October 9th 2019 - Wednesday: 10:50 AM

Looking at the strange fruit that has grown from the dead plant, you feel the strange obligation to pick it. Who knows what secrets it might hold? You grab the fruit, which is as hard as a rock despite having a large raspberry-like appearance. Seperating it from the flower is rather easy however, as the delicate stem snaps as soon as you apply force to it.

It occurs to you that currently, your group is directionless. Shirley is still eying the dead stem of the plant suspiciously, while Theresia looks strangely contemplative, having now come out of hiding. Deciding on a path, you speak up "I suppose that we should try the other wing of the mansion, if the rest of the rooms are like this, I don't even want to take this route unless we have no other choice."

"Probably for the best, for just a plant, that thing was way too strong. I don't even know what else might be growing in that rest of this side of the mansion, there's way too much flammable material about for me to safely rely on fire magic too. That being said, I suppose I should get us out of here, huh?" She turns toward the door back to the lobby, still completely covered with vines as she draws one of her knives.

Going back to looking at the fruit, an idea springs to mind, and you press the button on the side of your earpiece. "Holly, does your computer have any information on what this fruit might be?" She has that computer system after all, though it is a long shot considering the limited information on the plant itself, perhaps there might be some more information on what this fruit is.

"Hold on a minute then, If there is any information, it will probably be on a different database, So I'll need to connect that up first" There's a small pause. "Hmmph, it looks like it's been physically disconnected. I'll need to go and connect it up personally." There's another brief silence till you hear her mumbling something about sub-levels as her voice gets quieter and quieter before the line goes completely silent. You hope you won't need any advice from her any time soon.

You wait around for a while for Holly to connect the database, while you wait, you see that Shirley is still hacking away at the vines blocking the door with a knife, she's making surprisingly fast progress too. You consider offering to use the Power of Destruction to just cleave straight through, but you feel like using it again in such quick succession might be even more difficult to control. Perhaps there is some drawback to using it too much after all? It might be that relying on it to solve all your problems is a bad idea.

After waiting around for about 10 minutes, you get tired of waiting for Holly to return, whatever this thing is, finding out will just have to wait for later. It's not that important and you can't let yourself get caught up on it. Fortunately, the fruit is small enough to fit in one of your jacket pockets, so you don't have to keep holding on to it while you wait for Holly.

Shirley is done with cutting through the vines now, and the path to the lobby is once again open. You wonder what's taking Holly so long, but you reason that there's probably just some computer error slowing her down. Nothing to worry about.

You stride confidently back out into the lobby, stepping over the body of one of the fallen golems as you cross the room. Hopefully you'll have more luck with this side of the mansion. You twist the handle and the door opens smoothly, thankfully, there is no plant growth at all in this room, which still looks rather luxurious, despite there being a very off-putting feature. The walls are covered with dozens of dolls of all kinds of shape sitting on shelves. The table is loaded with all sorts of old fashioned children's toys. The thing that catches your eye though is what appears to be a rather extravagant music box in the shape of a carousel, it seems to be made out of gold and silver, with gems set into it.

The door leading to the next room has a metal bar in front of it that is stopping it from being opened, there doesn't appear to be a mechanism to lift the bar either either.

>Try to force the door open with Shirley's help.
>Inspect the shelves with all the dolls on them.
>Inspect the toys on the table.
>Get a closer look at that music box.
>Write-In

>>3917148
>Inspect the shelves with all the dolls on them.
>Inspect the toys on the table.

>>3917148
>Get a closer look at that music box.
Ah, overtly thematic rooms. Will Castlevania's love for them never cease?

>>3917148
>Inspect the shelves with all the dolls on them.
>Inspect the toys on the table.

>>3917148
>>Inspect the shelves with all the dolls on them.
>>Inspect the toys on the table.

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>>3917165
The only 2D Castlevania I can think of where the majority of rooms are themeless is Order of Ecclesia, but that's because the majority of the game is an amnesiac girl running around the countryside or caves, sometimes the caves are underwater. Though when you finally reach it, Dracula's castle makes up for it somewhat. Shanoa is not a great protagonist honestly, the amnesia is silly.
Ecclesia as an organization is the dumbest thing ever too. Imagine being a powerful wizard with the aim of resurrecting Dracula, so you go about doing this by creating an organization for the sole purpose of defeating him and you raise two orphan children to defeat him for some reason.
What was the fucking point, Barlowe?

Also I updated the character sheet, I felt like I should point that out.

>>3917271
It's just a little nitpick, but the term is anti-materiel rifle, not anti-material rifle.

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>>3917274
So it is.
Huh.

Anyway, here's a portrait for Holly. I had to use one of those face creator things again.
I wish my ability to source art or edit things was better.

>>3917295
Huh. I was picturing her as having black hair for some reason, but this works too. She has a sort of "everywoman protagonist of romance novels and/or shojo manga" look about her.

>>3917298
>She has a sort of "everywoman protagonist of romance novels and/or shojo manga" look about her.
She's probably a weeb too.

>>3917295
WTF, this is a best girl look. I don't want Holly to be best girl.

>>3917148
>Inspect the shelves with all the dolls on them.
>Inspect the toys on the table.
Lightning Doll? Killer Doll? Something else?

>>3917298
>"everywoman protagonist of romance novels and/or shojo manga"
That is one of the themes behind her, yes. Even if she does have a bad temper when she's tired.

>>3917476
>I don't want Holly to be best girl.
Why? She's doing her best to help, you know.

>>3917506
>>3917192
>>3917179
>>3917155
>Look at shelves and toys
Alright then.
Writing...

Intrigued by the table, you decide to go and take a closer look. Between this room and the overgrown wing of the mansion, you can reasonably say that these elusive alchemists are an eccentric lot. Their personal taste aside though, you decide to be more careful with this room. Last time you were blindsided by that Man-Eating Plant simply because you didn't check the room carefully enough. This time, you won't take that chance. Shirley and Theresia however seem to be content with just loitering near the entrance of the room

Walking over to the table, you note that some of the toys seem to have been damaged, replacement parts and various tools for their repair are interspersed amongst the toys. Of significant note however is a huge yellow teddy bear sitting on the floor next to the table, it's about half the size you are. It seems rather clumsily stitched together. seemingly stitched together from multiple patches of yellow fabric. Instead of eyes, it simply has two crosses in their place.

In an attempt to further inspect the bear, you try to life it onto a clear space on the table, grabbing ahold of one of the arms of the bear, you expect that simply hoisting it into the air and onto the table will be a simple task.

However, the bear barely budges from the little force you put into lifting it. It feels like it weighs more than you do! Shirley watches you struggle with the bear, her confusion not hidden at all by her bewildered expression. Putting some more effort into lifting it, you finally manage to get it high enough to hoist it onto the table, the wood creaking from the sheer weight of the heavy plush animal.

You have to wonder just what sort of cruel individual would make such an insidious bear. It feels heavy that it could crush a child to death if it fell on them. It would likely have more use as a weapon than it could ever have as a toy, though the metallic sand seems to have leaked from it tells you that it wouldn't be able to serve even that purpose for long, either.

Putting the strange bear aside, you notice more things obviously not suitable for children mixed in with the rest. A squadron of wooden toy soldiers, each one with a razor sharp looking metal saber held out in front of them are surrounding figurines of mutilated animal corpses, each corpse far too detailed for you to be comfortable with. There's even an assortment of butcher's knives for whatever reason.

You decide to draw your attention away from the table, the strange assortment has begun to make you feel uncomfortable for some reason. Instead, you decide to focus on investigating the shelves and dolls that cover the walls.

Taking a closer look, they all seem to be rather delicate looking antique bisque dolls, there must be at least a few hundred in this room alone. You remember reading somewhere that these dolls can be rather expensive, so whoever put this collection of dolls together must be really quite dedicated.

While you muse on how much they must have spent on all these dolls, for a single moment, you think you spot something strange out of the corner of your eye, movement.

Turning in the direction of the movement, you soon realize there's nothing there, but then you notice it once more!

You whirl about to face it again just in time to see a knife pass by your face at incredibly high speed, slamming straight through the porcelain forehead of one of the dolls, which to your complete disbelief, was somehow floating directly behind you!

As you watch it slam into a wall and break into pieces as it's carried along by the throwing knife, you notice it had a knife of it's own. A black handled kitchen knife clatters to the floor as the doll is smashed.

Then you realize that to your horror, yet more dolls have begun to move around. Eight of them in total leap from their sitting position on the shelves, all of them carrying sharp cutting instruments. The majority wield kitchen knives, but there's one with a scalpel, and another wields a heavy looking meat cleaver.

From the speed at which they are coming towards you, it's evident you need to do something, and quickly!

>Draw the Silver Revolver and blast them to pieces.
>They seem immensely fragile, use your Beretta to deal with them.
>Try to avoid them as you back away towards the door, Shirley can hopefully deal with them.
>Draw your own knife in order to fend them off.
>Obliterate them all with the Power of Destruction.

>>3917578
Oh
And
>Write-in...
Is an option too.

>>3917578
>They seem immensely fragile, use your Beretta to deal with them.
Let's hope nobody has stuffed them with gunpowder.

>>3917578
>They seem immensely fragile, use your Beretta to deal with them.
Get that music box working!

>>3917578
>They seem immensely fragile, use your Beretta to deal with them.

>>3917578
>They seem immensely fragile, use your Beretta to deal with them.
Pop pop pop

I'm considering potentially including elves in this quest at some point later on.
Like, we know they exist in the setting considering stuff like
https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Elven_Cape
Exists, but they've never once made a physical appearance in a game.

Thoughts?
I'm a bit iffy on including something that's only been alluded to in the descriptions of two items.

>>3917673
Only if they're dickish, cursed-with-a-long-life elves.

>>3917673
Only if they're tree-hugging, man-eating elves.

>>3917673
Personally I'd be for the folkloric approach, where elf is another term for fairy.

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>>3917691
Dryads already fill that niche though.

>>3917694
I might go for this, though Castlevania does seem to differentiate between elves and fairies.
I guess I'll have to think about it.

Alucard can even summon a fairy.
and if you find the Faerie card, so could you.

>>3917713
The only problem with summoning a fairy is that Arthur's shoulders aren't as broad as Alucard's. So she'd have to sit on Arthur's face. And you wouldn't want to fuel that fire any further, would you?

>>3917713
>Castlevania does seem to differentiate between elves and fairies.
Just spitballing, another take on elves I'd be open to in a modern fantasy setting like this is "secret cabal of immortals messing about with society from the shadows." Maybe they're the true identity of the highest ranking Rosicrucians or Freemasons. That said, we already seem to be in a world pretty full of secret cabals, so that might be redundant.
The main thing for me is that they not be the fantasy fiction stereotype of treehugging archers who inevitably become fascinated with the "vitality" of the shorter-lived races, because TRPGs have absolutely killed any appeal that setup may once have had.

>if you find the Faerie card, so could you
That's something to look forward to, then.

>>3917765
>Arthur's shoulders aren't as broad as Alucard's
Do we know that? We don't have character art for Arthur yet, but he certainly seems to be in excellent shape.

>>3917779
>Do we know that?

Woosh.

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>>3917271
>Shanoa is not a great protagonist honestly, the amnesia is silly.
How dare you diss my girl Shanoa like that. She had way more going on than any non-DS castlevania protagonist except maybe Alucard.
At least from what I remember, I haven't replayed the series in a while, besides Aria of Sorrow when the quest started.
And yeah, no shit Ecclesia was dumb, they only had 3 people running the whole thing. I blame it on the devs that couldn't be arsed to do some actual worldbuilding in this series.

>>3917916
She effectively spends the whole game running around after Albus while he's trying to actually resolve the plot.
Then Albus bails her out after he died.
Twice.
He honestly felt like the real hero of OoE, considering Shanoa, having amnesia, was basically just told "do this." by everyone with no motivation of her own.

I wonder why Barlowe didn't just raise Shanoa and Albus to want to resurrect Dracula.
It's mind-boggling.

>>3917939
Probably because there have been so many other organizations and cults in the series openly dedicated to resurrecting Dracula that have failed. I imagine he was hoping reverse psychology would work on fate.

>>3917942
He did end managing to resurrect Dracula.
But he also managed to ensure Dracula was defeated.
Lorewise, there are only a few specific ways to actually kill Dracula. One is to use the Vampire Killer, but the Belmonts were forbidden from using it till 1999 and the Morris family didn't seem to be around at that point.
Another is to be Alucard, because Dracula's own power is effective against him, I guess. But Alucard has a bad habit of taking naps.
Using the Alucard Spear should also work, but there were no Lecardes around.

So it was left to Shanoa, who just happened to be hosting Dominus, which is power taken from Dracula. One of it's abilities is to kill anything, but it requires you to sacrifice a soul to use.
This is what takes him down during that resurrection directly after he basically reveals Shanoa can't hurt him at all with her magic.

