Visual Novel Read, Aiyoku no Eustia

On May 08 2011 10:39 Ecael wrote:
Onto Eris route.

Following the end of the Black Feather incident, the world of the Prison area has been having its fair amount of problems. Some idiot has tried to distribute drugs in the Lilium, the brothel that the Golden Chain (The unrusting golden chain, even) runs. This is as good a time to explain the Golden Chain and other stuff about the city as, so bear with the digression. The syndicate was formed right after the Gran Forte. I forgot if Blast explained properly or not, but the Prison area was essentially a part of the city that sank below the ground level of that time. Part of that fell down into nothingness (The City is floating above...something, all we know is that the 'earth' has been destroyed and this floating city is all that's left). The prayers of the Saint and the blessing of the Angel for the said prayers is what gives the miracles that makes this city run. The water that seems to come from nowhere, the very, very high yields from agriculture, and you know, floating.

The Prison area is pretty much devoid of farmland, and there isn't much water in the area. So there is very little of these life necessities to be found within the area, and the only method to get any would be to somehow brave the cliffs now surrounding the area. The Golden Chain was the first organized group to procure supplies via rope elevators and such. While a crime syndicate, the first leader of the Golden Chain's goals were always revolved about the protection of the people in the area. With very little governmental support, this crime syndicate has been the only force that kept the area from completely fucking up. When the path down was completed a few years ago, the common sentiment of the lower and higher level of the city is that the Prison area were made so because of divine punishment - well, mostly the fault of the previous Saint Irene who didn't pray hard enough, but discrimination against people from Prison is still there. At that point, the Golden Chain was able to work with guards to get a better flow of supplies down to the Prison. There were also alternative routes made for harder to smuggle goods.

This group that has been keeping the Prison in check broke into two a few years ago, when Sieg took over and the previous #2 of the syndicate, Bernard, left and formed a group, known as Rust (lit. decay, as in natural wear), on his own. Bernard's group is more focused on profit-making than to keep the orders of the Prison in check. One of the biggest differences between the two groups is that Rust makes a hefty profit on narcotics, which the Golden Chain refuses to distribute because in the long run, it is just profiting off something that weakens and destroys the Prison.

Going back to the distribution of drugs in the Lilium, naturally the Golden Chain is pretty pissed about the matter. The fool who tried to do that were beaten up some, the laws enforced, and he was sent off on his way.

The next day, Bernard barges into Melt's restaurant with a body bag while Sieg was there and confronts the head of the Golen Chain with the corpse of one of his men. Bernard blames the Golden Chain for having murdered the man and proclaims that his group will have to avenge themselves. Sieg was not provoked - Rust has been able to gain a larger influence and have a larger supply of men from the additional profits from narcotics. However, Rust started harassing Golden Chain the very next day, taking advantage of the lack of retaliation from the Golden Chain.

Eris Route

Eris route begins with Eustia settling pretty well with Caim and Fione's little pass with him, naturally Eris is in a pretty bad spot. Everyone around understand the feelings that Eris has for Caim pretty well as well as how Caim constantly try to dodge it, but don't quite know the actual history between the two.

So Eris makes a move at this point and demand to live with Caim while telling Eustia to shove. Perhaps affected by how he had to dump Fione while insulting her to get her to move on, Caim decided that this is as good a time as any to deal with Eris' increasingly persistent passes on him and grudgingly accepts this.

Over the next couple of days, she did the chores and cooked like she used to, trying her best to get Caim's attention.

It was all futile, though, as Caim rejects her advances time after time. This culminates in a confrontation, as Eris says flat out that she might be in love with Caim and Caim tells her all that he wants her to do is to live freely on her own. This was too much for Eris, and she had a moment where she started acting completely different from how she usually us, begging Caim to not cast her aside. From that day on, Eris started to become unstable. She would start to blank out and do some completely pointless things in order to get his attention.

At first it was just messing up while cooking, then it start to grow more and more random. When Caim wanted to have chicken, she bought all the chicken she could. When Caim ignored her, she purposely broke dishes to get him to scold her. She would try to follow him into enemy territory, etc. Anything to get some bits of attention from the man. Further more, even when Caim is not around, her behavior doesn't improve in any bit. She simply sits about and do nothing but talk to a doll that she has, when he first saw this, Caim noted how this was what Eris was like when he first paid for her liberty.

As all these has been happening, Sieg has been making moves of his own. With Caim as his bodyguard, he has been sneaking up into the lower area to meet with Lucius, the head of the Disease Prevention bureau. However, the situation is getting worse and worse, the prospect of more money has drawn many of the Golden Chain members. As Sieg did not want to have a direct confrontation with Rust, members of the Golden Chain simply had to take the hits throw at them. This has been very damaging on morale, and the outlooks of the infighting of these two factions seems almost certain. However, Sieg believes that his meetings with Lucius would be able to yield some favorable results and continues with this policy to buy as much time as he could.

