Stage 4-1: The Gorgeous King
But first, they have to get past a master samurai and her litter of strangely-armed cat kids. She has a half-dozen of them, two of whom are hiding in a clock tower (when invited, it stops any nearby enemies from moving for a turn).
Ryu and Miyako start the assault by taking out the two Death Sabers on the hill, while Bob, Lucca, Satan (in the newly-upgraded LEX) aim for the lead Samurai and her cohorts. One of the Death Sabers from the Clock Tower destroys the hospital, as two more samurais arrive from the east to help. Steve states that while he finds them cute, they're still dangerous and need to be disposed of. In a bizarre turn, the group takes to pilfering bits and pieces of the landscape on their way out.
Stage 4-2: The Great King
Random dungeon. This looks easy enough.A few armed merchants and a shovel-packing engineer guard the first area. Steve hangs back and lets the B-team handle them, since they're about level 12-14. Next, he and Kashiwa double-team a drill-carrying Tar Man before it can reach the tome. For some reason, this upsets the balance and causes everyone to become dazed. Kashiwa tries to correct this by casting Espoir on the tome. The status is utterly meaningless to the group of magic-using and shortcake-wielding babes heading their way. Thanks to the law of Conservation of Ninjutsu, this group is statistically weaker than the groups they've fought before. The enemy healers, realizing this (and the fact that their weapons are useless in the face of real warriors) try to beef up their defense, but Satan charges ahead in the LEX and guns down as many of them as he can before the tank runs out of fuel. The Cake Brigade goes down without a fight.
Stage 4-3: The Beautiful King
Gee...you'd get the idea that King Drake were an egomaniac or something with all of these titles.The group accidentally teleports underwater, where they find that a group of mechanics and their professor boss also possess Super Not-Drowning Skills. The point requirement is pretty strenuous for a mid-level area: 800 points. The enemies in the first area only give up a total of 100. Astral, who is overdue for ascension, nukes the lot of them with fire magic...somehow]]. Another group tries to sneak-attack our "heroes", but they are brought down in short order by the crew.
To the northwest, the crew discovers a secret laboratory, where King Drake and his goons appear to be working on weapons. Not so...it's just one dumbass engineer who didn't know to bring backup with him. The crew has to destroy the lab to proceed.
The third area brings them back to the surface, where a pair of Gel Boys and a Samurai await them on the beach. They dive in and quickly get acquainted with the locked of good ol' Davy Jones. After they dispatch another trio of surprise attackers, they reach the central area, which is rife with enemies waiting to be mined for EXP and rewards.
The leader is a samurai riding around in a vehicle called a Dark Runner Z2. Another samurai, whom one might assume is this guy's girlfriend, emerges from a lighthouse in the distance and carves Io open with a Moon Slash, knocking him out early. Steve quickly reminds the girl samurai that he can do that too, and kills her. This enrages the other samurai even more than Nabiki destroying his tank, or the fact that he's fighting them with a fishing pole. He uses it to isolate Kashiwa from her friends by tossing her aside so that she can't heal them. They quickly regroup, however, and give the samurai and his minions a sound beating.
Post-Battle
Ryuunosuke and Miyako both graduate to "Working Samurai". Dover becomes a trooper, and decides that he wants to be known as Ryan from now on. (Vanessa, the soldier formerly known as Fake Saga, couldn't be happier.) Io has gained enough experience to graduate from Pickpocket to Burglar, and Lucca is promoted to Electric Professor. She likes the fact that her Badass Lab Coat is now a sleek brown.New Map Effects:
- I've got NO Motivation: generates healers, professors and female wizards holding plates of food. Everybody becomes Dazed, preventing them from gaining any EXP while under this state.
- Are you making a weapon? Probably exclusive to 4-3. This generates a lab with a mechanic inside.