>>3917967
Good lord. I haven't played Order of Ecclesia myself, but from what I've heard of it here it really does feel like they were straining for new ideas at that point. It makes me wonder why they didn't just continue the Sorrow storyline and have Soma find some new things to do with his power after Aria and Dawn.
Then again, I've never really been satisfied with the plot to a Castlevania game since the linear Belmont entries, so maybe I'm biased.

>>3917981
The best part about Shanoa is that Dracula himself has no idea who the fuck she even is.
Most of the time when Dracula is confronted by the protagonist, he'll at least take them seriously.
For Shanoa, he first offers her a place at his side before laughing at her when she tries to give a cool speech.

The worst part about Castlevania is that the Sorrow series set up a game that we never got with the Battle of 1999 where Dracula was finally killed "for good".

>>3917939
All he had to do was tell Shanoa "Don't use Dominus, it'll kill you" for the plot to solve itself but instead he went on a kidnap voyage to get the power of the Belmonts and it SOMEHOW worked out because Shanoa out of HER OWN volition went to save the villagers and sort of got the blessing of the Belmonts from the glyphs Albus put on them? And the Dominus brainfucked him, which somehow got his soul absorbed into it? The whole thing is a huge contrivance and Albus is one too.
People give a lot of shit to Warren Ellis for just reading the wikis for material for the netflix series but let's be real, there wasn't a lot to take from the games anyways (people should shit on Warren anyways tho).
All I'm saying is, Shanoa had more going for her than just being a badass avatar for the player like most other mcs. The tragedy of her character fit perfectly in the gothic atmosphere and ironically, despite having no emotions, she displayed more personality than the Belmonts. The problem was that two thirds of her dialogue was behind side quests.
>>3917967
To be fair, Dracula was only alive for like a day, there was not a lot of time for a hero to get there before Shanoa, if there was any.

>>3918011
>"Shanoa I need some salt."
>"Take a picture of a yeti."
>"Draw a picture of a church for me."
>"Record the wail of a banshee on this phonograph."
God those side quests were ridiculous.

Anyway, Ecclesia as a story only works because both Albus and Barlowe did stupid things.
Shanoa would've been a more interesting character if she kept her emotions in my opinion.

>>3918011
The Belmonts may not have had a lot of emotion beyond grim determination and a lily-white dedication to justice, but at least their stories all made sense. You play as a scion of a clan dedicated to hunting down and defeating vampires and you go through a linear series of progressively more difficult challenges until you finally put down Dracula and save the world until he inevitably comes back.
It's simple, yes, but it also works perfectly and puts the gameplay and challenge of the games front and center, where they're supposed to be.
Every time they complicated the story in later games I found myself with a mountain of gripes. The big one in Symphony of the Night, for example, was the fact that Alucard and Shaft have a conversation about how the power of the Belmonts can never be exceeded, completely undercut by the fact that Richter has decided to fuck off and hang around outside, leaving Alucard to complete the inverted castle and finish off Dracula alone. Do you think Alucard ever paused to wonder why Richter didn't volunteer to help, considering that in Castlevania 3 it took Alucard, Sypha, Grant, and Trevor all working together to defeat Dracula? Surely the incredible power they're hyping up so much would have been useful in the final conflict?
In Aria of Sorrow the story felt like the bottom completely dropped out of it at the ending. You spend all this time exploring Dracula's castle and collecting all of the souls, and when it all comes to an end the thing just collapses and Soma gives up his power. Did he not think it might be possible to marshal the immense power of this army of demons to some useful purpose? If nothing else, it'd give him a really prime house, and as a young man in Japan you'd think he'd be rather pressed for living space. It felt like the whole game was building up to a conclusion where Soma takes Dracula's place and uses Dominance for good, then they pulled a fast one at the end. I'd go on, but there's the character limit.

>>3918024
Personally, for me the strangest thing about the Sorrow games is Death acting totally out of character.

This is Dracula's closest friend and confidant, so WHY DOES HE KEEP TRYING TO KILL SOMA?
It's not like he's unaware of who Soma is the reincarnation of. He's the Grim Reaper, souls are sort of his speciality.

Richter just not doing anything while Alucard fights Dracula alone is also silly.
At the very least, you would expect Maria to help.

>>3918024
To be fair for Alucard in Symphony, Dracula was being resurrected early by Shaft and wasn't at full strength. Richter sitting it out is weird though. They'd probably give some contrivance about how he was weakened by the mind control or Shaft slowly draining strength from him to revive Dracula or something though so he decided to stay out of it. Maria though definitely could have helped.

Soma really did drop the ball though, yeah. Doesn't even hold on to any of the power just in case some crazy bullshit happens in the future. Which with all the cults and magic is inevitable. If he didn't just yeet his power out he could have kept Celia from kidnapping his girl but hey, Soma is actually kind of a dumbass.

This is a more personal complaint, but while I'm airing my grievances I'll throw this one out. As an avowed lover of renaissance and baroque architecture, it really bothers me that they always destroy the castle at the end of these games. Doesn't anyone ever think "say, this thing may well be the world's greatest architectural marvel. Perhaps we could just wipe out all the monsters and keep it around as a museum piece."
Or, again, as a place for Soma to live in, since he basically owns it.
Even the damn Venetians didn't destroy all the art in Constantinople when they sacked it. Half of it they just stole.

>>3918039
Celia didn't kidnap anyone. It was a doppelganger. Arikado had Mina under heavy guard.

Literally anyone could trick Soma into becoming the Dark Lord just by using a doppelganger and killing it.
All that effort in Aria just gone totally to waste.

>>3918045
Damn I forgot. Guess I'm the dumbass after all.

>>3918044 #
The Castle collapses of it's own accord, it's a symbol of Dracula's power, so when he gets taken down it sort of just goes away because it can't be sustained.
As for wiping out the monsters, it kind of summons more automatically.
Even without a Master, it's still dangerous, as we see in Aria.

It's got a direct link to the Chaotic Realm and it sort of just pops up randomly in places.

>>3918024
You say that but I'd argue Simon's quest, the SECOND game was just as guilty of contrived storytelling.
>>3918038
That's not even the worst offender in handling Death's character. In Portrait of Ruin, Death doesn't realize the castle was being taken over by Brauner until Jonathan tells him.
>>3918039
To be fair with Soma, he had to either use all of his souls to seal Chaos or become the fucking Antichrist, which he would have been if it wasn't for Arikado's meddling. I think despite being so generic, Soma did a fine job at making me root for him.

>>3918057
>The Castle collapses of it's own accord, it's a symbol of Dracula's power, so when he gets taken down it sort of just goes away because it can't be sustained.
That's fair enough, I suppose, but the fact that it pops up without a master and can be sustained by Soma in Aria still leaves me unsatisfied with him.

>>3918071
>he had to either use all of his souls to seal Chaos or become the fucking Antichrist
This is a justification of the ending in-story, though, not an actual reason for the writers ending it that way. You can't convince me that they didn't start from the ending of "the castle collapses and Soma goes back to his normal life" and work backwards from there to come up with a reason for him losing the power. Chaos comes right out of nowhere, it's not like it's an established part of canon that they had to include.
Thematically, the best ending for Soma's story would be for him to use the Power of Dominance to become Graham's non-evil counterpart, finally resolving the issue of Dracula's resurrecting castle by integrating it into the world as a force for good rather than dynamiting it for the umpteenth time so it can inevitably come back once again as someone else's problem. It only ends that way because that's the way Castlevania games all end, not because it's the natural conclusion to Soma's story.

At any rate, hopefully we can do it right with Arthur by having him move into Dracula's castle, become the dark lord, and take a vampire noble girl as his bride in a suitably overblown, opulent, gothic ceremony. I'd even be down for a full-on "corrupted by his incredible power" villain protagonist, if that's what it takes.

>>3918121
>I'd even be down for a full-on "corrupted by his incredible power" villain protagonist, if that's what it takes.

>yfw the quest ends with Arthur committing to evil
>yfw a new quest begins set to combat Arthur and the new evil he represents
>yfw Arthur is unbeatable because he's treated as though he still has anons voting for and rolling for him so he's actually frighteningly competent

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>>3918132

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>>3917581
>>3917582
>>3917615
>>3917624
Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Writing...

>>3918121
>At any rate, hopefully we can do it right with Arthur by having him move into Dracula's castle, become the dark lord, and take a vampire noble girl as his bride in a suitably overblown, opulent, gothic ceremony. I'd even be down for a full-on "corrupted by his incredible power" villain protagonist, if that's what it takes.
Just be careful about HOW corrupted you go.
Basically, just don't do a Dmitrii and try to take control of hundreds if not thousands of demon souls with a bootlegged ability in addition to sacrificing your most useful ally for literally no reason.

But yeah, honestly, everyone seems to forget there was a good 400 years or so where Dracula basically did nothing at all before he somehow let the single human he loved get herself killed by a mob of villagers despite his near unlimited power.
Even worse is that the also incredibly powerful Alucard just sort of watches and does nothing.
That will never ever make sense to me.

>>3918195
Alucard is a gud boi who lissens to his momma and she said don't hurt nobody

Dracula was getting smokes at the time. Also Drac isn't really omniscient. If he isn't actively watching an area through his magic he doesn't know what's going on there.

>>3918202
What was going through Alucard's mind do you think?
Because you just fucking know that Dracula vaporized that entire town as soon as he realised what happened.

And Alucard is more than powerful enough to have saved her without having to kill anyone.

>>3918208
>What was going through Alucard's mind do you think?
"Ah, perfect. Up until now I hadn't been sure of what to do with my life, but this looks like the ideal event to become a core part of a tragic backstory that motivates me to rebel against my father!"

>>3918208
>What was going through Alucard's mind do you think?
Probably massive mega depression.

>"Hey dad they killed mom, she said not to-"
>"I'LL FUCKING KILL THEM!"
>"... I'm going to go cry in my room."

>>3918195
>pic
This from the other Sorrow game? Is it good?

>>3918248
I can confirm that most Castlevanias are a joy to play despite the less than stellar plot. Dawn of Sorrow in particular is one of the best in my opinion, even if a bit grindier at times.

>>3918248
I'd call Dawn of Sorrow the third best in the series, after Aria and Rondo of Blood. That's the final boss, pictured.

Judging from the look of these dolls, they are nowhere near as durable as the enemies you've fought against up till now, so therefore, it should be fine if you just used your normal pistol against them.

Rapidly unholstering the gun, you take aim at the nearest doll as it flies towards you, kitchen knife held in front of it and fire directly at the porcelain face of the unnerving toy. They fragile doll's face explodes as the bullet connects with it, sending the doll careening towards the floor, where it breaks into pieces.

You take aim at another doll, managing to take it down before you're forced to retreat back towards the door. Thankfully, Shirley seems to be able to deal with them easily as she covers you, a trio of knives hit three separate targets. The Dolls are impaled and effectively nailed them to the wall on the far side of the room. You take another shot at one of the remaining few dolls, which again is far too slow to react to the bullet piercing straight through it's unmoving face. It too scatters into pieces from the impact of hitting the floor.

The only dolls left now are the two holding different weapons, the one with a scalpel, and the one with a meat cleaver. Before you can even take aim again, Shirley has accurately pierced both of them with more throwing knives. You'll have to ask her where she keeps them all at some point, her seemingly inexhaustible supply of them is something that intrigues you.

"Well, I'm glad that's over. Those dolls were creeping me out. At least they weren't too difficult to destroy" You say to nobody in particular as you once again begin to walk towards the centre of the room. You don't let your guard down completely yet though, you can't shake off the feeling that this was just too easy...

For reasons you don't quite understand, you reflexively take a step backwards, your body nearly acting on it's own as you avoid the meat cleaver slashed at you from above, the rusted blade of the cleaver would have likely split your skull if not for the sudden urge to move out of the way at the last second.

It's then that you notice the dolls on the shelves have once again come alive. Another eight of them, including the one that just attacked you would make nine in total. You throw a left hook at the doll that nearly killed you, the force of the blow shattering it's delicate head.

You're never going to able to look at dolls the same way again after this. It seems like this second wave of dolls are weaponless, however, so you have some time to think of a way to deal with them. Then a nasty realization strikes you. What if destroying the dolls didn't actually stop them? It's just a hunch but if you're right, the brute force approach won't work! You're going to have to go about solving this problem a different way.

>Start indiscriminately destroying the dolls on the shelves while Shirley focuses on the animated ones.
>Retreat and ask Shirley if she can use her magic to incinerate the contents of the room.
>Take a closer look at that music box, it's the only thing in the room that seems out of place, maybe it's the key to solving this?
>Use the Power of Destruction on the dolls, see how they cope with complete destruction.
>Write-in...

>>3918555
>Take a closer look at that music box, it's the only thing in the room that seems out of place, maybe it's the key to solving this?

>>3918555
>Take a closer look at that music box, it's the only thing in the room that seems out of place, maybe it's the key to solving this?

>>3918555
>>Take a closer look at that music box, it's the only thing in the room that seems out of place, maybe it's the key to solving this?

