Curate of Curiosities

Previously, we found out that the ghost in Ramona's head is a rapist. And before she could even process that, her friends all got killed. Now, she's absorbed the Siren's remains into herself, granting the power that will replace the need for a full adventuring party.

And now she even has the power to consume the souls that she has collected, because now she is a true hero.

There's nothing else to do here, all that's left is to exact our revenge.

Anyone who reaches the top of the tower and successfully defeats its boss is granted any bit of information they desire, as long as it concerns events within city limits. Since the murder happened within this town, it shouldn't be hard to figure out where the killer went from here.

And who else should have made it to the top than that one guy from earlier with the eyepatch? And it looks like he put his request to good use.

He made it to the top of the tower by himself, and took on monsters that are likely meant to be faced by a full party, so expect him to be a challenge. Okay, maybe he's not too hard. He can reflect magic, but Ramona shouldn't have skimped out on physical attacks, and the rest of his skillset is nothing we haven't seen before. Like with a few other late-game bosses on this route, we only have to get him to less than half health to finish the battle.

You remember how the Siren wouldn't let us enter the tower before? This is why. For our final challenge. We have to go through this whole tower, from the very bottom, without shortcuts.

We've been through the first stratum before, so nothing to remark there.

These are children. You're not going to force your will on these children, aren't you? Or maybe even worse, seeing what the Siren already did to...

You know, once we reach the boss of this place, we're going to ask how to get rid of you for good. You'd think that with all that time you spent stuck in that statue when not jumping from host to host, you would have learned a thing or two about respecting boundaries!

On to stratum 2. I started exploring this stratum early on, but left after picking up what I thought I needed.

This floor looks very different from most of the other tower floors. In fact, I remember at the bounty office, there were a few bounties that operated out of the tower. If only things had gone differently...

I remember this boss from the demo. It can be pretty hard if you face it early in the game with only three party members. In fact, there was even a quest to gather item drops so that the scientist guy from the manor could build an item that would weaken it.

The treasure in its room is a bat. Just like what Devon would have...

You know what, let's move on. There's nothing for us here.

Imagine some anime cosplay mask being the very last thing that Gacy sees.

While on the topic of accessories, there is an item that you can collect called an Artifact Tarot. It's a lot like an artifact gacha, but it gives you an item based on one of the Major Arcana. They can be easily purchased, along with Artifact Gachas, at the Beautiful Day compound, but it hasn't been accessible this entire route, so there are precious few of these that you can obtain. What I got from mine is something called the Fortune Coin, which gives its user a random buff at the start of each battle. Certainly useful for whatever awaits us at the top.

Man, is the adventuring industry in a sorry state, if this many adventurers feel they have to turn to a life of crime to earn more.

At last, we reach the top of the second stratum and fill out our application to challenge the tower boss in earnest. Of course it, like everything else in this game, has to have some corporate bureaucracy involved.

But hey, not only will we get a lead on Gacy, but we'll finally be rid of the Siren for good. But what's the protocol for when the person challenging the tower has become that same "pseudo-Dark Lord individual" in all but name?

These are the roaming enemies you fight in this stratum. Under normal conditions (that is, with a full party) they would be really annoying to fight, what with their acting twice per turn and having a move that silences the party, but Ramona's recent upgrade makes them...well, still annoying but manageable.

On launch, fighting them was a very good way to farm stat-boosting items, but sadly it was nerfed in later updates.

The rest of this stratum is pretty tedious to get through. The floors are huge, and even with a lowered encounter rate, you're bound to get into four or five encounters while finding which door leads to the next floor.

Gacy? So he's related to the assassin? Could that be the reason why the bounty office was targeted.

It's the adventurers from the Lonely Hearts quest. I didn't expect them to make it all the way up here.

On the one hand, Sarah here's completely right. Even with her own party members, Ramona has shown less restraint than she should about using her powers. On the other, she willingly joined a cult that practiced necromancy, so she has no room to lecture her.

But of course, they're still no match for the Persuasion no Jutsu...

And whoever runs this doesn't care that she's practically a wanted criminal already; she still needs to go through the proper procedures to finish her tower challenge!

This is her trauma. The moment where everything fell apart. The moment Charlotte Gacy burst into her apartment and one by one, took out her party members: first Kyrie, then Devon, and finally Jasper.

And of course, because their entire life up to this point has been needless suffering, Jasper has the most painfully drawn-out death of them all from choking on poison gas.

But this is not just for her alone. For this is not only a test of the challenger's mental fortitude, but also a criminal's execution. Now, in our world, there are debates on the appropriateness of the death penalty--I once did a paper on it in college--so I wonder if there are similar debates in this world, especially when they're carried out by supernatural means.

I suppose it's appropriate that Ramona's very first and very last interaction with her would be while she's trapped in an inanimate object.

This battle, if you can call it that, is just you wailing on the Siren, in a manner that's very similar to how you first tested out your magic, while she is unable to do anything, thanks to the tower's power. How does it feel to be trapped and desperate for once?

As you're doing so, you relive her backstory, because we haven't had a clear view of it yet--Sheya had secondary info to go off of, and the Siren herself is just a bit unreliable.

Her love triangle (hey, isn't this sort of what was going on with Ramona's party?) with the other scientists, and her jealousy leading her to a murderous rage.

Her ill-advised resurrection at the hands of the man in the center of it all.

Her uncontrolled desire for this man...

Leading into the thing that the Siren herself already told Ramona about, but that she's forced to relive anyways.

