Battle Mastery: Lichkeit defeated
The White Star's interior has gone all... fleshy. Kyosuke, Excellen, Gilliam, and Kusuha (and Bullet) are automatically deployed. Some kind of energy field is also surrounding the area and making escape difficuly. The Regesseur appears with an escort of lesser Einst and Alfimi. Ryukooh gains max Will, Valor, and Guard.
Alfimi says the Lichkeit protects her somehow, and that she can feel Kyosuke when she's in there because Excellen had ridden it once. The Einst want a tranquil universe, but humanity is distorting it; not Earth humans, but others wandering around. And somewhere around this point, Kyosuke and Excellen figure out that Alfimi is a clone of Excellen
If the BM rides on shooting her down, Alfimi will definitely flee at some point. There are 14 minor Einst, so I start this stage by casting lots of Rouse on everyone involved in combination attacks. I can't cast until turn 2 due to moving casters into position, but the Einst are too far away to attack. I combine the SRX so that all three characters can get Roused at once, then divide for the grunt-bashing portion since I haven't upgraded the thing and it's kinda fragile.
The Regisseur has no MAP attack, but it does have a weapon that shoots at 11 range, so it'll be constantly trying (and failing) to nail one of my units. The grunts are gone by turn 5, which makes it time to start trying to take down Alfimi. One round of big combination attacks takes her down for a Thruster; Excellen finished her with a Rampage Ghost fueled by the power of Love. I take two turns to recover a bit of SP before going for the Regisseur. I'd estimate its HP in the 200K range.
Once the Regisseur is down to half HP, the Shadow Mirrors attack: Vindel and Lemon with a bunch of Ashsabers and a few Rathgrith. Blah blah blah, more of that bullshit about war being awesome for humanity; my crew gives them the collective finger and it's time to fight. The first order of business is to retreat my battleships just a little while finishing off the Regisseur. I wish I knew what the song is called that plays here because it's awesome. Kusuha takes the kill for a High Generator. Somehow, that mysterious energy field is still intact after the big Einst is gone.
When Vindel and Gilliam fight, they reveal that System-XN was actually the core of another weapon that Gilliam repaired, something that should never have existed. Gilliam is doomed to travel the multiverse because of a crime he committed long ago (I believe the whole story is in a very distantly related game).
The Randgrith have 44K HP and the Ashsabers have 10K, and the W-series pilots all have lots of support defense, so I divide the SRX to get more shots in and to use Ryusei's chain attack. Combination attacks also ignore support defense, so judicious use of Royal Heartbreaker helps break up blocks of Ashsabers. In retrospect, I should've bought the Combo skill for Bullet since Ryukooh has a chain attack weapon. They're rare enough in this title that Combo is rarely a good investment for pilots who don't have it naturally.
I leave Viletta's Ashsaber out front to slowly grind down the Rathgrith while my big hitters regenerate SP and get resupplied. Vindel has three shots of a nasty little MAP attack of the “drop a template on the map” type, but I can Alert through that. Lemon's Ashsaber has good range, but low HP and armour, so it goes down very easily. I make sure to have Excellen finish her off since she promised to reveal her identity if Excellen defeats her. Lemon drops an S-Adaptor and reveals that Excellen's parents were engineers on the other side who tried to rebuild their daughter as an artificial human. Her personality and memories weren't quite the same, so I suppose they considered her something of a lemon. Having Excellen defeat her also changes the ending just a tiny bit.
The Zeizergain has a lot of HP and some regeneration, but it won't last more than a turn or two. Oh, and the bastard has Double Image, which is annoying but easily overcome. I leave him at 43K HP at the end of the turn and he regenerates 30K, so that puts the Zweizergain at 300K HP total. I have Gilliam finish Vindel off with the Graviton Cannon because he seemed like the right character to do it. Vindel drops a Custom CPU (Movement +2, mobility +25, weapon range +1, accuracy +20; great part), not to be confused with the Custom HUD (accuracy +30%).
Vindel tries to escape with the System-XN, but Gilliam jumps in to stop him. Lamia also rushes in— to stop Gilliam from jumping to some place he can't return from to destroy the System-XN, Zweizergain, and the White Star. As the system activates, Alfimi pops in saying it's time to open the Door.
So that's all the battle masteries acquired. I'll decide where to put the new parts later, and spend a bit of money upgrading someone's combination attack.
