Fourteenth session of The Abyss: Playing as Asch.
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After waking up as Asch, I explore Yulia City. The underground town seems really big and futuristic compared to most of the medieval or mechanical-themed places we've visited so far. Asch talks with everyone on the city, reunites de team to get back to the surface. They put the Tartarus in some sort of energy current, and that makes the boat go up back to the sea. By the way, the explosion left a giant hole in the planet's crust, and all the sea water is going down. If this wasn't a magical world, I'd say all the water in the oceans would end up there and would dry the seas, causing something like a Mad Max morld. Only salt everywhere you go... Fortunately, this runs on magic logic, so the team can continue without problems. They decide to follow Van's activities, and go to the city of Belklend, where apparently they have been studying the art of cloning (it has another name in the game, but it's basically cloning, so for the sake of simplicity I'll call it that). I take the opportunity to explore with the Tartarus and go to various ports to get supplies. Luke and Tear are still on Yulia city, so I don't have my main healer and my main brawler, Asch is too slow for my taste .It gets too much damage, bad when I can't heal him at the same speed as before.
We reach the Belklend port, and then travel to the city, which is not on the coast. Once we reach the city, we go to the labs, and we apparently can enter without any kind of authorization, they must recognize Asch. Once there, the team meets a guy that says he helped on the kidnapping of Asch years ago. The scientist used something called fomicry to experiment and copy things, a substance that was initially created by Jade! I suppose his necromancing studies needed some of that, because he says using fomicry on living things is forbidden. The scientist says something about Van's preservation problem, and then shuts up when he realizes he said too much, and runs away. Isn't anyone going to stop him for interrogation? Guess not, he ran away. The team decides to go to the Ortion cavern, the place where fomicry is produced/extracted/synthezised. All this time, there's been a bit of tension in the group. Luke is still annoyed about the rest of the team going with Asch instead of him. Guy doesn't seem to like Asch that much and goes away (dammit, now I lose Guy the Guy? No fair), and Natalia is conflicted about him. After all, Asch is the guy she was in love with all this time, and it seems the feeling was mutual, but Asch doesn't want to go through that again because he thinks he's not the same person he once was. And there's a lot of moments between those two when they reember something from they childhood and wish for the good old times. They go to the cavern and explore the place a bit. For a place where this valuable product gets made, there's an awful lot of monsters in here, what did the workers do with them? They find two things in there: one, a machine that tells them Van is planing to produce a very big object with the fomicry (as big as a piece of a continent!) and two, a pair of cheagles. One is a clone and one is the original.The team talks about the risks both the original and the copy suffer through the procces, that could lead to progressive degeneration and death for them. When they are exiting the cave, a giant monster appears from the waters and attacks the team. It's a mix between a tentacle monster, a giant clamp and Zoidberg, all while calling to jelyfish reinforcements. I miss Tear and Luke, I have to spend a lot of my gels to keep the team alive during the battle because I can't heal as fast as I'd like.Once it dies, there's an earthquake, and Asch informs that the crust is still falling apart due to Luke's actions. Asch says the next pillar to fall will be the one close to St. Binah.
We go back to Luke, waking up in Yulia City. He wants to go back to the surface but he doesn't know how. He heard about the danger St.Binah is in, so he goes out searching for Tear. She is in some sort of inner garden (there is no sun underground, so only special flowers can grow). Tear says that even if he reaches St. Binah in time, he would have no idea how to solve the problem, and scolds him because he doesn't think for himself. You are right to do that Tear, he deserves it, but now it's not the time! But he gets affected by the criticism, and swears he will change into something better. In a cutscene, we see him cutting his long hair to simbolize his compromise to change who he is. It's a very anime-esque scene, but I can't stop thinking about what will the gardener when he finds out a bucket of hair all around the garden. They decide to go talk to Tear's granfather for help. More game another day.
