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2: Milady Miluda's Melody of Malcontent
Sand Rat Cellar, by any name, is something of a breather map even in a normal run, a way to wind down between Dorter and the upcoming Thieves' Fort.
What it doesn't have in challenge, however, it makes up for with sprites.
And then a bunch of assholes showed up and killed everyone.
It helps that they happily arrange themselves into both Fireball Formation...
...and Lightning Bolt Line-up.
Seriously, it's a small map with chokepoints (which the NPCs will happily cork up for us) and the entre party has AoE attacks. There's very little else to say.
Except that at one point Ramza punches out Algus for experience points.
Battles won by bopping someone on the head with a wooden stick: 2
Apparently Ramza thinks he has CT5 Holy and Excalibur or something, because that's about the only way this could possibly have gone faster.
Our reward is a bunch of shit we can't use.
And this awesome cutscene 
Of even greater interest however, on the way back...
...we find that we've unlocked new merchandise.
Get. The fuck. In.
Elemental rods randomly cast spells when you hit people with them, making them unreliable as normal weapons, but the important bit is they each strengthen one of the wizard's main elementals, and if you're guessing that I'm putting these on my entire party then congratulations, you have a working brain.
They're kind of costly, though, so I'm selling off a bunch of this shit I'm not allowed to use.
Not this one, though. Fuck you, 'stache man, you're not ripping me off that easily. I'll pour this thing on the counter while you watch before I sell it for five fucking bucks.
I savestate before crossing each encounter area in case something pops up, but don't need 'em. We made it back to Igros without any trouble, and get lied at by Dycedarg's elder brother.
We do not get to pick one of them. There's only the Thieves' Fort.
And then I got into an encounter and hit my save state button instead of load state,
and so we had to kill some goblins. (It took, like, two minutes.)
The fort is tougher than the cellar... though that's not saying much.
One of these statements is true. One of them is false. Guess which is which and win a fabulous prize!
Miluda is not lightning proof.
She does however attempt to cast a protect spell, which is sure to help a lot since we're going to be using so many physical attacks. Bolt is the scariest of the lot - it's raining hard, which strengthens lightning attack (while weakening fire attacks), so it'll be moderately painful. On the flip side, my entire party knows Bolt, so we can give even better than we get.
I'm starting to think having a full party of wizards in chapter one is kind of broken.
I was going to say something about how Paralyse could be annoying, but it only hit Algus so that's okay.
This one asshole thief stole Delita's hat!
While the priestesses kindly line up for a double kill,
...he exacts swift and final retribution on the culprit and will be depositing his loathsome corpse into the bottom of the... whatever kind of water this is as soon as the battle is over.
(As long as it hasn't turned to crystal before then.)
Miluda tries to heal the damage we're putting out, but little does she know this guy has already been targeted with a Bolt that's set to do more damage than he has max HP.
Certified Lovely Human Being.
Let's have a little talk, Algus...
...Sadly the rest of the party fries Miluda before that can go off. More gear we can't use! Well, not entirely true; Delita can and will equip the sword.
That can't be true, you're standing right there, talking.
I wonder.
"...Zalbag was being a total badass."
"You know, the usual."
But they did, only they grabbed Teta instead. Because a twelve year old brunette girl is so easy to mistake for a big bearded blonde man. Good job, Death Corps!
(I know that's not actually what happened. Shut up.)
This man is 100% trustworthy, I don't think we'll need to do anything more.
Good thing you're not him. Also,
The next destination is revealed on the map,
...and we're treated to a pretty great scene before we have to fight again.
Miluda II: The Miludening is... maybe a little tougher than the first round?
She has time mages instead of priests this time. Slowing Delita is probably the least frustrating use of this one's time; I've distinct memories of her nailing like half the enemy party with Haste.
Delita gets set on fire. Then the other wizard hits him with bolt 2. It's the first time we see second level magic, but we'll be seeing a lot more.
The enemy likes to clump up in easily Hasteable formations, but we can take advantage of that too. The time mage goes down, and three boosted Bolts leave Miluda at 2 HP. Sigh. Looks like we'll actually have to make some kind of effort to kill her.
This is the first time an enemy guards against a spell. This asshole has a three percent chance to do this.
...said Miluda, while bleeding out.
Seriously, two HP.
We got into Fireball Formation as well. It's painful.
Then Ramza gets a sword embedded in his skull.
There's nothing much worth showing off. I resurrect Ramza and ponder waiting to see if some of these mages will drop anything nice when they die.
Then this absolute fucker pulls a second 3% dodge out of her ass
so Ramza bites it again.
She doesn't get lucky a third time.
And then the enemies start dying. I got lucky - all of them turn to crystals instead of chests.
And score! His Bolt 2 is now mine.
The rest weren't quite as interesting; none had skills I can use.
We could have waited another turn for the last wizard, but I don't think he had anything too great and I'd rather not spend another phoenix down on Ramza, so I bolted Miluda again and ended the map.
Well you see first Algus was born and then it kinda snowballed from there.
It doesn't feel like we should be celebrating. The whole Miluda thing is kind of a downer.
Wait, I take that back.
I don't care how many peasants I had to oppress to get this, it was totally worth it 