After escaping from the exploding Karnak Castle, some of the shards from the Fire Crystal fall on the ground around us. We're literally just standing in a giant green area -- I guess they didn't want to bother making an environment for this scene or something.

Anyway, along with those Crystal Fragments, we get the Geomancer Job, which is our next Fiesta Job. So now we need to always have at least one White Mage, Time Mage, and Geomancer in the party at all times.

This is our first Job that really has much offensive power, and well... that power is... quite unreliable. But I guess it's better than bopping stuff with sticks for the whole game.

We leave Lenna as our dedicated healer, as White Mage is still the only Job that can equip a staff, and we need someone to use the healerwammy. Faris stays as a Time Mage because, because I like his setup with the Main Gauche right now and don't feel like re-equipping. And then Bartz and Galuf are going to try out our new Job.

Geomancers harness the power of nature around them. Using their unique skill "Gaia," we can summon elemental powers to aid us in battle. The power we summon is based on the type of environment we're currently battling in; for example, in the forest we get a lot of tree- and branch-themed abilities. While some of these can be extremely useful or powerful, the biggest downside is that you have no idea which of the many environmental abilities you will summon. You can't choose them, and each environment has many different abilities, some much less desirable than others. You just have to... hope the ones you want pop up.

In the forest nearby Karnak, we test out some of what we have now. In forests, we have access to Bindweed, a skill that summons vines from all around to greatly slow down all enemies' ATB Gauges. We also have a great attack called Branch Arrow which fires sharp tree branches at a single enemy, usually dealing over 1,000 HP damage! Right now our knives and stuff only do a bit over 100 damage, so that's extremely powerful!

We also have access to bells, a musical instrument weapon that we haven't been able to use yet.

But we'll experiment with the abilities as we continue to progress. For now, we'll continue on with our story. We learn that the Queen is actually okay, and she's holed up in the Karnak Inn. So it looks like at least the people of Karnak will be able to rebuild their Queendom. But for now, she seems to be a bit out of it, lying in bed and screaming out about the "darkness." So it might take her a while to get over the whole being-possessed-by-a-demon thing...

Mostly people in town just talk about how the Crystal is gone now, and how the prices have gone back up since they can't use the Crystal's power to make weapons any more (damn...)

We also learn that the castle explosion also destroyed the wall to the west that was blocking the path to get to the Library of the Ancients.

Because I went to buy stuff in the shop quickly before, we actually didn't even make it into the pub in our first stroll through Karnak. Going there now, people give us hints about Cid being on the Fire-Powered Ship and stuff lol... But we do get to play the "piano" there, stop by the shop and grab a couple Diamond Bells to equip to our Geomancers, and we find a Flame Rod in a barrel atop the city walls.

Before we leave, we get one last hint from a townsperson -- apparently there's a terrible monster called Dhrome Chimera hanging out in the western desert. Sounds like something we should go check out. We're already going to be heading there on the way to the Library, anyway, since we have to pass by the desert to get there.

So, we head out west to check out the desert and the library, because it doesn't seem like there's much left for us here at Karnak. And Cid's grandson Mid is supposed to be at the Library, too, so maybe we can ask him to help us with the whole Crystal-saving deal.

We start running into some new enemies like Zu, a big bird thing. We get to try out our new weapons. Using a Bell as a weapon, the character will kind of... shake it in the air, and then these little translucent bells fly out and bop the enemy. The damage seems to be kind of random, on par with the Flail. Actually, it doesn't seem to have the same upper range as the flail from my experience using it, so maybe it's on bogey with the Flail.

Either way, it's at least more reliable than rods or staves, and Geomancers are also able to equip knives, so we can swap out to some blades if need be. I think this game has hidden damage attributes like blunt, piercing, slashing, etc. and some enemies will resist them. Like how we couldn't really use the knives on the turtle things but the rods did pretty well.

