Yep, I think we all saw this development coming.
“The entrance to the realm of the gods lies just outside my castle. Go ahead and try to stop it…if you think you can! Blarg!”
With that final bit of exposition, the demon king vanished away, thoroughly vanquished.
“Okay, then! The demon king’s out of the picture, so now we just have to move along and take on the final boss!” I said.
The five of us took a moment to exchange high fives and celebrate our victory. Our party had been brought together by circumstance, but we’d been traveling together for long enough now that it felt like we’d really learned to work as a team.
We stepped into the realm of the gods, which turned out to be colored in such an intensely bright, rainbow-like hue, it hurt my eyes just looking at it.
“Ooof, yikes. This feels like where the final boss would be, all right,” I muttered. Actually living in this place on a day-to-day basis would be seriously rough, I bet…
“This is the final stretch, isn’t it? We’ll defeat the elder god and restore peace to the world!” said Laika. She’d really gotten used to the game’s world, it seemed. Laika had never struck me as someone who was very good at immersing herself into a role, so it was kind of fun to see her pull it off for once.
I, of course, was intent on playing the role of the hero to match.
“That’s right!” I said. “We’ve come this far, so we might as well finish the job and save this game’s whole world!”
Saving the real world just wasn’t something you could expect to do in your lifetime. The real world was complicated, and between all the various interconnected factors involved, coming up with a single, straightforward save-the-world solution just wasn’t possible. In the world of this training program, however, the solution was simple: Defeat the elder god. That was something I knew we could pull off.
The realm of the gods didn’t seem to have any towns in it…which was probably a given, considering. Even if it was technically possible for people to live here, the constant shimmering of the landscape would be so maddening I had a feeling they’d move elsewhere before you knew it.
There were, however, plenty of enemies. Random mob sprites were scattered all over the place, and touching one of them would naturally result in combat. I had to wonder: Just what sort of random enemies would show up in the realm of the gods? The monsters we’d been fighting so far were the demon king’s minions, so surely we wouldn’t still be encountering them here?
[Nintan appeared!]
“Why are We being treated as a common minion?! This is unacceptable!”
Nintan showed up out of nowhere as our first encounter, and she got angry just as quickly.
“There, there. It could be worse!” I said. “The enemy sprites in games like this are way bigger than the player characters, so even if you’re technically a common minion, you still look way cooler than we do!”
“That does not even begin to quell Our rage! If you must involve Us in this farce, at least make Us a boss!”
Before Nintan even finished airing her Godly Godness gripes, a storm of stones rained down on her. Pecora had cast a spell.
“How dare you?! What sort of cur would attack Us while We were speaking?! You miserable coward!”
“Sorry, but only people who make an effort to play their characters get to monologue! ”
Pecora really does take these things seriously, huh? I guess she’s one of those people who can switch between serious mode and messing-around mode in an instant.
“Hmph! We shall turn Godly Godness into a frog the next time we see her. But for now…,” Nintan said, pausing to look each of us in the eye, one by one. “The holy sanctuary lies just beyond this point, and if you do not bring your all to bear as you progress through it, you will surely be cut down before ever reaching your goal. Do not think this will be an easy task. The sanctuary serves as the culmination of this training program, and it will require you to battle a gauntlet of gods.”
I could tell Nintan meant it. She was giving us a genuine warning.
“If there are any spells or techniques you still wish to learn, now is your last chance to turn back and do so. Be sure you are well-stocked with items, as well. Should you perish in the sanctuary, you will be returned to its beginning. In other words, if you cannot defeat the elder god, you will be locked in an eternal cycle of battle and defeat.”
Oh no—it’s one of those situations where you can save yourself into a corner right before the final boss! RPGs sure do love not letting you go back to the overworld after entering the final dungeon, don’t they…?
“Got it. Thanks for letting us know—we’ll be ready,” I said.
“See to it you are,” Nintan replied with a satisfied smile…
…as a torrent of offensive magic continued to batter away at her.
“Boy, endgame mobs sure have a lot of health, huh!”
Without showing so much as a hint of mercy, Pecora ended the conversation by defeating Nintan single-handedly.
