空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky ⚔ Story Club・Week 21

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Week 21 25th November 2024
Last Week Week 20
Next week Week 22
Home Thread 空の軌跡

Finish investigating the crime scene, don’t leave the area yet. You should have 7 bullet points, the last one telling you to head to Manoria (the village).

Side Quests
  • 倉庫の鍵
  • 試作品の捜索
  • アイナ街道の手配魔獣

If you want better pacing this week all three can be left for a bit, but there will be worse pacing in a later week as you’ll have more to do in a short amount of time.

Screenshot

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Vocabulary

Vocab Sheet , thank you to everyone who has been helping with this.

We also have an arts sheet if you’re struggling with the in-game version. I added a characters tab, so far all that’s there is name, age, occupation, but feel free to add any notes you think are relevant or you might want to remember.

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

If necessary, include an explanation of any discrepancies in the Ebook page numbers from physical page numbers. If there is an easy shortcut for some ebook versions to relate back to physical page numbers, it would be worth it to include it as a third bullet here, or if you want to use chapter page numbers instead of volume page numbers, as is the case with some manga. For example:
Example

For the Kindle version of this manga, the page numbers and the location number are always 3 apart. If you subtract 3 from the location, this will give you the accurate page number!

OR

Please use the chapter page numbers, instead of the volume page numbers. These are located in between the panels!

Discussion Questions

  1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!

  2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?

  3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

  4. What are your opinions on the 公爵 and other new people?

  5. Do you have any theories about what happened at the orphanage?

  6. Gut instinct, who is your prime suspect?

Participation

Will you be playing along with us this week?

  • I’m playing along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still playing the game but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m playing this game after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer playing the game
0 voters

If you’ve already played this game but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!

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Well then

Burning up an orphanage is about the most straightforwardly evil thing we’ve seen up to this point; there’s not much nice rationalization to do here. Specifically targeting orphans is like cartoon villainy so I really wonder what the scheme is here. I’m also curious if we’re going to learn more about the children and head of the orphanage escaping – maybe they just got lucky, but they seemed in terrible danger when the scene cut off our view. Was someone else present to help? Up to this point no one has seemed like the orphanage burning type. I guess my big random swing guess would be the ex-nobleman we met last time? This is probably just my tendency to suspect people if they are introduced as nice and helpful. I think the girl we’ve been traveling with is actually how she seems on the surface, though.

The 公爵 scene was a sudden jump in language difficulty with him and his servant both; I got through ok but I was doing a lot of lookups. I’m always drawn to the yojijukugo so 放蕩三昧 is a neat word to learn. That guy feels like the most accurate portrayal of the upper class privileged people that we’ve come across so far, haha. Glad Joshua and Estelle just laughed in his face, good scene.

Was a rollercoaster of emotions, from my excitement at meeting Nial to my dejection upon hearing Dorothy isn’t here too. :sob:

That monster at the tower side quest though, that is remarkably cruel combat design. Enemies that reflect physical, mute you so you can’t use the only thing they don’t reflect, and summon more enemies that drain your MP. I tried twice, it seemed hopeless as each time Joshua got off 1 spell and Estelle got silenced before even casting once, so I ran back to town and bought the accessories that I think prevent that condition. I say I think, because on try 3, the RNG made them sit around summoning way more and they kind of just waited to die without harming us much at all. I… did it. Yay?

I skipped entering the tower on the assumption we might have a reason to go there later (obviously the first was main story, IIRC the 2nd had an optional sidequest after entering?), and I still think we’re getting at least one more party member while in this region so no rush. If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate a simple yes or no on if anything will bring us there, or if I should maybe plan to dive in on my own some week, can spoiler tag it in case others don’t want to know.

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No, feel free to explore at your leisure.

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Monster hunting side quest

Ooof ouch owie.

I’m completely skill checked. Takes me two spells to get rid of one of them and I get so few turns compared to them. I think I’m underlevelled or under-geared, or there’s a trick I don’t get.

Are there spells that Target more than an enemy at a time? This orbment thing is really annoying to understand, there are so many constraints and it’s hard to figure out what results in what.

I think I’ll wait a little bit too get new party members (if that happens in time) or just level up a bit more. I think I’ll just explore the tower first.

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There are, I think the easiest one to get is エアリアル as you just need 4 wind.

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Oh. I just stacked a bunch of wind on Joshua and then two shot them with that 40EP tornado spell. That was easy.

Thank you for the help!

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Week 21

Well at least we had a warm welcome in Ruan, it was a nice change of pace from Bose.

The dialogue with the queen’s nephew and his majordomo was a bit tricky, as was the ensuing discussion with Nial. I hope we’ll see Dorothy again, she was fun.

