Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 46: Fairy's Isle

Beginning

<- Previous: The Open Open Seas

It’s time to take the battle to the monster girl queens.  We’re starting with the Elf Queen for the simple reason the elf and fairy monsters appear earlier in the library than the other three races.  At this point, I’m not sure difficulty matters a great deal.  My Luka hit the level cap many blog posts ago and has mastered nearly every job under the sun.  I only put him in the party now as bait for some of the bosses (which is Luka’s one role in life, to be fair).

The Fairy Isle is just off the coast of Magistea village.  Weirdly, the wandering monster girls out the location are the generic late game encounters of vampire girl and tiger girl.

The dungeon location is the tree in the centre of the forest.  It’s split into three sections – south, north and central.  We enter in the south.  Going either west or east will lead to opposite ends of the north region.  The central region is accessed via vines leading down at the midpoint of the north region.

The dungeon is pretty by JRPG standards, but it’s also mazy, long, and a little tedious.  Unless you’re using the various instant kill combos (which are not guaranteed against some enemies), the fights are way more of a slog than they need to be.

I’m glad I didn’t devote a blog post to the monster girl invasion of each city.  As expected the monster girls hanging around this dungeon are the same new monster girls we saw menacing Grand Noah.

So we get muscly Elf Amazonesses (not entirely sure the ‘ess’ is necessary, game):

Right proper amazons for yer

Gigantic-boobed gigantic girls:

As big as your... you

Extremely stretchy Trick Fairies (you’ll figure it out) and Carbuncle:

A fairy and a... I give up, your guess is as good as mine

I have no idea what carbuncle is.  She has green fur, that weird red eye thing and an extremely suspicious pink orifice in her fluffy tail.

Unsurprisingly, her Bad End move is to vacuum up all of Luka’s cum with her fluffy, sucky tail.

When the fluffy tail fetish goes too far

Gigantic Girl is technically of the elf race.  When I checked her request moves back at the castle after recruiting her, I thought she’d be catering to the giantess vore fetish.  This appears to be a bug in the game.  Her request options are the typical “Predation” and “Predation?” as used for most of the more vore-y girls, but don’t correspond to her actual scenes.

The first is a rerun of her temptation move to bounce Luka around between her ginormous boobs.

Boing boing

The second is to use Luka as a makeshift dildo.

Good sex toys are hard to find when you're this size

Luka does come from this, but then he’ll come from just about anything.

Her giantess scenes will come as a pleasant surprise or disappointment depending on your own personal fetishes (I’m easy—show me big boobs and I’m happy).

The various elf and fairy NPCs we run into do not approve of Queen Elf’s aggressive campaign against the humans.  A possible cause of it is hinted by the elf NPC who can be found next to the vines leading down to the central region.  She describes it as a cloud of malevolent energy hanging over the island.  Or rather, centred on the world tree located to the northwest.

Is this more interference from the shikibus sisters?

The central region is a big lake with green walkways looping around to a central region in the middle.  This is where Queen Elf can be found along with various NPCs.

The centre of Fairy Isle

Currently the NPCs are hostile and refuse to talk to scummy humans.  A couple of them appear to be the blacksmith and merchant, so I suspect they’ll turn friendly and this will become another warp location once we’ve beaten some sense into Queen Elf.  You can also find Queen Fairy here.  She’s getting treatment for the beating we dished out to her in Grand Noah and will stay out of any more fighty stuff.

First, it’s time to take down the boss – Queen Elf:

Queen Elf

Queen Elf is an elf and the elves of MGQ are vulnerable to pleasure attacks.

Or you could just have Alicetroemeria double cast prominence until Queen Elf is crispy-fried...

(I really hope we don’t have to fight her at some point.  She’s only level fortysomething and still way stronger than virtually all my level 60 characters).

After defeating Queen Elf, it’s time for the usual let’s-have-peace conversation.  Queen Elf claims she’s doing all this to protect her territory and race.  Alice calls her out for her isolationism—she never made any effort to sit at the table and talk to the other world powers.

