[Coldsaturn]

"If I had to guess more, I think its the last two that are most likely to be correct"
Of the last 2, one of the two is correct.

NIP:
Yeah once other people started to ignore that principle, he might have stopped caring himself because "what was the point" or maybe because whoever stopped following it (his own team? backtrackers from traceback I?) was starting to do damage and he needed to correct whatever he could.

AWWWW the anecdote where he meets MC for the first time <3
And yes, it's established that Earth's core dies, gets replaced artificially with a new one and this new home is Philos. There's also another text where it's better mentioned that Philos is an entire galaxy, and then you have the planet (capital planet?) with the artificial core where everyone lives long long long long long long long lives.
Also, when Xavier goes away to search for a protocore that could save MC and comes back a little too late, don't we get a little detail on something on his body that wasn't there before? Am I remembering right?
And he went to look for a specific protocore, and when we meet him in the present time he also has this habit of taking protocores, examining them, and then destroying them if they're not what he's looking for (he did it with the big wanderer that MC thought he was comforting).

The anecdote happens yes in the future, but if Xavier is a time-traveler then it's in his past, technically.

Paradoxes:
I haven't decided yet if we're in a multiverse where we can change the course of "destiny" or if time is set and counts time-travelers too (so there are no paradoxes because they're already counted). A sort of "by trying to prevent X you actually make it happen"
But this is a chinese game and there IS a spiritual way of conceptualizing faith and death/rebirth, so there's that too.


Raf:
well...
 

videotutorials:
Yeah I totally get that. So many make their videos reach the 10 minute mark just because they can then be eligible for ads and get some cents out of it, which in turn makes it irritatingly full of useless fillers. But I always watch those youtube videos at least 1.5x, so I fix the issue that way lol

[ChicletPrime]

oh my god they are hiding clues EVERYWHERE. who would have thought to check the text descriptions of the damned combat skills?

I get the impression that Rafe lies a LOT.

i am delighted! i am also feeling a tad overwhelmed (in a good way). I mean, its coming together sort of at least in a general sense but my itchy brains wants to go back and start making index cards or something, and I am not sure if that's a good idea (stall now to build resource lore library for later for my own fun and giggles) or not (i have chapters still to get through! i haven't met sylus yet!)

are you a man believing himself to be a turtle, or a turtle dreaming that he is a man? philosophy will drive you into a mad barrel.

PREDICTION: I'm reincarnating constantly along with the guys (at least those of them that do die, and not the semi-immortal sunshine ones and maybe lemurian people) and we're all tied up in this terrible timey wimey ball of horrible consquences and none of us can break out because none of us can change the way our hearts beat.

ALSO: read the Anecdote of Zayne on the medical team at Mount Eternal, his dreams of mass slaughter, his (implied) choice that in THIS lifetime he will fight that by saving as many as he can, and then a really great description of how he single-handedly beat up an entire field of bad guys. But I have to read it again because it almost sounded at the end like he only destroyed what he thought were the bad guys but instead killed his own team? It was late, I was sleepy, I need to go through that again. Also, there were names I should probably try and remember but won't.

I'll be honest, in the text at least, Zayne sounds like a really scary guy that you do not want to be on the wrong side of a battle from.

[Coldsaturn]

Yes the skill description was very Dark Souls of them and I totally got there by chance in that I had never really given much thought to those generic descriptions, sort of like when you constantly read stuff and you think this too must be filler to occupy space but then you learn something somewhere else and this tidbit suddenly makes your brain ping. It’s obscure enough that a popular channel on YouTube that does in depth character analysis of the LIs looking at their trauma etc. (you will get the links in the near future once you’re clear of spoilers because that’s some good food) legitimately said that Raf is not acting out of revenge but more like the sad kind of desperation. And I was sitting there and Raf was sitting there holding a printed board of his skill description and we were looking at each other in silence and it was very awkward.
This will be a leitmotif in the fandom. People constantly get Raf “wrong”. I’m 200% in favor of headcanons and taking these fictional dolls and cutting their hair and painting their face, whatever, but it’s quite interesting how with canon Rafayel you get people who only take him for the comic relief goofball and completely ignore the fact that he has a bounty on his head, or people who embrace his tragic backstory and mollify him into a sad fishie who’s fighting alone against the world. I mean, he is a sad fishie and a passionate and sweet lover yes, but that man is also a cold blooded manipulator, and he does it so well he’s even doing it to the players.

