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.

Update on Valentine's Day story

As you may have already noticed, I did not make the deadline of the 6th.

:(

Still some productivity and deadline issues at my end.  Things I'm trying to work through.

Unlike last year (where this happened for both Literotica's Nude Day and Halloween contests), I'm going to carry on working on this story until it's done.  Ironically, the moment I realised I wasn't going to make the deadline was the moment I unlocked to get back to work on it again.  Ideally I'll have it finished by Valentine's Day, but given my current complete lack of reliability I'm not making any promises.

Patreon is obviously off the table for the moment.  I'm not going to ask for people's money until I'm confident I've resolved my current issues.

The plan is still to write myself back into form with short stories on Literotica.  That was what worked for Succubus Summoning 101 and 201.

Apologies and thanks for your patience and understanding.

Slight pause on Monmusu Quest series

I'm coming up to the deadline for Literotica's Valentine's Day competition.  I think I've got a sweet succubus story, but it's a little longer than I anticipated (four succubi, they all want their time in the limelight!).  So I'll be throwing everything at it to try and get it finished by the 6th.

I'll get back to regular posting as soon as the story is done.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 44: Demon Invasion

Beginning

<- Previous: Succubus Village (alt)

We were in an alternate world, hanging out with one of the great heroes of the past (who coincidentally happens to be travelling with one of the worst villains) when we got a message all heck was breaking loose back in Luka’s world.

One harpy feather later and...

Our newest recruit

What is Black Alice doing with us?  She got sucked into the warp and followed us back into our world.  Fortunately, she seems quite tickled at the prospect of going up against the demon armies and joins the party.

This is probably for the best.  As a party member, she’s fairly OP.  Despite only being level 40 or so, she has access to the tier 3 Black Mage jobs and her trait is to double-cast black magic.  With the right gear and stat bonuses, she can dish out a helluva lot of damage.  So yep, it’s probably a good thing she pitched in on our side.

She is also a bit... not there.

I think someone recommended keeping her in the party for her comments.  I concur with this.  Alice is a fruit loop.  All hell is breaking out around her and she talks about tea parties (before dishing out five-digit damage double fireballs).

I think I can say I’m on team Black Alice at this point.

Originally, I was going to break this part into four posts covering each city, but I think it’s time we push on and get this series done before part 3 comes out.  Also, while there are plenty of new encounters, I’ve a strong reason to believe we’ll be seeing them as regular encounters in other locations (for reasons that will become clear later).

Right.  Grand Noah, San Ilia, Sabasa and Grangold are all under attack.  Technically, it doesn’t matter which order you do them in, and at one point I did get confused as to which was the first (I may have rushed to the other cities to see what new monster girls were around to “play” with).  The monsterpedia is fairly helpful here.  It lists the new monster girls in the order elves, mermaids, spiders, vamps.  So we’ll start with Grand Noah (which is where we warp to after the distress call comes in anyway).

Grand Noah is under siege by a combined army of elves and fairies.  The random encounters are various low-level elves and fairies we’ve seen in previous locations.  They’re still at the same level and therefore not really a problem.  Also present are various fixed encounters where the monster girl character sprite is visible and usually in the process of molesting some unlucky (or lucky) townsfolk.

The giantess girl in the town square is fairly hard to miss.

I wonder who we're supposed to fight...?

There is also a carbuncle girl (I’m guessing this is a fairy-tale reference) molesting a priest on the bridge to the coliseum.  These are one-time encounters.  There are also recurring encounters (respawns every time you come back to the city) with new girl Elf Amazoness and original series Trick Fairy.

I’m not going to put Bad End details here just yet as I suspect we’ll be running into these girls again.

Various routes, including the road to the coliseum, are blocked by mass fighting.  You’ll need to head towards the castle where you’ll find the androgynous-looking Queen Fairy marshalling her troops from behind the lines.

Sweet child of the 60s

Queen Fairy was a boss fight in the original series that specialised in sending various lewd plants into Luka’s pants.

The boss fight managed to drag out for an age because my party is effectively Alicetroemeria, Luka and a ragtag punch of other characters I’m running through the Maid job to pick up the value-oriented Job XP +50% ability.  After this I did some switcharounds because I didn’t want every fight to take thirty minutes with the risk of a party-wipe if they managed to nail the one character capable of actually doing anything.

What happens after beating Queen Fairy is a bit of a surprise to me.  In the original series she tag-teamed with Queen Elf and I was expecting that fight to follow this.  Instead Queen Fairy calls back her army and vacates the city.

Hmm, I suspect we’re going to have to track her back to her home turf.  That mountain outside Yamatai?  Although Queen Fairy and Queen Elf were located on their own island in the original series, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, that’s Grand Noah clear.  Time to move on to San Ilia.

San Ilia is under attack from the mermaids.  I think this is a slight change to canon as the mermaid queen attacked Port Natalia in the original series.  Once again the wandering monsters are various mermaids from previous locations.