>>>Start indiscriminately destroying the dolls on the shelves while Shirley focuses on the animated ones.

Sometimes brute force IS the right answer. Instead of leaving shirley to fight alone, let's deal with this first and then investigate, eh?

Plus it might lure out whatever's behind this once the dolls are down.

>>3918215
>rebel against my father
I think you mean "do nothing until Trevor helps, then proceed to do nothing for 300 years before deciding not to do anything for another 200 years"
Alucard is an asshole for not helping nearly as much as he should.

>>3918216
No I mean, at the burning.
He was right there.
He must have thought "Dad is going to butcher these people" surely?
Yeah, don't hate the humans but don't let that be the reason you just do nothing as she gets incinerated.
I guess maybe he was only a child or something at that point?
Who knows? Dhampires are weird.
>>3918248
Dawn of Sorrow is pretty fun.
I suggest getting a romhack that removes magic seals for bosses.
Maybe also one that fixes the Luck stat so it does something too. It's actually broken in that game.
Don't ask how they managed that.

>>3918624
>No I mean, at the burning.

>[internally sobbing]

>>3918121
>move into Dracula's castle, become the dark lord, and take a vampire noble girl as his bride
You're literally the target audience of isekais. They're written because of you.

>>3918555
>Take a closer look at that music box, it's the only thing in the room that seems out of place, maybe it's the key to solving this?

>>3918777
That's an amusing accusation to throw at someone you know nothing about, particularly since I don't particularly like the "normal person transported to a fantasy world" formula. Is the hero setting up shop in the dark lord's castle a fixture of them or something?

>>3918787
The power fantasy and monstergirl waifu is a fixture. "Normal person transported to a fantasy world" is actually irrelevant, despite giving the name to the genre.

>>3918796
Whatever you say, anon. I just think it'd be more entertaining to have Arthur embrace his dark lord candidate status than to have him follow in the hackneyed footsteps of Soma.
As for monstergirl waifus, Castlevania has been bait for that since Symphony of the Night.

>>3918801
You are certainly entitled to your opinion.

>>3918801
>waifubait since symphony
>implying I wasn't getting hot n bothered in classic CV games when the medusa heads came on screen
A bold assumption.

>>3918555
>Take a closer look at that music box, it's the only thing in the room that seems out of place, maybe it's the key to solving this?
Nice trips

>>3918571
>>3918576
>>3918594
>>3918777
>>3918908
>Check out the music box
Writing...

>>3918801
>Castlevania has been bait for that since Symphony of the Night.
More like since Haunted Castle came out in 1988
First appearance of the Harpy there.

If you do try going the Dark Lord route I can't wait for you to meet Graham. He's sure to take it well.

>>3918940
Oh, I'm sure we'll be great friends. We have so much in common! A fondness for good suits, an affinity for dark power...
I guess that's about it, actually. Still, it'll be a fun conversation!

If you're going to get through this room, you obviously aren't going to be able to just brute force it. If the dolls do keep coming back after you've destroyed them, then you'll have to think of another way to solve this problem. For a moment, you consider the idea of trying to smash every single doll in the room for a moment before dismissing it. It would probably take too long, there's just too many of them.

While you don't doubt that you could ask Shirley to destroy everything in the room with her magic, you don't really want to go that far unless you have no other option. Then you find your attention drawn to the music box once again.

It's almost as if there's a voice whispering in your ear proclaiming the importance of the carousel. You decide to use the scant seconds you have before the dolls rearm themselves in order to investigate it further. You notice that Shirley keeps throwing knives at the floating dolls, but they seem to have begun to figure out how to dodge the thrown knives.

You grab the music box off the table, finding that it's fairly heavy despite it's small size. Likely a result of the metals used to create it. The circus tent pattern making up the top of the carousel alternates between gold and silver. The animals themselves, horses, some with wings and some with horns are also made of incredibly detailed silver. Rubies and diamonds are studded all over the box in order to replicate the appearance of lights.

"Arthur, what on Earth are you doing?!" Shirley's shout snaps you out of it, while the music box might be beautifully decorated, this really isn't a good time to be gawking at it, especially not now that the dolls all have weapons again.

You're forced to throw yourself down onto the floor by the side of you in order to avoid an attack from two of the dolls charging you at once. Consequently, you're on the floor, surrounded by the dolls and you're pretty sure you won't be able to dodge all of them at the same time. It's then that you notice that subconsciously, your left hand had begun twisting the key on the bottom of the music box, you recoil, letting go of the key as it begins to turn. A sad melody rings out as the carousel spins, horses bobbing up and down as it goes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ZtSk5lwAw

Then you realise that the dolls aren't stabbing you to death as you expected they would have at least attempted to, they instead simply float motionless in the air, seemingly entranced by the song. One by one, the dolls plummet from the air and smash into the ground. The last to fall is the one closest to you, it's scalpel blade inches away from piercing your heart.

You sit there for a moment, dazed at just how close you were to death, though it's not long until you feel two sets of hands helping you to your feet. It seems Shirley and Theresia apparently both rushed to you to make sure you weren't actually dead, their view of you from where they were being partially obscured by a table.

You hear an exasperated sigh from Shirley. "When we're done here, I'm making sure that you get trained properly, even if I have to do it myself. You can't just keep leaping into danger like this!" She raises her voice, but it seems to be more out of concern than anger. "Just... In the future, when you're about to run off on your own like that, at least give me a warning, OK? Having to suddenly begin to start covering you by surprise isn't ideal for either of us."

"Alright, alright. Fine, I'll try to keep the surprises to a minimum from now on. I'm just lucky my hunch was correct, otherwise I doubt we'd be having the conversation right now. Anyway, do you have any idea what this is? I'd ask Holly to check, but she hasn't come back since she went to connect up some database." You hand Shirley the music box, who stares at the carousel for a good while while she considers it.

"Well... Not really, no. Though based on what just happened there I imagine it's has some sort of enchantment on it that soothes restless spirits when they hear it's song" Shirley's hypothesis sounds plausible at least. You hand the music box to Theresia, who's clearly interested in the expensive looking device, she's been stealing glances at it every now and then. As you're about to ask how Shirley intends to get through the barred door you notice that the door bar is lifted, in fact, the door is ajar.
How convenient.

>Continue investigating the room, with the threat of the dolls gone, you want to make sure you didn't miss anything
>Carry on exploring this wing of the mansion and head through the next door
>Explore another part of the mansion
>Write-In...


Oh fantastic, a powercut has caused my IP to change. Farewell, formatting abilities.

>>3919946
>Carry on exploring this wing of the mansion and head through the next door

>>3919946
>>Continue investigating the room, with the threat of the dolls gone, you want to make sure you didn't miss anything

>>3919946
>Continue investigating the room, with the threat of the dolls gone, you want to make sure you didn't miss anything

>>3919946
>Continue investigating the room, with the threat of the dolls gone, you want to make sure you didn't miss anything
Make sure we get the MP max up inside the breakable wall.

>>3920287
Good point.

>>3919946
Switching >>3919957 to
>Continue investigating the room, with the threat of the dolls gone, you want to make sure you didn't miss anything

>>3919946
>Continue investigating the room, with the threat of the dolls gone, you want to make sure you didn't miss anything
SEARCH

>>3919946
>Continue investigating the room, with the threat of the dolls gone, you want to make sure you didn't miss anything

Holly is clearly best girl. All Theresia does is stand around being useless and Shirley is a dirty liar.

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Looks like further investigation wins easily.

On an unrelated note, I think the curse has begun trying to fuck with me.
Powercuts when I'm writing an update is one thing, but now my eye feels like somebody punched it for no reason.

>>3920411
Check your eye man, that might be an infection.

>>3920414
Probably for the best I get it looked at, yeah.
It's probably nothing though.

I hope.

>>3920416
Right, so my eye feels a little better now.
Aaaanyway.
I'm having trouble deciding just how to implement monsters dropping items.
In addition to justifying having a large inventory.

It's no secret that most Igavania protagonists end up picking up about 4 dozen swords and 12 capes during their journey.

Any thoughts?

>>3920986
I always just assumed them niggas was using magic to create some hammerspace shit or whatever. But we don't know how to do that anyway. Pocket dimensions are wild.

>>3920986
I know you want to be like the games and all, but honestly, as a quest this is a bit more of a narrative-focused experience, so some things might have to change. My suggestion would be to take a more realistic approach to inventory and items. We can only carry what we can carry, and if we want to build up a large supply of weapons and things we have to keep most of them at home. Swords, magical artifacts, and such, should be found where the building's owners keep them, rather than being dropped by random monsters. It kind of bothers me that the most powerful sword in Dracula's castle is dropped by a random ghost in SotN. Not a lot of verisimilitude there.

The plant was a good example of a monster drop done well. It's reasonable enough to think of a giant plant as having concealed a fruit within it. For the dolls, it would be possible to collect things that were on them. Their tiny weapons, bits of porcelain, etc. Igavania style "this flying book has a 1% chance to drop the cloak of curse resistance" is harder to swallow in a quest than in a videogame.

>>3921017
>>3921004
Yeah you might be right about that. Of course, this does also mean guaranteed drops from enemies wielding weapons.
Guess items will be more location based.

>>3921002
Pocket Dimensions and the like certainly are possible, as we see with the paintings in Portrait of Ruin, but you have absolutely no knowledge of magic and the only (non evil) magic user who could probably pull one off is Charlotte, who's either dead or is like 100 years old.

Oh, or Alucard, he might be able to pull one off.
But he's an unhelpful asshole.

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>>3921053
While looking up Charlotte (and Jonathon) I noticed just how ridiculous Jonathon's throwing knives are.
Look at the little cross handles!
And why are they kunai?

But yeah, I guess item space will be limited to what you can physically carry for now.
So try not to pick up 9 Greatswords.

>>3921053
>But he's an unhelpful asshole.

>tfw only about four humans were genuinely nice to Alucard one of which was his mother
Let's be real here if his momma didn't tell him not to fuck with humans he probably would have just let daddy Drac murder everyone.

>>3921096
You got...
Lisa
Trevor
Sypha
Grant
Maria
Richter (after Alucard beats him up)
And probably Julius.
"All of my friends are dead/suffering from amnesia for some reason."

>>3921106
Don't forget Yoko. And Mina, but she might be his mom.
Unless we are talking about the current quest time, then they are kids.

>>3921106
Picture that over the course of around six hundred years. It's understandable that he doesn't get along well with others.

There's no reason to move on just yet, now those dolls are dealt with, you want to make sure you've properly searched the room.

"Hold on, before we go to the next room, I feel like we should investigate this room further. There's no threat anymore, so we shouldn't be hasty. Besides, It'll give Holly more time to get back in touch about that fruit." You reveal your intentions to the others.

"That's fine I guess, but we shouldn't spend too long searching, and be careful! I don't want you to accidentally trigger another trap." Shirley agrees to go along with your plan to search the room, albeit somewhat reluctantly. Meanwhile, Theresia is staring at that strange yellow teddy bear, she looks oddly sad for some reason.

You start to search through the rest of the room, hoping to find something other than the strange toys on the table or the dolls lining the walls. There's not much else in the room however, so it doesn't take long to search the rest of the room. There are only a few drawers and a storage trunk pushed up against a section of the wall that isn't lined with shelves and covered with dolls.

Looking through the drawers is mostly pointless, finding buttons, needles, thread and raw fabric in the majority of them, seems that whoever owns these dolls likely made their own outfits for them. They'll probably be displeased by you destroying a few of their possessions, but they're already trying to kill you, so it's not like you care.

Finishing up with rummaging through the drawers, you move over to the chest, quickly noticing the chest has a lock on it. Strangely enough, the lock seems to shine like it's made from solid gold, contrasting with the cast iron metal the rest of the chest seems to be.

You quickly decide to break the lock to see just what's inside the chest, what surprises you is that the lock breaks at the smallest amount of force you apply, the shackle immediately snaps and the lock falls to the floor, wait a minute, was that lock actually real gold?

As you open the case itself, you find that it's filled with countless metal parts made of a various shades of dull looking metal. There are multiple dull iron discs, featureless and smooth. There seem to be a few large brass wind-up keys too, along with more complex looking parts that wouldn't be out of place in a mechanic's garage. You wonder what a case like this is doing in this room. The contents clearly make no sense whatsoever for the room the chest is in.

Before you can continue pondering the curious storage trunk, Shirley yawns before speaking up "Looks like that's everything, did you learn anything?"

"Not really, other than the fact that one of the people living here likes making dresses. Other than that, I only have more questions. Especially regarding that trunk full of mechanical parts" You tell her honestly. "Oh, and this..." You pick the golden lock off the floor and pass it to Shirley. "For whatever reason, it was locked with a padlock made of pure gold."

"That's... unusual." Shirley hands the lock back and you pocket it, there's not really a reason to pass up on the valuable lock. Even if it is technically theft, as far as you're concerned, these alchemists owe you more than they could possibly pay with money. "Well, whatever the reason behind their poor choice of metal for locks, we should get moving."

