So I got to the final boss...

I’m sure you can surmise something is fishy by the title, but I’ll get to that later. For now...

Our daily adventure begins with me hunting down The Chest Key locations. There’s nothing too great, so I finish exploring the penultimate Temple of Kiltias. Until, that is, I stumble upon a room where Ashley immediately gets punched in the head by our old’ pal Rosencrantz. We look up to Sydney, as well, having trouble as he kneels in the middle of the room. Rosencrantz claims he should be the successor. Better him than either the soon-too-be-dead Duke or the courrpt The Cardinal. Sydney refuses to name him that and his weird metal arm is cut off as punishment. Rossey tells the world that Sydney is immortal as Sydney begins to play mind games. Rosencrantz’ sword turns in to a weird metal arm as Sydney puts his back on. Ashura from Final Fantasy IV is summoned as The Cult Leader promises he won’t kill The Senior Riskbrekaer...only to seemingly kill him anyway.

We’re tasked with defeating Kali who falls, like a lot of bosses one you learn the trick, pretty quickly. After the fight, we find the place where Rossey and Guildenstern last saw each other which tells me Sydney wasn’t even hiding from them. They could have found him whenever. The door was right there. Regardless, before entering The Great Cathedral, I finish exploring the city, upgrade my weapons, and then head in. This entire dungeon is locked doors and a Boss Rush intermingled with block puzzles.

The bosses are:
Ifrit - A named Fire Elemental
Another crab
Marid - A named Water Elemental
Another Dragon
Djinn - A named Lightning Elemental
Lich
A goddamn Holy Dragon!
Dao - A named Earth Elemental
Nightmare - A Named Dark Elemental, being the last one to stand in my way and, if done in the correct order, the penultimate boss battle.

After the Dao battle, there was a scene where we’re where Mwrlose telepathically asks Ashley for help as we cut to the room. Sydney takes the Cloudstone up and prepares to confront Guildenstern. It turns out Hardin is still alive, for now, so now I don’t know how to feel. Hardin is, however, suffering from wavering loyalty seeing how his boss lied to him about the key. Meanwhile, Guildenstern rants about the corruption in society and, specifically, points out the merchants. What he does isn’t for his religion, but for the world as a whole. But not as the cool socialist, “everyone gets affordable healthcare” shtick, but rather the, “I want to be tyrant” type. Samantha shows up (I forgot about her, by the way) to force push Sydney who, seeing stuff is about to hit the fan, teleports Hardin, Merlose, and Joshua away to an unknown location. Just before, though, we gain an interesting tidbit: Is Sydney the Duke’s son? We may not know as Sydney gets shot by a cross-bolt and Guildenstern prepares to get the key.

After the Nightmare fight, Ashley floats to the room where this went down and, as we climb the stairs, see a heavily bleeding Sydney because he, indeed, was flayed. Ashley asks where Gallo Merlose (who knew she had a first name?) is and Sydney answers by saying she’s safe and fills our hero into what happened. They turn to the Rood Inverse on the floor and see ghost form Joshua hanging out saying he wanted to help his dad. Also, ignore all the stuff I said about it being Ashley’s son. I was wrong. Joshua says, “This city was his only hope” and Sydney says something confusing about he wanted to help, even if it cost bis life. Is Joshua dead? I didn’t get it, but the scene shifts to the roof where Samantha is being held by her lover, Guildenstern...except she’s not. She actually got stabbed. He says, “I need you soul” and says he always loved her as Sam breaks up with as just before dying. Ashley shows up and, with few words, a boss fight takes place where Guildernstern is wielding a Blood Sin sword, because symbolism.

This fight is more annoying than hard. Guildy doesn’t have a weakness and he’s immune to the important status debuffs so all we can do is buff up and hit him while hoping he doesn't de-buff us. He’s good at a chain evasion so it takes a while. More tedious stuff, though.

After his fall, Ashley is teleported to a world of white where he eventually sees his family during the picnic. They say their goodbyes, it’s real touching. Finally, a bit of closure. It’s mostly Tia and Marco talking and saying that they love him. To me, it seems to indicate that Ashley’s memories were correct and this was his family. Rosencrantz was the one lying for reasons we may never know. Probably generic sketchy shadow organization stuff. The last line here is, “Come home agent Riot you’re story is not yet finished” as the whiteness ends and we’re on a floating glyph in front a Final Form Guildenstern.

This sucked. Not only is he also immune, but he hard to get into range. When I was able to unload onto him, it got my Risk so high that I ended up being one-shot by him. Slowly chipping his HP, 1-10 points at a time, out of 666 because symbolism, I’m salty that I have to fight form one again, but it’s late and I want to sleep.

I’ll, hopefully, finish the plot tomorrow and give my moratorium as well. I was hoping to save that for its own, but alas.