I totally feel you! Once you start noticing that the writers actually put thought into the plot, you suddenly get paranoid because what else could be info that you might be missing, if there are clues everywhere? But trust me, your brain will start to connect the dots soon and if you’re even a fraction like me and get obsessed, the amount of time your brain will run lads content in the background will do the rest for drawing mind maps for you. You won’t feel lost for long. Still overwhelmed because it’s a lot, but you’ll know where to look at.
I’d suggest letting the rest of the story you’re missing rain on you, and only once you have gathered all the main materials and got a general gist of where we’ll be, then you can start backtracking and putting things in order. I say this because if you try to stop now and go immediately back to the start to take notes, you might not know what is relevant info and what isn’t. The game isn’t so dense that every single word counts, it’s just that they do foreshadowing very well. But you can’t catch foreshadowing beyond very obvious ones right on the first read, you need that hindsight pov. I’ll be here to help you organize your thoughts and point the flashlight to areas that you might be overlooking, but go on. You still have anecdotes to unlock that will make understanding the beginning of the game easier, and 2 LIs who are waiting to join this unofficial harem/polycule.

That’s certainly a prediction that is in the range of the heat of the smoking gun, you’re that close.

Zayne in the anecdotes and world underneath texts is amazing. Once again with feeling I’m asking infold to drop the zayne novel. I need it. Like I believe I’m fine and neutral about him in the main chapters and his cards, but then his texts drop and I’m not immune to him at all.
What happened on that mountain is very important, definitely put a pin on it.

[ChicletPrime]

9. Into Deep

• oooh boy, okay. what are we gonna find out NOW.
  
• uh. okay. of all the "next things" i might have been expecting, Zayne's voiceover while in my rather swanky bedroom was NOT on the bingo card. "perhaps they don't want anyone else to get their hands on it, as they try to obtain one for themselves."  i'm still unclear exactly what differentiates an "aether" core from a regular protocore, than than maybe sheer power level. "or there are aether cores already in their possession."  aw, you mean i'm not alone and unique and worth my weight in political favors?
  
• Shit, Zayne's talking to Xavier??
  
• no wait, these have to be flashbacks to previous conversations. phew. levels of conspiracy back down to manageable levels.
  
• thanks, flashback to Rafayel. i WOULD make great bait, wouldn't i? i smell good too.
  
• if i'm the dangling lure, are you the big fish with the jaws?
  
• go me, i'm calling Rafe because... why aren't i calling the guy who can flash out of anything like sunlight?
  
• i love phone calls. it even has the slightly distant tinny sound.
  
• "Meet me at The Nest. Show me how to fish."  booyah, baby! lets do this thang!
  
• swankly club time and i appear to be dressed in.. black leather? excellent.
  
• oh great. fuck boy shows up trying to trade me not-illegal-protocores right on the floor. do i look cheap or something? this is supposed to be a great disguise! (although i am still wearing my Hunter's watch, jeez)
  
• handsome handsome Rafe
  
• i am SOOO naive, i can't stand it
  
• exit Rafe? oh man. this is not going to go well.
  
•  yup. check out the next quest name
  

10. Trap.

• time for the abandoned warehouse and the rough guys with rubber hoses i guess.
  
• wow. hologram flyer offering 100,000,000 credit reward for bounty target Lumiere. "duration: long term". i guess it doesn't matter how long it takes, somebody will pay for him.
  
• other bounty targets are peanuts in comparison
  
• "mission level:" five red triangles. that's... that's hard, right?
  
• wah? the lights went out?
  
• oooh, creepy red eye in the machine. LOVE IT.
  
• crap, its looking at me. why are you looking at me? i am just your average run of the mill wannabe mafia boss don... thing.  (and Xavier is "just a normal Deepspace Hunter". this is a very flawed plan all right)
  
• this looks suspiciously like that eye was was staring at me from the sky the night before Caleb died, only smaller and with less menacing fog effects.
  
• SPOTLIGHT
  
• oh crap.
  
• I THINK I'VE BEEN SOLD OUT.
  
• oh great, now we're going all vampire hunt? guys, i'm just here to buy some non-illegal things and maybe take home a date.
  
