PART II: AFTER THE SEALING OF THE BLACK MAGE

Chapter 3: The Age of Monsters

Though the mysterious war had ended, true peace never returned. Across Maple World, great monsters began to appear across the lands. 

A war between the dragons of Leafre took place between the last two of the three Great Kings, Nine-Spirit and Horntail. (A/N: The third was Afrien.) To undermine Nine-Spirit’s rule, Horntail killed the good king and stole his egg, causing Nine-Spirit’s followers to leave Leafre. However, Horntail was gravely injured in the battle and retreated to the Cave of Life in order to recover, planning to one day use the egg to expand his rule beyond Leafre. Under his influence, all the lesser dragons were corrupted and became evil, while the Halflingers who served the dragons cowered in fear. 

Deep in the mines of El Nath, there was a spirit named Zakum who was sealed in a tree. A mining town that once existed nearby eventually discovered this tree. At the time, Zakum was a peaceful spirit who had no enemies, but the greed of the miners corrupted it. As the corruption ran deeper, Zakum grew smarter and soon gained the power to control the town's populace. It forced them to build an enormous statue in tribute, after which it possessed the statue and eventually killed everyone in the town. Around the mine, all the trees in the forest began to wither under Zakum’s dark influence, which also caused the zombies of the dead townspeople to appear, who began to roam the Forest of Dead Trees. 

Long ago, the King of Ludibrium had made a deal with the Goddess Rhinne to stop time in his kingdom, allowing his people to remain youthful forever. However, when time was attempted to be restarted for unknown reasons, cracks began appearing across spacetime, from which strange monsters appeared from another dimension. Among them was the evil Papulatus, whose influence turned the toys of Ludibrium into monsters. With the Dimensional Schism widening, more and more monsters began wreaking havoc across the kingdom.

A powerful being named Lord Balrog was an evil creature who threatened to destroy Maple World. According to legend, Balrog had been sealed away by the heroic warrior Tristan, though Balrog had sworn to one day return and rule Maple World. Tristan, Mu Young, the 7th Dark Lord Sung, and his apprentice Jin, had discovered that a mysterious threat had been destroying records of key events in Maple World, and so they had taken it upon themselves to stop it. Under the guise of hunting Balrog, the four tracked down the threat below the Cursed Temple.

Knowing that it had the power of possession, they shielded their minds to keep the enemy from possessing them. What they hadn’t anticipated was that Sung’s adopted daughter and Jin’s lover, Syl, had secretly followed them. Their target, who was the spirit of Lotus, took over Syl’s body and attacked them. Unwilling to strike her down, both Sung and Tristan allowed themselves to be killed by Syl before Jin wrested her sword out of her hands. After Lotus released her, she was horrified to see the bodies of her father and Tristan, as well as a bloody sword in Jin’s hands.

With no memory of her time being possessed, she concluded that Jin had killed Tristan and her father, and so she swore revenge against him. Jin became the 8th Dark Lord and Syl took to the shadows, adopting the title of Lady Syl and founding a rogue group of thieves called the Dual Blades, whose purpose was to overthrow the Dark Lord and seize control of Kerning City.

(A/N: A lot of the Balrog lore involving Tristan, Manji, and Mu Young is intertwined with the Dual Blade storyline. The original Dual Blade storyline has Sung going alone to fight Balrog while Tristan and Manji, not Mu Young, are occupied. Balrog transforms Sung into a monster and Jin has no choice but to kill his master. Syl believes that Jin had killed her father in order to take his place and forms the Dual Blades in revenge. Tristan and Manji then go on to seal Balrog, but Tristan dies and passes his sword on to Manji. The revamp for the Dual Blades came out in the same patch that Phantom was introduced, whose storyline involves Lotus possessing people and destroying historical records.

Likely, the overhaul on the Dual Blade storyline was meant to tie into the stuff with Lotus, but it also introduces a multitude of plot holes. If hunting Balrog was just a pretense for Tristan and the others, then there’s no explanation about how he gets sealed. Mu Young claims to be Tristan’s apprentice, even though Manji is Tristan’s apprentice and Mu Young is Manji’s. Mu Young claims that he wants to reseal Balrog to follow in his master Tristan’s footsteps, but as Mu Young was part of the expedition instead of Manji in the new storyline, he should have known that fighting Balrog was just a cover story. Since Manji was not part of the expedition, Tristan couldn’t have passed his sword onto Manji either. Ultimately, the changes to the Dual Blade storyline do more harm than good, as I feel that the Lotus tie-in really isn’t worth all these continuity issues.)

Kirston, the dark magician who helped Ephenia poison Altaire Camp, began researching relics of the Ancient Gods. In the ruins of Partem, he discovered a relic of an Ancient God and attempted to reproduce its power. As the relic had been created in the time before the Transcendents, he attempted to turn back time on the relic in order to reveal its full potential. However, the Barrier of Time created by Freud prevented time from going back any further than the moment the Black Mage’s seal was created, and the resulting failure placed a curse on the relic.