Earthbound – Day 40

–Day 40–

There are a lot of people in town to talk to, and the fact that many of them teleport you away makes talking to them all quite time consuming. However, we eventually find exactly the person we’re looking for. Talking to the guy directly in front of the hospital ends up sending us to an as of yet unexplored part of town, which just so happens to be exactly what we were looking for. This new area is invisibly walled off from the rest of town, and contains another person in a Hawaiian shirt.

After a few more similar teleportations, we end in a small building with a Mr. T looking guy as well as a shadowy figure. This shadowy figure is apparently the exact person we wanted to meet. After teleporting out of the room the shadowy figure, now completely invisible, ends up following us around.

Obviously since he’s invisible, we have no idea what he looks like, or if he’s even still following us. However, as we walk around he simply won’t stop talking. It is through these dialogues that we discover he is the man with a unibrow and a gold tooth.

We might not be able to see him, but apparently the other true residents of Moonside can. As soon as we talk to the guy by the Monotoli building, he instantly notices his buddy and the two of them apparently head off to get some drinks. At least I think they’re both going. I can only see one of them after all.

Anyway, this opens up the path to the Mani Mani Statue, In front of which is an old man who simply exclaims himself to NOT be Monotoli before disappearing into thin air. Examining the statue itself is also somewhat unusual, Ness recognizes seeing it before, and then we are immediately thrown into a battle with it.

This battle with the Evil Mani Mani Statue is actually quite annoying. For its opening move, it used Paralysis α which took Jeff out of the fight before it even began. Already our fighting power is cut in half, and I don’t appear to have anything on me that cures paralysis.

Death Count: 7

What really made this fight unfair however is how it ended. The Mani Mani Statue “emitted a glorious light” and then POOF, Ness and Jeff both instantly fall to 0 HP and collapse. It wasn’t a powerful attack, it was just a cheap shot instant kill attack which should never be allowed.

There aren’t really any special preparations I can do to defend against an instant kill attack, so we simply head straight back to him and try again. Thankfully our second attempt goes much better. He doesn’t paralyze Jeff, so we actually get to fight the battle at full power. Then before long it is defeated, and we have put a stop to its evil powers.

After the battle we are once again engulfed in a blinding white light. When our vision returns, we found ourselves in some kind of warehouse with the Mani Mani Statue broken on the ground in front of us. It would appear the whole town of Moonside was simply an illusion created by the statue, and now that it is destroyed, so too is the illusion.

No sooner do we leave the warehouse and head back into the bar, we get a random call from Apple kid again. Apparently he has come up with another invention that he thinks will help us. It’s called the “Gourmet Tofu Machine” and like the name implies it makes different types of tofu. It’s still a work in progress, so at the moment it can only make Strawberry Tofu, but it’s a start. How a Tofu machine is going to help me is a complete mystery though. For all my problems at the moment, I can’t think of any that would be suddenly solved with strawberry tofu…

We leave the bar in order to meet the Escargo Express delivery guy with the device, but instead we’re greeted by a random monkey instead. Correction, we meet a random monkey which immediately runs into the wall of the bar and explodes for some reason. Anyway, this monkey has come to tell us that Talah Rama has finished fasting and would like to meet us in the monkey paradise back in the Dusty Dunes Desert.

The monkey leaves, and before we can even take another step, the Escargo Express guy shows up with our package. Or at least he was supposed to have our package, except he forgot it somewhere why passing through the desert. He mentions talking to sun bathers and them telling him about some secret monkey paradise. Of course, since Apple Kid shipped it “Neglected Class”, the delivery guy doesn’t really care that he doesn’t have it anymore. It’s our package, if we want it we should go get it ourselves.

The Escargo Express guy leaves and once again we are approached before we can even take a single step. This time it’s some fancy lady that overheard our conversation with the delivery guy, at least part of it anyway. She is apparently a maid that works for Mr. Monotoli and she is looking for some strawberry tofu to give to one of their special guests. So I guess that answers the question of why we need strawberry tofu in the first place. Now we just have to go out to the desert to get it.

Thankfully, the monkey paradise is very easy to find. It’s actually directly north of the shack where the bus drops you off, so it’s not a long trip at all. However, the caves leading to the actual monkey paradise seem like they’re going to be a pain to travel through. It’s not some maze full of monsters like the mine was, it’s just really annoying because all the paths are blocked by monkeys asking for handouts before they’ll move out of the way.

I don’t have everything the monkeys are asking for right now, but I give out what I can. Eventually I make it to the end and it would seem the tunnel choices I made lead directly to a dead end. The only thing here is a monkey talking about Dragonite and handing out eggs. This is just fantastic. It looks like we’re going to be spending some time in here paying off all the monkeys before we actually get to where we want to go.

I’m heading back to the store to stock up on things the monkeys are asking for, so join me next time as we try to trade our way into the monkey paradise. See you then!