Then there’s a twist.  Two emissaries of Queen Alraune—a walraune and dryad—teleport in.  Queen Alraune has gone over to Black Alice’s side, which shocks Queen Elf as Queen Alraune is supposed to be completely neutral on these matters.

“Black Alice is showing her hand.  How interesting,” says our Black Alice.

I’m really curious to see what happens when she and the other Black Alice finally meet.  What will we get—a grand loon off?

Anyway, it’s time for history to repeat itself.  In the original series we had to spring to Queen Elf’s defence right after beating her, and it’s the same here.  The plant girls think this is a good opportunity to take her—and us—out.

Walraune—“Ha.  You’ll be weak after that battle.”

Um Walraune.  You are a plant girl and plant girls are weak to fire, right?  So I have to ask: Did you not see the inferno mage double casting tier III fire magic?

This fight was not long and grindy.

Dryad watches the turn one incineration and decides she’d rather be elsewhere.

Afterwards Alice talks about the malign influence from the world tree that appears to be affecting everyone here.  Queen Elf casts some magic to purify the island and finally comes to her senses.  This renders all the NPCs friendly and they now serve up various bits of background information.

There is some talk about an elf princess in the mountain region in Yamatai.  She appears to be a bit of a shut-in and those elves don’t have anything to do with these elves.  I suspect we’ll not be seeing her until part 3, which is rather unfortunate as she’s the one holding the job change item to unlock the advanced hunter job.  Another elf tells us Queen Alraune is holding the job change items for Dancer and Minstrel.  Both the merchant and blacksmith are unlocked now, although the blacksmith needs raw prism material to unlock the next tier of equipment.  That can be found in the world tree.

Queen Elf and Queen Fairy will talk to us, but both are still bashed up to be recruited just now.  I think we have to go and deal with Queen Alraune first.

But before then, the game drops a few strong hints that we should go back to Grand Noah and collect a reward from Quuen Noah for pacifying the elves and fairies.  This is a good idea as Queen Noah gifts us the God Worker’s Soul.  This is the job change item required to unlock the advanced orator, doctor, chef and maid jobs.

This is also a surprise to me.  I didn’t think we’d unlocking the third tier of jobs until part 3.  I’m wondering what progression TTR is leaving himself for part 3—maybe the advanced monster girl race unlocks?

Anyway, that’s the Fairy Isle segment done.  Next up we’re off to the world tree to find out what’s up with Queen Alraune.

-> Next: World Tree

(Yes, I know my update schedule has gone a little haywire of late.  Please bear with me while I try to get my now very late Valentine’s Day succubus fuckfest story finished.)

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 45: The Open Open Seas

Beginning

<- Previous: Demon War

After fighting off the four monster girl armies, it’s time to head to Grand Noah to plan out the next move.  That seems to be to take the battle to the four queens.  There is a slight problem with this.  We know where the mermaid and arachne bases are.  We don’t know where the elf/fairy and vampire bases are.

Ah, that would be because they’re on the other side of the big stone gate at the Navy HQ blocking off access to the outer ocean.  Queen Noah mentions she’ll have a word with the Admiral.  This opens the gate, which surprises me as I didn’t think we’d be entering that part of the world map until MQ:P part 3.

Before we head off to the great open ocean, there are a few bits of info to process.

There is more mention of the rainbow material required for the next upgrade.  That can be found on the elf/fairy island.  I also remember the machine/computer girl with a zillion Bad End CGIs from the original series being found there.  I wonder where TTR will fit her in with Paradox, or most of the chimeras from MGQ Chapter 3 (although I think most of us would be quite happy if he happened to forget about the catoblepas girl).

They also talk about Helgondo and the demon king castle.  Heinrich got there through a tunnel, which is now collapsed.  Alice tells us to research the orbs.  We have 2 of them already.  If I remember right, the four queens have the other four.