• oh great, i got needled in the .. somewhere. where's my needle?! i got a needle somewhere too, damn it. i am way too slow.
  
• well, maybe not exactly abandoned warehouse
  
• RAFAYEL?!
  
• why are you holding a black glass?!
  
• handsome, oh SO handsome Rafe.
  
• what the whatting WHAT?
  

oh, maaaan. challenge fight. what is HAPPENING?!

(aaaand I am back to needing to level a bunch of cards before i can progress). what the whatting what holy shit, what did i just see exactly.

[Coldsaturn]

END OF UNDER DEEPSPACE

So many things here.
Nest!Raf, you'll always be famous. And people still act like you're just a whiny brat. This dude is familiar with illegal auctions, has a bounty on his head (the same kind of bounty is flashing for Lumiere, only Lumiere is worth a lot more, but that tells us that the people who can take bounties are there) that might be fulfilled by the same people that are there in the club yet he's there in all his charm networking in the shadows.
And what a network that is.
Good catch on the eye. I swear they paid one of the personality core spheres from Portal lol.
Now, let's talk a bit about what is happening with Raf and this handsome dude in the shadows.

1. That is a fully rendered model. You don't do that with someone that won't be VERY relevant later on. We just don't know WHO he is yet. But we know some things. First off, something you can see flashing proudly on his suit jacket is the Ever logo. The thing about the logo is that if you look at it carefully, you realize it looks like an eye that is looking slightly to the side.

Second thing that you might not notice because you're not familiar enough with it, is that his voice sound basically the same as that of Caleb. Except that the quarter of the face we see doesn't look like Caleb at all, so that might just be a matter of needing a voice actor.

Back to business.
Raf: "Now's not the time to celebrate. The big fish we want hasn't fallen for it yet. Did you bring the stuff I requested?"
and a small package comes out. A protocore? Something else??
Raf is doing shady business with someone from Ever? And someone expensive, by the look of it? Is that dude from Ever double-crossing his company? Is Raf??

"You're fine with handing over a fresh catch just like that?"
"Do you really think they can handle the prey I caught?"

So we're talking about "handing over" MC to the N109 Zone, since this entire thing was in order to become bait who then is brought inside the Zone so we can finally get involved with Onychinus. As of now we haven't been sold out really, that was the plan from the start, she just didn't know how it was going to happen exactly.
Raf believes in us, which is very hot. We will walk in and out of the N109 Zone without issues.

And finally, finally we get the other half of the initial cutscene, who plays out entirely like this:

VOICE OVER FROM PAST
- "Day 1326 attention: target anchor lost, no response from base. TracebackII is about to pass the event horizon and enter the black hole"
- ((the automatic voice suspiciously sounds like ours now)) "We are stuck in this loop, this never ending journey."
VOICE OVER FROM PRESENT
- "Hello Linkon City, DPSC ((DeeP SpaCe)) FM here to greet you on this early morning. Did you sleep well night? Weather's nice today with winds at 5 kmph. Certain areas have a higher Metaflux index due to the Deepspace Tunnel. Expect Wanderers to appear more often. We would like to thank all the hunters in the city for allowing us to live a normal peaceful life. Next, a detailed report for each district. Areas that are at high risk of being attacked by Wanderers--All medical personnel please get ready. Today is gonna be another busy day.
We now have a message for all the new Hunters who recently passed their exams. Now that your journey is about to begin we want to express our deepest gratitude and wish you all the best as you face the challenges ahead! 
And...that's all for today. But before we go, please enjoy this gift we received from deep space 14 years ago ((when the tunnel opened during the Chronorift)): Love and Deepspace. These electromagnetic signals have traversed time and space. A miracle of the ages. One day, we will be able to evolve from our current limitations, transcend the boundaries of life...and reach the stars. At a certain moment in the future we can pass through the Deepspace Tunnel...and discover the future awaiting us."
VOICE OVER FROM PAST (end of chap 8)
- "TracebackII will reach the edge of the Deepspace tunnel's umbra within one day. Our journey through the Deepspace Tunnel begins. Destination is in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way--Once the home of humanity: Earth.
((galaxy looking suspiciously like an eye))
Activating Course Correction Engine. The final countdown has been initiated..."
VOICE FROM PRESENT (end of chap 8)
- "When alpha-P0159's light shines through the Deepspace Tunnel, illuminating Linkon Tower's pinnacle...The closest we've been to it in the last 4.6 billion years. The galaxy's name is derived from the Greek word "philo." ((Love)) It is the most exquisite gem in Deepspace. Philos. Humanity remains shackled to time. Fortunately there are other lives in this boundless starry sea. Tonight's weather: clear sky with winds around 7 miles/hour. Everything is serene inside the Deepspace Tunnel. Goodnight, Linkon city. May you rest in the Milky Way's embrace, drifting in a realm of long and happy dreams."