"Right."

>Go through the next door
>Go back to the hall and choose another part of the mansion to investigate (What?)
>Write-in...

>>3921420
>Go through the next door
When are we going to find out that the stuff we've been breaking with minimal effort is actually all steel?

>>3921420
>Go through the next door
oh hey free gold
time to sell it to a vendor carrying a valuable item that you have to go through so much bullshit to get
I'm looking at you Soul Eater Ring and that priest faggot from Portrait

>>3921646
Heh heh heh...thank you!

>>3921417
>There are multiple dull iron discs
Oh no, Discus Lord. One of the coolest Castlevania enemies.

Where did everyone go?

>>3921420
>Go through the next door

>>3922084
You update late night and ass-crack morning in regards to burger hours bro. Give it time.

>>3922094
I guess my update schedule is a bit wonky.

Be that as it may, 3 votes is enough for me to conclude a consensus and start writing.

"Let's get going then, we've got a lot of ground to cover, and I think that's everything of any worth looked at in this room." You don't really see the point of inspecting the dolls or their rusted weapons any further. You doubt that you'd be able to learn anything about them from the smashed porcelain of their faces, the only thing of any note is that the dolls were in fact hollow, and there are no strings attached to them. But you expected that to be the case anyway. You don't have any way to safely carry their dropped weapons, and you certainly aren't going to carry around a bunch of rusty knives in your pockets, either.

"I'll take the lead, if there are any traps in this next room, I should be able to deal with them if I go first" Shirley marches towards the slightly open door and pushes it wide open. Though instead of walking through to the next room, she simply scratches her head. "This isn't what I was expecting at all, honestly." She's clearly been taken off guard by something.

You decide to see what Shirley means as you quickly catch up to her and stop at the door. The next room takes you by surprise as well. Huge gears and cogs are interlocked all about the room, which has obviously been heavily modified from what it once was, there are a few scraps of wallpaper here and there that are identical to the last rooms, giving away the extent of the changes. Other than the few signs of the room prior to it's modification though, the rest of the room looks more like the inside of some huge clockwork machine than anything else.

Theresia follows closely behind you and Shirley as the two of you enter, though as soon as she does, the door slams shut behind her. A distinct clicking sounds tells you that the door bar has locked the three of you inside!

Just as you hear the door click, electric static fills the room as unseen speakers flare to life. As the static fades out, a fairly young sounding male voice blares into the room. "Congratulations on getting past the..." there's a brief pause as the voice seems to consider it's words carefully before continuing "...Cunning trap of the first room. But now you face the mechanical ingenuity of the Ashwell family! Behold!" As he finishes his introduction, there's another clicking sound, and then a whirring sound follows it up as the assorted cogs and gears around the room begin turning.

The largest gear, standing over 6 foot tall is roughly as tall as you are. As the huge gear starts to turn, the entire room shakes as three metal doors begin to very slowly slide downwards. Isn't this just a little too theatrical? Did he really need to go through all this effort just to open a few doors?

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice Shirley yawning, apparently from boredom, it's been a few minutes since the first gear started turning and you share her sentiment. Between this and them leaving the key to stopping those dolls on the table in the same room as the dolls, you're starting to doubt the competence of these alchemists. Even now, the Doors aren't even a third of the way open.

Eventually, Shirley gets bored of waiting, picking up a loose steel rod from the floor, she simply jams it in between two spinning gears, and the entire mechanism quickly grinds to a halt. "Oh, looks like it broke. What a shame." Her voice sounds excruciatingly bored.

The speakers scream out in rage "How dare you! Do you have any idea how long it took to set those up like that?!"

"I actually really don't care." Shirley taunts the voice. "Now, if that was all, can you open the next door for us or will I have to break that too?"

The voice makes a furious sound, before the aggravated growl turns into spiteful laughter. "Fine. I'll open some doors for you. Now, tremble in fear as I reveal my mechanical brilliance!"

A loud snapping sound comes from the metal doors, as they loudly slam downwards, creating a horrible racket and kicking up a large cloud of dust that obscures whatever is behind them as they do.

The dust quickly clears, and you brace yourself for what awaits you... Only for 3 toy-like robots to come clanking out of the open spaces, complete with large brass wind-up keys on their head, the robots barely come up to your waist. A noise to the right of you tells you that Shirley is having some difficulty containing her laughter. Looks like she doesn't consider them a threat at all.

"No, seriously. Is this a joke?" Even you can't stop yourself from asking the voice if they are just messing with you at this point, after the clear danger represented by the dolls in the last room, these slow plodding robots are just sort of disappointing. Especially after that massively over-dramatic attempt at revealing them. It's not like you crave danger or anything, but it's real hard not for this to feel like a let-down.

"You could have at least given the little guys a weapon or something, you know. What, are they just supposed to walk into us aggressively until we give up or something?" Shirley continues her taunting of the voice. Even Theresia is looking at the humanoid contraptions slowly ambling towards the three of you with a look of pity on her face. "You obviously spent a lot of time on these, and honestly, I think I'd just feel bad if I had to break them." She's having way too much fun messing with the man behind the speakers, speaking in a condescending voice.

You think you hear the sound of teeth grinding for a moment before the speakers seem to cut out, the faint hum of static shutting off entirely. This leaves you, Shirley and Theresia alone with the ridiculous robots that are apparently supposed to be your enemy.

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The stubby legged robots continue their march towards you, while also being absolutely impossible to consider a genuine danger to anyone. They look more like something a child would be given as a present on their birthday. Of course, looks can be deceiving, but something about the way they amble towards you with their arms held perfectly motionless against their side just tells you without a doubt of their lack of any ability to harm you. Honestly, with the way they wobble as they move, it even seems like they might fall over entirely.

You suppose you should deal with this seemingly terribly thought out attempt at a trap somehow. As harmless as it looks, this could be a trap to lure you into a false sense of security, though Shirley certainly doesn't seem to think so.

>Just walk up to the stupid things and knock them over.
>Shoot them with your Beretta.
>Destroy them with the Revolver.
>Erase them with the Power of Destruction.
>Ignore them entirely and just head over to the next door to knock it down.
>Write-in...

>>3923058
>>Destroy them with the Revolver.

>>3923058
>Destroy them with the Revolver.
Those things are 100% guaranteed to explode when they get close to us.
I'm curious what game they're from, though. Haven't seen that sprite before, that I recall.

>>3923066
I'm not sure where they came from but I think you could turn in one of those in OoE, it was funny because it made other robots like you.

>>3923058
>Just walk up to the stupid things and knock them over.

>>3923058
>Destroy them with the Revolver.
Pop them in their antenna or head?

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>>3923066
Those particular enemies are from Order of Ecclesia.
They aren't ever seen again after OoE.
Then again, OoE was the last Igavania before the series basically died, so their absence is understandable.

As anon mentioned, Shanoa can absorb a glyph from them that allows her to turn into a female robot that the other robots are attracted to.
Don t ask how that works.

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Truly, my greatest regret as a QM is making it unlikely for any Persephone to be able to show up until a good way into the quest, if any show up at all.
I mean, unless you want to try giving demon summoning a shot at least.

>>3923326
>isn't even holding the vacuum
That's an imposter.

>>3923049
Shirley's bestness level is increasing a bit.

>>3923058
>Destroy them with the Revolver.

>>3923753
>Shirley's bestness level is increasing a bit.
She's a Renard, what did you expect.

>>3923058
Yeah they're obviously explosive.
>Toss them at the next door.

>>3923061
>>3923066
>>3923153
>>3923753
>Just shoot them.
Those poor robots.

>>3923326
Once we unlock the Power of Control, we'll start learning how to summon demon maids.

>>3924048
Nah, we're stuck with Destruction. Get used to erase tools and other cool shit.

>>3924083
QM said earlier on that we could unlock all four eventually.

>>3924090
Yes, you won't be limited to only ever being able to use the Power of Destruction, even if you still have quite a lot to learn about it's true capabilities.

I should say that safely unlocking the other Powers won't be easy, as a warning.

>>3923178
>Shanoa can absorb a glyph from them that allows her to turn into a female robot that the other robots are attracted to.
I'd fuck it.

As harmless as they might look, there's a slim chance that these ridiculous toys actually aren't as useless as they appear. Therefore you decide against taking them entirely lightly and draw your silver revolver, luckily it should still have 3 shots left in it before it needs 'reloading'.

"Shirley, are you sure that those things pose absolutely no threat?" You decide to ask the girl, she should have the most experience on something like this. You wonder if there's any information on that computer system Holly got working, but unfortunately, it seems that Holly is still absent. What could be taking her so long?

"Well, I haven't ever fought any mechanical enemies that look exactly like those things, but compared to what I'm used to, these ones don't really look like too much of a threat. The magical automatons that I'm used to dealing with tend to have more whirling blades, for one. Oh, and they also usually moved like they didn't have two tiny broken legs." She flicks one of her knives into the air and catches it without looking, her eyes are still focused on the robots slowly waddling towards you, something tells you that she might not be as off-guard as she's making herself out to be.

"Be that as it may, I don't think we should take them so lightly. I've been attacked by a plant and some dolls already today, so I'm not just going to assume that there's no danger, as ridiculous as these robots look." You point the extravagant silver gun in the direction of the nearest robot. It really says a lot about their capabilities when they aren't even halfway to reaching the three of you yet.

"Alright then, they should be decent for target practice, at least. Go ahead." Seems Shirley wants you to deal with them.

You sigh before finally firing at one of the robots, expecting the projectile to tear a hole straight through the machines face, you're surprised by just how durable the robotic creations are. Instead of the catastrophic damage you expected from the revolver, instead, you are met only with a fairly large dent in the metal making up the robots face.

Though while the robot isn't destroyed, the force of the impact instead throws it off balance, it's next attempt at taking a step forward instead causing it to fall heavily on it's back. It's attempts to right itself are completely fruitless, it's stubby legs aren't long or flexible enough to manage such a feat. You hear Shirley is now unable to hold back her laughter at this pathetic display.

In between bouts of laughter, she starts speaking "Oh wow, I wasn't expecting them to be that durable, but honestly? This is even better. Why would you put so much effort into the defenses of something so utterly useless like these automatons?" Any alertness Shirley may have had about the robots is gone, but you still aren't so sure if she should be acting so nonchalant about them.

You consider it for a moment, before deciding to walk over to the other two robots in order to knock them over, there's no reason to waste your ammunition on them now that you know their rather fatal weakness. Though as you begin walking across the room, you're stopped by a tug on your sleeve.

Turning around, you see Theresia shaking her head at you with a frown. For whatever reason, she's trying to stop you from approaching the robots. As you consider the motivation behind suddenly stopping you, you take a quick glance at the two machines still slowly trudging towards you and suddenly realize that third one, a few meters behind them is glowing molten red! It looks like the damn thing is about to explode!

>Grab Theresia and dive to the floor with her.
>Hide behind the large cog in the center of the room.
>Try to shield yourself with the Power of Destruction.
>Write-in...

>>3925048
>Grab Theresia and dive to the floor with her.
She saved us, we ought to be decent enough to be protective now.

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>>3924656
Shanoa can also use her glyphs to transform into a Werecat or a Werebat/Ladybat

Honestly, magic in Castlevania is just all over the place.

Consider yourself lucky that you don't have the Power of Dominance. I can't imagine Soma appreciates what the Valkyrie soul does in Dawn.

>>3925048
>>Hide behind the large cog in the center of the room.

>>3925048
>Grab Theresia and dive to the floor with her.

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>>3925048
>Grab Theresia and dive to the floor with her.
GET DOWN!

>>3925065
Or pic related :^)

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>>3925065
>I can't imagine Soma appreciates what the Valkyrie soul does in Dawn.
I dunno, have you seen him? Does this guy strikes you as a paragon of masculinity? And he's from 2036 too, it probably doesn't bother him.

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>>3925101
He strikes me as a man with excellent taste in coats.
I mean, he's the reincarnation of Dracula and his first reaction to skeletal monsters is to stab them. He's not exactly lacking in masculinity.
He's not as bad as Juste, at least.

>>3925093
>>3925051
>>3925069
Diving to the floor to protect Theresia wins.

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>>3926161
>Juste
JUSTe
FUCK
MY
SHIT
UP

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>>3926263
Nah, Juste does fine. He is like the one Belmont to actually prevent Dracula's resurrection, and also successfully rescues his girlfriend.

Honestly, the biggest fuck-up award would go to Richter (gets mindcontrolled) if Eric didn't exist.

Seriously, it's one thing for your love interest to get vampirized and being unable to cure her, but Eric goes a step beyond just that by later marrying another woman and having twin daughters he trained to also hunt vampires.

Then he challenges some random vampire and gets his ass kicked.
Then his daughters try to save him but both are basically beaten and turned into vampires immediately.
Then he dies with this being the last thing he sees.
Then he has to watch everything as a powerless ghost.
Then some random witch girl easily learns the single spell that can cure vampirism that he could never figure out.