The moment I stepped into the sanctuary, my footing felt strangely unstable. It’s hard to put it into words, but it felt like I was walking on air, more or less.
I wonder if this place was based on the actual realms the real-world gods live in?
“I’ve been to all sorts of places over the course of my work as an adventurer, but this is the first time I’ve seen anything like this,” said Wynona. Her professional instincts were kicking in, I could tell. She was taking this just as seriously as she took her real-world adventures.
“This feels unsettling to me as well, yes,” said Laika. “If this were the real world, I would have to resist the urge to fly away…”
“’Tis a sign the ending is close at hand. Endure for just a moment longer,” said Beelzebub.
Okay, then—who’s the first boss in here gonna be?
At the far end of the space we’d found ourselves in, I saw what looked like a big, scruffy ball of fur. A moment later, a pair of hands and a face emerged from it.
“…Look upon me, Ost Ande, god of death. I shall grant you your ends. Perish, here and now.”
Looks like the sanctuary’s first boss is Ost Ande, then. Having a reaper show up as part of a game’s final boss rush certainly felt appropriate.
“Pecora, cast attack buffing magic on Laika and Wynona!” I shouted.
Pecora, however, didn’t reply. She—and Laika as well, for that matter—went limp and collapsed in a heap without a word.
“Huh? Laika? Pecora? What’s wrong?” I asked.
“…It was the work of my instant death power. Witness the might of Reaper’s Requiem.”
“Now that’s the sort of power I’d expect from a true god of death!”
“…Can’t use it in the real world, though. Too many liability problems.”
Oh! She’s talking more like how she usually does now.
Since Beelzebub, our party cleric, had made it through Ost Ande’s attack alive, we were just barely able to revive our fallen members and turn the battle around. The god of death’s actual physical abilities were quite low, as it turned out, so we decided to stage an all-out offensive in the hopes of defeating her before she could use her instant death power again. Somehow, we pulled it off and emerged victorious.
“I can’t believe I collapsed like that—I was so shocked! I see my training is far from complete…”
Laika ended up muttering regretfully to herself after the battle was over.
“Nah, I think that’s the sort of move you can’t do much about, no matter how perfect your training was.”
Bosses with instant death spells were a common obstacle. Overcoming that obstacle was a sign we had what it took to make it through the remainder of the challenges before us.
Okay! Let’s head for the second boss!
We proceeded at random through a convoluted series of branching corridors until finally, we encountered an individual with a long, reddish-brown ponytail and rather androgynous features. There was no way an ordinary person would be in a place like this, so I immediately knew we’d met our next boss.
“Hey there—I’m the god of fate, Caven. Fair warning: I’ll be using an unavoidable instant death ability called Inevitable Fate on you every other turn.”
“That’s basically the same thing as the first boss’s ability!”
I really wish this game would stop making the bosses look tough with insta-kills and start making them deal actual damage! All this instant death is making the training we did feel like it was a total waste…
“Don’t like it? Not my problem. Take this—Inevitable Fate!”
Once again, Pecora and Laika got hit by Caven’s ability and dropped like stones.
Maybe some people are just naturally more susceptible to instant death skills than others…?
Our party, of course, wasn’t about to take that lying down.
“Have a taste of my instant death spell: Divine Punishment! ’Tis my ultimate magic!”
She’s using the exact same sort of spell the boss did on her very first turn! But wait…insta-kills barely ever work on late-game bosses, so there’s no way this will—
“Oh. I can’t deal with moves like that. Ah, crap…”
The god of fate, Caven, went down in a single attack.
“What goes around, comes around! ’Tis just as true for a god of fate as it is for us mortals,” Beelzebub said with a smirk as she healed Pecora and Laika. Thankfully, the system that brought them back to the verge of death post-battle still worked just fine, even when they’d been hit by a death spell. That meant basic healing magic was all it took to bring them back to full strength.
“I was under the impression you were cautious to a fault, Beelzebub, but I see now you can be quite aggressive as well,” Wynona said with a rather mystified look on her face. Beelzebub had demonstrated her cautious side on plenty of occasions throughout our adventure, so that trait was one we were all familiar with.
“Dragging out the battle would only force me to waste healing magic,” Beelzebub explained. “As such, I decided it was worth giving an instant death spell a try, just in case.”
