I did save right outside the Esper Mansion. Good job, me!
We enter and walk around the colossal Air Castle. There are rooms on either side, but we should head to the back of the place. Two espers guard us from entering Luts' personal sanctum, but, for some odd reason, they let us pass when Rune gives the word. Rune sucks, so why are they listening to him. He's not even from this planet. We enter a courtyard that contains a smaller building that leads to Luts' room. Inside we see...nothing. The only thing that's here is a floating eye looking thing. Rune tells us that Luts passed long ago. Kyra is confused because she has seen him, but Rune tells us the eye is a memory device that contains the will of Luts. More importantly, it jogged Rune's mind. It turns out Luts is a 2000 years old wizard because he can reincarnate every few hundred years. The original Luts was a member of the team that first killed Dark Force, presumably in PSI. This time, he has returned as Rune Welsh, the very guy who sucks. With Luts' mind in his new body, we get a new outlook on life. The only way to get past the evil trees is by using the Eclipse Torch, a religious icon in the Gumbious Temple. I accidentally found that last night north of a city named Jut, so I simply teleported there.
Gumbious Temple seems to be the religious and political head of Dezolis. It's all about fire warship, which makes sense as we're on a frozen hellscape where the only thing that keeps civilization around is a flame. There's nothing on the first floor, and two guards won't let us by in the basement, so head upstairs. We'll find the Eclipse Torch behind the Fire Pope. The priest in front of us refuses to let it out of the temple, which kinda makes sense, even if it's to save the planet. While we argue, three figures teleport in behind him. He/They mock us by promising to use Dark Force on us or something. They pay no heed to Rune's line about anything, and they make off with the Torch. Before they do, they tell us they work for Lashiec at the Air Castle. The Air Castle is where Dark Force was killed thousands of years ago. But the planet it's on, Palma, was destroyed centuries ago, which Rune thinks might have caused the reemergence of Dark Force now. But it might still be out there in the asteroid belt...
Taking the Landale to space, we do find the Air Castle in the middle of it all. It has a breathable atmosphere and gravity, so we wonder if they planned for us to come here. I may have assumed some stuff about the last scene.
The Air Castle gives me final dungeon vibes, and maybe it was in a previous game. All of these callbacks make me want to play the older games. They're all pretty cheap on Steam, so I might. I've heard II might be the best, so I'll check that one out one day. But back to the castle... It's incredibly long but not that windy. You'll come near, or close, to every treasure in here, and the dead ends are pretty short paths. There are no battles outside the castle, and the inside is manageable. The encounter rate isn't too high, but the mobs are a bit tougher than previous dungeons. They tend to get surprise attacks in more, at the very least. Most everything are just pallet swamps of things we've already fought, but there is one guy of note. They look to be blinking in and out of dimensions, and they can only be harmed with magic. Rune's Psycho Wand can one shot them, and the Silver Tusk we got last night for Rika deals over 200 damage to them. Despite all of this, I didn't need to pipe. There are two healing circles in this area, which make this a decent place to level up.
Blocking a clear path in and out are figures who resemble the guys who took our Torch. Once we kill them, we don't need to take the long way around. It's also why piping is a bad idea. Eventually, though, we reach them. I don't remember the borderline random string of letters that was their name, but they're kinda weak. They don't enjoy light magic or physical hits. They managed to take out Rune a few times because Rune sucks, and Kyra came pretty close because she's pretty mediocre, too. Rika was using Gisar most of the fight to stave off the big magic blasts they did. Focus on one at a time to get limit their ability to combine spells. Rika's not a good healer, so I had Krya use a few Sun Dews, which functions the same as a GiSar. They don't pose too much of a threat.
With them gone, we can fully explore the Air Castle. The only place we couldn't reach before was the basement. For as bad as the Air Castle outside was, it's nothing compared to its basement. I found an actual map, and it doesn't look that bad. But trying to navigate the place was a nightmare. Eventually, I decided to just use any stairwell I could find and figure it out from there. I got to where I needed to go and found a chest containing the Eclipse Torch. But it was fake. We fight a ghost fella, but that was just the preamble.
From behind us appears Lashiec. Rune knows who this is, but I didn't catch anything. I think it was a playable character from an earlier game. Regardless of who he is, he hates Rune. He and I could be friends, but we have to fight. I was not prepared. Not that I'm underleveled or anything. It's just that half of my team is dead. I wanted to rush through this for some reason, and it cost me. We'll have to hold off on the exciting conclusion of this battle until...
...tomorrow!
I did the Climate Control dungeon tonight, too. It was perfectly fine, but we found a guy who looked like the three we killed tonight guarding it anyway. Raja would have been right, so I'm glad we left him behind. I also did the Weapons Center. It's totally optional, and Wren even tells us there's no reason to do this. You can find some good equipment for him if you do, though. And also exp and masala/gold
Kyra is kinda bad. She can do a lot of things, but she's not good at any of them. She has fun magic and boomerangs, but she lacks the stats to make them worthwhile. Worst still, she's really slow. If she went before our opponents, she'd be great in the setup role Alys had. Instead, Rune is faster than her, and Rune sucks.
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