Black Matrix Zero Part 4: Who Are All These People?

So new guy's name is Exal, more or less. I put a BP thingy on his Falchion and give Cain the Cutlass, and then we're off again!

Big pile of dudes here, but most of them are equal to or lower than our level. It goes pretty smoothly.

Semi-counterintuitively, Luca has a healing spell; it goes by the name of Lilim. I say "semi" because yes, she's a demon, but she's also The Girl, which gives her an 80% chance of being the party healer. The last two poor bastards run down a dead-end alley and we run them down.

And again, Victoly! We have five people now, but only get enough XP to level 4 to level 4. I decide to leave Yohane behind for now. A long conversation with Exal commences. The new keyword of the day is "Cipher Bunk," or possibly "Cipher Punk." The font's a little muddy so I can't tell if I'm looking at quotation marks or circles. Either way, I hope this one will replace Incest as our talking point entirely. ...nope, somebody just mentioned that, and also the name Lilith. I'm sure that'll be significant. Stei is still upset about being bludgeoned half to death, but talking with Exal seems to cheer her up a bit. Everybody argues a bit, and Zion seems to take Cain's side. Then we get Cain thinking about a stream of keywords: Incest, Lilith, Matia. I bet there's a connection to two of those, and hopefully one isn't Incest!

Then we get to this neat little town screen. Moving the cursor over various people gets us the options Talk, Shop, or Battle. First things first: Shop. Better armor for most everyone and a new whip for Luca.

At the end of the last battle we got this as a prize, the Stone of Tobit. It's an accessory, so I give it to Cain.

And now it's time to battle this dude in the upper left corner.

We're around the corner on this map. One guy's Level 5- the stage leader- but the rest are pushovers. Once we've pushed them over, we try out Yohane's Luminacros spell.

Impressive! But it only does 4 damage. Not so impressive. Oh well, we'll just have to do it manually. Which we do, and it didn't take much. I did learn that if you can heal a person before their body's destroyed, they'll get back up. Very good to know. But this seems to be a practice battle of some sort which you can repeat as you like. I give it one more go, which gives enough to get Yohane's level up to the rest of the group. Time to move out!

Cut to a prison, where a girl with a chain around her neck is either thrown into a wall or trips into somebody. She mentions Exal, and then talks to a random portrait I don't recognize. They talk about Lilith a lot- guess they main the Siren in Borderlands. Then it's back to battle prep.

Stage boss is this guy, whose name is Ibel. Or possibly Ivel, because his name uses the same katakana as Veil except in a different order. When we begin the stage there's more talk, with Exal and Yohane talking to Ivel. And then, Battle!

Ivel being level 7, this seems like a good time to try out the alternate attack option. It's pretty effective, but I wouldn't say super-effective. Interestingly the stage doesn't end until we destroy Ivel's body.

And of course we rescue the girl, who seems to be Lilith. You can tell Lilith is supposed to be just as moe as all hell, because Lilith constantly refers to Lilith in the third person. Then some guy wanders by and mentions someone named Valtos...

...who I assume is this guy. Some of our party have flashes of discomfort around him, but I'm not sure why. Then more blah blah Incest blah blah Matia and we're back outside the building town thing.

And then a wandering Mandalorian poses for a photo outside Tourist Trap City.