Shangri-La Frontier: Episode 23 Review

Challenge Run: Kill the boss in eight hits or less.

The twenty-third episode of Shangri-La Frontier is out. Their journey brings them face-to-face with a septet of sorcerous skeletons standing between them and the next area. Sunraku decides to make it a challenge run to kill the boss in eight hits or less.

Let’s go over it all in my Recap and Review.

Recap

The episode opens with them continuing deeper into the Canyon of Ancient Souls when Sunraku wonders if he can climb the cliffs to the top. Bilac and Emul explain that at the top of the cliffs are monsters known as Crystal Scorpions, who attack as a swarm and are tough enough that even Bilac can’t beat them. Sunraku spots the silhouette of the scorpion by chance, and the bunnies tell him to get a move on since they don’t want to deal with them getting ambushed, so he plans to challenge them later on.

After bullying the rest of the monsters who are too chicken to pick a fight with him due to the markings, they come across the arena of the Area Boss shrouded in a sphere of darkness. Entering it places them within a foggy area with low ambient howls that leave both of the bunnies on edge until they come across the boss: [The Humming Lich]. Sunraku immediately tries to cut it down, but Bilac warns him that he needs a holy-attribute weapon to deal damage to it.

Then the boss intensifies the miasma, which still isn’t enough to curse him with a debuff but does some minor damage. That puts them in a stalemate where one can’t kill the other outright and would drag on for a long time, which Bilac breaks by telling him to buy her time to prepare something. So Sunraku equips Emul and bribes her with carrots to use magic against the boss for chip damage. Then the boss multiplies into seven copies of itself, each with a different weapon that he has to struggle to avoid.

Bilac, however, uses Holy Water and a whetstone to give the [Dullahan General’s Decapitator] a polishing that bestows a temporary buff so that it can harm the Humming Lich. However, since it’s a rush job, the blade will only last about eight uses before it breaks. So he has to kill all of them in eight hits, making it a challenge run as he has Bilac hop on his back.

The second round starts with him baiting one of the clones into hitting another with an arrow, causing the original to flinch. From that, he deduces that they share an HP pool, and the amount of health they have is pretty low. He then instructs them on a strategy to deal with them all, even if Bilac isn’t happy with it, before he tosses her away.

Sunraku then starts stacking buffs like he’s playing a goddamn Carthus Pyromancer with the Red Tearstone Ring and has Emul fire a blast to corral them so he can cut off their individual heads. The bonus to neck strikes from the blade, the critical hit because its a neck strike, and all the buffs he has means he can one-shot them. But his buffs only last for five minutes before he suffers a penalty that will make it impossible to win, and he ends up with two attacks left to use against the original boss.

To finish things, he tosses Emul up into the air while he rushes it. She hits it from the back with Magical Edge to create an opening, which he exploits by stabbing it with the Glowing Pierce skill. That isn’t enough to kill it, however, so he releases the blade and leaves it to Bilac to finish things by using her hammer to drive the blade in. The Rabbit Pile Bunker, inspired by what Katzo and Pencilgon did, proves successful in killing the boss.

Yet, Sunraku gets dropped to 1 HP when Emul falls on top of him because he didn’t catch her, nearly killing him. She points out he threw her up first and Bilac tells them both to quiet down before she picks up the broken blade and figures out she can repair it later. Sunraku gets the drop item, which is something for Shamans that he can’t use, so he puts it away until later as the miasma clears and they head to Eighthold.

Bilac and Emul head back to their home to take a break, but Sunraku decides not to and claims he wants to look around despite promising not to be reckless to Emul. Naturally, that was a lie, and he buys some carrots to bribe Emul later before immediately going back to the Soul of Ancient Canyon. The reason is obvious: he plans to go pick a fight with the Crystal Scorpions.

The SLF Mini this time has Emul sleeptalking about carrots and how she considers Sunraku like her little brother.

Review

Mmm… a challenge run where you have to kill the Area Boss with eight swings of the blade or less. And its an escort quest where the escorts are useful. Sign me up.

So, this episode continues the side quest, getting Sunraku to the next area in order to ascend Bilac into an Ancient Craftsman. Along the way it establishes that there’s a bonus/hidden area at the top of the canyon with rare enemies even his Level 99 companion doesn’t want to tangle with because they’ve got tough shells and attack in swarms. So, naturally, he plans to go solo the entire thing.

But first he needs to get past the Area Boss, which is the [Humming Lich]. This undead boss would be a major threat to any other party considering it splits itself into copies and has a debuffing miasma that would sap your HP and give you negative effects. But as we established last episode, Lycagon’s Mark basically nerfs the crap out of its most harmful gimmick and Sunraku has fought groups of enemies before without help.

That being said, he can’t actually harm the boss on his own since his weapons don’t have a Holy-attribute. So the boss couldn’t hurt him severely, but he couldn’t hurt it at all. And, while Emul could do some damage with her magic, it wasn’t feasible to make her do everything on her own.

Bilac was able to give the weapon that he just got a nice buff so that it could deal damage but, as mentioned by Pencilgon previously while fighting Kirin, certain buffs decrease your weapon durability in exchange for their bonuses. In this case, it only had eight swings before it broke.

So they added some mild stakes by making it a challenge run, where Sunraku would have Emul assist with the magic to line up his shots, and then he strikes a killing blow thanks to the many buffs he stacked on himself while running low on HP. That allowed them to take out the clones, but for the final boss he needed Bilac to finish it off and keep the blade from breaking.

It was fun. More so considering that he nearly died anyway because of fall damage from Emul hitting him. It was good for a laugh.

But with the boss defeated and the next landmark registered, Sunraku has decided to push his luck by opening Pandora’s Box and picking a fight with the Crystal Scorpions despite being warned not to. Either one of two things is about to happen: he’ll get a lesson in humility or he’ll come up with some way beat the swarm.

And while that will be fun to watch either way, I am concerned that we haven’t gotten another season announcement when we have two episodes left. I want more of this glorious VRMMORPG story and I know for a fact that there’s a lot to cover before we get to the rematch with the wolf.

But that’s a nitpick for another day.