In the grasslands and plains areas, we get access to some cool elemental powers, like Wind Slash which sends air blades across the battlefield, greatly damaging all enemies. It's enough to take out most of what we encounter in these areas in one hit. Sadly we almost always seem to get the Twister ability as our Gaia attack, which just... makes a tornado appear by the enemy. I don't even know what it does. Maybe it has a 5% chance to confuse them or something? Or maybe it can cause instant death to them, but the success rate is just miserably low. It never says "Miss" or anything, though. Just tornado then nothing...

There's only a short path of plains west of the broken wall before we get to the desert. And here we find that Chimera thing that someone was talking about! It looks pretty neat, with the head of four different animals coming out of it. Maybe we'll get some kind of special prize if we beat it?

Just kidding. It attacks rapidly and deals tons of damage to the entire party at once. We get wiped before we can even scratch the thing.

The goal here is actually to hug the mountain range near the desert and try not to step into the desert at all to avoid fighting this thing for now. Maybe we can come back later and try, but it's definitely way too strong for us at this point.

Past the desert, it's just a bit more walking before we find the Library of the Ancients surrounded by forest. We head inside and learn that Mid is there, but ran off somewhere looking for a book. And of course, the basement stacks are overrun with monsters. Because you know monsters love to hang out in their local public library... I wonder if they issue monster library cards.

Going into the upper floor of the library, we find a bunch more scholars who just say boring stuff that boils down to "books are good" and "monsters are bad" and stuff... though one person does tell us that there was a monster named Byblos that appeared near the Wind Shrine once long ago and then was sealed beneath the library. How much do you want to bet we will have to fight it?

When we enter the basement, we find... a very strange layout for the bookshelves. In fact, it seems like there's not really anywhere we can go. But with a little walking around...

One of the bookshelves shifts suddenly to the right, opening up a path for us to walk through.

Wandering around a bit more, we find that there are random places on the ground that, upon being stepped on, will cause one of the bookshelves to move. There's absolutely no indicator of where these are or which bookshelves can move or which spots move which bookshelves. You just kind of walk around until you happen upon a place where a bookshelf moves and then try to remember where it is.

For some of them, we even have to crawl through holes between books on the shelves to the other side of the shelf, or climb up on top of the shelves themselves and step on one of these weird magical spaces somewhere up there. I really would like to know who the hell decided this was a good way to build their library. And how do they organize all this with the Dewey Decimal System? Do you need like a map and instructional manual just to find the books you want?

We run into some book enemy things... there are actually quite a variety of them, and they're all named "Page" with a number after them. It's more like a monster that stands on a book, usually, though this one is like a face coming out of the book.

It has a pretty obnoxious ability called Level 5 Death, which automatically kills anyone whose current level is a multiple of 5. So this would be pretty bad if the whole party was, like, all level 15 at the same time or something.

Oh.

So, uh, we go run around outside and fight stuff til everyone is level 16.

In the library we have access to some different environmental abilities using Gaia. The one that seems to almost always show up is Ignus Fatuus. Dictionary time! Well, apparently Ignis Fatuus is just Latin for will-o-wisp, and it literally means "stupid fire."

Anyway, it seems to deal decent damage most of the time, and even has a chance of confusing the enemy.

Deeper in the library after many bookshelf-moving obstacles, we arrive at a suspicious book sitting out alone. And although a random book on the floor in a library would not be anything of great interest to anyone ever except maybe a librarian who would care for all of six seconds while they put it back on the shelf, in a game a book on the floor means CRAZY IMPORTANT THING so we go check on it.

And when we talk to the book (yes, we talk to it), it says that it's been sealed in the book for many years and only those who can withstand its flames will be able to summon it. Kinda like the trial thing Shiva had us do.

Except this time, it's Ifrit instead of Shiva. Ifrit is really not so bad. He can do a Blaze attack that damages the whole party, but the damage is easily recovered with a single Cura from anyone's White Magic. He also can use Fire or Fira to attack a single party member. Fira does a lot of damage, but again, it's something we can just heal up. Having a whole team of healers is pretty useful.

