Evolution Revolution

That poor ghost ship boss fellow. His name will never be remembered.

Quest summary: Four more spirits, one more divine blade.
Current goal: Uhh, I guess it'd still be get to Forcena.

It's an unpleasant feeling to wake up with your lungs full of seawater. Take my word for it. At least it meant we were alive. As we all know, you can only recover from a death in battle, and not one in a cutscene.

So I added a few gallons of water back to the sea and woke the other two, who basically did the same thing. Except an earthquake happened when Duran puked.

I figured out in record time (Faerie's note: a few minutes) that there was no connection. Turns out the beach we had washed up on was the volcanic isle Bucca! I had been preparing all my life what would be the only fast food restaurant I could have, and our unexpected arrival had made it all come to naught.

Not that it would last long, anyway, because the volcano seemed pretty fit to burst and all.

I took off, the rest of my team trailing behind. Maybe there was a friendly village full of people who loved to make boats! Or some stranded airship pilot who needed twenty bear bottoms to refuel! Or... or...

A teenage mutant ninja turtle was not on the list.

Okay, I really had no way of knowing how old it was, really. And it didn't look very ninja, either. It was basically just a mutant turtle. And it swam past before it could offer any quests. Well, that little appearance stuck straight out. Either some god's inside joke or the turtle would become important later. Or maybe it only made sense in Japan. I don't know. Am I supposed to be some turtle expert? Not unless they're teenage, mutant, and perhaps ninja.

We did find that friendly village I mentioned. But they didn't make ships. "It's not our place to defy nature!" one said. They had no means of leaving, and they didn't really care. They did have one thing we needed, though, and that was a God of HP Restoration who apparently accepted temporary worshipers. Because our regular god didn't have any graven images nearby to pray at.

Oh, and another thing we needed, I guess. Information. When I described the turtle to one of the funny floating villagers, he/she/it because it was really hard to tell said something about it living in a cave nearby. But a boulder had fallen in front of the entrance. Aha, I knew it would become important later! That thing was our ticket out of here.

I checked the first boulder we came across, and guess what? Gnome popped out of my head and found a cave. A cave full of horrifying monstrosities. Another timeline ended in tragedy before we managed to make it through alive.

All of us tired, panting, barely alive, we came across a watery room of some kind containing what must have been the boss. Oh, just what we needed. He was humanoid, so, as I was wont to do, I accused him of kidnapping Elliot. And then /he/ disappeared. Nobody with an above animal intelligence wants to confront me. Not that I blame them.

Before he went, he was sure to reassure us the volcano was about to blow. As if on cue, rocks started falling from the ceiling. Cries of "Craaap!" seemed in vain, when suddenly! The teenage mutant ninja turtle took us on a tour of the world. I mean, not teenage or ninja.

From where we dropped us off, it was only one cannon trip to Forcena. I threatened Bon Jour until he made some adjustments, and he sent us on our merry way. In hindsight, maybe we should have just stuck with the soft landing.

Kingson described the location of four more Mana Stones. Why he didn't give us this information earlier, the world will never know. And when our exposition faerie mentioned the turtle, he got this shocked look on his face, all, "Oh, I ushed to get losht for daysh on the back of a giant turtle, too! Here, take thish Flute of Shummoning Turtle!"

So we did. Found a beach. Decided to check out the ice land first.

HORRIFYING MONSTROSITIES. But there was no way I was choosing a different order. On we trudged through the snow that Angela had nearly frozen to death in before, and was happily whacking monsters in without anything more on now.

Level 18 seemed like a pretty safe level. Plus, honestly, I was getting pretty tired of this farming business. We took off for the boss.

Hey, wasn't that the black knight from Puzzle Mountain Cave who had undone all the puzzles before reaching the spirit? "Blah blah Dragon Emperor," he said.

"What?" said Duran. "But my father died to defeat the Dragon Emperor years ago!"

"I don't remember that part of your backstory," I said. But then I walked forward and the black knight had no choice but to run for it, leaving a few of those Machine Golems like the ones from the bridge behind.

Now, this... this was quite a battle. Angela, for one, was eating healing items like the candy they were. We all flailed around desperately for a few consecutive minutes. Remember this, dear readers. Robots are weak to flailing.

Duran was fine HP-wise. Why was he falling to his knees? "If the Dragon Emperor's alive," he said, "My father died for nothing."

Oh.

Good thing I was so great at words of comfort. "All right, just add 'im to our hit list," I said. "We're not gonna let anyone die in vain. So, what, that's two dads dead now? And my kidnapped brother."

"And my mom grabbing for power," said Angela.

"Speaking of," said the Exposition Faerie. "We better go find that Mana Stone and make sure nobody's released the energy or anything."

That... that was energy being released if I ever saw it. "Dang it!" I said, sparing no nasty words. "Friggin' Altena, showing us up all the time."

Sounds of crying came from nowhere, and a fishy spirit thing phased into existence, blubbering about what a story and she was moved to tears.

"What, that story?" I said.

"No, no, his." She pointed at Duran. "I... I just summoned myself late."

UNDINE GET

A thought struck me with its blunt end. I looked at the Mana Stone. Then at my level. A wide grin spread across my face as I realized the implications. "Class change time!"

"Wait, that was my idea the whole time!" said Duran.

And so we each posed in front of the stone, focusing on all our memories and experiences farming. Duran's choice of class change was easy. Knight or gladiator? What he had been trying to earn the whole time or some sort of brutal ancient Roman fighter? Or was it Greek. Angela's was pretty easy, too. Sorceress or whatever the heck that word was. Mine...? Okay, it was easy. Valkyrie (roughly translating to awesome) or something with "maiden" in it.

Even the cosmos is doing it now.

And so we changed our color palettes and gained stats accordingly.