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>>3926281
I like pic related in regards to Juste. He also has good aesthetic sense.
And yeah, Eric had a hard life after Bloodlines. Then again, he was fucking overpowered in Bloodlines. Then again, Bloodlines was stupid difficult, so what do I know?

>>3926281
>Cowboy hat, duster, and bandolier of firecrackers
Eric deserved whatever he got.

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>>3926434
Yeah, I don't know what's up with that character design, honestly.
It's even dumber when you realise that he's supposed to be a spearman wielding an incredibly powerful magical spear, so the outfit is even worse.
This is what he looked like in his prime 25 years ago in 1917.
I guess he also dyed his hair at some point.

>>3926459
He looked pretty bad regardless of when.

>>3926459
>LeCarde
>Family crest is an R
LeCaRde?

>>3926683
Nah just the Japanese. "Recarde"

For me, it's the fact that he uses the alucard spear when alucard himself uses swords

what

Damn it! In the few moments you have before the explosion, you decide to grab Theresia and dive to the floor with her, hoping to shield her from the explosion. It seemed the right thing to do, especially after she prevented you from walking blindly towards the self-destructing robot.

Wrapping your arms around the thin girl, her eyes widening in surprise, you throw yourself and the girl to the ground. You try to lessen the impact on the girl by taking the brunt of the fall, your arms hitting the rough concrete floor hard. You can't focus on the pain for long however, as a tremendously loud noise erupts from the robot as it detonates in a shower of sparks and red hot parts.

Thankfully, it seems the detonation wasn't of the more incendiary kind, as you don't feel yourself being engulfed in a fireball caused by the explosion. What you do feel however, is the molten hot chestplate of the robot slamming into your back, carried from the force of the detonation.

The pain from the impact of the surprisingly heavy part immediately makes you forget about the damage done to your arms from trying to avoid the explosion. While you try to endure the pain, a grim thought takes hold, had you not been made aware of the danger, that piece of shrapnel likely would have severed both of your legs instead of just smashing into your back.

Quickly, you leap up, knocking the near molten metal off of you before the heat can transfer through your clothes. You don't want to check, but you're certain that your suit now has a horrible scorch mark it. Fortunately, you did manage to get the metal off of you before it actually managed to leave a burn on more than just your jacket, or even ignite it.

You reach down a hand to help Theresia back up, her eyes are still wide from you suddenly grabbing her, but after a few seconds of confusion she shakes her head and returns to a more neutral expressio., Taking your hand she pulls herself to her feet. As you turn around, you see Shirley taking cover behind a strange turtle shell floating in front of her. It seems that the shell blocked quite a lot of shrapnel from the exploding machine, judging by the amount of scrap metal surrounding her.

"Arthur! Are you alright?" She calls out as the turtle shell in front of her cracks apart and disappears, seems she's worried about you after that part fell on you.

"Mostly. A little bruised, but I don't think I took any major damage." As you respond to her, her eyes are suddenly alert and she moves forwards in a burst of speed so quickly you don't even see her move properly. Her rapid movements are a complete blur to you, turning your head in an attempt to keep track of her, you see her lifting the two remaining robots. One in each hand, it seems that Shirley is much stronger than you gave her credit for, you know from your direct experience with it just now that the metal used in their construction isn't exactly lightweight. Both of the robots have started to glow faintly orange.

"Take cover behind that cog, Arthur." She motions at the large cog in the center of the room with a nod, the worry in her voice is gone entirely now, replacing it is only a cold demanding tone. Honestly, you prefer her when she's less serious, it's rather unnerving seeing the girl you've known for so long behaving so differently to how you're used to her acting.

As you put your back to the motionless cog, Theresia mimics you, also hiding behind the cog. Peeking out from behind the cog, you see Shirley heaving the two self-destructing robots into the air, launching them straight at the door to the next room before taking cover behind one of the smaller cogs.

There's a loud crashing noise as the two slam into the metal doors, the explosion immediately follows as the room is sprayed with yet more shrapnel from the explosion. While the metal double doors leading to the next room a

As everyone steps out of their cover once more, you see Shirley, frowning "Let's just move on. I underestimated how quickly they would resort to trickery. Though, even as walking bombs, they were kind of bad." Her frown twitches slightly into a near-smirk as she finishes her sentence. As dangerous as the robots may have been, you do somewhat agree with her about that. The blast radius of the explosion wasn't that large, they had an obvious sign indicating they were going to explode, and above all, this room is full of cover basically guaranteed to protect you from the blasts. Trying to make sense of this is just going to give you a headache.

"Right, there's no reason for us to stay here any longer, I don't see anything worth taking a closer look at in this room." All you can see other than the overly complicated display of gears and cogs are the scattered remnants of your enemies.

"I'll take the lead, I don't want to be blindsided by a trap like that again, no matter how poorly executed it was." The three of you make your way over to the door as Shirley declares her intention, striding forwards into the next room.

As you walk into the room a few feet behind Shirley, you note that the aesthetic of the mansion is now totally gone, the wallpaper replaced entirely with rivited metal, and the floor with concrete tiles, there are a small amount of cogs and gears lining the walls, but nowhere near as many as the last room, and there are none protruding from the floor either.

"Hold on." Shirley puts her arm out to stop you from walking past her. She points up at the ceiling, a single section of it is higher than the rest, creating an inset covered in dangerous looking metal spikes. Shirley simply sighs in disappointment "That's pretty obviously a trap, it'll smash whatever walks under it. I don't know what I was even expecting.

Looking at the trap blocking your path, it's obvious that you'll need to think of a way around it.

>Try to trigger the trap into falling, then cross it when it's down.
>Try to run past the spike trap before it hits you.
>Ask Shirley if she has any ideas for getting past it.
>Use the Power of Destruction to pass the trap (How will you use it?)
>Write-in...

>>3927725
>>Try to trigger the trap into falling, then cross it when it's down.

>>3927722
>While the metal double doors leading to the next room a
A what, QM? A what?

>>3927618
For whatever reason, Alucard decided it would be a great idea if he used his powers to create a weapon that could be used against Dracula.
No idea why he chose a spear though.
Not like superior range is all that important when you're fighting a teleporting fireball spammer.

Dracula is real uncreative with his attacks usually. Considering all the stuff he can do, you'd expect him to mix things up more often.
Especially when all of the fights against him are documented to be learned from.

>>3927807
A typo, anon. A typo.
No idea how that one passed me by.

>>3927725
>Try to trigger the trap into falling, then cross it when it's down.
>>3927618
Remember, Alucard only started using swords in SotN, which came out after Bloodlines. In CV3, he used fireballs just like dear old dad.

>>3927725
>Try to trigger the trap into falling, then cross it when it's down.
Like a true Caslevania player.

>>3927722
>Try to trigger the trap into falling, then cross it when it's down.
>>3927812
Imagine Dracula using the Red Minotaur, Final Guard and Headhunter souls though. And that's assuming he can only use 3 like Soma, shit would be genuinely final-boss tier.

>>3927725
>Try to trigger the trap into falling, then cross it when it's down.

>>3928016
All Drac needs to do is transform into poison mist. He's a big lad, he'd probably fill the room.

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>>3928152
I would imagine that the Vampire Killer would still hurt him even if he tried that.

What there's no excuse for though is not having a bigger room and just flooding the room with his summons while he stays out of reach by flying.
And if he actually used any of the souls he has, God help the Belmonts (more than he already does.)

He also barely ever uses his strongest spell, which is an instant kill (on Shanoa, at least)

Dracula just looks much less competent when you realise that he can technically do anything Alucard, Soma or the Dark Lord Candidates can do if he wants.

In Portrait of Ruin he finally figures out that he might increase his chances at victory if he fought alongside Death.

>>3928471
>I would imagine that the Vampire Killer would still hurt him even if he tried that.
I mean it doesn't hurt Alucard when he's in mist form. Half human and whatnot but still.

>>3929262
Sometimes you need to ignore some gameplay mechanics if they don't make much sense.
Grand Cross should definitely hurt a mist vampire.

Richter is actually weak to custard pies being thrown at him going by Portrait gameplay mechanics.

>>3929317
To go a step further, the whip can kill incorporeal ghosts, so shifting to mist shouldn't help much.

>>3929328
>the whip can kill incorporeal ghosts
So can a common dagger. And everyone knows Richter's one weakness is sweets. Just like Dracula's one weakness is his face.

>>3929365
The fact that most things in Castlevania can be repeatedly shanked to death with enough patience is great because on one hand,
>how the fuck does that work these are creatures from the depths of hell or some shit
but on the other hand,
>3286 knife stabs is pretty fuckin lethal

"Well, if it's really a trap, then shouldn't we focus on... you know... disarming it? Or at least trying to trigger it harmlessly?" You tell Shirley your thoughts on the matter, you don't feel like trying to slide under that thing just in case you can't make it in time and you get impaled on the spikes.

"That would probably be for the best, though I wouldn't know where to start when it comes to stuff like that, I usually just run straight through traps like this and avoid whatever they throw at me." She boasts of her ability and recklessness quite smugly. You aren't sure if being that careless with your own life is something one should take pride in, but you don't bother saying anything.

You take a look at the hallway in front of you while you think of how to go about disabling the trap. The corridor is almost completely featureless, and you see no obvious way to cause the trap to activate. "Well, first off we should probably try to find what triggers it into falling, it could be any sort of mechanism, honestly." You pause for a moment in thought before continuing. "I'm not entirely familiar with the concept, but couldn't you use magic to trigger a trap on somebody too?"

"While you certainly could, I doubt we're dealing with something like that here. This guy seems way too invested in this fixation on machinery, and this certainly looks like something he would do aftttter that last room. Though I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility, not after that room with the dolls. He might be working with one of the other alchemists."

That's quite concerning, you're pretty confident in your knowledge when it comes to stuff like this. You even read a book about the topic once. But with magic potentially in the equation, you don't really know what to expect. It's irritating, but you'll just have to work with what you know

"Well, I don't see any tripwires, though any one of those tiles could be pressure sensitive... Shirley, do you think you can trigger it into falling somehow?" You decide that a visual inspection won't get you anywhere, hopefully, Shirley has some idea on getting it to fall.

"Of course!" Before you can instruct Shirley to see if she can uproot some tiles to throw at the trap to try and trigger anything that might rely on weight, she's already darted off to stand in the center of the trap before you can stop her.

"Shirley! What are you doing?!" The girl stands unmoving in the center of the trap as it rapidly descends on her, when it's mere moments from crushing her, she quickly leaps away from the approaching spikes, hopping an incredible distance backwards.

The spike covered slab smashes into the ground, making a thunderous noise as it does. Strangely enough, there's no mechanism to rearm the trap, the heavy chunk of ceiling simply remaining dead still. Strangely enough, you expected the trap would retract into the ceiling again by itself, but nothing happens.

Landing next to you, Shirley's voice is all too casual. "You asked me to activate it, right? Well this is usually the fastest way to do that. Speaking from experience."

"Don't you care that you just put yourself in harms way to solve something that could've been done in a safer manner?" Though saying this somewhat reminds you of your own recklessness in trying to open that sealed door earlier today, at least you were driven by curiosity. Shirley meanwhile put herself in clear danger just as a shortcut.

"Oh come on, It wasn't that dangerous. I had plenty of time to dodge it." Seems that she kind of missed your point. You can't really understand why she wouldn't care about senselessly putting her life at risk, and you doubt you'll get a decent enough explanation from her right now.

You look her in the eye, noting her nearly blank expression as you do "We'll talk more about this later, Shirley, for now let's just go through the next door." The three of you step over the now defunct trap, thankfully, there are no more traps in the corridor, and you quickly reach the ornate marble entrance to the next room, a far cry from the rest of the hall. Shirley pushes the solid looking doors open, with you close behind.

"Ah, so you've finally reached me." The familiar voice of the man who spoke to you remotely greets you. The source of the voice is a young brown haired man, perhaps a year or two younger than you are sitting at a desk and looking at you, his piercing green eyes are focused on you with a mixture of interest and anticipation. Behind him are mutiple monitor screens showing footage from the rooms you just passed through set in some sort of brass and wood display. The rest of the room is far more like the first room, except there's no abundance of dolls.

You almost overlook her but there's also a frail looking black haired girl sitting in the corner of the room, she seems to be entirely uninterested in your intrusion, and doesn't even raise her head to look at you.

"So, why have you come to attack me anyway? I don't remember doing anything to you, and and while you breaking into my wing of the mansion and smashing my things is irritating, I'd rather we just spoke about this without resorting to violence." The man's question is surprising, either he's lying, or these alchemists aren't nearly as coordinated as you first assumed. From his perspective, if he's being truthful, you three would seem like tresspassers, after all.

>He's lying, attack when he doesn't expect it!
>Answer the man and ask him questions of your own (any particular questions?)
>Write-in...,

>>3930020
>Answer the man and ask him questions of your own (I seem to be being targeted by someone from your... organization, using golems. Would you know anything about that?)

>>3930020
Supporting >>3930054

>>3930020
this >>3930054

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Man I'm gonna lose my shit if it turns out these alchemists were being set up by the real baddies.

You look the man in the eye as you respond. "It seems that somebody from your organization is targeting me, they attacked me yesterday. For whatever reason they did, I don't know. I do know that they use golems which were traced back to this mansion however, would you happen to know anything about that?"

There's a brief look of surprise on the man's face before he quickly reverts to an impassive mask. "You were attacked by golems? You're certain they were from here?" The man turns away, his voice almost too quiet for you to hear "What the hell is that idiot director doing, allowing something like this...?"

"Of course they were from here!" Shirley violently interjects. "For one thing, how many secret magical groups are in this city? You can't just dodge the blame like that!" Shirley seems like she might attack at any moment, guess she's more an 'ask questions later' type.

The mans passive mask slips a little bit as he frowns at Shirley. "More than one, it would seem. Besides, aren't you being a little hasty? I'm merely discussing things with your friend here and am hoping we can come to a peaceful resolution. I certainly had nothing to do with any attacks. I'd much prefer you go took out your anger on the people who actually wronged you instead of just lashing out at the closest person."

"Then what about attacking us earlier, on our way in?" You decide to cut in before he can jab at Shirley any further.

"That? My apologies, I had assumed you were either thieves looking to steal my research or assassins sent to kill me. You see, normal people wouldn't have been able to get past the main hall unless they were very heavily armed. So I decided to make use of a few of my defense protocols... which may need a little work, I admit." The man looks away from you and Shirley upon finishing his sentence, grinding his teeth while Shirley smirks at him.

"Fine, if you really had nothing to do with it, could you tell me who here could have been?" He seems willing to talk things out at least, though you don't imagine he'll reveal the identity of his colleagues to you so easily.

The man frowns again, considering his response for a moment. "Fine. Except the answer might not satisfy you. In truth, the majority of our institution are alchemists who can create golems, it's quite a simple part of their craft, actually. The only real exceptions to that rule in this building are me, my sister, and the people across the hall in the botany department. While I might work with the alchemists, I'm not one of them, I specialize in the creation of pure machinery, the three machines you fought earlier were unfortunately failed prototypes, their main weapon malfunctioned for... some reason." He glares at Shirley, resentment in his gaze. "Anyway, if my theory on the creation of golems is correct, alchemists create a sort of blank soul which they can program simple instructions into, before implanting them into a prepared body. It's real-"

"Cut it out. We didn't ask for a lecture." Shirley rudely interrupts the man mid-sentence. You were sort of finding it interesting, even if it was becoming a tangent.

Noticing the situation rapidly declining, you decide it would be prudent to ask another question before Shirley decides to make things worse somehow. "So, if you specialize in machinery. What about those dolls that attacked us? They clearly weren't mechanical." Hopefully,

"Oh, those dolls? Those are my sister's work, something about wandering spirits? She doesn't talk about it all too much, it does differ from the magic of our family after all. Ah! Speaking of family, now that we seem to have thankfully come to a peaceful resolution, I believe proper introductions are in order. I am Edwin Ashwell, and sitting in the corner over there is my sister, Rose." For the first time, the girl looks up at the three of you. Upon catching sight of your group, there's an almost imperceptible flash of recognition and shock in her eyes, though the expression fades in a split-second and she hurriedly looks down once more. Going back to doing whatever it is she was so focused on before. "And what of you three?"

"Please, call me Arthur." You decide against revealing your last name, It only ever seems to bring you trouble anyway. "Oh, and this is Theresia, she's mute." You motion towards the silent girl. Shirley remains silent, apparently she doesn't want to introduce herself.

The man coughs awkwardly upon realizing Shirley has no intention to go along with things, before he continues talking. "I must say, I do fail to see how those dolls posed a threat to you, why, all they ever do is float harmlessly around the room!" Seems that he's somehow unaware of what was easily the most dangerous trap in his part of the mansion. Probably best to avoid bringing it up.

"You know, you're acting suspiciously helpful for somebody who's base of operations was just broken into. In fact, I'd guess you want something from us." You can't help but feel that there's some ulterior motive, he's trying to be way too useful to somebody who might still consider him an enemy.

Edwin smiles at your accusation. "It's not something I want from you, persay. It's more something I want you to get for me. You see, Me any my sister are only in this organization because I was promised something from the director, of course, he's withholding it from me in order to ensure my continued loyalty. But you three seem like an opportunity to end that arrangement. You can get your revenge on the director, and I get what I want. What do you say?"

>"Sorry, but I'll have to pass. I don't really trust you at all."
>"Fine. We'll get whatever this thing is from the director for you. Though you'll have to provide some more information, and make it worth our time."
>Say nothing, attack him while he's distracted.
>Write-in...

>>3931249
>>"Fine. We'll get whatever this thing is from the director for you. Though you'll have to provide some more information, and make it worth our time."
I'm not really scared of this doofus so might as well make coming this way worth it.

>>3931249
>"Fine. We'll get whatever this thing is from the director for you. Though you'll have to provide some more information, and make it worth our time."
>"That alchemy stuff didn't sound that bad actually. I was looking forward to hearing more." Elbow Shirley slightly.
>"We got into the botany section and killed a skull-firing plant, but decided to come back and explore this way instead. Do you have a map of this place, or something helpful for us to get around?"
>"Do you know anybody else in here who might be able to help us, or at least be as willing as you to talk things out? We're kind of at a loss as to where to go next or who is worth checking out."

>>3931249
Seconding >>3931275

>>3931249
Supporting >>3931275. It's a good set of lines, and getting chummy with friendly NPCs is always good to do.

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>>3931275
Alright then, speaking of maps, here's the mansion so far.

>>3931658
Oh, and I should say that the orange parts are the entrances to the other wings, if it's unclear.
The parts of the mansion above the entrance aren't actually floating there, It's just more convenient for them to be there for now.

>>3931658
So is the half-explored room the one with the stoneflower?

>>3931815
The half explored room is the room you saw the corpses in and decided not to mess with.

"Fine. We'll get whatever this thing is that you want so much from the director for you. Though you'll have to provide us with some more information. If you can do anything else to make it worth our time, that would be useful too. It might be mutually beneficial, but it's clearly not going to be easy to retrieve this item. If it were, I imagine you would've done so yourself." It's a rather interesting proposal, and you really need all the information you can get. Running blind into more traps is something you would rather avoid.

"Excellent!" The man smiles at you, his eyes seem to show genuine happiness for the first time in the conversation. Though as the smile makes you focus on his features, you do notice some pretty heavy bags under his eyes. His manner of speaking and his general demeanor did a great job of hiding how tired he actually looks. "Well, the first thing I should tell you is what you're actually looking for. I'm after a glass vial containing a viscous purple liquid, I've only ever seen it once when he first showed it to me." The tired man begins to look through the drawers of a desk for something.

"You know, I was sort of enjoying your theory on the creation of golems." You nudge Shirley with your elbow as you say this. It was kind of a shame, having it cut off like that. Shirley doesn't seem to react at all other than her mouth twitching downwards into a slight frown.

The man is distracted looking through his desk for something as he responds. "Ah! Yes, it is a rather fascinating topic, isn't it? While I don't practice it, I do find some aspects of their craft rather interesting. Perhaps I can tell you more another time?

"Alright, sounds good to me. But back to business, where exactly will we able to find this vial you want so badly? We're kind of lacking for information here. Earlier on we walked into what I can only assume was the Botany Department and were attacked by some sort of Man-Eating Plant! Do they really just leave those things lying around? Not to mention those corpses..." You wonder what sort of person would run their department in such a disorganized way.

Edwin springs up in alarm as you mention the corpses you saw. "Hold on just a minute. Corpses? Man-Eating plants? And... this was in the Botany Department?" He seems genuinely worried about something.

"Well, yeah. The place was totally overgrown, and there was no human in sight, other than those three bodies."
His eyes seem to go even wider at the word 'overgrown'.

"This is a disaster..." he mutters "attacking outsiders is bad enough, but the entire department...?" He clenches his fist tightly.

"Uh-huh, so, do you mind telling us what's got you so bothered?" Shirley is somewhat dismissive of Edwin's sudden worry, but there does seem to be some concern, otherwise you doubt she would've talked at all.

The strangely panicked man runs a hand through his hair. "I happen to know one of the people working in the botany department quite well. They... they were working on a method to increase the growth rate of monstrous plants." You don't like where this is headed. "Of course, I kept saying that the research was needlessly dangerous, but they always assured me that it would be fine. I'm not sure what happened to them overnight, but the botany department doesn't even keep Man-Eating Plants for... obvious reasons, and the department itself was well kept. I can only assume the worst." He slumps back into his chair. His implication of some sort of giant carnivorous plant infestation is rather startling.

"Is there any danger of it spreading?" You feel the need to ask whether you're going to have another problem on your hands soon.

"...thankfully, no. The Botany Department is specially warded to keep plant-life inside of it. So long as nothing breaks that, it should be fine." He pauses. "Let's talk about something else, please. I don't want to keep dwelling on the botanists. Sadly, I doubt that any of them could have survived in there. But even if they could have, rescue would be damn near impossible." He looks quite upset, despite all attempts to appear otherwise. It seems he maintained much better relationships with his fellow sub-department than he does the alchemists.

"I don't really want to dwell on it either. Let's just move on, I do still need that information." You remind the man.

"Oh, of course, hold on, I'll write down what I remember of the floor plan. The vial should be either in the director's office in the basement, or in his bedroom on the upper floors. You can expect more golems either way. You'll probably able to get your answers from the director about being attacked, too." The man pulls a pencil from his jacket and begins a fairly high detail sketch, highlighting two rooms, one in the basement, the other on the third floor.

You consider asking him if he might know anyone else around who might be willing to cooperate, but asking him something like that after being informed of the likely fate of the botanists he was on good terms with seems just a little too cruel. You have enough information to go off now anyway.

You wait in silence until he hands you a floor plan of the mansion. "I'll see what I can do about properly paying you, if you accomplish this for me."

"Well I guess I'll be seeing you later, come on Shirley, Theresia, let's go." The two girls follow you back into the corridor. The trip back to the lobby is uneventful, soon you find yourself having to decide what route to take again.

>Check out the upper floors first, hopefully you'll find the vial and the director, and you imagine security might be less tight in what is effectively just the sleeping area.
>Try the basement, at this time of day, it's unlikely anyone would still be in bed. Besides, the basement is a shorter journey.
>Venture into the overgrown Botany Department. While there might only be a tiny chance of survival, the idea of potentially leaving somebody to get devoured by one of those horrible plants leaves an awful taste in your mouth.
>Write-in?

I'll have to give the updated map tomorrow, I feel like I'm gonna pass out.

>>3933076
>Venture into the overgrown Botany Department. While there might only be a tiny chance of survival, the idea of potentially leaving somebody to get devoured by one of those horrible plants leaves an awful taste in your mouth.
And maybe we'll have an alchemist owe us their life. That's always useful.

>>3933076
>Check out the upper floors first, hopefully you'll find the vial and the director, and you imagine security might be less tight in what is effectively just the sleeping area.

>>3933076
>Venture into the overgrown Botany Department. While there might only be a tiny chance of survival, the idea of potentially leaving somebody to get devoured by one of those horrible plants leaves an awful taste in your mouth.

>>3933076
>Venture into the overgrown Botany Department. While there might only be a tiny chance of survival, the idea of potentially leaving somebody to get devoured by one of those horrible plants leaves an awful taste in your mouth.
MAP
COMPLETION
we can always loop up to the upper floors around the other side

"We should head back to the Botany Department. We should at least try to find survivors" You make your mind up quickly. There's no real reason you should care about them, especially given that they've almost certainly all been killed, but some odd feeling takes hold of you, a bizarre mixture of compassion, curiosity and something quite unexplainable compels you return to look for survivors.

"Huh, really? I wasn't really expecting you to want to look for survivors in that overgrown death trap but... alright, sure!" Shirley gives you a thumbs up and a smile. Theresia seems a little happier now too. It would appear as if the two approve of the selfless act. Though it isn't entirely for the sakes of any potential survivors that you feel that neutralizing the threat of a potential breakout of those plants would be wise. Edwin did say they are trapped in by some sort of barrier, but you have no idea how accurate that information is.

The three of you once again begin walking towards the ordinary, if extravagant, looking door leading to the overgrown wing of the mansion

"Yeah, though we should go in with a plan this time, now that we know what we're up against. Anyway, Shirley, I've been meaning to ask you, is there any reason you haven't been using your magic? Wouldn't it make defeating these enemies so much easier?" It's been weighing on your mind for a while now, her ability to control fire would be tremendously helpful against any plant you might encounter.