Back to Eris, she is getting worse and worse from day to day. Now seemingly flipping between two personalities, with no idea what she was doing while reverting to her earlier days. This continues for some time before we learn her history and how exactly Caim is related to her. Amusingly enough, this was partly accomplished by a deal from Bernard for Caim to betray Sieg. She was raised to be a doll by her parents, made to live in confinement. While she has all her needs tended to and has a lot of her wants, she has been conditions to follow others' orders and not act on her own. Her parents caught the attention of the Golden Chain for other reasons and Caim assassinated her. Only learning later that the two had a child named Eris. Bernard, the man who arrived on scene afterwards to clean up after Caim, look for valuables and needed informations, etc, found Eris confined in a hidden room. Then he bought her to Lilium to train as a prostitute. This was how the two met for the first time.

Over time, Caim was able to learn the history of Eris to a certain and figured out that he murdered her parents and caused her to be sold to a brothel. Caim tells all of this to Eris, who is too insane at this point to care. Instead of being bothered by what Caim has told her, she suggested for Caim to sell Sieg out to Bernard and not worry about anything anymore. Enraged, Caim threatens to kill her should she ever do anything like that. Eris calmly replies that to her, getting killed by Caim won't exactly be a bad thing else. As he tries to argue with Eris, Caim remembers that he has his own motives for buying Eris. It wasn't that he felt sorry for her - if he did for her, why would he not track down all the orphans from his past assassinations and protect them. No, it was a promise that he has made to his dead brother during Gran Forte, to live respectably on his own. That promise overlaps with the doll-like Eris, and he became determined to rehabilitate her to society as a part of his quest to lead a respectable life. Shocked by his revelation and unable to face Eris, he runs off to Melt's place.

That marks the turning point of this route, everything starts to break down. The fight of the Golden Chain against Rust goes from looking impossible to be actually impossible to prevent Rust from wiping them out, with even some of the officers defecting to Rust. Caim has been living at Melt's place and avoiding Eris still. Eris has been getting increasing obsessed with the idea of getting killed by Caim from betraying Sieg - that will be the point when he thinks the most of her, even if it is just hatred. After another escorting Sieg to another meeting with Lucius, Caim learns that Eris has disappeared. Fearing that she would sell Sieg out, he goes out in a wild search for her. He was able to find her, but when confronted about his blatant disregard for her feelings and his motivations for saving her, Caim was unable to say a thing back. Eris implores one last time for Caim to simply dominate her so that she doesn't need to think on her own anymore, Caim refuses, and she runs off with Caim still stupefied from her earlier words.

Another day passes, Sieg goes for the final meeting with Lucius, whatever plans that Sieg and Lucius has in this situation apparently was going to work out. But on the way back, they discover that Rust was marching directly for Golden Chain's stronghold in the Lilium. The Golden Chain was too weak at this point to resist. Caim has Sieg escape on his own as Caim himself headed toward the Lilium to see who he could save. He was caught by a female assassin and knocked out. The next thing he knows, she was taken to Bernard, who decided it would be amusing to torture Caim by having him kill Eris as his underlings brought her in. He refuses, as they were about to kill him, Fione busts in with a bunch of Wing hunters, supposedly received a tip that they were hiding Feathers at the Lilium. She finds a hidden chamber with Eustia in it and tries to arrest Bernard. Bernard attempts to escape, and in the havoc of the fight between the Wing hunter and members of Rust, Caim lost sight of Eris. Chasing after her from others account, he was finally able to reach her again.

Eris finally explains her position more coherently to Caim. She was just a doll from the start, that she was fawning over Caim wasn't because of love or anything, but the need of having someone who would command her and boss her around. What looked to Caim like signs of her becomin independent of him were merely things that she did because Caim said to. As a result, when Caim had told her that she was free to lead her own life, she felt completely betrayed and was barely able to keep some sense by doing the chores and cooking for Caim. However, since Eustia came and the affair with Fione, she wasn't even getting much of that done anymore. That finally tipped her mental balance over and led her to this regression.

Here, we make the decision to either live on her side and support her and ease her rehabilition into society (her route)


or to tell her to man up and deal with it, either way she will more or less get a grip on herself.

Unfortunately what I wrote here for Eris route I feel like is a bit lacking, but whatever, can't do much better without actually translating the bloody thing myself Also, there was a pretty funny part at the end of Eris route where we learn that she drinks something that sounds a lot like absinthe. Imagine if it was all just the absinthe.

Done for now.