So, off to the open seas we go (warp to the Navy HQ and you’ll see the gate is gone, if you were wondering where to go).  This is a massive open area that encompasses the rest of the world map, although a lot of it is just empty ocean.

New area means new monster girls.  There are four new ones here, and they’re also all brand new rather than repeats from the original series.  (Presumably because we never went to the open ocean in the original series.)

Grown up lickle sea horse girl and... nope, nope, nope

There is a shy sea dragon girl.  She appears to be the intermediate stage between the cute lickle sea horse girls (I’d love to see someone make plushies of Arekishi’s cute creations and for them to be distributed and bought with people having no idea of their true origin) and Admiral Leviathan.  Despite their shy exterior, they are more than capable of making mincemeat out of any party once they start calling down Poseidon’s Lightning.

The other common monster girl is another type of sea anemone girl.  I think.  My university-level Biology is failing me on trying to determine which marine organism she’s been spliced with.  She’s also odd in that you’d guess she was another of MGQ’s many monster girls catering to the vore fetish.  She has an attack that gobbles up party members.  Her Bad End starts like this:

You dun fucked up, Luka lad

And moves onto this:

Yet another vore end...?

Normally this would be the point where Luka scoops his bones out of the puddle of his digested remains before heading down to Hades for reincarnation.  Except sea anemone girl doesn’t actually digest him.  She holds him inside while milking out all his semen forever more.  A nice vore end?  What madness is this.

There are two other new monster girls, encountered slightly less frequently than the other two:

She's very horny

Narwhal girl.

Manta bewbs

And manta girl

Manta girl is another Arekishi, hence the enormous boobies.  Her temptation move is to climb on top and squeeze out all of Luka’s seed with her soft, tight pussy.  Given that it’s Arekishi, it’s not a surprise to see her Bad End is a paizuri scene.  She wedges Luka’s cock between her giant tits and takes him for a swim.

Getting taken for a sex swim

Squeezed between those enormous boobies, Luka comes again and again.  Luka is not quite bottomless, so after she’s squeezed out all his seed all over her big boobs, manta girl swims him off into a future life as her helpless semen slave.

So where do we actually go in the open ocean.  And boy is it open.  There are quite a few new locations and little islands to find, and some are easy to miss.  I was anal enough to traverse the entire map, and I believe this a comprehensive list of all the places.

First up we have the missing monster queen bases.

I managed to miss the vampire base at first and then mistook the castle for the demon king palace in Helgondo.

Vamps r here

It’s a medium-sized island roughly north-west of Yamatai Village.  Most of it is surrounded by mountains apart from a cove on the west side.  We’ll be visiting there later when we go fight the vampire queen.

The elf/fairy isle is west and slightly south of Magistea Village.  We’ll be heading there next.

Elves and fairies

The world tree is on its own island slightly to the west of the elf island.

The world tree.  Currently not accessible

If you remember the plot of part 1, you’ll know we need to visit here in order to pick up a cure for Queen Harpy.  Unfortunately, this area is not accessible at this point as the entrance is blocked by a Walraune.

Also not accessible are the two northern continents.

Helgondo is surrounded by mountains.

No way through here

There is a small cove on the south shore where a boat can land, but as stated earlier, the tunnel leading into the interior is blocked by rubble.  As with the original series I suspect we’re going to need to summon the God Bird in order to fly over.

The snow continent is also surrounded by impassable mountains.  There is a tunnel entrance accessible on the north shore and this even takes us to a location screen.

The way into the snow continent... at some point in the future

But it’s all a tease.  As with the elf mountain near Yamatai Village, we can only go so far before being teleported back to the start.

Also close to Yamatai Village is this little conundrum of an island.

Unreachable, for now

Yup, we’re going to need air transport to check those two villages out.

In the middle of the big ocean, roughly north and in between the mimic island and world tree island is a very small island with a lost polar bear girl on it.

