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And now, the last breather map before we fight Selena and her capped magic/strength.
Ewan and Saleh are here, too. From their map sprites, Ewan is another Bonewalker archer, and Saleh is (tentatively) an Assassin.
And here comes a bunch of enemies! That is a lot of Myrmidons.
I want to give Duessel a chance to shine, so he's coming off the bench, as is Cormag.
SKILLS:
Inspiriting Tune: Refreshing a unit (something Gargoyles can't do) gives them +2 Str/Def for the rest of the turn.
Canto
As usual, Marisa is by the top of the map, and the invisible hand of the RNG strikes again, as Marisa has gone down a few points in most of her stats from the last chapter preview. However, it also brought her level down, so she has more of a chance to make up for the lost points. Her stats are more balanced than L'Arachel's, for better or for worse, but we'll see if her growths also reflect that.
There's not much else to say before this chapter, other than it brings back Wyvern Riders with Hawkeye and Myrmidons with Vantage+. Fortunately, that's not all of the Myrmidons, but it's still a potentially nasty thing to run into.
Oh right, Caellach is here too, as an Entombed. But since he doesn't really have anything interesting statwise and leaves right away, I kind of glossed over him.
The initial enemies shuffle forward, but they're nothing to worry about.
Then Riev shows up, and Caellach fucks off, so now...
This is the boss. Vantage, Hawkeye and Bane? Oh, you are just too kind. Not many people are going to be able to actually take this guy on.
There's also now a Wyvern Lord with a neat new toy, and...
Gargoyles... right by Ewan's house. Guess who's doing the Konami code again! 
Instead of figuring out the best way to get the Gargoyles away from the house, I decided to just use them to recruit him.
SKILLS:
Ignis: Skill% chance in battle to add Defense/2 and Resistance/2 to damage dealt.
Shove
Well, he's no Joshua, that's for sure. His bases and growths are mediocre at best and he has yet another 5% defense growth. I'm using him to get Marisa and nothing more.
Amusingly, you can also get enemies to go to the arena, if you want to spend a bit of gold to get them to die in a different kind of way. However, it's usually more efficient to just make enemies crash into your guys.
I also fly Marisa closer to Ewan and pfft, she still has the Fir portrait when trading. She disarms the other Gargoyle because free weapons are always good.
This also still works for its most known trick - letting you store enemy weapons in your supply. I don't do that because this Myrmidon has a really shitty sword.
Instead, in the interest of keeping things moving, she attacks Ephraim to give him a very nice level.
Feeding into Vantage+ isn't always a good idea, as this Revenant is still able to fuck Natasha up given she can't one-shot it. Duessel takes it out instead.
Pavise kicks in anyway, so he takes NO DAMAG.
I hadn't noticed it before, but it seems the Fighters now all have the classic Vantage+-Wrath combo. If I don't one-shot these guys, it won't be pretty for me.
On the next turn, Ewan gets Marisa into the party wayyy earlier than you're supposed to.
Okay, seriously, this isn't funny anymore. At least for once she has a decent base defense...
Vantage-Wrath doesn't mean anything if you can't do any damage 
Tana takes out an archer for another amazing level. From the +2 Speed last chapter, she's now guaranteed to cap speed by level 20. 
Then Kyle dispatches a Myrmidon to finally get some more speed!
One consequence of getting Ewan and Marisa this early is that now they're in a very precarious position where one or both of them could get swarmed and killed. The enemy control is staying on this turn, but hopefully after that I won't have to touch it for the rest of the chapter (or, god willing, the rest of the run).
Another siege asshole, but I unfortunately don't have any way to cheese an extra Bolting out of him. Oh well.
I can at least get Ewan some experience by crashing a Gargoyle into him, but it almost isn't worth it. Almost.
Ewan's second level isn't much better.
Natasha is also in a good position to not give a fuck about Vantage+Wrath.
Ephraim isn't, but he has high enough HP that he could probably tank a Wrath crit if he got unlucky enough. Also the fact that he still has single-digit speed at level 4 promoted is depressing.
Another knight tries to go for Gilliam and it ends about as well as it did for the first guy. Seriously, look at that 50 damage.
also the level is pretty good
Artur then patches him up for a minimal but good level.
At least Marisa's palette looks really nice on the Gargoyle sprite.
The first few turns of this map were a clusterfuck, but we're already almost to the boss. Natasha 
s a knight for a pretty decent level - more speed on a character with Desperation is always good.
Kyle and Ephraim also hit their B support, which also helps Ephraim's viability.
Cormag keeps on Bardin'.
Kyle cares not about weapon triangle disadvantage.
For lack of fights that won't end horribly for him, Ewan hits up the shop. If it wasn't for Shine having good accuracy and an actual crit rate, I'd say it's even worse than the Short Spear. Man, why does light magic always get so screwed...? Instead, I buy two Fire tomes and two Mends.
Yeowch, I forgot to check the range on the Brave Sword guy. Fortunately, Ephraim's HP boon is saving his ass.
And he gets a pretty good level for surviving the fight!
Marisa gets a slightly less good one for taking out a Myrmidon.
Joshua gets an even worse one for taking out the Wyvern Lord.
Meanwhile, Moulder and Vanessa have been out of the line of fire long enough to reach their own B support.
Is it bad that I'm surprised whenever an enemy puts up 0 damage against Ephraim? Now that he's promoted, he's definitely started to get going... it's just that it shouldn't have taken him until several levels after promotion to be on par with the rest of my unpromoted army.
The last enemy on the map is this Enemyrika that Duessel softens up...
...for Ephraim to once again take the kill and get an alright level.
Duessel is one of the few people to actually be able to take on the boss. Elfire hurts, but Duessel's high HP means he can take it like a champ. The problem is that if I want to bring a healer to him, it has to be Artur because he can instagib Neimi from full health and there's nothing I can do about that. And guess who isn't close enough to the front line to reach Duessel?
Well okay, Neimi can heal him now after the two of them have gone two rounds, because now Duessel (or anyone, really, but I'd rather it be Duessel so he can tank the extra hit from Vantage) can finish him off.
And finish him Duessel does, complete with a Colossus activation when the boss is already at 1 HP! 
Well... uh... at least it's the one stat he could definitely use more of? And that's the chapter!
NEXT TIME:
