In our last adventure, we welcomed new party member Krile to the what-was-once-Leather-Harem. Functionally, she's just an alternate skin for Galuf, at least from a gameplay perspective, so we don't have to go out of our way to train up the Jobs or anything for her. She even conveniently already has his armor equipped, which is a little creepy when you think about it.

And with new resolve, we set off to Exdeath's castle to join Xezat's navy who had been waiting for the barrier to drop for a chance to take to the land and strike. And now that the barrier is gone, we're able to just walk straight through the front door to try to confront Exdeath. Because, well, you know how well that went last time. And now he's recuperated and powered up with the Crystals. Sounds like a good idea. Let's just walk right into his house.

The inside of the castle looks just like all the castles we've been to so far. Xezat's men are scattered around the floors, telling us that Exdeath was so strong they could do nothing to fight him as he just casually strolled to the top floor, destroying everyone in his path. Our prospects are sounding better and better.

There are also a ton of treasures hidden in the walls here, so we spend a lot of time pressing against random walls hoping to find secret passages.

Eventually we reach a room that doesn't seem to lead anywhere. Bartz announces that it's time to turn back, but Krile just walks into the middle of the empty room. She says that all of this is an illusion created by Exdeath, and calls out for her grandfather. We cut to Kelger's house, where the werewolf is still lying in his bed from his injuries suffered at the hand of Bartz. He talks to nothing, addressing it as Galuf, so perhaps Galuf is inside of his mind now or something. It seems that Galuf is asking him to help Krile out. Kelger agrees and uses the last of his strength to... help. And then the illusion is eradicated from the castle as Kelger dies in his bed at home.

You know. Just go with it.

Some green light flashes, which is apparently "everyone's power," and the normal-looking castle transforms into some kind of bizarre hellscape where everything seems to be made out of flesh, bones, and fire. Because I would totally decorate that way if I were someone like Exdeath. Why build a fortress out of some kind of impenetrable stone when it looks so badass to build it out of skin and skulls? It may be frail, but you can always just erect some elaborate barrier mechanism to protect it.

As the illusion is dispelled, everything is the same shape throughout the entire castle with just another appearance, except for a new door that happens to be right in front of us. That's pretty convenient that Krile decided to talk to dead people to make the magic castle change shapes right in the only place in the entire giant structure that would let us know where we have to go next.

The castle, like most dungeons at this point in the game, is long and winding with lots of little mini-puzzles that are easily solved only by minimal trial-and-error. The places where water appeared in the illusion is now lava (how Exdeaths maintains molten lava inside a building comprised of most dermis is beyond me), which hurts us if we walk on it. But fortunately for us, we have the Geomancer's ability to ignore dangerous terrain, so we just have to swap out one character's ability for a while to allow us to continue unharmed. There are also a lot of switches and trap doors that we can fall through into lava pits, and some places where we have to fall through the right trap doors to proceed. At once point we find and battle Carbuncle, who joins us as yet another summon that we cannot use.

There are also a lot of Yellow Dragons and a few Blue Dragons as regular encounters here, which drop the Dragon Claw item. This is one of a few unique items that are only used by the Chemist Job as part of the Mix ability, so it's nice we can pick several of them up just while we walk around here, especially since the only way to obtain them is from dragon monster drops. Fortunately, they drop them with 100% rate, so we just have to make sure to fight every dragon we run across to save up a few of them.

We come to a very large room with nothing but a treasure chest in the center. When we open it, it is empty. As we try to proceed to the next room, Gilgamesh appears form behind us and brags that he stole the treasure before us. We try to move around him, but we end up getting into a battle with him. Like all Gilgamesh battles, he's not too tough to fight, and after dealing enough HP damage, he starts to blabber incessantly for a while as he boosts up his own power. It's during that this fight that he gives one of his most famous lines:

"Enough expository banter! Now we fight like men! And ladies! And ladies that dress like men! For Gilgamesh... it's morphing time!

The "joke" is "teehee trans people are just crossdressers," I guess. But after this expository banter, it will only feel that much better kicking this guy's face in. This is also the only time in the game someone who doesn't know Faris personally refers to him as if he were a woman.

After that, Gilgy "morphs" into lots-of-arms Gilgy, now holding the Excalibur, the legendary sword that he swiped from the treasure chest. Though we've seen the Excalibur before, locked away in the sealed chamber with the other legendary weapons. Gilgamesh starts attacking us, but he's incredibly weak. Seems the sword is a fake. Exdeath's voice sounds out from nowhere and scolds Gilgamesh. Then he gets banished into the Void. We do a little dance for our "victory" and receive the sword called Excalipoor at the end of the battle.