Shirley stops in place. "A few reasons really. The first off is the expenditure of energy using magic requires, most humans don't have the capacity to use even a basic spell without risking there lives. I know there are methods around it, but unfortunately, I don't really have access to any of them. So I have to normally reserve it for when I'm in serious danger or other emergencies." That explains some of it, you suppose. "In addition to that, using fire magic when I'm surrounded by both allies and flammable materials is just too dangerous in most circumstances. It's mostly because my control over fire is limited at best..." She turns away from you and lets out a sad sigh as she looks upwards.

"You shouldn't undersell yourself. If not for you, I wouldn't be alive." Though it hurts your ego to a little to admit that without her you probably wouldn't have made it, that was in the past. Now you can properly defend yourself, you don't intend to keep being such a liability.

Despite your reassurance, Shirley still frowns, but she starts walking forwards again. With all three of you standing inside the overgrown dining room, you turn to Shirley. "So, do you have any ideas on ending this infestation? Could it be a chemical or gas causing their growth?" You remember you're forgetting somebody that could be helpful, clicking the button on the side of the earpiece one more. "Holly, are you there?" The response from the earpiece is an eerie silence. You do hope nothing happened to her.

"Well, it's possible there's some sort of plant controlling the rest of them." Shirley offers a lazy suggestion while you wonder just why Holly is taking so long in getting back in contact. You do genuinely hope that Shirley is joking though, having to fight a composed force of those plants would probably end up with all three of you dead.

Now, you stand at the closed door to the completely overgrown room with the 3 corpses in it's center.

>Reload your revolver and try to destroy the 3 corpses.
>Draw the revolver and keep an eye out for any movement as you cross the room.
>Ask Shirley if she can use her fire magic to deal with anything that might be in the area.
>Try to sneak around the centre by going through the totally overgrown parts of the room.
>Write in...

>>3934240
>>Draw the revolver and keep an eye out for any movement as you cross the room.

>>3934240
>Draw the revolver and keep an eye out for any movement as you cross the room.

>>3934240
>Draw the revolver, reload it, and keep an eye out for any movement as you cross the room.
No need to do just one.
Also, I kind of want to go back and check on Holly. This foreshadowing is pretty heavy.

>>3934240
>Draw the revolver and keep an eye out for any movement as you cross the room.
Holly has been eaten by a possessed database server, I'm calling it.

>>3934240
>Draw the revolver and keep an eye out for any movement as you cross the room.
>>3934234
>something quite unexplainable
embrace the mapping impulse within. You WILL explore every inch of this lab, Arthur.

>>3934240
>Draw the revolver, reload it, and keep an eye out for any movement as you cross the room.

>>3934665
The Power of Autism was a secret element of all the Dark Lord Candidates then?

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Well, that's pretty unanimous.
I'll let you reload it too.

>>3934695
>The Power of Autism was a secret element of all the Dark Lord Candidates then?
Well, all of the ones we see are pretty messed up.
Dario just likes setting shit on fire
Dmitrii wants to push his power to it's limits just because he can.
Graham wants to become Dracula because he considers it his right or something.

Soma hardly even uses his power and it can mess him up the worst of all, as seen by the bad ends of both Aria and Dawn, and his appearance change in Aria when he beats Graham.
But with Soma, he's got the greatest link to Dracula out of all of the candidates, so he's a special case.

>>3934877
All of those are tied to their powers, though.
>Dario, power over fire
Likes setting things on fire
>Dmitrii, power to replicate others' powers
Strives for the greatest power of others
>Soma, reincarnation of Dracula
Power drags him towards greater similarity to Dracula

I don't know about Graham, but you see the pattern. I'm hoping that if the Power of Destruction manifests some mental abnormality in Arthur it isn't obsessive completionism, because there's no thematic link there.

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>>3935119
Oh no, the obsessive completionism isn't actually really a thing in universe, outside of an out of quest joke.
You might be assuming that the unexplainable feeling is that obsession and not something else entirely.
You should take care when using the Power of Destruction.

For Graham we don't even know what his powers canonically are, you only fight him after he's gained an additional amount of Dracula's powers by becoming the Lord of the Castle (though he isn't the Castle's true master).
Outside of his boss fight though, he can defeat a powerful Belnades witch with just a knife.
You'll get to see what power I gave him outside of that if you encounter him.

>>3935136
>You should take care when using the Power of Destruction.
Yeah, I'm assuming that we'll probably start losing our ability to think rationally and eventually get erased ourselves if we go too far with it. I'm still shooting for a dark lord ending, though.
>You'll get to see what power I gave him outside of that if you encounter him.
Cool! I'll be looking forward to that, then.

>>3935136
Eh...
Soma can defeat enemies to get their abilities
That lame guy from Dawn gets abilities by getting hit by them

Graham just straight-off steals abilities he sees?

I'd say that'd establish him as the most powerful candidate since he has to work the least for his mojo

>>3935374
>Soma can defeat enemies to get their abilities
That's not entirely how the Power of Dominance works.
Soma defeats enemies to get their souls, with their souls, he should theoretically not only be able to do anything they can do, but also summon them, should he so wish. It works on any non-human soul (and probably human souls too, if he goes Dark Lord mode).

Dmitrii can gain abilities by experiencing the effects of them. As he was able to copy the Power of Dominance.

Graham doesn't really steal anything, the powers he displays as Lord of the Castle are Teleportation, Dark Inferno, and transformation into a monstrous form.
He was taking his Dracula LARP to another level.

>>3935139
>Yeah, I'm assuming that we'll probably start losing our ability to think rationally and eventually get erased ourselves if we go too far with it.
I'm going to be honest.
I really didn't expect you all to go for Destruction at this stage.
It's easily the riskiest Power around.

>>3935388
Just a reminder, we didn't all go for it. I and at least a couple of other anons voted for Control.
Ah, well. You play the hand you're dealt, and I'm hoping we can manage to unlock its full potential without screwing up and dying.

>>3935393
We have to figure out how to make destruction bullets without...destroying the bullets.

>>3935422
Can we eventually Hakai people like Gods of Destruction in Dragonball? Can we eventually do some weird unorthodox shit like Kefka from FF6, who becomes a God of Destruction? Or other cool shit? There's this one character in a webnovel who can cause disintegration blasts that have high recoil, which she uses to launch herself medium distances and redirect her movements.

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>>3935455
>Kefka
Kefka becomes the God of Magic. He just wanted to use that power to destroy everything. Then his dramatic downfall by the hands of the party is caused because he decides to procrastinate for a year for literally no reason. You won't be replicating any of those ridiculous powers with Destruction alone.
Final Fantasy 6 is really odd when you realise that literally nothing important happens while Celes sleeps for a year despite there being a literal insane god that really wants to destroy the world in it's entirety.

As for those other ideas, you'll have to find that out by training.
There is a hint as to another use of the Power of Destruction already.

>>3935393
Yeah, I know not everyone voted for it.
It's not a terrible thing though, as long as I can maintain a reasonable benefit/drawback curve to it's use.

>>3935388
>It's easily the riskiest Power around.
Then it might be a good thing since this way we'll get the hang of it sooner.
At the moment it seemed like a good one to start with since it was the most straightforward of the bunch.
>>3935472
>Kefka becomes the God of Magic. He just wanted to use that power to destroy everything. Then his dramatic downfall by the hands of the party is caused because he decides to procrastinate for a year for literally no reason.
Think of it like the Androids of Future Trunks timeline in Dragon Ball. By all means he had already won, he was just savoring his victory, it wasn't just about destroying everything but also about making everyone miserable in the process. You can see it thorought the second half in how he randomly drops lightning on towns, awakens ancient evils, makes a cult to his madness and how he taunts the party befor the final battle.

>>3935472
Clearly the throne is for when he turns into a big fire breathing blue-green boi.

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You know, ever since I wrote barrel instead of cylinder, I've kind of wanted to make the gun reload in a slightly different way...

"Alright then, I say all three of us go in at the same time. Keep your eyes peeled for any movement, and Theresia, if you see anything... I guess clapping will do in order to notify us." Theresia nods, her eyes however tell you she's less than enthusiastic about going into the next room. You can't blame her, really. There's something about these plants that makes your skin crawl.

You draw your revolver, taking a long look at it as you do. You should only have 2 shots left if it's based on a 6 six shot revolver. You get the foreboding feeling that you're going to need just more than two shots in this room. Spinning the cylinder, there's the feeling of lightheadedness once again as the gun glows in a blue tinge.

"You ready?" Shirley asks, multiple knives are splayed out in one of her hands. Nodding at her, she slams her free hand at the middle of the two doors, causing them both to swing inwards.

The room is dead silent, in this room, the plants somehow seem even taller than they were when you visited the room less than half an hour ago, the vegetation covering almost every inch of the ground. Far more worrying than the apparent plant growth however, is that you quickly notice there's only two bodies in the center of the room. You pick up the pace, walking faster.

There's no movement as you approach the corpses, the room is entirely still. It's unnerving. Now that you're close up to them, you can properly make out the terrible condition of the bodies. Though the stench is the first thing you notice, the horrible smell of rotting flesh nearly makes you gag. Thick roots of some kind of plant have burrowed through the both of the bodies, scraps of displaced skin and muscle litter the immediate surroundings of the unfortunate botanists. The bodies seem far further into decomposition than they should, especially if the earliest they could've died was yesterday night.

The faces of the two botanists are the last thing you look at. Up to this point, you had been subconsciously avoiding looking at them, expecting the gruesome sight of a mutilated face, violated by those terrible roots. What you see instead comes as a great surprise. Their faces, if slightly strangely tinged, seemed to be in nearly perfect condition. Undamaged by the savage plant. What is even more confusing is that their faces appear almost tranquil, as if the two had peacefully drifted off to sleep, rather than having been horribly killed by these awful roots.

You turn to Shirley, who's also looking at the corpses with a focused expression on her face, seems she's as baffled by them as much as you are. Beside her is Theresia, who just looks nauseas "Do you have any idea what could've done this, Shirley?"

She puts a hand to her chin as she thinks for a moment. "Well... not really, I've never had to deal with... um... plants, before. But from the way these two men looks, I can only assume one of two things happened." Shirley's tone becomes serious. "First off, these men were killed instantly, though with the way they've been penetrated by those roots this isn't likely to be the case, they could only have died in terrible pain." She stops at the first point.

"And? What about the second thing?" You rapidly ask her, her serious tone is starting to worry you now.

There's a horrifying squelching, tearing sound behind you, that could only have come from the corpses. Turning back towards them, you see the two heads are no longer connected to the bodies, well, not properly anyway. From the neck of the two bodies extends a long stem, roughly as thick as one of your arms, the heads themselves look down on the three of you. Milky, dead eyes staring down at you with pure hatred. The foliage is rustling in a peculiar way now, it almost sounds like some strange sort of applause.

"I think that's kind of self-explanatory now. Don't you?" Despite the imminent danger, Shirley still manages to try to make light of the situation. You're not really sure you appreciate her approach to death, but you suppose it's just something you get used to after a while.

Though right now, you have more important things to do than ponder on Shirley's apparent acclimation to seeing corpses.

>Back away from the bizarre zombie plants immediately, try to line up a good shot on them as you do.
>There's no need to move at all if you're quick enough, simply shoot them both in the head from close up.
>Use the Power of Destruction to slice through the stems of both of them, hopefully this will put an immediate end to them.
>Write-in...

>>3935699
>>There's no need to move at all if you're quick enough, simply shoot them both in the head from close up.

>>3935699
>Back away from the bizarre zombie plants immediately, try to line up a good shot on them as you do.
Methinks the head isn't the weakspot, a la necromorphs.

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>>3935699

>Try to use the Power of Destruction to erase the life force of the entities instead of their bodies.

Maybe if Arthur'd focus on killing the beings themselves and not merely their bodies, he could avoid looking for weaknesses.

>>3935882
Wait, do zombies even have life force?

We must destroy their DEATH FORCE

>>3935883
That sounds like something in the extended lore of a metal band. AKA pretty cool.

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>>3935882
You don't quite have the technical knowledge to know where the soul or life force of something is yet, nor how to target them specifically. But...
I wouldn't want to punish a creative use of your power. So it might have a different effect.

Soul Steal is currently beyond you, however.

There's a three way draw right now.
I might just see if I can use one of those face generator things to make a close enough approximation to Arthur.

Imma change to
>>3935742
>>3935699
>>Back away from the bizarre zombie plants immediately, try to line up a good shot on them as you do.

>>3935699
>Try to use the Power of Destruction to erase the life force of the entities instead of their bodies.
Let's give it a shot

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>tie is broken
>gets tied again
God damn it.

>>3936345
>>3936387
Ah well, fuckit just do
>Try to use the Power of Destruction to erase the life force of the entities instead of their bodies.

I don't really like the prospect of us suddenly thinking up a Chinese Soul Steal on the spot but I guess I'm in the minority.

>>3936423
And you'll keep being in it if you don't fuckin vote.

