PART IV: AFTER THE DEFEAT OF THE BLACK MAGE

Chapter 9: Odium, the Awakened Laboratory

• Following the mission to Karote, Cosim was brought to the Resistance in order to be evaluated for his injuries, which appeared to be old. While the Resistance assessed him, Senya hacked into her father’s computer and overheard his call with Nicky, learning that their father had programmed them as he saw fit. Just then, her sister, Laha Angler, arrived and told Senya that their father had finished preparations to invade Odium, with an Apostle of Darmoor being expected to arrive in order to lend their aid.

• Meanwhile, at the Secret Plaza, the Resistance realized that Cosim was a cyborg with mechanically enhanced organs. Because of the damage to Cosim’s internal machinery, Cosim’s grey hair and round pupils were oscillating between their current state and the blue hair and diamond pupils that the Angler family had.

• Cosim revealed that his injuries had been sustained in the explosion at Angler Company headquarters, which had allowed him to break free of his father’s programming. He also revealed that his father had also been critically injured in the explosion, causing his power source to be destroyed. Because of this, he had been sending his children on missions to harvest energy to sustain him - such as Senya’s attempts to create an energy source by boiling Savage Terminal, as well as Nicky’s attempts to harvest Erda in Reverse City.

• Because of their father recklessly sending them into danger, even with his children being damaged and weakened to varying degrees from the explosion, Gerand Darmoor had learned about the continued existence of the Angler Company, for which he had sought them out in order to recruit them for his own purposes.

• Just then, Oz arrived from chasing leads on Kaling and reported that Angler Company ships were moving in on Odium, with Kaling’s trail vanishing around Karote. In order to investigate Odium, the Adversary, Oz, and Brighton set out with Cosim, who teleported them to the entrance of Odium. Cosim explained that Odium was guarded by the Guardians, as well as the robotic Constables who had assisted the elders with their research.

• Oz was surprised to know that the elders had kept Odium running after leaving the laboratory, to which Cosim noted that Odium’s power source was somewhere deep inside the laboratory, with only the elders knowing the full truth. Cosim then told them that one of his allies would soon come to assist them before disappearing.

• Inside Odium, the Glory Guard found that the Angler Company had already invaded the laboratory and hacked into the Guardians, who were attacking the Constables, whom they found were robots with mechanical Anima-like features. The Adversary saved one Constable named Alter, who led them into the residential district with the other Constables.

• Along the way, the group overheard Laha and Senya arguing about the Apostle arriving to open the path to the research laboratory, with Senya warning Laha about their father’s reminder to be patient and to not antagonize Darmoor or his Apostles. As the group pushed through towards the door to the research laboratory’s entrance, they faced off against Laha, with Alter buying the Glory Guard enough time to enter through the doors, which opened to the Adversary after recognizing them as a true Vessel.

• At the entrance, the Glory Guard met with the remaining Constables, as well as Tai Yu, who had been sent by Cosim to help them. Together, they deduced that Kaling was the Apostle being sent by Darmoor, shocking the Constables, who revealed that Kaling had once been a researcher of Odium, as well as one of the creators of the Constables.

• In order to learn more about Kaling, the Adversary read through old research notes and learned that Kaling had not only been a researcher, but a prospective Vessel for the Adversary experiments, with the elders being tasked by the Overseers - worshiped by the elders as the will of the world - to create beings capable of slaying the Ancient Gods.

• However, Kaling was deemed to be a defective Vessel and unsuitable to bond with a Godsphere. As a result of the brutal experimentation process, Kaling’s humanity was slowly erased by the contamination, which had left her obsessed with fulfilling her hardwired purpose by conducting an experiment to enhance the Adversaries of Odium.

• Her research had led to the creation of the robotic Four Perils - Hundun, Qiongqi, Taowu, and Taotie - who had been unleashed upon Grandis to consume small monsters and amass energy, which she intended to fuse together with an Adversary in order to grant them immense strength. However, the Four Perils began spreading terror and chaos across Grandis, for which the elders had sent another defective Vessel - Tai Yu - to seal her and her monsters away.

• Following this, the Adversary and the Constables began attempting to reconnect the retracted stairs in order to help the residential district. As they did, however, one of the Constables heard the Adversary claiming that there were active Constables in the residential district. The Constable then revealed that power to the residential district had been cut off when they had retracted the stairs, which served as the power conduit from the laboratory’s power source to the rest of Odium.

• Because of this, the Constable revealed that it was impossible for the Glory Guard to have met any active Constables in the residential district. Realizing that the Constables in the residential district had been hacked by the Angler Company, the Glory Guard attempted to stop the other Constables from restoring the stairs, though they found that it was too late.

• Just then, Kaling used the restored stairs to enter and unleashed monstrous test subjects from within Odium to attack them while she entered the laboratory. After defeating the monsters, Tai Yu revealed that Kaling had been unable to enter through the door which the Adversary had used to reach the laboratory entrance, despite being a Vessel, as the elders had made the door reject Vessels with contamination. Because of this, Kaling and the Angler Company had manipulated them into opening the only other path via the staircase.

• As the Glory Guard chased after Kaling, Kaling reached the heart of Odium and discovered the final and strongest Peril - Hundun - who had been enslaved as the power source of Odium by the elders by forcibly fusing him with a Godsphere. With Taotie lost to Hoyoung, Kaling hoped to claim Hundun and complete her Four Perils experiment with Darmoor’s help.

• Just then, Laha arrived and confronted Kaling, demanding to take possession of Hundun as a power source for her father. This resulted in Kaling and Laha fighting over Hundun, just as the Glory Guard arrived.

• With Kaling and Laha distracted, Hundun spoke with the Adversary and was surprised to recognize that not only were they an Adversary who had once been completed, but that they had gone ‘off the path’ while maintaining their ego. He then presented the last Godsphere in Odium to the Adversary, revealing that his life would end after it left his body, which had grown depending on it cycling power through him. However, he gave the Godsphere freely to the Adversary in order to put an end to his imprisonment, as well as to cause chaos by presenting the maverick Adversary to the elders.

• Hundun also revealed that the Godsphere’s power had grown degraded over the ages, and that only one well-versed on the subject would be able to restore its true power. In order to help the Adversary restore the Godsphere, Tai Yu used a magical hanging scroll to take them to Shangri-La, where the elders had imprisoned themselves after abandoning Odium.

• Following their escape, both Laha and Kaling were furious to know that the Godsphere had been taken, with Hundun dead in the process. Just then, Senya arrived with their father, Alter - revealed to be Alter Angler - with Kaling noting that he had rebuilt his body in the image of a Constable after the explosion at Angler Company headquarters in preparation for the invasion of Odium.

• In order to appease Kaling, who blamed the Angler Company for the loss of Hundun and the Godsphere, Alter tore out Laha’s mechanical heart and crushed it, shocking Senya. As Kaling left to report to Darmoor, a shaken Senya realized that she was truly disposable to their father after all, for which she decided to seek out Cosim.