天下制覇

Oh no! Not the thing that we just heard about three minutes ago!

Impressions:

Wow! What a well-timed expositional dump that was! Reminds me of Baldr Sky. "By the way, let me explain this ultra rare thing that we'll probably never see or hear of ever again." –five minutes later– "Oh damn, boy! It's that thing I just told you about!" Anywho, speaking of Giga, the big scene here with Orr was really one of those places and times where the whole lazy visual novel presentation really fails, well, everything. Well, the bland repetitive writing about struggling internally with the power of darkness was doing nobody any favors, but moreso the presentation. So many words, so little on screen. Not that you have  to be like this, as Amatsukaze showed very well, in both writing style and presentation, but we've made our bed here and don't even have a CG to show for it.

They could've also displayed it through the battle engine to better work that into things. Say, for example, just made Orr spam nothing but dark magic, or hell, even really used that "messes with our mind" crap to full potential and let her shuffle her cards between you chosing your attacks and her going. Granted, having seen the guts of visual novel programming, I kind of doubt that they programmed the engine well enough to allow such ambitious usage, but you can only stare at that one stand image of Orr looking impassive for so long.

Back to Celia, we've (apparently) explained that we can use magic becase we absorbed Blondie's. She calls us a knight who protected a princess. We try to yell that we're a hero, but Blondie cuts us off and steals the line. Celia's already tired of hearing about it. Kururu thinks Mavis wants Masamune to take over the kingdom, but Celia says she's not that dumb. We get fired up thinking that there must be people even stronger than Mavis. Ringo says we have worms in the brain, but tells Celia she promised that she'd stick by us, even if it costs her her life. Yada yada, our heroic spirit is why we're all there right now. Roll eyes, etc. We say that's wrong and it's because we always had our friends. Double roll eyes. Can we move on yet? Celia says maybe we can do something about THE DARKNESS then. We celebrate being enabled. Normally, humans would have their memories wiped and be pitched out on their asses, but we're different. Ringo and us ask why witches are so anti-human. Celia makes Kururu tell us.

There was a witch of light named Sol, and a witch of darkness named Orr. Together, they ruled the world of humans and witches. They fell in love with a man, but Orr's love was unrequited, so her heart became filled with jealousy and hatred and she, along with other witches, went on a murder spree. Sol was pained by this and forced to kill Orr to stop her. After that, witches sealed away the darkness in their hearts and the world was split in two so that witches and humans would never interact again. Talk about overreacting at every step of the way.

The girls feel bad for the queen whose love went unfulfilled, but Celia says not everybody finds happiness. Ringo feels like she recognizes this situation, using us as the human, Kururu as the light witch, and the queen of darkness being… her. Then she remembers that she's water based. And a human. Subtle foreshadowing nonetheless, Ringo. Celia doubts that the fairy tale's the truth anyway, although our entire group, being a little more media saavy, thinks it is, especially with what Mavis said. Celia admits that Mavis is probably the smartest person in Witchland and wouldn't says something without being certain. We decide to talk to the queen/Kururu's mom since she should know something. Before they go, Ringo wants us to rest and recover. She's worried about the spell Mavis cast on us. We say it's nothing and excuse ourselves into the trees to go to the bathroom, where we proceed to vomit violently and continue to suffer bloody visions. Celia followed us and tells us that it's the power of darkness eating away at us. Mavis uses it, but is a witch of light. We ask her not to tell Kururu and make her worry. She agrees, but tells us we better not make the princess sad.

We nap, and Kururu plays with our face. Ringo's fast asleep, Celia's wandered off. Blondie wants to make out. We play dumb, but eventually kiss her. She feels bad that she couldn't save us from Mavis, but we tell her she did through the power of love or some such rot. She says Masamune is our important treasure and asks what she is. We say she's important too, but she wants to know if she's more important than it because we've been looking a lot at Masamune lately. Instead of just saying she is like a sane person we launch into an expositional flashback about how we got it from our dying grandfather and he told us to become a hero. She gets mad and says that she only has eyes for us, but we keep focusing on our sword. Finally, we say that she's more important, so she tackles us and shoves her tongue down our throat just as Celia comes back. Celia has some kind of mental breakdown about raising her to be a better girl than this. Celia says it's time to go, but Ringo and her penguin are still asleep. They get lightning bolted.

We fly west to the castle. When we get to the town, it's quiet as the grave. Everyone's apparently scared and staying inside. Cheaper on the budget that way. We ask if they built the place with magic, but Celia says magic was originally meant to protect and is basically never used in day to day life. Spirits hate machines, so that's why they're still technological backward. Apparently all the casual magic Kururu used at school was irresponsible and she gets chastised for still having not learned her lesson. It's time to see the queen. We wonder if being the princess's lover means we'll be king of Witchland. We get to the palace, but the queen's MIA. Celia assumes she's in her private room, so Kururu runs off to get her. Celia explains that the palace was built with the help of humans… or so they say. Most witches think that's dumb, but she admits that maybe she believes in parts of the old fairy tale, and thinks that Mavis may have found the truth behind it. Mavis also is really the only one who knows anything about THE DARKNESS. Blondie comes running back. She can't find her mother anywhere.

We all split up and search. Eventually, we come to a temple which has super holy atmosphere or whatever. We look at the statue and think about what Celia said re:all the village witches hiding from the darkness. We see someone there, assume it's the queen, and run up to them. They're clinging to the statue and obviously scared. They ignore us and continue chanting something. We run out to get everyone else. Kururu, however, has no idea who the woman is. Celia tells us both to get away from her and says it's some unknown person. The woman says that her name's been lost, but people know her as the witch dyed in darkness, Orr.