>>3936425
But I did.
>>3935794

>>3936423
>Chinese Soul Steal
Every word of this is at odds with my mental image of what we're trying to do. Destroying the plant-monstrosities root and branch by erasing their animating force from existence isn't stealing anything, and I doubt they have souls. Where's the chinese bit even come from?

>>3936431
I was basing it on >>3936167's post.

>>3936423
Don't worry, it won't quite work that way.
You won't be deleting souls any time soon, but it doesn't mean that I can't use the opportunity to show another use of the Power of Destruction right now from your attempt to use it in a different way.

Messing with souls is going to have to remain out of your reach for a long while because at that point there's nothing that can really stand in your way short of Death/Master Vampire level opponents.

Master Vampires are totally fucking broken.

>>3936434
But that post was me saying you can't use Soul Steal.

>>3936450
To be fair, I never really had soul steal in mind (I'd say that falls firmly into some advanced fusion of all 3 powers). Just trying to destroy or damage the soul is more realistic i'd say.

Looking up at the snarling face of the disembodied head, you know you need to act fast. You have no idea what the best way to kill this half-living parasitic creature would be. You doubt that your gun can really help, not unless you could perhaps sever the stem connecting the head to the body. But even then, you don't quite know the anatomy of the creature. It's possible that the head holds no importance to it other than a weapon.

Then, you notice the twisted roots that are growing through the bodies of the botanists, have strangely started to sprout. Long waxy leaves burst from the plant at rapid speed. It's then that yet more of these leaves begin to burrow outwards from the decaying flesh of the body, sprouting from the roots within the corpse also.

The newly sprouted leaves whirl around, though standing in front of the plant, none of them can currently reach you. You don't know why you would bother avoiding the flat leaves, until in it's flailing, one of the leaves slashes downwards onto one of the sprawled out arms of it's corpse, cutting the limb cleanly off of the corpse. How could anything be so sharp as to do such a thing with so little weight behind the blow?

No matter the reason for the supernatural sharpness of the edge of them, you realize that getting into range of the leaves would be a death sentence.

You're close to the plants, the heads of the corpses have likely become solely for offense, the core of the human-plant hybrids seem to lie somewhere within their bodies. Which you can't approach without getting sliced into meaty chunks by those vicious leaves. You doubt even the holy knife will be of much use, if the only thing you do with it is cut through one of the hybrid's vines. Shirley is focusing on the plant further away from you, though the strangely agile plant is avoiding getting hit by any of her thrown knives.

Then as if there's a voice whispering into your head telling you to use it, you feel the urge to use the Power of Destruction. Seeing no other option, you reach out and grab the stem of the plant, calling upon the Power as you do, just as the face seems like it's about to spit something out to attack you. While merely severing it doesn't seem like it will be enough in this case, perhaps you can try directing the energy? If it could destroy whatever counts as this thing's core, or perhaps even the force keeping it alive, you could conclusively destroy it and ensure it doesn't regrow.

This is when things get strange, instead of the energy enveloping your hand and severing the tendril, it instead seems to enter it. But the moment it does, A loud anguished screeching that sounds as if it is coming from inside your head causes you to stagger backwards and release the plant, clutching at your head with your other hand. It's as if the screech wasn't the only thing you felt when you grasped the stem, but the moment passed so quickly, you haven't a clue as to what that strange emotion could've been. As the shock of the scream fades, you quickly realize that with the use of the power, you feel slightly ill, your headache caused by the incredibly loud scream only getting worse

You remove your hand from your pounding head, only to see that the plant seems to be having a much worse time of it than you are, It's entirely covered in lines of light that seem to randomly sprawl all around it's body, dozens of lines criss cross it's face, spiraling down the stem before spreading all over the body and roots. The plant is obviously experincing whatever it's equivalent to pain is, as the face is once more making an anguished screech, however, it feels far less human than the one that occured in your head, sounding more guttural and animalistic than the face of a human has any right to.

Then there's a bright flash, and the light vanishes. For a moment, nothing happens, though soon just what those lines did makes itself clear, as the plant totally falls to pieces, blood and a green liquid falls along with the chunks of the face and stem. The body itself reduced to a pile of gore and chopped roots.

It's strange, but when you look at the other plant, you seem to know exactly what it is. You don't know just what occurred with the Power of Destruction when it interacted in such a strange way, but for the moment, the information is a boon.

You clutch your head once again as information you shouldn't know forces itself into your mind. An impossible memory of reading an entry in some magical botany book. 'Commonly called a Corpseweed, an advanced mutation of the highly variable Une plant species that grows using the nutrients of a fresh corpse, like all Une species, it's leaves are able to cut through most organic material instantly by secreting a highly potent acid. The face of the corpse is kept by the Une and repurposed to spread toxic seeds, both to spread the growth of Une and to infect potential attackers, slowly poisoning them to death, it will usually take an hour or so for the poison to finally kill them, this is when the Une seed planted within them begins growing into another Corpseweed. It is a truly gruesome display to witness for yourself. Fortunately, the plant cannot move by itself, and it is unable to spit it's seeds far at all.' The entry continues for some time, but it's mostly useless information about how it interacts with other flora and fauna, and what it's natural enemies are. Hardly information relevant to you right now, it seems you've got all the information about them other than how to kill them.

But that's no matter. Is it? You can deal with this plant just fine now. You focus completely on the remaining weed. Stepping to the side in order to avoid some spat seeds, the needle like seeds harmlessly pierce the ground as you get into range to grab the planet. It tries to get away from your reach by maneuvering it's stem away from you, but there's no point. The pitiful abomination can't escape you as you grab hold of the stem, willing the Power of Destruction to replicate what it just did. The Power seems more than happy to oblige you, as once again it enters the plant instead of destroying it immediately. This time there's no sudden mental pain or anything like that, but you do feel a tiny fraction of the energy remaining behind in the plant. The purple lines begin to cover the Corpseweed as it writhes about.

The second plant dies in a similar manner to the first, reduced to a useless heap of parts on the floor.

Now that the plants are defeated, you allow yourself to collapse. You feel entirely drained, thankfully the grassy floor cushions you fall somewhat. For now though, it doesn't feel like you'll be walking any time soon.

Shirley slowly walks over to you, her face showing a rare dumbfounded expression. "Arthur... just what did you do to those things?" She almost demands, but her voice isn't angry. It sounds more confused.

>"Apparently, this Power of mine can be used for more than just cutting through things directly."
>"I dealt with the monsters attacking us, Shirley. That's all."
>"I don't know."
>Write-In...

>>3937406
>"I don't know."

>"Apparently, this Power of mine can be used for more than just cutting through things directly."

but one could also add:

>Getting a firm grasp on it would be very useful, but this isn't the moment for that.

>>3937406
This >>3937414

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>>3937406
>"Apparently, this Power of mine can be used for more than just cutting through things directly."

>Completely delete stuff, rendering almost any physical defense useless (at range too, eventually)
>"Hakai" touch
>By this logic, we probably have the potential to just NUH-UH anything out of existence, even abstract shit
Power of Destruction is best, Dmitriifags BTFO. Pic related

>>3937406
>>"Apparently, this Power of mine can be used for more than just cutting through things directly."

>>3937574
You'll probably want to use it a little less when I actually reveal the mechanics behind how it works.

That being said, I just realized that defeating that Corpseweed might have given the impression that you got the information from the act of killing it, rather than from the method.

Try to think what the energy projected by the Power could be.

I'll just say one last thing about why the Power of Destruction isn't a great thing to overuse, despite how powerful it is.
Remember what kind of sacrifice is needed to use Dominus.

>>3937402
>"Apparently, this Power of mine can be used for more than just cutting through things directly."

>>3937745
Impression I had from the "portion of energy remaining behind" bit is that we're either paying with some of our life force or with a piece of the Power itself.

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I'm not quite happy with it, but here's a portrait for our hero.
Consider it subject to Change.

>>3937840
You're on the right track, just don't use it too much or there will be a far steeper price to pay than feeling drained or tired.

>>3938279
Oh man, I was picturing more like a blue-eyed, cleanshaven version of Colin Farrel. That's a shift.

>>3938288
Yeah, I can't really do anything with these damn face shapes on the generators.
There's like one
on every single one.
And every other piece of art I find has some hugely offputting element.

Also, Arthur is only 20 right now, so he doesn't look quite that old either.
Of course, it's not like you don't have the potential to change that, if you'll recall the potential Powers.

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>>3938300
Now I was looking through all of Dracula's different appearances through the series, and one of them really kind of... stood out.

I mean, it never helps he can never stick to a hair colour (Grey, Purple, White, Blonde, Black.) but this is ridiculous.

It looks like there should be rose petals falling around him or something.

>>3938330
Clearly this is the Dracula who courted Alucard's mother. We should take inspiration from his romantic style.

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>>3938330
Eh, why not? Considering there's an actual timeline and he's had really diverse appearances, I'm pretty sure he picks how he looks each time.

Presumably ol' Drac wanted to indulge a bit in this incarnation, though he had no chance to do so thanks to one of the more badass Belmonts.

>>3938300
With all these generators on picrew, you'd think there'd be one emulating Yamane's style. I haven't found one, though.

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>>3938279
I thought I'd play around with one of the generators to try and produce something similar to what you've got here. Thoughts? Is it closer to or farther from your mental image of Arthur?
I know the suit is different, but there's rather narrow clothing options on these.

>>3938348
If there is one, I would imagine it would be easier to locate if there weren't so many of those awful English Tumblr art style ones.
Are there people who find that horrible style appealing? Bleh.

>>3938360
Oh, that's great!
Shame about the clothes, but I do like this.

The clothing isn't super important anyway.

>>3938372
I say it's not super important because your suit is kind of absolutely ruined.
You'll probably be getting another new outfit eventually.
Hopefully one that won't be immediately destroyed.
Maybe you'll even get the opportunity to get some armour.

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And here's that updated map with the unexplored rooms in a darker shade.
It's just about every room in the mansion, disregarding any hidden rooms, that is.

>>3938426
Personally I'm hoping we can have that arms-dealer connection of Shirley's tailor a magically tough suit for us, so we can continue to look sharp even while fighting monsters.

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>>3937745
>>3938279
>Draining our life force is on the right track
>"Because the (Dominus) glyphs draw from Dracula's own dark power, his will can easily consume the mind of the wielder." (from Castlevania wiki)
>We got all this corpseweed knowledge from placing part of our power in the corpseweed, almost as if we're familiar with them
>Just remembered as I wrote this that Soma gets mindraped in his bad ending because of Chaos Control or something
OH FUCK HE'S IN OUR HEAD

>>3938823
>Then as if there's a voice whispering into your head telling you to use it, you feel the urge to use the Power of Destruction.
>A loud anguished screeching that sounds as if it is coming from inside your head causes you to stagger backwards and release the plant
>You clutch your head once again as information you shouldn't know forces itself into your mind.
Yup. Ol' Drac's in our head now.

Your eyes are heavy, but you match Shirley's expectant gaze as she awaits your answer. There's a pause before you answer her, as you find the words slow to come to you, seems like doing whatever you just did has put more than just a physical drain on you, considering how long it's taking you to organize your thoughts.

Eventually though, you overcome the bout of mental fuzziness and manage a response. "Apparently, this Power of mine can be used for more than just cutting through things directly. By flowing into those corpses, It cut them apart all at once instead. I don't really get it either." You barely managed to avoid saying 'Corpseweed', by cutting off the word halfway through. That knowledge would no doubt would've caused Shirley to become even more suspicious.

"I see... So you're saying that this power of yours just lets you basically instantly defeat anyone you touch? Wasn't it enough just being able to erase things like you were doing before? I'd be jealous if I didn't have my doubts about the origins of that power. It's useful for now, but after we're done with dealing with whoever is leading the Alchemists here, we're definitely going for a little trip." Her sentence ends rather ominously.

"Huh? A trip? Where to?" You don't really like the tone she finished with there at all.

"To our organization's headquarters in Europe of course!" You are about to correct her use of 'our' until you remember she press ganged Theresia, Holly and you into that very organization without even informing anyone. As much as you hate decisions being made for you without your consent, you can't really blame her for trying to avoid you all getting in trouble with this organization of hers. Of course, you wouldn't mind the opportunity to meet the people who seem to have such a vested interest in you. Though her rash decision might otherwise have irked you, in this case you can tolerate it. If anyone can give you the answers you want, it must be them.

"Europe? Can't you be a little more specific?" You hope she knows the location of their headquarters outside of just the continent it's in.

"Not right here I can't. The location is top secret and I'm only allowed to reveal it when I'm absolutely certain that there's nobody that could be listening in. Seeing as we're in the middle of an enemies territory, I'm definitely not allowed to reveal that information. I mean, I don't know what good knowing what country it's in would do anyone, but the rules are the rules." She sounds a little dejected, seems that she'll follow the rules of her organization even if it sounds as if she doesn't agree with them. Though based on how she just conscripted the three of you immediately earlier, it's not like she's above exploiting it's loopholes either.