Chapter 115: Even the Spider's Soul Can't Escape Castlevania's Clutches!
Golden Axe 3 — a side-scrolling action beat-em-up available on both arcade and Sega Mega Drive. A sword-and-sorcery setting with a somewhat barbaric edge, not the most typical of the genre.
The most memorable part, though, was the character design on the hero side. For a long time, Ross had used the male protagonist of Golden Axe 3 — muscular, bare-chested, sword in hand, wearing blue shorts, with standard rugged features — as a substitute He-Man or Conan the Barbarian whenever he wanted something in that aesthetic.
Men, women, old men, panthers, giants, enemy units — every last one looked like they had oiled skin and were built from pure muscle. The playable protagonists had standard punch, kick, and blade attacks, plus the ability to use magic.
To use magic, you needed magic bottles as consumables. Those were the real prototype for the charge-type Magic Bottle Ross had just received.
In Golden Axe 3, there are four selectable characters, each with a different magic specialty.
Worth noting: under normal conditions, a single player can hold a maximum of six magic bottles at once. In solo play, that caps your available magic at Level 3.
To release Level 4 magic, the prerequisite was co-op, with both players' combined bottle count at ten or above.
Among the four characters, the warrior woman Sarah Barn uses fire magic. Her strongest Level 4 spell, Blazing Solar Fall, has an extremely high degree of similarity to Feitan's Rising Sun in effect — both summon a miniature sun-like fireball to scorch the entire field.
That was clearly the main reason the Magic Bottle Ross received had been blessed by the warrior woman.
The Magic Bottle's arrival dramatically expanded Ross's wide-area damage output, or more precisely, his field-clearing capability.
The Level 4 spell Blazing Solar Fall in particular — while it requires a full 10 magic units stored and can only be released once per natural day — could essentially be used as a clean version of Feitan's ultimate technique, with no negative side effects and no meaningful self-harm.
The absurdity speaks for itself.
What could Ross even say? Thank you, Feitan, obviously.
He switched his view to check on the other three Troupe members. They were currently climbing quickly through the Clock Tower, getting close to the BOSS room — which was now also Feitan's makeshift morgue.
As for Feitan's body: that would serve as the catalyst to set the Troupe's rage off.
But just as Ross had settled on that plan, he caught something strange on the screen.
Hovering in the air near Genbu, above Feitan's corpse, was a small "interactable" marker.
He looked closely. It read: "Press A to Imprison Soul."
Ross slapped the side of the console with a look of sudden realization.
Right. Castlevania did have the ability to imprison souls. More precisely: Dracula had the ability to manipulate souls.
This power was given concrete form and the name "Dominance" in the GBA game Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. The basic effect was that you could kill any demon and absorb its soul, gaining various active or passive abilities from each one. It was the central gameplay mechanic of Aria of Sorrow, and also Ross's personal favorite entry in the entire Castlevania series.
And even in earlier Castlevania games that didn't feature Dominance specifically, players could always break the candles on walls or torches on the floor to drop and collect heart-shaped items.
Those hearts were consumables used for three operations: sub-weapon activation, magic casting, and transformation. In the background lore, the hearts were actually the souls of innocents who had died and been imprisoned directly inside Castlevania.
The reason players could use those soul-hearts to activate item techniques was that the innocent souls inside them were expressing gratitude to whoever set them free.
Feitan clearly qualified as an entity that could be classified as a BOSS unit. His soul value was far greater than an ordinary person's and had considerably more room to work with.
Nothing more to say. Ross immediately pressed Imprison.
With the press of the interaction button, a strange ripple washed over Feitan's charred body. Then a translucent phantom, identical in every detail to Feitan in life, "crawled" out of the corpse.
And at that same moment, the three Phantom Troupe members who had been making their way up finally arrived at the Clock Tower's topmost room, now fully cooled from Rising Sun's heat.
Even though Machi's warning had prepared them for the worst to some degree, when they saw the nearly unidentifiable charred corpse at Genbu's feet — and the translucent phantom that was unmistakably Feitan — an emotion that had no clean name surged through all of them at once.
Anger? Grief? Regret? Guilt?
All of them, apparently. And all of them, intense.
But what shook them most completely, body and soul, was Feitan's soul-body being drawn out separately under Castlevania's influence.
Still those same narrow, cold, detached eyes from life. But when the soul saw the three comrades who had rushed here, something that looked almost like nostalgia rose for just a moment in his expression.
That moment lasted only an instant. An invisible force then pulled the entire soul-body upward, and it became a soul orb.
Nearly identical to the soul orbs that dropped when Castlevania level BOSS units were killed.
The soul orb then shot off toward the highest floor of Castlevania's main structure — the direction of Dracula's throne room — and was gone.
Ross's screen began filling with notification lines.
[You have used Castlevania's power to successfully imprison the soul of "Feitan Portor."]
[Your Castlevania: Dracula's Curse has gained 1 new configurable special BOSS unit: Feitan Portor.]
["Feitan Portor" will exist in two forms:
Form one, Post-Mortem Nen Beast: by injecting Nen and magical energy, perfectly reproduces his living state. Nen is continuously consumed during use; receiving attacks or using living-state Nen abilities accelerates Nen consumption further. Using this form, he can only appear individually as a Castlevania: Dracula's Curse level guardian BOSS.
Form two, Post-Mortem Nen Tool: "Feitan Portor" can be injected into a weapon, transforming it into a special Post-Mortem Nen Tool that retains some living-state characteristics. Optimal weapon type: umbrella-sword. Secondary options: sword-type, umbrella-type. Using this method, he can be wielded by another BOSS unit as a weapon for combined combat.]
[By imprisoning a complete soul that should have been reclaimed by the Spirit World Guide, your actions have attracted the Spirit World's attention to a degree. However, based on the influence of Castlevania's laws, the Spirit World's attention is currently directed only at "Castlevania" and "Dracula."]