So in the end, even this was all about keeping her MP economy in a good state…?
“While I’m at it, I shall fully heal the rest of you as well. For all we know, the final boss may be mighty enough to blow away most of our health in a single spell.”
I didn’t know if this was a coincidence or if Godly Godness had planned it all out, but surprisingly, Beelzebub was very well-suited to the role of party cleric.
“Incidentally, considering the final boss has been referred to as an ‘elder god,’ I imagine we’ve all made a certain conclusion regarding who we’ll encounter?” asked Laika.
“Sure have,” I replied. “I mean, all the bosses we’ve fought since we got to this sanctuary have been real-world gods. If the game says it’s going to throw an elder god at us, I think we can expect a real elder god.”
Plus, we’ve already worked our way through most of the people I know who could turn up as characters in this game. There aren’t really many options left. It’d be weird if the very last boss was the only one who turned out to be a total stranger, right?
When we arrived at the sanctuary’s deepest point, we found a girl floating in the air, wearing a white robe that just screamed, Look at me, I’m a god.
“I, the ELDER god Dekyari’tosde, will REMAKE the WORLD in my IMAGE!”
Yep, there she is. Of course it’d be Dekie.
She didn’t look very intimidating at all, but I knew for a fact she was tremendously powerful. This was all but guaranteed to be a brutal smackdown of a final battle.
“I’ll trust you to call the shots in this battle, Sub-Hero,” Wynona whispered to me.
“Really? Are you sure?” I whispered back.
“If all of us were to fight on our own initiative, we would stand no chance of beating her real-world form, correct? She even defeated you once. As such, I believe that following your orders is our best chance at victory.”
The other members of our party turned to glance at me. I could tell by the look in their eyes that they trusted me to take the lead, as well.
“All right, then. I’m not exactly an expert commander, but I’ll give it my best shot!”
At long last, the final battle began. We found ourselves transported into the battle screen.
“First up, Pecora and Beelzebub, get all our defenses buffed up! Especially our magic defense—any spells for that would be perfect!”
I was convinced we were about to get slammed by some absurdly powerful attacks. We needed our defenses up as high as they could go! Unfortunately, however, before the demonic duo could follow through on my orders, Dekie targeted Wynona with the most powerful lightning spell in the game!
“That just drained seventy percent of my health in a single hit!” Wynona shouted.
“And here’s attack TWO out of THREE!” Dekie said as she swung what looked like a blade of ice at me, which I assumed was her basic attack. Basic or not, it shaved off a third of my health… She used the same attack on Pecora as the final hit of her turn, taking our wizard down to half health in one blow.
“She’s really not holding back,” I muttered. “Laika, keep attacking every turn! Use whatever you have that deals the most single-target damage! Wynona, make sure to heal yourself up any time you’re hurt! When you don’t need healing, cast whatever your strongest spell is at her! Pecora, just keep using that one staff that heals the whole party!”
I figured I didn’t need to give Beelzebub orders—she’d be focusing on healing whether I told her to or not—and was immediately proven right, in a sense, as she cast an incredibly powerful but incredibly expensive spell that fully healed our whole party.
“What—no! That spell uses up way too much magic! This isn’t the time!” I shouted.
“I shan’t let our allies die by being miserly with my magic reserves! Or are you hoping I would let you perish?”
“Just trust me, okay?! I have a plan!”
My plan was to spend the early stages of the battle fighting defensively. The best way to make it through battles like this one, in my book, was to dedicate a small part of your party to attacking, and the rest to just keeping you alive. Laika the warrior would be filling our main attacker role.
[Oneshot Strike! Dekyari’tosde takes 7515 damage!]
All right, nice! Laika’s Oneshot Strike deals just as ridiculously high damage as ever against the final boss!
On turns when we had HP to spare, Beelzebub and Pecora used their actions to cast defensive magic on us. I knew there was a chance Dekie would have an ability that dispelled those buffs, but using it would eat one of her turns, so it still seemed worth it to me. The question of how much health she would have, however, was a mystery. I had to make sure we’d be able to last through an extended battle of attrition.
On turns when I had the chance, meanwhile, I went on the offensive. I wasn’t using the strongest equipment in the game, but I could still dole out some pretty substantial damage when I tried.
