Evil unbound!

I spent two days recovering a lost save, switching a few jobs, and grinding. Fun times!

We head into the Gittingham Palace, but we don't get far. Commander Owl is flanked by two knights, and he's barring us access to the depths of the Gittish Empire base. I am so glad I changed jobs! Lucy is now a sword wielding priest, and Tryton is a Paladin. I tried to see if I could make Armamentalist work, but it's a terrible role. Drew was our "make sure we don't die card" while grinding, so he got to level 51 during the last few days. But Lu and Tryton's levels are lower than a few days ago, so our average level is about the same. Anyway, take out the ads before they get annoying. One basic attack and a Kacrackle works. Afterward, make use of your paladin's Magic Barrier move. It increases the party's magic resist, which is Owl's primary attack method. But it's not his worst! Another thing Magic Barrier does (I hope) is increase status effect resistances. Owl loves, loves, loves to confuse your team. And confusion lasts for what feels like forever, and I couldn't find any item to remove it. I'm sure there is one, but I didn't look too hard. My primary method to defend against it was to just not get hit with it! On my second attempt, it worked! He primarily casts Kawhoosh, a wind spell.

He'll die and feel embarrassed that he lost to mortals. But he warns us that we're no match for Commander Cat or Lord Godwin. We can now enter Gittingham Palace proper, and it's a decent sized maze. There are a few dead ends, and most of the treasure is there. The left side of the bottom floor (on both outer and inner buildings) is one stop, but it's full of stuff. The right side takes us up, and we'll eventually come out into a courtyard. The inner building has two stairs up, but find the instant dead end one first. Check the bookcase for the Sage job quest. You can't do it now, but it's worth picking up. If you find a locked, silver door, you know you went the wrong way. Go past it AFTER picking up the quest since it's along the way to the "correct" path. Loop around the inner keep until you reach the last member of the Triumvirate. Commander Cat is a noble samurai blocking us from confronting Godwyn. He only attacks with physical moves, and his non physicals seem to have terrible accuracy. Kabuff up, Sap, and wail away. I had no problems with him.
 
Behind him is the throne room of the Gittish King, Godwyn. I didn't pick up any animal pun, so I instantly don't care. What I do care about is the traitor teacher, Aquila, kneeling before him. Godwyn asks for the fyggs he stole from us, but didn't we have the real ones? Aquila goes to hand them over but pulls out a sword instead. Aquila was a triple agent the whole time! He only pretended to go rouge on us to get to Godwyn and free the enslaved Celestrians. Aquila goes to strike down the King, but Godwyn takes no damage. Godwyn blows him away and then summons a massive fireball to burn him. All while we watch on... Once we're done sitting idly by, we try our hand at killing Godwyn.

He's incredibly easy. Godwyn has two forms, and the first one was beaten in about six turns. He'll get annoyed that he can't defeat mere mortals and turn into a dragon (?). Even then, he's a sinch to beat. His first form can remove buffs on you, but I don't recall the second form having such powers. I tried to keep Kabuff up as often as I could, though, regardless. Godwyn seemed weak to fire, but I can't say for certain. Both versions took to getting Sapped with little difficulty.

But Godwyn's not done yet. Just as he did to finish off Aquila, we'll try to do to us. While Lucy stands there looking at it, Aquila will get up and deflect it. In the same motion, he'll slay the fallen King once and for all. Aquila will begin to glow blue and tell us how proud he is of us. He regrets doing what he did but still thought it was the best way. His final words are to entrust us with his mission to save the captured Celestrians and protect the world. King Godwyn dropped the Gittish Wand, which I think opens up the locked, silver door we passed before. At the very least, it's open now, so head back there and descend into the Oubliette. You can rest up if you want to before venturing forth, though.

These ruined halls are where the King turned Celestrians into monsters 300 years ago in an effort to rule the world. We walk past a few ghosts who tell us that but make sure to check all the bookshelves. You'll get some end game gear and alchemy recipes. I only managed to make one by the end of the night, though. We'll eventually walk into a cave system that takes us to the very bottom. There we'll see one more Celestrian locked up in chains. We can free him, but we probably shouldn't have...

As his chains fall off, he laments that all he did was for naught. He revived the Gittish Empire and destroyed the Observatory in an attempt to kill Zenon. All because mortals are terrible creatures. He says the gods are weak and need to be destroyed. Then he introduces himself as Corvus. His feathery wings have turned to demon sinew, and his halo has grown into horns. He's a full demon now. He's been locked up here for 300 years, festering on hate and isolation. Since we ruined his plans, he wants to kill us, and he attacks. Like the battle against Aquila on the Starflight, we can't do anything. Despite Corvus being a demon, he's still considered a higher rank of Celestrian than Lucy, so we can't attack. Corvus kills us in one hit on the second round. Corvus flies out of the palace and lingers in the sky. He calls for Barbarous and says he's going to destroy the world. He doesn't do it, though, and Stella wakes us up. It's just in time for us to hear Sarona running after us.

Or...Corvus, I should say. Sarona knew he'd be down here, but she just missed him. She reveals why she's been looking for him this whole and tells us. After the Gittish Empire attacked Wyrmwood, they came back for the Celestrian. Corvus was willing to fight, but he was still injured from his "fall." The only other option was to run away, but Corvus didn't want to leave because he liked it here. He and Sarona fled to the Spring of Hope, but Corvus still wanted to defend the town. It was his role as guardian, after all. Sarona and her dad knew he'd say that, so she offerd the angel a drink of the town's "special" potion. Alas, it wasn't a healing pot but a sleeping brew. Corvus was put to sleep to protect him. As he lies there, knocked out, three Imperial soldiers enter the cave with Sarona's dad behind them. Dad made a deal with the Empire to turn over Corvus to protect the town, and Sarona was unwittingly involved. Corvus is barely conscious for this, so he assumes Sarona went along with the plan. As the Gittish leader leaves with the Celestrian, he orders the rest of the town destroyed. Sarona's last words were a promise to find Corvus again... This whole scene reveals Wyrmwood's backstory of why they don't trust outsiders: Corvus got their town razed. It's also why Corvus hates humans: they betrayed him. Sterling runs down after us to get us in the Starflight Express. All the other Celestrians are already there, and we need to talk to Apus.

We fill the mentor in on Aquila and Corvus, but he seems resigned to dying. Due to the red tape, we can't attack Corvus, and Apus is too weak to defeat him. As we leave his chair, Yggdrasil asks us to talk to her. Celestria tells us that, just as we've saved the lives of so many people, their love for us will save us. We see bright lights forming near all the places we've visited: Their powers rise to the Observatory and from one last fygg. Celestria tells us to eat the fruit and become mortal. Only then will we be able to slay Corvus and save the world. When we bring this up with Stella and Sterling, they both say it's a pretty raw deal. Become mortal to save the world, or stay immortal and enjoy what time we have left? We're asked if we want to head to the Realm of the Almighty, where Corvus is to become the new Zanon, and I get "point of no return" vibes. So it looks like we'll be finishing Dragon Quest IX...

...tomorrow!

I'm out of side quests I desperately want to do, and alchemy has reached its limits for me. I'm as ready as I'm willing to be, so let's do this!