One lost polar bear girl (I thought she was a jellyfish girl)

I’m guessing this is connected with the snow continent, but doesn’t magically remove the blocking teleporter just yet.  However, the polar bear girl’s Bad End scenes are in the pics folder for the game, which suggests the snow continent will get unlocked at some point in MQ:P part 2.

Another small, easy to miss island is present in the north, between the vampire base and Helgondo.

This one is easy to miss

This is another cryptic location similar to the abandoned camp location found in the inner sea.  The only thing on this island is a stone monument.  It talks about some children that were lured away to a circus and some of their bones, but not all, were recovered later.  Very creepy, as Sonya puts it.  Maybe this is a reference to La Croix’s zombie queen circus, but I don’t remember her gobbling up kids unless her Paradox incarnation is a lot more evil.

Lastly, there’s the mimic isle, which—as the boxed girl told us in the lava mines—can be found east of the harpy village.

Mimic isle.  Perfect for grinding Job XP and small medals (or payback for all those times a surprise Mimic wiped your party)

The NPCs describe it as a paradise for mimics and where they hide from the outside world.  Every pot and chest is some form of mimic here.  This location seems here for grinding rather than plot.  It’s one of the few places where mimics spawn randomly, so this is where you can recruit them or fill out the gaps in your library if you haven’t already.  It’s also a very convenient spot to grind both Job XP and small medals (Hmm, I should probably go and cash those in with the medal queen at some point).

And that, I think, is everything in the open open seas.  Let me know in the comments if I missed anything.  Next up we’re off to confront the elf queen.

-> Next: Fairy's Isle

As an aside, I know people are concerned about this series and my original fiction being mutually exclusive, in that working on one prevents working on the other.  I’d like to reassure them that the Valentine’s Day story is still being worked on.  Perversely, I unblocked the moment I realised I wouldn’t make the deadline.  I now have 3.5K words typed up.  There are four hungry succubi in that story, so there is still a lot more sex to write!  I will try to get it finished and posted ASAP.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 43: Succubus Village (alt)

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Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 42: Tartarus IV

Beginning

<- Previous: Nightmare Wilderness

While most of Monmusu Quest: Paradox is a retread of the original Monster Girl Quest series, the Tartarus locations are usually where the game goes into Wow! mode.  Considering these are just smut games and given the limitations of RPG Maker style, Toro Toro Resistance does a remarkable job at generating atmosphere in these segments – whether it’s an alternate reality where Luka quit his quest at Granberia and the world was subsequently scoured by Ilias’s angels, or a desolate tower in the far future where La Croix, one of the villains in the original series, is the last one standing in a world consumed by chaos.

So far the game has teased tartarus locations at us, but not actually allowed us to descend into a pit filled with the worst Delphinus and Xelvy can imagine (let’s face it – it’s going to be them two).  This tartarus region is located on the western edge of the desert.  There is no exploratory team researching it because this whole region is too dangerous, although there is a convenient rope ladder set up to allow us to descend, implying someone must have looked into it at some point in the past.

Yet another pit of nope

The route to the ladder is blocked by a giant flame.

Alice recognises this as the work of the White Rabbit and calls her out on it, causing the annoying bunny girl to show her face.

You.  Again.

She reveals she put it there to make sure Luka is following the “correct” path by contracting with the four elemental spirits.  Following the correct path reduces chaotization.  The actions of the fiery angels and lilith sisters are also trying to achieve this, which does beg the questions:

Why are they so busy fighting each other if they have the same goals?

And:

Who does that make Big Bad?  Adramalech came out of nowhere in part 1, which I thought was a weakness of that game.

White Rabbit also mentions she’s being chased by Nero and Neris.  She doesn’t know why they’re so keen to kill her, given that she’s some sort of natural law, but she doesn’t particularly want her head knocked off, so off she hops.

And down we go.

Hello Delphinus.

When giving your life for music goes too far...

And hello more Delphinus.

