Romancing Saga 2: Fritz, Royal Exterminator

There's another guy here, and Amethyst loses her second-to-last LP saving him. He says something about the Termite Queen...

...who it turns out is just up ahead and indeed WAS the pulsating tube of Yuck we saw yesterday.

And we're getting the Big Boss music, so this one's serious. Well, then we'll get serious!

And we get seriously wiped in five turns. So next time I try the Wyrmslayer's Final Strike on it, and it does:

THAT. 562 damage worth of Flare-y goodness. And, as I predicted, breaks. Assuming we live through this fight, totally worth it.

Well, we don't. But we made a better showing, and if Richard hadn't run out of skill points, we'd likely have made it. So I'll restore more of them for him and then go again.

The queen has a series of annoying attacks: a group poison attack, an attack that does 500+ damage to a single target, and a Pheromone that charms the males of the party. Amethyst is generally the last person standing because of this, but we're still getting wiped out. A lot.

And then I figure out something important: the ants- er, termites -that are attacking people? If you approach from behind you get a free turn. So I can use them to power-level. I also learn that the reason that Fritz and Richard hadn't racked up any new techniques in forever is that they were out of space for them. So I drop a few of the less-useful ones, and powerful attacks start rolling in.

So we grind like freaking baristas until everybody except Walrus is out of skill or magic points, and learn a slew of new techniques and gain HP and skill levels. Fritz completely abandons the mace of his ancestors in favor of pure kung fu. Richard learns a 7-point Katana attack. Walrus learns and gains very little, but Amethyst gains some levels in Foom and some much-needed HP.

Then we use this item, which tops off the whole party's skill and magic points. And we tussle.

And it's still not enough. So I load, pop a restorative onto Amethyst who is the most useless without points, and we grind some more. Then what feels like a miracle occurs: Richard learns an extremely powerful GROUP-hitting sword technique.

We cannot allow such a glorious technique to be lost, here in this filthy termite mound. We. Must. LIVE!