What she did was already horrifying enough, but consider how up to this point, she as actively encouraging Ramona to go through with forming a polycule. Just so she could force her to do the same thing to her party members. Way to confirm my suspicions on the ethics of ghost-enabled polyamorous relations, game.

With her powers, the Siren drew monsters and other adventurers to her side, in a manner not dissimilar to Ramona, until eventually being slain by an adventurer named Petra Yetz. But although she faced the Siren alone, she didn't travel alone. There were two other adventurers travelling with her, Sheya Aman and Uzbek the slime. But sadly, she herself would be mortally wounded in the process.

So now it all makes sense, why Sheya was so invested in stopping the Lonely Hearts, and why they knew so much about the Siren.

You know, Claudine, you've been kind of helpful for a while, but now it's clear how pathetic you really are. How else can you describe someone who preys on the desperate and weak-willed, and slowly attempts to corrupt them so that they may help you fulfill your sick desires? And one of those victims was a child, and given what you did to the man you were in love with, I can't imagine your having anything wholesome in mind for him.

I'm surprised that nobody even thought of trying to get rid of you sooner. Burn in hell, you manipulative, self-centered, rapist piece of shit.

Now, let's have a little chat with the boss of this tower.

A Long-Due Confrontation (click to view)

But did you really think that the guys from the bar would be the only ones who would try to stop Ramona?

It's been obvious from the word go that the landlord is a scumbag, but this is just reprehensible. First, he purposefully turned a blind eye while a murder took place on his property. Then, rather than, say, investigating, he has the gall to bother the tenant in whose apartment the murder took place about the rent she still owed. And now, he's managed to follow her up the tower (though I wouldn't put it past him to just teleport up to the top like he did before) to shake her down for rent before turning her in to the police. Wanted criminal or not, this is one of the most short-sighted ways you could handle this situation.

Not even the Persuasion no Jutsu works on him anymore; he's that mad at her, or just that focused on that payday.

Fortunately for us, he's a bit of a pushover. All he can do is hit you for a rather feeble amount of damage. Besides that, he has an attack buff, but that does him little good. In fact, I thought that I had made a mistake in recording the fight with him: there was no way that he went down in less than three minutes!

He was the closest thing to an overarching villain that this game had. Did you really think that this route would allow him to get away from this in one piece?

Now, on to face the boss for real.

The Final Battle (click to view)

I believe that I mentioned that in this world, dungeons are formed from the power emanated by crystals that were shed by the space god when it descended to earth. You'd think that most of them would end up at around ground level, but the one for this tower rests at its top. Makes for a nice set piece I guess. I still don't want to spoil anything from Slimes, but this looks a lot like something you'd see there.

However, it looks like someone made it to the top before us...

Is it really a crime to aspire to something better, Sheya? Sure, the Siren did some unspeakably horrible things, but the Tower's already dealt with her, and there's no evidence that Ramona will do anything remotely comparable!

That aside, you need to consider that these two not only managed to make it to the top of the tower, but are also the teammates of the hero who killed the Siren the first time, so the fact that they're trying to stop Ramona is something to be wary about.

So a boss in two seperate senses, then. And one with exactly the same color scheme as Slimes.

I don't think you grasp just what kind of power Ramona has come into possession of. When you meet up with Navier again, you can ask him.

Wait, you mean Quinnith was inside Ramona while she and Claudine were planning this polycule business? As if things couldn't get any more revolting!

We're putting away a dangerous criminal, Uzbek! Plus, did you know that one of her teammates was a vigilante murderer who hunted down corrupt high profile individuals? Where was that energy with her? Surely somebody would have noticed one or more CEOs turning up missing!

That's oddly merciful of both of you, giving Ramona the chance to back down, even after everything she's done.

But it's too late. It was too late since the day she woke up in the clinic.

The final battle is against both Sheya and Uzbek, the first real allies that Ramona had. Unlike the landlord, they can easily overwhelm you if you're not careful. At regular intervals, Sheya can summon two chakrams that can debuff your stats, so it's best to deal with them quickly. Meanwhile, Uzbek? He can inflict bleed, which can very easily lead to being stuck in a healing loop, like with the Beautiful Day guy, as well as permanently lower Ramona's stats...which certainly sounds scary, but he doesn't use it all that often, nor do Ramona's stats get drained by a significant amount, so if you've been diligent with raising stats, it should be the least of your worries with regards to this battle.

In fact, this was the very first battle that I've lost to since...wait a minute, when was the last time I've actually lost a boss battle this playthrough? I guess since this is my third playthrough, I was ready for any trick that the game was willing to pull.

Oh, one last thing, you need to take both of them down on the same turn, or else they'll revive each other.

But eventually, they are defeated. And due to Ramona's special situation, the boss is willing to give us the info we need with no strings attached.

The only people who could stop her have been forced to stand down. Even the monster responsible for her suffering has passed on. Now nothing can stand in her way. Only now has she truly won.

Not even a pseudo-Dark Lord, like Claudine? God forbid a woman possess drive in this day and age...

If that landlord guy's spirit is still hanging around like the Siren's was, I would like him to know, this was all his fault.

And that was I Hate You, Please Suffer. For such a shoddy-looking game, it had quite a lot going on. You really have the feeling that you're trying to escape being merely a cog in the corporate adventuring machine. Too bad that when you do manage to escape, horrible, horrible things end up happening.

Moral of the story, don't make deals with ghostly rapists.