Our knives don't seem to do a lot of damage, so I try out some other stuff. Gravity doesn't seem to work, but surprisingly we can actually confuse Ifrit! The Confuse spell is very cute, with little black Chocobos flying around the enemy. I guess I would be confused if that suddenly started happening too.

But sadly, confusion is not helpful, because Ifrit just starts casting his fire magic on himself, which only heals him...

So we stab him again to get him to turn back around and face us. It seems we're just going to have to chip away at him with our daggers.

Since there's not much difficult about it, it just takes a long time to let the guy bleed out, and then he grants us the use of his powers. So now we have two summons that we can't use because we have no summoners.

Galuf and Bartz level up the Geomancer Job, which allows them to equip the Gaia ability while using other Jobs.

Continuing through the poorly-planned library, we run into more Page monster things. Page 128 is a bug thing that douses us in "gummy liquid," and Page 256 is a mask with feet that can do an ability called Moon Song to cause the party to go berserk. This is particularly annoying because berserk status simply makes a party member automatically use their basic attack skill when their ATB Gauge is full, instead of letting the player choose an action. And right now Lenna has the lifewhacker equipped, so she just constantly heals the enemy... So every time a Page 256 popped up after this, I immediately would have Lenna switch over to the Flail, just in case.

Often times, after hitting one of the Page enemies enough, it will sink into the book and another one will appear in its stead. Each Page's number is a power of 2, from 32 to 256, and I think there's some kind of weird mathematical pattern or formula that is used to determine whether the enemy is defeated or if it is replaced by another page. Sometimes they'll even be replaced by a duplicate of themselves (so like, page 32 turning into page 32).

But of course I have no idea. I just like... vaguely remember hearing about this long ago when I was playing the PS1 version and was more sociable online.

Hey, I'm still online though. Let's see if we can find out.

... OK, I got tired of searching and couldn't figure it out, but the Page enemies do have set HP, so maybe it's just when you defeat one, there's a chance of it being replaced by another or being defeated. Some of these battles dragged on forever with tons of Page enemies coming out one after another, and some were over almost immediately. So it seemed pretty random.

So if anyone knows the specifics to how these Page things work, please comment and let me know!

We keep traveling through the Library which is just a bunch more of this kind of weirdness, climbing through and over bookcases and stuff... at one point a bookshelf moves in front of us no matter what we do, but then it realizes we're hanging out with Ifrit and lets us through.

Eventually we arrive at the deepest and most difficult-to-reach room in the place, which of course is where Mid is hanging out.

But before we can talk to him, some books... appear... on the screen. And Galuf has a bad feeling. I don't know. It doesn't really make sense, but BOSS BATTLE!

Oh, it's Byblos. That thing we heard about. It casts Protect on itself, which lowers all physical damage done to it. So our flails and knives are even weaker now...

But the thing is not immune to Gravity, so we can just chop its HP in half a few times, and it's already really weak. We try out Gaia, and Ignus Fatuus kills it. Just a few turns. I can't really comment much on this because it was over so quickly.

After we defeat Byblos for whatever reason it decided to attack us, we talk to Mid, who does the whole cliche "I-was-caught-up-in-this-so-badly-that-I-didn't-notice-the-giant-battle-right-behind-me" shtick. And everyone is like "HOW WEERD" and then Mid shows us a shortcut to leave so we don't have to go all the way back through all that mess we had to go through to get here. And basically we just crawl into a bookshelf and pop out right on the top floor (knocking one of the scholars off a ladder). Why... couldn't we have just used this in the first place...

Everyone is glad to see Mid is doing alright, and Mid talks about how he found this great book that they might be able to use to repower the Fire-Powered Ship now that the Fire Crystal is dead.

When he says he has to go show it to his grandpa Cid, we tell him that Cid doesn't seem very energetic anymore, and Mid seems mad because his grandfather NEVER gives up. He storms off to go find him and we're left alone in the library.

So, uh, I guess we'll go try to find where they are to see if we can get the story to start making sense again.

---