So present humanity catches a celestial body in the now named Philos galaxy. We're looking at our future, future, future home once the Earth dies, and where Xavier (and others?) come from.


BTW, you can directly jump to the beginning of Long-Awaited Revelry without needing to finish the battle challenges! You will be forced to complete battle challenges within the same section, but not when you're going from one section to another, since it's been unlocked for you for a while. There's no more plot to be extracted from Under Deepspace until we go back to it while backtracking.

[ChicletPrime]

- didn't catch that the voice was similar to Caleb (mostly because i have one recorded phone conversation with the guy and a handful of quests back in Chapter 5 or something). You're right, that doesn't seem like a relevant thing to the story, because unless it IS Caleb, its a red herring and it can't possibly be Caleb since he's all tied up in whatever shenanigans are happening in Deepspace Aeronautics, not in an unethical research lab (other than as the lab subject).

- is the big fish Sylus? please don't tell me, i want to be surprised.

- the jewelry box is certainly big enough to contain a small protocore, they certainly aren't huge. i highly doubt its jewelry. i don't know, it just seems a little too on the nose to be a protocore and why would Rafe even want one? unlike Xavier, he doesn't seem to be interested in fixing my heart issues, he has no problem hunting any other type of protocore considering how easily he put down the dreadwaterwyrm,  and if he wants a fancy aether core, he could just rip mine out my chest if he needs it that badly.

- Zayne's friend William in the anecdote of Mount Eternal died of some sort of vicious crystal attack out of nowhere that took him over in seconds. Zayne could freeze the corruption for a heartbeat but couldn't stop it (so his ice is at least minimally effective) and got his Linde award for the first "abdominal aortic repair" (there's a set of words that don't go together!) on a heart corrupted by crystal (i forget the specific wording). Unclear if it was my heart or somebody else with a similar case. If Protocore Syndrome is a way of saying crystals are growing inside you, that's pretty interesting thing. Aether core, crystals in the heart, regular protocores which do appear crystalline...

- and YES, loved that Rafe was all "I caught it, certainly. But I bet you can't keep it."  Hopefully we don't let the guy down.

- apropros of nothing, when i was watching the beginning cutscene again, i paid attention while Tara was talking to me and the recruiter/captain guy says ".. but we only care about results - the end justifies the means" which.. interesting. and since you're paying attention to Tara at the time, its very missable.

Thanks for cutting and pasting the ending text, because holy crap, that was a lot. Let's have some pictures!


-- if Ever (see creepy shot of the Milky Way Galaxy looking like an eye definitely, aka Ever logo) is working towards unshackling humanity from time (aka immortality), they definitely achieve it in the far future since Xavier is born to a long life. Beyond that, I'm not sure yet what the deal is, why Wanderers and Protocores are involved unless the solution to a long life is to have a crystalline heart only most people (in the past) can't handle it yet. Extract Protocores from Wanderers, infect people in a lab to study the results, most of humanity just gets corrupted but eventually goes on long enough be stable long enough in the general populace that they stay human long enough to corrupt more (ie, Dawnbreaker's world) and then eventually we break the Earth, install a new crystal core in the actual world to give IT a perfect new life and then... profit(???). See: Zayne's dream of having to kill all those people to spare them the suffering of corruption.

[Coldsaturn]

- I can only say that I'm 89% sure that's Caleb's voice, but I don't think it IS Caleb (and instead just the voice actor doing his job; there are a bunch of other side characters all sharing the same VA). Even without all the implications of Ever's pin on his suit, there's the fact that up until now the LIs have never directly interacted with one another. They know of the existence of some of the others (most notably when you meet Caleb at grandma's house he mentions Zayne, who, as a childhood friend of MC, was automatically also a childhood friend of Caleb), but you don't see them literally talk to each other in the canon timeline.

