Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 47: The World Tree

Beginning

<- Previous: Fairy Isle

And we’re back.  Kind of.

We’re in the middle of taking the fight back to the monster queens.  After knocking some sense into the Elf Queen, it turns out the real malodorous influence is happening over at the neighbouring World Tree.  The normally passive and peaceful Queen Alraune has become rather warlike all of a sudden.  So over we go to bring peace by setting everything on fire.  Starting with the Walraune blocking the entrance.  I suspect Inferno Mage Alicetroemeria is going to enjoy this particular dungeon.

We come in peace.  Burn everything down.

The world tree has a very similar structure to the slug and harpy towers of MQ:P part 1.  There are three floors with multiple stairs (or rather, vines in this case) leading to the next floor.  Some lead to dead ends with treasure chests.  The central path pretty much gets you to Queen Alraune.

It also gets you to the rainbow material required for smithing prism weapons.  That is reached by climbing down a vine in the southeast corner of the 3rd floor and gets you to here:

Rainbow rocks

Before we show Queen Alraune the error of her ways by setting her on fire, I suppose I should go over the wandering monster girls you can find in this region.

Walraune was in the original series.  She likes to trap Luka in her petals and give him a very long blowjob.  Also present is the Dryad you fought around the same time.  In the original she was also brainwashed and switched from sweet to sadistic after taking enough damage.  Both versions are present here.

Nice 'n' nasty dryads

If I remember correctly, you probably don’t want to lose to either of them as their Bad Ends involve attaching their roots to you and leaching out all your moisture.

We also get two new Forest versions of Alraune and Dryad.

New model Alraune and Dryad

Forest Alraune likes attaching a special flower to our dangly bits and gulping down all our juices.

Forest Dryad starts innocuously enough with what looks like a blindfolded handjob.

This doesn't seem so bad

She doesn’t seem too bad to lose to.  Sweet and innocent and... what’s that?

Wait!  That isn't a hand.

A plant gal’s got to get her moisture, and her favourite way is to attach her tentacle root to the crotch and start sucking away.  At least she’s considerate enough to keep Luka around afterwards rather than sucking out all his fluids and leaving behind a dried-up mummy.

In the original series Queen Alraune was brainwashed by one of the doll weapons designed to beat the heavenly knights.  They haven’t showed up so far in Paradox (thankfully, they were a bit shit compared to the other bosses), so I’m guessing it’s either Lilith or another one of Black Alice’s creations behind all this.  Queen Alraune can be found in the middle of the third floor.

She's big, bouncy and flowery... but mostly bouncy

She’s also no less flammable than the other plant girls, so prominence away Black Alice!  Uh, I mean, Alicetroemeria.

Queen Alraune does have a few annoying AOE status effect pollen attacks, including an instant kill one, but her vulnerability to fire should make this a fairly straightforward fight.

Afterwards Mephisto is brought in to clear the brainwashing, which causes the real culprit behind it all to reveal herself:

Who and what are you?

And you are... Aži Dahāka.  Whoever that is.  It looks like someone added a bunch of extra nonsense to the letters to make the name sound more mysterious.  That seems a really lame thing to do (ahem).

In this case Aži Dahāka is the name of an ancient Persian demon.  I must confess to not knowing too much about that particular mythology.

This Aži Dahāka looks like a lamia with other bits thrown in.  She reveals she’s acting on behalf of Black Alice which triggers a very suspicious facial expression from our own Black Alice.  Seeing the respective Black Alices face off against each other is something I’m rather looking forward to, even if the most likely outcome is they team up to snu snu Luka to a particularly icky Bad End.

But first we need to take out the real boss for this area.  As she appears to be a lamia, I figured it would be a simple switch from fire magic to ice magic.  And it worked... ahem.

Ilias’s evaluation afterwards (and the monsterpedia) reveals Aži Dahāka is strong to both fire and ice.  Really, I didn’t notice.

(Alicetroemeria might need a teensy bit of a nerf.)

But Aži Dahāka is a new gal, so what we’re really interested in is what debauchery she gets up to if you deliberately throw the fight lose to her.

Her temptation move is to hold Luka up and tempt him with her pussy.

Seems tempting enough.  Why not.  What’s the worst that can happ...

Snakes on a... particularly sensitive part of anatomy

Um, Aži dear.  Why is there a snake biting the end of my cock?

Aži.  Why is there a motherfucking snake biting the end of my motherfucking cock!  I’ve had it with these mother... yeah, we’re just going into cliché now.

Afterwards is more conventional sex.  Being a lamia, Aži Dahāka has quite a mobile pussy and uses it to full effect to squeeze and suck out all our semen.  Rather refreshingly for one of MGQ’s snake gals, she even refrains from opening her vagina wide and shoving us in face first.

She's a good squeeze

But that’s alternate!Luka’s fate.  Our Luka froze her into an icicle (despite her being resistant to ice – have I said enough times already how OP Alicetroemeria is).

She’s one of Black Alice’s minions, so there are no opportunities to recruit afterwards.  She does a runner and I imagine we’ll see her again in part 3.  With the snake demon gone, Queen Alraune returns to her normal placid self.  Unfortunately, we can’t seem to recruit her either as she’s too busy recuperating from being set on fire repeatedly.