Nope and nope

So what do we have – a girl that looks like she’s been merged with a harp, what appears to be a giant flatworm twisted around into a vaguely feminine form, and what looks like the computer girl from Superman III.  (Hmm, I suspect virtually no-one will get that last reference.  Here’s the relevant youtube link.  And yes, explaining pop (ha!) culture references is as bad as explaining jokes.  But... oh let’s just move on.)

We also get a Xelvy.

....

Yup, that looks like a Xelvy.

(Yes, I think those are teeth and eyes in that yin-yang ball abdomen thing.)

Do we even want to risk seeing the Bad Ends on these?  Sorry Luka.  We have an audience.  We can’t let them down.  So take your clothes off and hope none of them are as bad as Eater.

Harp girl wraps her strings around Luka and plays him like a musical instrument.  An energy string lined with vibrating energy beads goes down the urethra at some point.  I don’t really have any frame of reference to know if that’s pleasurable or not.

Making sweet music together - I hope!

Libo-libo draws Luka into her capsule with her and vacuums up his semen with a variety of tubes.  The worm girl gives Luka a... handjob... wormjob?

Then we have Twinkell.  They give our ass a good tonguing while having a competition to determine which pussy is best pussy.  White hair’s is very very tight.

Twinkell has a competition to see which pussy is best

Then...

Hey, no-one said I was supposed to judge this particular part of your anatomy as well!

Uh oh.  Pixelated tentacle penis time.

I think my boner just went negative.

I think it’s also a very rare incidence of futa in the MGQ series.  While it’s not my thang, I’m not going to complain about the one scene in a hundred that veers away from the stuff I normally like (as opposed to 4chan or hentai foundry, where some monster girl threads have to enforce a strict No Futa policy to avoid being drowned in the stuff.  But whatevs, diffr’n strokes for diffr’n folks.)

This region is also pretty tough on the game front.  Most of the apoptosis monster girls seem immune to a lot of the status effects, which means you can’t really cheese them with hungry blob/plant girl parties.  I found Twinkell in particular to fairly nightmarish to fight even with decent-levelled parties.

As with the other tartarus regions, we inevitably end up at the door only Luka can open.

This takes us to a heavily corrupted version of Remina castle.  You know what I said at the start about generating atmosphere, well this section ramps it up to eleven.  There are people stuck in the walls in various states of disassembly.

That's... uh... a lot creepier than I ever expected RPG maker to go

I didn’t even think it was possible to get this level of creepy out of chibi RPG-maker sprites.  Most of them are still alive and spouting gibberish like notes or random DNA strings.  Seeing this makes me wish there was a dedicated team capable of remaking this as a more modern 3D game as I think this segment would be very Silent Hill-esque (the good ones!).  There are coffins lying around that look like La Croix’s work.  There’s also another room locked by a key card and one of those tier III chests I still have no idea how to open (and should really make a note of where I see them, because I’ll never remember to backtrack to open them when I do finally learn the relevant skill).

Strangely enough, there are no NPCs (unless partially disassembled people fused with walls count) or boss fights.  It’s a relatively easy – if creepy – walk through to another Hades region.

So what alternate world are we going to find on the other side?  Guess we’ll find out in the next post.

-> Next: ???

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 41: Nightmare Wilderness

Beginning

<- Gold Volcano

We’re done with the Grangold towns and villages for now, so it’s time to head out to the Tartarus pit located in the dangerous western desert.  It looks like a straight walk on the world map, but in actuality we’ll have to go through a dungeon-type location to enter the desert – the Nightmare Wilderness.

This is not a straight walk on the world map

Thankfully, it doesn’t live up to the name and is relatively short to traverse (unlike the many many screens of the Marching Hills).

We even get three brand new monster girls.

The welcoming party

These are Gelatinous Cube Girl, Tiger Girl and Youki.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Gelatinous Cube Girl ever since she was spoiled on Toro Toro Resistance’s blog.  I was surprised she didn’t show up in Undine’s Fountain.  I must not have been the only one looking forward to her, because – if you’re running the (pre 2.20) Dargoth patch – her H-scenes have already been translated.  I’m guessing this was by one of the volunteers as the translation has a few little quirks (“little swimmers”).