The new encounters are the mermaid general from the original series and a new mermaid knight.  There is also a mini-boss encounter blocking off the route to whoever is leading the mermaid encounter.  This is new girl Lorelei.  She offers to give us a nice bubbly bath massage, which is rather tempting...

Bubble bath soapy massage?  Sign me up!

Oh well, that’s what save’n’reload is for.

Leading the army is the mermaid princess from the original series – El.  She gets blasted back by a cannon and we confront her in the central square.

The littlest mermaid

Alice knows her mother has a hatred of humans from a Little Mermaid thing that didn’t work out too well and is sad that hatred has been passed down to her daughter.  El wants to prove she’s good enough to be next queen, which means beating us and taking the city.

Beating El is enough to call off the assault.

Now I spot the trend.  The deputies are leading the armies while the real queens are being held back as the inevitable boss fights in their own bases.  Unlike with the elves/fairies, I know where that is for the mermaids.  It’s on the road from Plansect to Gold Fort.

That’s two cities cleared.  Next is Grangold and spiders.

Again the random encounters are various spider girls from MQ:P [part 1].  There is a new type wandering around with their own map sprite (and also fighting the golem in the town centre).  They are a group of very kitsch arachnes drawn by the same artist who did the succubus harem.  I like them and like their Bad End and will be sure to show it off when we “lose” to them in the arachne base.

The deputy boss fight is more like a deputy boss rush as we fight first the tsuchigumo and then two of the arachne lord from the original series.  Unlike the elves and mermaids, the spider queen is here in person.  But we don’t get to fight her.  After we defeat the arachne lords, the spider princess shows up at the entrance to the castle.  She’s looking for the King of Grangold, who isn’t in the castle because it got blown up in the fight with alt!Tamamo.  The king is currently in his temporary warehouse HQ.  He emerges to blast away a few of the rank’n’file arachnes.  This draws the attention of the spider princess, who jumps over for their epic boss battle.

Hey, star of the story over here.  Shouldn’t you be fighting us, Miss Muffet?

We get another new spider girl to fight against instead – Atlach-Nacha.

A titty spider to go with the titty flies?

Woo, Clark Ashton Smith ref.  Atlach-Nacha was the spider god in one of his weird stories – “The Seven Geases”.  That story can be read here, but I wouldn’t get your hopes (or other parts) up.  Atlach-Nacha is male and conventionally monstery here.  A gender-flipped version did show up in an Alicesoft visual novel (that was porny).  Funny to see a Cthulhu mythos monster (that isn’t Cthulhu or a shoggoth) show up in such things.

I did have a “The Seven Geases” porn-parody type story/novel on my todo list.  Maybe that could be the original fiction serial I follow this series with?  (Spider girls, snake girls, one huge slime girl, plus one hapless protagonist.  Probably good for a laugh.)

Goddamn it, so many ideas.  So totally disorganised when it comes to writing them.

Anyway, back to Atlach-Nacha and... that’s a lot of tits.

Despite the fearsome name, she doesn’t even get proper boss music.  She does have a lot of tits, though...

She exploited our weak point...

I don’t think Atlach-Nacha is meant to be any kind of boss.  If you fight her properly rather than throwing the fight to see what she does with those many tits (she uses them to squirt aphrodisiac silk around Luka until he’s all cocooned up and spurting his life away in her cunt), you’ll find out she’s vulnerable to status combo tricks like trance/intoxicating pitcher and can be beaten in one turn.

In keeping with the previous two cities, we don’t get to fight the queen of the race as Spider Princess calls a tactical retreat.

That’s three cities clear.  We also get a new recruit as King of Grangold joins the party afterwards.

Last is Sabasa.  I’m a bit hazy on this one as I did bits of it out of sequence.

As you enter the city, Sara will run off citing a need to defend her people.  We have to take the slow way through Sabasa fighting vampires along the way.

Or rather, one vampire, as the only non-Loli-Bandit vampire we’ve seen so far is the generic vampire girl found in Grangold Desert.  She is joined by other non-random encounters – Conquista and Vendetta.  Later on we also get the Setouchi-special Elder Vampire.

There are two mini-boss fights required to free Sabasa.  Carmilla and Elizabeth show up from the original series.

Do you think they'd say yes to a threesome?

Carmilla is fought at the half-way point, which unlocks the way to fight Elizabeth deeper in the city.  Elizabeth has Sara trapped by what looks like a horde of vamps.  She taunts Sara by telling her she’s going to enslave the whole country.  At which point Sara reveals her heritage as the daughter of the sphinx.

Oh hello, does that mean we’re going to get Succubus Sara.

Oh yes.

That's the Sara we've been waiting for

After blasting away the minion vamps, she rejoins the party for the boss fight.  Again it’s like the previous three cities.  Defeat the lieutenants and the invasion is called off.  I guess the game is saving the vampire queen for the vampire base, wherever that actually is.

That’s all four cities saved.  So it’s time to return to Grand Noah to plan the next move... which we’ll do next post.

But before then, we might as well get to know Sara’s new succubus body better.

Totally worth a trip to Hades

-> Next: The Open Open Seas

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