There is also a very long callback to MQ:P [part 1].  If you remember all the way back to the harpy tower, we were able to cure all the harpies of the lust plague afflicting them, but not the queen.  She needed a special fruit from the World Tree.

Well, we’re here now, so does that mean we can recruit Miss Fluffywings?

Not quite yet.  Queen Alraune needs some time to grow the fruit.  I suspect we’re waiting for the requisite plot trigger.  Maybe after we’ve dealt with the other three queens.  However, she does give us the soul item that unlocks the advanced singing and dancing jobs.  Sonya is curious as to why Queen Alraune had this item and she reveals she wanted to be a star when she was younger.

Returning back to the fairy isle has Queen Elf reward us with an item.  Unfortunately, both her and Queen Fairy are still not recruitable as yet.  I suspect it’s the same trigger condition as the World Tree fruit.

Now that we have the requisite material for the elf blacksmith to make prism items, there are some side quests to catch up on.  Papi can be taught how to make prism gear.  There is no quest here, just bring her along to chat with the blacksmith.  Papi fails the first couple of times, but then gets some help from Salamander and between them they learn how to make prism items.

Unsurprisingly (as this is a 3-part series), this is not the ultimate material.  The elf blacksmith talks about the greatest blacksmith, Randolph, and legendary weapons forged from meteorite iron.  Alice also mentions she knows about this as the weapons were forged in the demon castle in Helgondo.  As for Randolph, nobody knows where he is, but I suspect he’ll show up sometime in a future chapter.

And that’s that for the World Tree and Fairy Isle (at least until we come back to recruit the queens).  One Queen down, three to go.  Next up, it’s time to have some fun with some frisky fishies in the secret mermaid base.

-> Next: Mermaid Cave

The Heart Squad (part 3)

Beginning


There was email awaiting Kurtzburg when he got back to his desk.  Also not a surprise.  There was always email waiting for him.  One of them wasn't like the others, but Kurtzburg wasn't aware of that until he opened it up.

"Hi Piotr.  We're the Heart Squad!"

It was followed by a picture of four extremely attractive and provocatively attired women sitting in the back of an expensive limo.  They were all smiling at the camera and holding their arms out.  Kurtzburg recognised one as the gorgeous flame-haired courier who'd delivered his card and chocolates this morning.

"We're so looking forward to making your Valentine's Day an unforgettable one."

Kurtzburg frowned.  He was normally super-careful about which emails he opened.  He was sure this had been another work email when he'd clicked on it.

He lifted his small round spectacles and rubbed his eyes.  Must be tiredness.  It had been a hard slog over the past couple of weeks to get the latest patch ready.

He became aware of someone standing next to his desk and hurriedly deleted the email.

He looked up and saw it was Leah Betts from the QA department.  She was looking down at the chocolate box.

"Aren't you going to open them?" she asked.

"I dunno," he mumbled.

"You do know it's customary for employees to share their Valentine's chocolates with the rest of the office."

"It is?"

He tried to remember if anyone had ever brought chocolates around to his desk.  Not that he would have remembered or even registered if they had.

He glanced back at his screen.  Was that email with the picture of the four hot semi-naked women in the back of a limo gone yet?  Yes.  Thank fuck for that.

Not that he needed to worry.  Betts was still staring down at the chocolate box.  "Go on.  Open it up," she said.

Kurtzburg shrugged.  He opened it up.  It was a box of chocolates.  The cover was sickeningly saccharine.  Kurtzburg flipped the lid.  Yes, they were chocolates.

"Ooh, those are fancy," Betts said.  "Have you got a posh bird you've been hiding from us?"

Her hand hovered over the tray like a vulture about to swoop.

Kurtzburg was reluctant to take one.  Where had they come from?  Why him?  You heard stories.  Food being tampered with.

Betts selected one she liked—a little brown nut from near the centre of the tray.  She plucked it out and brought it up to her mouth.

"Wait!" Kurtzburg said.

Betts stopped, eyes opened wide in sudden surprise.

"I don't know where they're from," Kurtzburg said.

Betts's frozen expression of surprise thawed out into a contemptuous grin.

"They're Valentine's Day chocolates.  You're not supposed to know who they're from."

She rolled her eyes and popped the chocolate into her mouth.  She chewed.  Her eyes widened.

"Ooh, these are yummy," she said.  "It tastes like... ooh."  A hand involuntarily drifted down to her crotch.  Her cheeks reddened.

"Mandy, you have to try one of these," she called back to the adjacent QA section.

She looked back at the box with naked avarice.

"You look busy," she said.  "You want me to share them around the office for you?"

Kurtzburg mumble-grunted a yes and Betts went away, taking the box of chocolates with her.

Then his attention was caught by something on his monitor.  A heart-shaped balloon floated to the top of the screen and popped to reveal the word, "Tonight."  A lipstick kiss flashed on the bottom right of the screen and was followed by, "The Heart Squad."

Kurtzburg's stomach lurched.  Had that email downloaded a virus onto his machine?

He went through a series of diagnostics and found nothing untoward.  He rubbed his eyes again.  He couldn't have imagined it, could he?

And what did they mean by "tonight"?

* * * *

The first text message arrived at two o'clock.


to be continued...

(Also, Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] playthrough to resume tomorrow Wednesday.  One was more ready than the other so I flipped the days).