Gelatinous Cube Girl has a temptation move where she drags Luka into her cube.  Her Bad End also involves pulling Luka into her jelly cube.

Could be worse...

Once she has Luka trapped, she forms a jelly cone around his dick and pulsates him to repeated orgasms.  Afterwards, she pulls him all the way in, but it’s fine as she’ll let him breathe, somehow.

Hmm, are we sure this translation is accurate?

Gelatinous Cube Girl is much less fearsome than her namesake.  From the spoiler screenshots I thought there might be some paralyzing electricity involved, or Luka getting diffused within her cube, but it’s mostly just pleasant stuff.

Her temptation scene can’t be requested in the castle, instead she has a new scene unlocked at 100 affection.  She pulls us on top of her bouncy cube and proceeds to bang the shit out of us.

Slime girls can be passionate lovers

Which also looks rather pleasant.

Gelatinous girl seems to fall on the Lime side of the slime family tree rather than the nastier Blob Girl or Slime Beth side.  Not a bad thing, unless you like your slime girls nasty and melty.  Don’t worry, I’m sure the upcoming Tartarus region will give us nasty a plenty.

Youki is big-sis Oni.  I’m guessing that should be pronounced “Yoki”, as those are the name of the big red ogre things currently kicking my ass in Nioh.

She’s certainly muscly.  If she does manage to knock Luka flat with her club, she’ll climb on top and use her muscular pussy to squeeze out all of Luka’s “seed juice”.

Muscles in places you wouldn't even believe

This is another Luka loses the will to carry on Bad Ends, as once she’s done she just buggers off and leaves Luka where he is.

If you recruit her, she has a muscular paizuri scene where she squeezes her big boobs around our cock.  It looks like a lot of force is involved given the geyser of semen she gets out of Luka.

Tiger Girl was another one spoiled before MQ:P [part 2] came out.  She’s got a bit of a samurai theme and some fairly vicious sword attacks.  I’m not really a big fan of the quadruped beast girls like centaurs and some of the kitsune, and Tiger Girl is no exception.  I like them conventionally succubus-like, or very weird.  So, I think we’ll pass on the tiger pussy.

There’s a little hut halfway through the nightmare wilderness that contains a friendly little oni and big oni.  It functions as an inn, but you shouldn’t really need it as this section is mercifully short.

On the other side is the western desert.  Gelatinous Cube Girl is taken out of random encounter rotation and replaced with the Vampire Girl from the original series.  She was one of the first encounters on Helgondo, if I remember right.  MQ:P appears to have moved her to an earlier slot.  She’s also the first vampire you can recruit outside of Vanilla of the loli bandits.  Vampires appear to be very high level monsters in this universe.

There are a couple of locations of interest in the desert.

To the north is the Bird God Shrine.

Be grateful it's a warp point

Ah, I remember this from the original series.  This was how Luka got to Helgondo, and what those mysterious orbs are for.  We need six of them to summon the bird god to carry us over the mountains ringing Helgondo.

The game doesn’t actually mention this.  For now it’s a suspicious location that will clearly do something later.

It does fulfil one important function – it’s the warp point for this region.  Which makes sense, as running through the nightmare wilderness from Lady Village every time you want to visit here would get very tedious.

There’s another location to the southeast.

Yeah, don't go here unless your party is max-levelled

Entering this location scares Alice.  For good reason.  The wandering monsters patrolling the grounds around the abandoned research facility are all chimeras and experimental organisms from chapter 3 of the original series.  They even have the one that was glimpsed in the original series, but never had a fight or scene.

You don’t want to be here right now.  Not unless you want to get slapped around a lot.  I thought my party was over-levelled and still got flattened.  There’s also nothing to do here as the door is locked by a card reader.  I’ll go over it in more detail when the plot calls us for us to actually be here.

