to dying...
At this point, Susa shows up again and kills the damn thing. He then leaves, but before we can, a tablet shows up.
Wielder of Earth's might, Lay your hands upon this stone. I shall grant thee the power to melt into the earth, the power of Sand!
Ugh. More bad old English. Translators, you know it doesn't work if there is only one non-modern English word, right?
Anyway, Felix touches the tablet and learns Sand. The spell essentially allows us to treat sand as water. We immediately use it to get the Cloud Brand.
Ugh, thankfully the last one of these rocks is just before endgame. Let's get outta here. As we leave, Susa's collapsed from exhaustion. He'll be fine though, and will head back to Izumo after getting some rest.
Next time, we'll wrap up this side plot and the trading sidequest. Probably.
Stats:
Felix: Lv 27 Cavalier (Venus) HP:407 PP:138 Attack:318 Defence:192 Agility:129 Luck:8
Jenna: Lv 27 Enchanter (Mars) HP:386 PP:156 Attack:304 Defence:177 Agility:132 Luck:7
Sheba: Lv 26 Shaman (Jupiter) HP:349 PP:175 Attack:259 Defence:168 Agility:150 Luck:21
Piers: Lv 27 Ascetic (Mercury) HP:351 PP:142 Attack:293 Defence:183 Agility:197 Luck:8
Djinn: 5 Venus, 5 Mars, 5 Jupiter, 6 Mercury
No, Sheba's Luck is not a mistake. She gets 10 extra from the Festival Coat and the Floating Hat multiplies it by 1.2
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