- Can't wait for you to play the next three sections!!! So much juicy stuff.

- You're right that Raf is pretty much uninterested in protocores, if not for...I don't know, grind them to make color so he can murder someone else lol
And now that I think about it, I'm not sure he even knows MC has protocore syndrome.

- You'll read again about Mount Eternal and what happened there. Definitely gather all the info you can. I can confirm MC is not involved with Zayne at that point, they only meet again after MC becomes a hunter and at that point they haven't seen each other since childhood.
Crystals are definitely a recurring image. Many enemies you face look kinda crystal-like, Philos is called "a gem" etc.

- Excellent job listening to the background audio!

- Yes, it looks like Ever will succeed in their objective. What role Wanderers will play, we'll find out in the next chapters and texts. The future looks bright on one side and very grim on the other.

[ChicletPrime]

okay, chores finally over and i can sit down for a bit. okay. alright. moving on!

LONG AWAITED REVELRY
Ambiguous Chaos

Chapter 1: Cage

• i have no idea why i'm so nervous to start this. so what if i got a needle in the neck? Rafe sold me out but hopefully we both get something out of this. Xavier, i hope you are listening in like you're supposed to be!
  
• wow, 423mb download. this game is going to eat up my entire hard drive.
  
• oookay. engine sound in the utter dark. please don't tell me i'm being transported in a body bag over somebody's shoulder.
  
• "the rocking car is filled with the scent of low-quality leather."  who the hell knows the smell of "low quality leather" instinctively.
  
• nice, story recap for the ones that got this chapter after a release delay.
  
• this is not a competent kidnapper.
  
• eeeeee! mysterious voice in the dark! tsk tsk tsk Mr Kidnapper, you were being impolite when you snatched Onychinus' prey. i can only agree. how rude.
  
• oh great, now i'm being held hostage with a knife to the throat. hang on, red.. petals?.. in the air?
  
• "she's ours... we called dibs a long time ago."  i am SO the main character!
  
• didn't even see whatever knocked the knife away, it was that fast.
  
• woah, demon smoke guy thing out of nowhere.
  
• yes, i was very brave drinking out of the black glass! thank you for noticing.
  
• wow, ALL of them are just smoke'ing into the scene. that's a helluva trick.
  
• simple black uniforms, tasteful dark red detailing, devil horns, red eye slits. bird.. beak masks?  /appreciation
  
• silver chain and black feather tassel on the belt. one horn on each has a silver piercing/earring. is this a tweedledum/tweedledee thing?
  
• yeah, Thing One and Thing Two! I love it! and yes, silver earring on opposite ears for identification, my favorite little detail. looks like the tassels are on opposite sides too.
  
• "explains why boss is interested". ooooh. BOSS. take me to your leader, amigos! amigettes? gender-ambiguous raven things? i am all tied up and ready for carrying.
  
• ... SYLUS SENT THEM! woooo, so close you can taste it.  Mr Kidnapper seems rather pleased though and i don't like that.
  
• crap, gun to my face! SHOT TO MY FACE!
  
• my beautiful, beautiful face.
  
• augh!
  

2. Alike

• Good title, lets hear about the raven twins.
  
• wow. that looks ominous. dutch angle shot of the kidnapper, as red trails swirl around him.
  
• oh, that looks very painful.
  
• hey, bullet caught in mid-air! my face may be perfectly acceptable still!
  
• and the bullet explodes next to HIS face. hah!
  
• this HAS to be Sylus' entrance. this is flamboyantly showy and terrifying.
  
• aaaand picked up by the throat by invisible force and... the twins just turn around and leave.
  
• hah! one waves! okay, i like these guys already.
  
• holy shit, did Mr Kidnapper explode? ewwww. also. impressive.
  
• yeah, he's just particles and blood clots now.
  
• can somebody untie me now?
  
• and the bells tolls for thee. i mean me. 
  
• i like the forced perspective shots... first me looking up to the shadow figure on the broken wall with the pealing bell, and then him staring down at me kneeling on the ground. nicely done.
  
• ack, crow out of nowhere. and i collapse to the ground.
  
• oh my god, hello Sylus!
  
