The game begins with a Fake-Out Opening that talks about an evil beast that ruled the land with an iron fist about two thousand years ago, and forced everyone to worship the ground it walked on lest they be killed. One peasant who worked on a shrine in the beast's honor tricked it and sealed it away, but not before the beast swore revenge on everyone.
Sounds like by-the-book stuff, right? Well, what you just read in that above paragraph never actually happens. The real story starts in a town called Leona, where a knight named Atolla tries to warn his king of an impending monster attack. The monsters are supposedly being led by a human, but the king isn’t buying it, and tells Atolla to keep calm and let the guards handle it. Frustrated, Atolla leaves the castle and tries to convince everyone else that their town is about to be attacked, but they aren’t having it, either. After wandering around and failing to convince the townspeople that they’re all about to die, he finds a mysterious raft by the castle moat that wasn’t there before. He believes that time is of the essence, so he takes the raft down the river to chase after the mysterious man and his monster brigade.
Four days later, in the city of Pecot, a strange man in samurai armor tells the king that his brother’s kingdom has been overthrown. He demands the king lend him his best soldiers so that he can investigate, but the king denies his request.
Just off to the side of the throne, a pair of soldiers named Cindel and Ames are suspicious of the new guy's intentions. Cindel (who hates it when people, especially Ames, call her “Cindy”) plans to find out why the samurai guy (who Ames identifies as “Antignarot”) is so intent on going to Leona. Ames decides to follow him in secret, despite the king’s order for the two of them to remain in Pecot.
After Ames takes off, a narrator explains that Antignarot came back from his scouting mission all by himself, claiming that the culprit decimated his forces. This could spell bad news for the town of Pecot if they should make it any further.
While this is happening, a young girl named Carol decides to come out of the rain and pay a visit to Jay, our hero (who is also narrating this part of the story). Jay explains that Carol is a Fire Mage, and is trying to get out of the rain because it interferes with her fire magic, but is prevented from narrating any further. Jay tries to get around this by using an Inner Monologue, but Carol one-ups him and does a bit of monologuing of her own, saying that she came to meet Jay because she was lonely and needed someone to talk to. Aww…
After a short snark-off (including an instance where Carol makes fun of Jay for stealing his "Whatever..." bit from Squall Leonhart), two of them decide to go for a walk around Pecot and get a chance to talk to the townspeople. One kid is baffled when he sees Jay and Carol wandering around town and occupying the same space. Another NPC stands right outside of Jay's house admiring his pointy room (which appears to be missing a piece, but he doesn't seem to mind). A green-haired NPC with an inexplicable Cockney accent tells Jay and Carol that a “mini-game room” is under construction near the entrance. They inspect the sign by the door to learn of a hot new game craze called “Pecan Racing”. Unable to partake in the sweet science of racing nuts, they continue to explore the town, and find a hat in a treasure chest near the entrance. Jay thinks the hat looks kind of plain, but decides to put it on anyway to offer a slight boost to his defense.
They enter a shop to try to get some supplies for their journey, but realize that they don’t have any money. Fortunately for them, one of the shoppers is feeling generous, and offers them 200 gold pieces out of the kindness of the script the designer provided for him. The shop only has a few items for sale – healing potions, some phoenix downs, a pocket shelter (which restores everybody’s HP and MP, but is prohibitively expensive at the moment), and some antidotes. Jay and Carol decide to buy two potions and antidotes with their money.
There are castle guards blocking off every exit point to keep the Pecotians safe from what one guard calls a runaway circus lion. Unsure of what to do, Jay and Carol continue wandering around until they find the lion waiting patiently by the west river. However, this is no ordinary lion…he can talk. The lion identifies himself as Atolla (the warrior from the intro cutscene), and tells the duo that he is trying to stop Antignarot from killing him and taking over the world (and also that the story about an escaped circus lion is bunk and was used by Antignarot to buy time while he formulated his evil plan). He asks them to try to help him escape as he sneaks around the bushes near the entrance. The two have no choice but to agree.
