The Crazy Bitch at This Banquet Is Me (1)
No guide today. Instead, just one quick note about a certain character's item interactions before we move on.
(Photo of Agnes Elizabeth Blaze)
See this mouse-dick-tiny little runt here?
Her firepower means you absolutely MUST take her into your party if you want the ending, and thanks to her whole family situation she'll join up with just a little sweet-talking — Luminor Academy's friendly public dealer, Agnes.
If you've played Lumiaka there's no way you don't know this brat, so let's skip the intro and get right to it.
(Photo of red wine)
(Photo of ale)
(Photo of whiskey)
You all know what these photos have in common, right? They're all booze.
Yeah, there are a shitload of drink types out there — Blue Curaçao cocktails, white rosé wine, whatever — but at the end of the day it's all booze once you're playing, so I'm not going to bother explaining each one.
These three are the ones you run into most in the game, so that's what I brought.
So why am I throwing this red chihuahua and booze together in the same post, you ask?
(Photo of Agnes + booze)
I brought them to show you what happens when you get THIS Agnes drunk.
You all know that booze is the most-used item for unlocking H-scenes in-game, and the ONLY character you can never get an H-scene from with booze is this Agnes right here. (Natalie gets one if you clear a single event while she's drunk.)
Obviously. The moment any explicit description of her showed up on screen it would straight-up trip youth protection laws, so the devs probably couldn't make an H-scene for her in the first place.
As a matter of fact, Agnes has no H-scene even after her solo ending. There IS a conclusion where she has two kids with the Hero and lives happily ever after, but anyway — not in the domestic release. (The Japanese version supposedly has it, but I never bothered looking, since Agnes is not fap material. Why would you look at illustrations of a chihuahua mating in the first place?)
In a game where the only way to see H-scenes outside of endings is basically plying characters with booze to set the mood (that fucking slut Lilith excepted), the reason Agnes alone has hers locked this tight is obvious, so I'll leave it there.
Anyway — this drinking habit of hers is what the devs created specifically to keep this oh-so-underage Agnes's H-scenes locked away.
Muzzle warning below.
(Photo of Agnes slamming the table in a rage)
(Photo of Agnes face-down on the table, drooling)
(Photo of Agnes beating the Hero with her staff)
See it? The astonishing evolution of an already rabid bitch transforming into an actual dog the moment she drinks.
Where Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge and learned shame, this bitch Agnes drinks and forgets shame. She was a garbage human being to begin with — the booze just brings out her true personality.
The second the alcohol hits, it starts with her suddenly flying into a rage and cursing out her family and the old fossils of her main house, then she's crying about how unfair it is that she's the strongest of them all yet still has to kiss the elders' asses, and if you fail to pamper her properly while she's at it, she snaps and charges at the Hero swinging her staff. (How the hell is THIS a heroine lmaooooo)
Anyway — even setting H-scenes aside, if a story event ever involves drinking, ALWAYS, ALWAYS stop Agnes from drinking.
Hunting the CGs is fine, but if this bitch gets drunk and goes on a rampage, her affinity and affection stats get shaved down hard the next day. She knows damn well it's embarrassing too lmao
(Photo of Agnes passed out drunk, face-planted on the table)
Truly the dignity of our proud Lumiaka heroines.
Today we learned about the Agnes–alcohol interaction. Watch yourselves out there, and don't get wasted and go full 'Agnes' on anyone.
The moment I laid eyes on the party members filing in behind the Hero Gehmajoshigi-gwat, a considerable sense of foreboding bubbled up in my mind.
Among the people the protagonist had brought along to the after-party, no fewer than two were, for all practical purposes, ticking time bombs.
Natalie of the Swordsmanship Department. Agnes of the Magic Department.
These were the two heroines you should never drag to a banquet crowded with strangers. To be precise, the ban applied strictly to any banquet where alcohol was involved.
As I said before, Natalie and Agnes possessed the shittiest drunk rages of any heroines in Luminor Academy.
If they simply couldn't hold their liquor and conked out after a single glass, that would have been fine — but those two, and those two alone, could never be allowed to let a single drop pass their throats. With Natalie, you'd be roped into sparring until every ounce of booze and stamina had drained out of her body; with Agnes, you'd be chained to the seat beside her, enduring her drunken whining until she finally passed out from sheer exhaustion.
'Still, at least if they came as Hunting Festival party members, each of them has a designated keeper. Small mercies.'
I had, of course, looked into the party that had won the previous Hunting Festival.
The Hero Gehmajoshigi-gwat and the Saintess Serista. The archer was, naturally enough, the elf Silena, with Natalie and Thomas filling the swordsman and lancer slots. And rounding them out, the firepower specialist, mage Agnes.