What we’re really here for is the Tartarus pit, which can be reached by going south around the mountains and then back north.

And that seems an appropriate point to leave things.  Come back next week when we finally descend into the first Tartarus region of Monmusu Quest: Paradox.

-> Next: Tartarus IV

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 40: Gold Volcano

Beginning

<- Previous: Magical Girl Ceremony

We’re almost done with Grangold.  One of the tasks we do have to do before proceeding (the tartarus region to the west is blocked off until we do) is contract with the last remaining Elemental spirit – Salamander.  She can be found in the volcano back by the gate we passed through to get into west Grangold.

This section is going to be short, because there isn’t much to it.

It's here, in case you haven't already guessed

Like the bottom floor of the Orichalcum mines, most of the volcano floor is covered in lava.  As we’re in a fantasy world, walking on it is not immediately lethal.  It hurts, but won’t burn us to a crisp.  It’s still irritating, but thankfully the map is pretty small and easy to explore.

Also irritating are the wandering monsters.  The demon lamia, demon scylla and lava girl from the Orichalcum mines can also be found here.  They are joined by basilisk girl and dragon girl, who both appeared in the same location in the original series.

I have no H-scenes

You don't want to see my H-scene

A hungry blob party is not so useful here as lava girl is immune to digestion.  You’ll also want to bring a lot of gold needles as the basilisks will be turning a lot of your party members to stone during your trip through the volcano.

The dragon girl design is very odd as the girl part is the dragon’s tongue.  She’s a vore monster, so her Bad End scene is her tongue body fucking Luka’s brains out until he’s docile enough to be swallowed.  As a biological strategy it... sort of makes sense.

Dragon girl likes giving lots of tongue

It’s not a long run to Salamander.  By this point, with the world and multiple universes in the balance, you’d think we could skip the whole “prove to me your power” nonsense.

Unfortunately, Salamander and Undine don’t like each other.  And I mean, they really don’t like each other.  Their animosity is beyond the playful dunking on Slyph the other spirits used to engage in with the original series.  It triggers a fight where it didn’t look like there was going to be one.

Goddammit Undine, can't you take your grudges elsewhere

Thankfully, Salamander is nowhere near as hard as Undine.  I’d switched to the imp party to get around lava girl’s resistances and Salamander, as part dragonkin, is vulnerable to pleasure attacks.  A lucky hit early on had her horny and in a trance, and the imps pretty much obliterated her with various pleasure attacks before she recovered.

I suspect that “fight” would not have looked like a fight to outsiders.

Uh oh.  We’ve barely cleaned up Salamander when Granberia puts in an appearance.  A double-header boss fight, again?

Thankfully not.

Granberia seems really conflicted.  Alice points out that the other knights have already deserted.  Even Granberia knows Alice’s mother is not acting like Alice’s mother.  She’s not going to join us just yet, but it looks like she’s hanging up her sword for now.

This scene is a little weird coming after the events of the magical girl ceremony.  Enough that I wonder if I might have done things out of sequence again.  Salamander’s position in the monster library with respect to Cassandra and the Succubus Witch also makes me think recruiting Salamander, then going to the great poison swamp for the magical girl ceremony is the “correct” order.

Granberia popping up and then effectively doing nothing also makes me wonder if this encounter plays out differently on the Ilias route.  I’ve heard people say the two paths start to diverge a lot more at this point and I wouldn't be surprised if the angel-lovers get an additional fight here. 

And that’s that for the Gold Volcano.  I did warn you it was going to be short.  I guess that’s the danger of repeating content from the original series – some segments are going to seem underwhelming.

There is one more thing that can be done here (and at Undine’s Fountain).  The catfish mermaid Gigi has a quest line where she visits various sites of great elemental power.  Take her to the spots where both Undine and Salamander were standing and she’ll learn some new skills.

Here...

...and here.  Does anyone even use the old catfish?

We’re now pretty much done with Grangold.  It’s time to head out west to that Tartarus location.

-> Next: Nightmare Wilderness