They decide to put Atolla’s plan into action by distracting the guards at the front entrance, telling them the whereabouts of the mysterious runaway circus lion. While the guards walk off toward the river where Jay and Atolla first met, the party heads west toward Pecot Tower, which they have to pass through to get to a town called Cymore.
The inside of the tower is run-down and full of cracks, holes, and other signs of wear and tear. The crystal on the ground floor of the tower, however, is fully intact, and allows them to save their progress and heal up before moving on.
Here, Jay and friends get their first taste of combat, as the place is crawling with many low-level monsters. Slimes are your typical sword fodder, Bats emit sonic waves that put the party to sleep, and Snakes and Arachnids spit poisonous fluid that requires an antidote to cure. Jay’s sword deals a decent amount of damage to these creatures, and he can expend some MP to use a slightly more powerful Slash attack against them. Carol, being a fire mage, can only use weak staves, but is capable of casting Fire 1 to deal fire-elemental damage, and Cure 1 to heal her comrades. After gaining a level, she learns how to use Fire 2, which deals more damage at the cost of more MP, but typically isn’t necessary to deal with the monsters in the tower. Atolla doesn’t have any special skills, but has a great deal more HP than either Jay or Carol, and his claws are more powerful, as well.
In the upper-right corner is a room with a metal door. The party is unable to get past it without a key, so they head down the nearby staircase in search of one.
Most of the basement appears to be flooded, thanks to water pouring in from some of the above floors. The only way Jay can get around is by pushing a set of three barrels into the water. There are two possible paths for him to take–one toward an island just to the north with a treasure chest on it, and another to the west that leads to a different treasure chest. The treasure chest on the island contains five potions and a phoenix down, and the chest to the west contains the very key they need to unlock the door above. However, he can’t take the barrels out of the water himself after they’ve been pushed in, so Jay has to temporarily leave the basement and return to get the barrels back into their original positions. While he is able to riff on the fact that the treasure chests are still somehow in good condition despite the condition of the tower, he has no comment on why the barrels are suddenly dry as a bone when he comes back down. There is one more treasure chest to the north that Jay has no way of reaching, so he leads the party back to the ground floor to open the door, which promptly destroys the key after it is used.
The second floor has a maze of barrels that Jay needs to push to get around. Some paths lead to dead ends, and if he gets stuck, there are statues that allow him to reset the barrels’ positions so that he can do it the right way. One such chest contains a key to another locked door at the end of the maze. After finding the second key, they go up to the third floor, and across to another staircase leading to the only other locked door in the tower. This leads down another large, empty hallway with a staircase to bring them back to the top floor.
A pillar by the staircase on the top floor contains a lever. Flipping it causes a distant noise somewhere, and an annoyed Jay yelling at the text box that points it out. Actually, said “distant noise” was the opening of a staircase on the second floor, accessible from another staircase on the third floor below where a skeleton is guarding, leading back to the ground floor and the save crystal. At this point, Jay has reached level 3, and has learned how to swing his blade in a Full Arc for even more damage than a Slash does. Before deciding to test his new attack on the skeleton guarding the exit, he heals up at the save crystal, and then takes the shortcut back to the third floor.
The twin Skeletons don’t have any special attacks, but they are quite sturdy and strong, capable of occasionally dealing critical damage with their swords. They appear to react negatively to Carol’s fire magic, as her Fire 2 spell inflicts even more damage on them than Atolla’s claws or Jay’s Full Arc swing combined. Jay and Carol do most of the heavy lifting in this battle, concentrating their attacks on one skeleton at a time to reduce the amount of damage dealt to them, occasionally taking breaks to allow Carol to use her healing magic to keep them from getting knocked out. When the skeletons are defeated, they don’t grant any experience points or gold, but leave behind a pair of HP boosters. Jay and Carol each use one, since Atolla has plenty of HP already.
The path is now open for them to move on to Cymore, and presumably back to Pecot, should they need more supplies for their trip.