Seeing that they had assembled nearly eighty percent of the canonical Hero Party lineup had reassured me on a number of fronts.
Recruiting Natalie and Thomas together, in particular, had earned the guy a pretty high score in my private ledger.
'Recruiting the two of them as a pair means his goal is clearing the game, not farming heroines. Better than stumbling around chasing harem flags.'
Natalie and Thomas were childhood friends, and both of them stood among the candidates for the Hero Party.
For the record, despite the childhood-friend label, neither of them saw the other as merely a friend — or rather, Thomas secretly harbored a one-sided crush on Natalie.
Left to their own devices, the two would start dating on their own, and you'd get the childhood-friends pure-love route that ended in marriage at the credits.
If the protagonist muscled in and snatched Natalie away, the story did acquire a slight "but I liked you first" flavor — but that was how the devs had written it, so there was nothing to be done about that.
In other words, romancing Natalie required shoving Thomas out of the picture, and Gehmajoshigi-gwat had instead chosen to exploit the Natalie–Thomas combo synergy rather than discard it. For a more reliable, safer game clear.
'The main-story clear will keep rolling along just fine if I leave it to him.'
Luminor Academy was a high-difficulty game precisely because romancing heroines and clearing the game at the same time was so punishing — but if you committed wholeheartedly to the clear and nothing else, it was perfectly beatable even on a first playthrough.
Besides, this was only my guess, but Gehmajoshigi-gwat seemed like the trustworthy sort who would have gone and read a walkthrough somewhere before even starting his playthrough.
So long as he kept his eyes on the prize and didn't get tangled up with women, I had no choice but to root for him. The Demon King had to die for this world to know peace, after all.
'And with Thomas around, Natalie's drunken rampages aren't my problem either.'
Thomas, the childhood friend who had watched over Natalie longer than anyone, knew better than anyone alive that she couldn't hold her liquor.
Even left alone, he'd cut her off on his own initiative and block her from drinking, and if she did get a drink down and started raging, Thomas would handle it — so I didn't need to spare it a single thought.
Which meant the Hero only had to keep Agnes away from the bottle, and the odds of a rampage were effectively nonexistent—
'...Huh?'
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Hero. Saintess. Archer. Swordswoman. Mage.
...Hold on. Where the hell is Thomas?
The realization that Thomas — the one person in this room who should have been glued to his childhood friend's side — had simply vanished threw my brain into instant disarray, and I carefully posed a question to Seraphin, who had ushered in the Hero Party without so much as a flicker of concern.
"The end-of-semester after-party is always merrier the more people attend, you know~. Some of you are meeting for the first time and it must feel a little awkward, but I'll be happy to help break the ice, so please don't worry~!"
"...President Seraphin, may I ask you one thing?"
"Of course, Miss Lilith."
"As I understand it, the Hero's party that won this year's Hunting Festival had one more member. Could it be that he simply never received an invitation?"
"Ah — Thomas, my friend from my hometown, returned home last week."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
"Thomas's parents run a large farm back home. He needed to go down before the end of November, so he departed early."
"Ah. I— I see..."
Thankfully, then, the protagonist hadn't booted Thomas from the party to clear the path to Natalie. Ten years off my sentence.
Wait. Hold on. That still meant Thomas — the man in charge of babysitting Natalie — was not in this room.
If he was gone, who on earth was supposed to rein in that orange-maned colt?
The only characters here capable of blocking those corded, muscle-packed forearms and stopping her from drinking were, at absolute best, Ethan and the protagonist—
'...Gehmajoshigi-gwat will handle it. He has to.'
It was the only assumption I could make — that he'd brought her along precisely because he was confident he could take responsibility for her.
True, if the protagonist got tied up restraining Natalie, no one would be left to stop Agnes — but that side of things I could manage myself, watching her closely and cutting her off.
Agnes's strength was nothing I couldn't overpower with my own two hands, and we'd shared a single class for an entire semester, so we had a reasonable rapport built up.
Nobody would find it the least bit strange if I stuck to her side all evening.
"Now that we have new guests among us, shall we all raise our glasses once more?"
After dumping the utterly unconscious Lizzie onto a small sofa, I went shuffling quietly, stealthily, toward the seat beside Agnes.
...Roughly five minutes later, the after-party banquet hall had plunged headlong into catastrophe.
"Lord Ethan! If you are any manner of real man, you will draw your sword this instant! Today is the day I wash away every defeat I've suffered at your hands — with your life!"
...Haah. Fuck.
I just want to grab Ethan and get out of here. Right now.