“Here I come, Dekie!”
“Hero’s Smite! Dekyari’tosde takes 4686 damage!”
I don’t hit quite as hard as our main attacker, Laika, but I’m no slouch, either!
“Our plan is working! So long as our healing remains sufficient, we can beat her!” Beelzebub shouted, encouraged by our success.
She wasn’t wrong to think that, precisely. The most important part of a final boss fight was setting yourself up to weather a war of attrition, and we’d pulled that off. That said, the one thing we couldn’t do was let our guards down.
“I think we’ve probably got a second phase coming up! Bosses transform all the time, and this is Dekie we’re talking about!”
Dekie may have looked human, but she had the option to transform into just about anything whenever she wanted. And, just as expected, she suddenly dropped to the ground right after we passed the thirty thousand damage mark.
“You know, I THINK I like your FORM. I’ll USE it for myself!” Dekie said before transforming into an identical copy of me.
Oh, I get it—we have to fight a copy of our own hero. That does feel like something a training program would pull. The final battle is overcoming yourself, or something like that. The game’s premise kinda obscured the point of all this, but I guess it really does have some training merit in at least one sense.
“All right, then. If you want me to fight myself, I accept your challenge!”
Much to my surprise, Dekie’s new form had more of an effect on the rest of my party than it did on me.
“Ugh… I’m not sure I can bring myself to strike down someone who looks just like you, Lady Azusa…”
Our frontline attacker Laika had stopped attacking entirely!
“Come on, Laika, it’s super obvious she’s just a fake! You’re looking at the real me right now!”
“B-but still! A barehanded fight would be one thing, but striking you with a sword is very difficult on a psychological level!”
“I look JUST like AZUSA! Woo-HOO!”
She doesn’t sound anything like me, either! Just compartmentalize a little, please! Agh, this is bad! If our most powerful attacker stops dealing damage, we won’t have any good way of whittling the boss’s HP down! Whose turn is it next? Beelzebub’s? Not like she’ll ever do anything other than heal in this fight…
[Beelzebub cast the instant death spell Divine Punishment! But it had no effect on Dekyari’tosde!]
“Hey! Why are you using a death spell, of all things?! Of course that’s not gonna work on the final boss!”
“Seeing her take on your form made me feel the urge to give it a try, that’s all.”
That’s seriously the worst justification you could’ve gone with! Wait… It’s Wynona’s turn next, isn’t it?
[Wynona used Merciless Blade! Dekyari’tosde took 4308 damage!]
“I suppose this battle will determine which of us is the mightier hero, then. I like the sound of that! We missed our chance since our party was split for the sages’ event, after all!”
“Why are you so much more aggressive now that she looks like me? Stop it!”
This is seriously bad—our plan’s falling apart…
Next up, it was Dekie’s turn to launch an attack using my form.
“TAKE this thunder spell: Godly Hammer!”
Even though this was a dream, I still felt that one! It dealt severe damage, bringing me down from full HP to around 60 percent or so. That was nothing I couldn’t endure, though, especially since Beelzebub used her next turn to heal me up again.
All right, I can take this!
We were struggling, sure, but we were still chipping away at her. It wouldn’t be much longer until we struck the final blow, at the rate things were going. The one problem was that ever since Dekie’s transformation, Laika hadn’t used her most damaging skill, the Oneshot Strike, even once.
“It’s up to you, Laika. Finish her off,” I said in a calm, gentle tone.
Laika, of course, looked very conflicted. She seemed to know anything she could say would sound like an excuse, and so for a moment, she didn’t say anything at all.
I’d better give her one last push.
“You never hesitate to battle with yourself, do you, Laika? You’ve been training and tempering your skills for way longer than I’ve known you, so I can say that for sure. Well, now it’s time for you to battle me and win. You think of me as your teacher, right?”
“Of course!” Laika replied instantly. It seemed she’d finally realized what she had to do.
“As your apprentice, it is my duty to endeavor to surpass you. That’s how apprentices have always paid their instructors back, isn’t it? I don’t believe I’m anywhere close to surpassing you in the real world, but here in this dream, I wish to take that step forward!”
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