It's actually possible to bypass this fight and scene by not opening the treasure chest in the center of the large room where the Excalipoor had been taken by Gilgamesh. I'm not really sure if it happens later or something, because I've never actually gone on after skipping it. But you can just walk right into the next room where Exdeath is waiting without ever seeing Gilgamesh at all.

In the next room, Bartz calls out to Exdeath that we're "not going to let him get away with this," but Exdeath just mwa-ha-ha's about how we don't even know what it is we're stopping him from "getting away with" in the first place. And like any good villain, he decides to conveniently tell us his entire plan. Which is pretty simple, he just wants to "return the world to what it was before."

We get in a fight with Exdeath. I learned the hard way that if you cast Slow on him, he will counter it by casting Haste. He doesn't seem to cast haste on himself otherwise, so basically you're helping him out if you try it. Exdeath is pretty powerful and with Hastle, is really quite difficult to defeat. Not only does he have heavy-hitting attacks like Earth Shaker that deals tons of damage to the entire party at once, but he also has the ability to turn party members into Zombies, turning them against themselves. I ended up dying and having to redo the fight after that, because with Haste, everyone became a Zombie and I just had to watch them snuff themselves out. But like most bosses we've encountered so far, the solution ended up just being to buff the party and slowly whittle away his HP until we won. Casting Float on the party helped us avoid Earth Shaker, and with the party Hasted (and not Exdeath), it wasn't hard to toss some Holy Water at any ally that became Zombied before it got out of hand.

After defeating Exdeath in battle, he escapes and the Crystals he was manipulating begin to break as everything turns red around us. We go flying and somehow end up, yet again, at that same nondescript "landing area" where we always go after explosions, even though it seems to actually be in different places each time. I don't even know how many times this has happened now, but if I had to guess, I'd say this is our eighth or ninth time landing at one of these places after an explosion?

After everyone wakes up, we realize we're actually just outside Castle Tycoon. Somehow we've left Galuf's world and are back home.

We head into the castle and the chancellor declares that the return of the princesses is a call for celebration, rather than a time to continue to mourn the loss of King Tycoon. Faris doesn't seem to know what to think about the Chancellor using his birth name, and when he forces him to wear a dress, he fights back and argues, but eventually has to go out in front of everyone dressed like a woman, much to his own embarrassment and shame.

When Faris comes out in a dress, we get the obligatory "omg she so hot" crap from Bartz. Then a bunch of people start dancing while Faris and Lenna sit in thrones. Krile runs off somewhere, and we're left controlling only Bartz. We talk to this Furby, who is completely unhelpful, and then we leave to find Krile.

If we try to reach the thrones to talk to Faris or Lenna, the dancing people shove us out of the way to make the area inaccessible. We find Krile on a balcony, and she says that she feels a bit anxious, like Galuf is telling us to hurry. Bartz tells her that we're back in his own world, so we should explore and try to find the reason for that. If we peep into King Tycoon's room, we find a diary that reveals that "Sarisa" was prone to throwing tantrums as a child. I wonder why.

If we talk to one of the lady's maids, she tells us about a memory she had, and we get to see a flashback of little Faris and Lenna. Faris was told to put Lenna to bed after his studies and return to his teacher immediately, but instead, he told Lenna about Wind Drakes and then pulled up another bed beside hers and crawled in so the two of them could sleep next to each other. Very cute.

We decide to leave the castle to try to find out why we returned to Bartz's world. Krile wonders if we should get Faris and Lenna to come, but it seems there's no way they can escape their royal duties for right now. One of the guards rushes up to the gate as we're leaving and says that the bridge over the west river is complete. Bartz tells Krile that his Chocobo may still be resting in the cave to the west, so we decide to go their for our first stop. Krile teases Bartz about being able to ride a Chocobo but being afraid of riding Wind Drakes.

As we approach the cave to the west, Boko appears right away. Since seems to "speak a little Chocobo," so she talks to him, and it seems that Boko wants to introduce us to someone. We meet Koko, Boko's mate. Bartz tells Boko that we're going on a journey and asks for his help, Boko tells Koko (as we can "hear," thanks to Krile's interpretation of Chocobo language) to take care of the little ones as he's gone, and we learn that Koko is pregnant with Chocobo chicks.

Boko joins up with us, and now with only a two-member party and a Chocobo to right, we set out to begin exploring the world once more.

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