• the raven thing just forms and reforms? i love that too. is that how he does things -- his power in the shape of a bird when unused, then unleashed when he needs it? neat detail, if true.
  
• I LIKE THIS GUY. woah, creepy eyes though.
  
• .. "possess him... devour him... " wha-hey? are those my thoughts or something? his? no, that's a woman's voice. the world has gone very weird suddenly. i can't catch the rest of the words, there's a few layers going on. ". you'll gain the power you've always dreamed of(??)" "its yours for the taking....just kill him." yeah, i don't want to look into his eye either. what the hell. and there's a damned ticking clock under the music.
  
• holy shit, i grabbed the man's dropped knife and stabbed him? what the HELL IS GOING ON.
  
• and he grabs my hand with his power after only a small scratch on his cheek and he's laughing. maybe i should stop with the color commentary. no, the screenshots are worth the stopping every three seconds. 
  
• "is this how you greet a new friend?" and he just... wipes the wound away?!  I LOVE THIS GUY. we're going to have so much fun in his dungeon.
  
• why the fuck did i want to kill him so suddenly? "I guess you don't remember anything." I GUESS I SURE DON'T. STORY OF MY LIFE SO FAR.
  
• oh my god, he's decided to "jog my memory" by wrapping his fingers around my neck and hauling me in like a doll.
  
• jesus fuck what does this guy KNOW? "from your past to your future.. to even all the crimes you'll inevitably commit." what is this guy, a time lord? and i'm looking him square in the eyes again (not like i have a choice at this point) and the world is going weird again.
  
•  "after all, you and i... we're the same. true kindred spirits."
  
• aaaand i pass out.
  
• just noticed the heartbeat thump going on as the creepy music faded out.
  

immediately goes back and watches all of that again.

13/10, no notes.

okay, okay. watched that a couple of times more. that was a drug of an introduction. story just went off the already shaky rails.  okay. i can do one more for sure. then i gotta sleep.

3. Cornered Beast

• love me these titles!
  
• i'm awake again. thank god. on the floor. not great. untied. acceptable.
  
• oh bad. he's trying to resonate with me or make me resonate with him and after three days, we got bupkis. he sounds VERY disappointed.
  
• i've got new jewelry around my left wrist. a buckled piece of leather and a silver chain?
  
• my friend, i am in awe. he's very... something. call me trite, call me weak willed and easily led but so far he's made a hell of an impression. i am ALL for casual displays of immense power.
  
• holy .. okay. did he just grab me off the floor with his power and drag me to my knees in front of him?!
  
• THIS GAME
  
• i guess he really wants me to be able to boost his power to even more big numbers. buddy, are you sure you need it?
  
• the hand closeup shots are doing it for me, not gonna lie.
  
• dear lord this is hot
  
• and again, that voice "devour him.. he's yours... he's right there. before your very eyes." and then there's a power explosion between our clasped hands.
  
• but when we break apart, there's only streamers of golden light. Xavier?
  
• "its a shame your Evol has deteriorated into its current state."  please, somebody just give it to me straight for once!
  
• aHA! the people closest to me might be the one who want to kill me most. i knew it! grandma, what did you dooooo
  
• these VOICES are driving me and her crazy. we just attacked him again ... well, i wouldn't say for no reason, but its definitely the voices.
  
• dude. he called me a weak kitten. i will gnaw his kneecap off.
  
• THESE HAND SHOTS
  
• whoops, gun again. what is with the guns. oh shit, he's not going to hand it to me, is he? i'm not lucid right now! oh fuck, he did.
  
• "kill him. KILL."oh good gravy, can we stop with the compulsions! i am a strong independent Hunter who only needs about five guys, its manageable.
  
• don't do it, girl! he's got answers, maybe you can tickle it out of him after schmexy times! if you put a hole between his eyes, he'll probably just sigh at you and give that disappointed face again.
  
• "... you do owe me a curtain call grander than death itself."  i am going to quote this whole damned chapter i guess. its all so intriguing!
  
• okay fuck it, i'm pulling for Sylus' flower card too, i can't stand it.
  
• "want some help? yes? no? maybe so?" oh my god, THIS GUY
  
• are we actually going to shoot him in the heart?  wow. go.. go us? i think? this is so wrong and weird and now i morbidly want to know what will happen when we do.
  