We try to do… something… but are afflicted by the same SUPER DARK stuff as when Mavis used a darkness spell on us, only worse. Eventually, we get a magical jolt OF LIGHT from our sword. Orr sees it and recognizes that we're a human. We try to attack Orr again, but get tossed against a wall. Ringo's being DARK BLASTED too, but Orr also shows off that she can manipulate Ringo like a puppet. Ringo's deliriously begging for us to save her and says that if we won't, she'll kill us. She starts to strangle us. We remember the power of light works, and Kururu grabs Ringo and tries to LIGHT MAGIC her, but gets a jolt of DARK MAGIC instead and immediately vomits. It stops Ringo from strangling us at least, even though she's still being brain raped. Orr says that all of light is wrong, so she's taken the right to the throne for herself.

We demand an answer from her while telling Kururu we'll protect everyone while they regroup. We stand in front of Orr and hope to goad her into a spell we can reflect, but our body's not listening to us cause of THE DARKNESS. We spend a very VERY long time psyching ourself up. Orr says that 'light' and 'justice' leads people to fight, but we yell that she's wrong and we fight to protect people. She accuses us of using the weak so that we can feel proud ourself. We attack and stab her, but DARKNESS and dark feelings and whatnot end up flowing into us instead. She says hatred won't lead to her death. We pull Masamune out of her, covered in blood, and try to attack her again, but she catches it this time and says that her hope is for the awakening of Natania. We yell at her some more. She says we've been misled, and pitches Masamune and us away. We spit up blood all over the floor. We try to attack Orr again, but she effortless dodges and we get smacked again. She's amazed we can still move, but wonders if it might be because of Kururu instead. Kururu's suppressing THE DARKNESS. We try to calm down. Orr decides to end things. She casts a big spell. We slash a bunch of times, but the spell won't stop.

Kururu prays to her mother to save everyone and THE LIGHT erupts from Orr. She wonders if she'll be sealed again, but the light fades a moment later. It gives us an opening however, and we attack Orr yet again. Just before we stab her, she says that the time has come and rejoices. We freeze in shock and then something rocks the temple. Kururu screams and collapses. The entire world shakes as she screams. Orr repeats that the time has finally come and repeats the thing she was chanting before. We try to stab her again, but the light explodes out of her body. She yells at Sol not to stop her. Then 'she' struggles to tell us to go back to the human world before screaming and disappearing. Kururu continues screaming. She's burning up and hyperventilating. We panic over how to help her. Ringo and Celia eventually recover and tell us to keep holding her. Eventually, she passes out. Celia prays, but we think that the light won't help because everything's been swallowed by darkness.

Later, we've moved her to her room and she's sleeping normally. Celia says she should be okay now. Apparently we saved her with CPR. Celia and Ringo leave to get some rest while we stay to watch over Blondie. She starts mumbling in her sleep about hearing us say that she's our heroine. We're frustrated about how powerless we were against Orr and how she almost took everything from us. We swear that we'll beat her next time… with THE POWER OF JUSTICE. Later, we're doing mental training in the temple. Celia walks in on us and we riff about ramen and magical pocket watches. Things turn back to less stupid topics eventually. Celia doesn't know what to do without the queen around or what's going to happen. Both of us wonder about all the stuff Orr was talking about, as well as review all the questions we had re:Mavis earlier. Celia thinks that Natania might be a witch of darkness carrying on Orr's will, and the awakening of Natania means the world will be swallowed by darkness. We also wonder why, if Kururu and the rest of us are in the way of bringing THE DARKNESS, Orr just stood there at the start instead of trying to kill us. Celia agrees that it's odd. However, at the end, Orr's look did change and she did seriously try to kill us after we told her not to hope for her despair herald or whatever. Celia explains that light is hope and dark is despair, but for some reason, Orr became angry about that. We both wonder if we're misunderstanding something very important. Duh.

Ringo wakes us up from napping in the main palace area. We yell at her that she's not allowed to give us any more blowjobs before running off to Kururu's room. She's still asleep. We think she resembles Sleeping Beauty, so we kiss her. Still sleeping. We hug her and fall asleep in bed with her. We wake up to her kissing us awake. She says she's feeling fine now, but… after making us promise to keep it a secret, she's been hearing a voice in her head. Doesn't say whose voice or what it's saying though. So we drag her out to do brain training after raiding the library… except we can't read any of the books. We make her translate. It's a list of ingredients and instructions, one of which is human skin. Celia thankfully interrupts us and after fawning over each other, wants to know what we're doing. We're trying to look up stuff on the old fairy tales. Celia points out that we're reading a cookbook. She says she'll help and goes to the library to get useful books. She brings back a collection of better cookbooks. Thanks, Celia.

A few days later, studying's going well enough, although we're worried about when we saw Kururu break down in tears because her mother's missing. Celia's having trouble understanding the books herself though. She has figured out some things though, like how Sol executed Orr's 8 sages along with her, but records more than that are missing. We've also been getting physically back in shape. Celia is apparently a god at running laps because she used to have to chase Kururu everywhere. Celia's also been training Ringo especially in magic.

As we watch them practice, we hear something crash. We rush off to it and hear someone approaching. We recognize the voice as it calls for help. It's Karen. Wet Towel's with her too, but unconscious and pale as a ghost. Karen hands her over to us, and begs us to take her and go back to Humanland. Then, she immediately turns to leave. Celia stops her. Karen freaks out and says she has to go now or someone will be killed. We ask her what's going on, but she says she can't tell us and doesn't want to involve us any further in the mistake they made. She says goodbye and to take care of Wet Towel. She summons Michael, a dragon apparently, gets on his back, and flies away. Good enough stopping point. About ~25% of this chapter left I'd estimate.