• HOLY SHIT. he pulled the trigger for us.
  
• WHAT A VISUAL
  

okay, i am stopping here because this is delicious and i want to have something to dream about tonight.

Sylus is more than I figured he'd be, honestly, because I was trying to keep my expectations grounded. That is some helluva level of arrogance, confidence, mystic and secular power and I love his twins, raven and that he's had us for three days without interference. What is he trying to dooo? And what's with the implication that he knows everything we've not even done yet? And what is WITH all the voices whispering deliriously to eat him alive?

i am fucking thrilled.

EDIT: closed the game and my main screen is FULL of screenshots. oops. i'll deal with it in the moooorning.

[Coldsaturn]

WE'RE HEEEEERE

"wow, 423mb download. this game is going to eat up my entire hard drive."
You're on an emulator so I don't know if it works in the same way, but you can delete all the downloaded content from the account page (open your profile, it's the first button bottom page starting from the left) so the game gets lighter. You won't lose stuff or progress, you'll just have to download any story/audio/video file you want to watch. It will become very relevant when the new next update drops, because that whole mess of the last time with the game file doubling in size and requiring 50gb for some people is because with all the audios/videos/photos/main story chapters dowloaded, there's a lot of space occupied by that, and when it doubles for the update it becomes huge. So people usually basically delete all the cache before the update, so the size will stay at least half reasonable.

"hah! one waves! okay, i like these guys already"
My other two sons <3

"ack, crow out of nowhere."
You've already seen it :))) but I don't think you remember. It's all the way back in chapter 1 of Under Deepspace.

- Sylus is very...bird coded, let's say. But his evol is something else. You're seeing what it can do though.

"why the fuck did i want to kill him so suddenly?"
You've actually wanted for a whole bit. Onychinus' name came up in relation to the explosion that killed MC's grandma and Caleb, so MC believes they're (or Sylus, in particolar) responsible for it.

"from your past to your future.. to even all the crimes you'll inevitably commit." "after all, you and i... we're the same. true kindred spirits."
So it's less time lord stuff and more like "we're one and the same and I'm a mafia boss, what does that make you?"
By the way, this thing Sylus has with MC where he sees her as not just an equal, but literally a mirror reflection is so good because it creates a partners-in-crime dynamic that she doesn't really have with the others in this flavor.

"my friend, i am in awe. he's very... something."
daddy. He's very daddy. And no, it doesn't matter how I'm technically older than his anagraphic age. That man talks and walks like everyone is working for him and people act like it too. Can't blame them.

"i guess he really wants me to be able to boost his power to even more big numbers. buddy, are you sure you need it?"
That's the right question. Do you think he needs it? Is that the only reason he might want to resonate with her?

"its a shame your Evol has deteriorated into its current state."
So he knows us from a time when our Evol was full power or at least more than this sad excuse of power.

"dude. he called me a weak kitten. i will gnaw his kneecap off."
.....get used to it, I fear

"... you do owe me a curtain call grander than death itself."
The liiiiines he says!!!

"Yes? No? Maybe so?"
I would like to put on record that Sylus isn't the first one who uses this exact line. Raf did in one of his cards. And I LOVE the parallels between these two, which is also why they're possibly my favorite m/m ship among all the lads LIs.

The iconic shot of MC's recoil after shooting him while he's sitting on a throne and she's on his lap. Who's doing it like them? No one.

AAAAAAH can't wait for you to continue! Long-awaited Revelry is just delicious from start to finish, and Sylus is definitely a whole lot more of what anyone might have expected from just his character design or a few quick looks at his story.

[ChicletPrime]

- Yes, it looks like Ever will succeed in their objective. What role Wanderers will play, we'll find out in the next chapters and texts. The future looks bright on one side and very grim on the other.

The lyrics of the main theme song seem super relevant - I mean, all of them are but in response to the comment above:

(Free from the rule of death now seem so dull)
(Where no rivers would flow, no woods would grow)

PREDICTION: Ever(lasting?) achieves the unshackling of time, granting some version of immortality to humanity but in the process everything is now a wasteland of un-growth. If it can't die, it can't live either so its pyrrhic victory at best. So Traceback II tries to figure out where it went wrong in the past to fix the future, but they lost their anchor/target  and ended up in the wrong place or too far back or... something.