Didn’t the nephew have another room booked at the hotel before he decided to upgrade to the upper floor suite? If so, shouldn’t there have been an empty room available after he took over? And why would Estelle refuse to take the money from Richie Mc Rich Boy? It seems like it’s the least they could do to make up for the lost room.

By the way the hotel is called “Hôtel Blanche” which is “White Hotel” in French, but that’s not grammatically accurate because hôtel is a masculine noun, so it should be “Hôtel Blanc”.

I noticed that you could return to the Raven hideout and enter it this time and chat with the gang members without problem. Maybe the game is setting up a bit of a reversal now, where the Ravens turn out not to be quite as bad as they seemed while we get to see the bad side of the aristocracy?

After all that dialogue a bit of side-questing was welcome. Admittedly it’s a bit tonally strange to run errands and explore unrelated areas just after you learn that the orphanage caught fire and we don’t know whether the kids and the 院長先生 are safe, but that’s just your usual JRPG fare of “oh right I have to save the world from this impeding doomsday device, but let me play the card minigame for a bit first”. I half-expected that the game would prevent me from crossing the Ruan bridge to keep me on track, but I’m also glad it didn’t.

Took me a little while to figure the lost key thing but it really rewards your paying attention to the details of the area.

I explored the ancient tower which is obviously laid out like a maze with a bunch of chests everywhere. The fact that all the 5F chests are trapped with the exact same enemies (which are also the same enemies used to trap the chests in the other towers, although with a different elemental attribute) got a bit tedious. You just repeat the same fight 4 times. At least the rewards were good.

I’m starting to wonder if these towers (and perhaps the ancient civilization thing as a whole) are going to play a role in the plot of this game or if it’s only going to pay out in the sequels. There’s clearly some kind of contraption at the top level of each of them. Will the game have us backtrack to all the towers in the final act or something like that? Mysterious.

I pushed all the way to the military outpost after the tower, I expected the same type of area as the ones we’ve already visited but it was quite surprising, worth the detour if you haven’t seen it yet (I presume the story will lead us there eventually anyway).

The orphanage arson thing is really mysterious at this point. What could be the motive? Looks like a meteor crashed there or something.

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Reply

Oh it feels like something that would make sense in a JRPG-trope kind of way. What’s surprising is that nobody has established the orphanage as something undesirable at this point, normally when you have this type of story arc there’s always a rich guy who, like, wants to buy the orphanage to destroy it and build a high-end shopping district or something like that. But from what we can tell the orphanage is just in some remote place and seems neither desirable nor problematic.

I wonder if the reveal will be that it was targeted for testing purposes just because it was remote and undefended, but then as you point out this is just comically evil.

Actually I think that there’s a sidequest item in there, although I didn’t realize until I actually tried doing that quest and I realized I already had the item…

Speculation based on the contents of the tower

One of the items in the tower is a flamberge which is not a type of weapon we’ve encountered yet and can’t be equipped by any of our current or previous party members. Exciting!

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Reponse

Iirc, he was meant to stay at the mayor’s mansion.

The item is actually dropped by the quest monster outside the tower. It’s very easy to miss that you picked it up if you’re just clicking through the normally standard end of quest fight text.

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Oh that’s exactly what happened then. So this fight solves two quests? Well I guess it makes up for its difficulty (before I cheesed it with the tornado).

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By the way a minor annoyance with the UI of the game (at least in my version) is that there’s no symbol indicating what type of item you’re getting after a fight or when opening a chest, just the name. A lot of the time I’m not sure if it’s a weapon, an accessory, gear, a food item, a key item…

Sometimes I get something and then spend a while in the item menu trying to figure out where it went and what it was…

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I got Hell Gate on Joshua, but it’s only small circle. I learned today about Tornado, but Line 1-2 made it extra confusing…

Side quests

I didn’t see the quest monster until I looked in the thread. But walking in and out of the tower is obvious and unmissable.

Some monsters can hit and make 封魔 too, but haven’t bought 封魔 potions to the tower, and I don’t see 封魔 med recipe so far.

Funny that I can take Croze from the burnt orphanage, to comment on the fished lost key. (Rather than bringing her Manoria immediately.)

No quest on the dropped filler tooth?

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Reply

Oh that’s fun. I actually considered reloading a save to see if I can actually go to Manoria before the orphanage and catch the orphans and Croze there first and get different dialogue but I couldn’t be bothered.

Also note that this week’s progress ends before you leave the orphanage, so you’re ahead now.

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I have that on him as well! So far I got by with that plus an expensive small circle fire spell on Estelle – used to have the tornado one they’re talking about and the big circle helped a ton, but that was my setup on Schera

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I ended up taking the time to go through the spreadsheet and figuring out what combo made the most sense and I set up Joshua with White Gehena which is a 時・中円 spell with a very high damage rating.

It’s not as big as the tornado but it hits harder and I think it makes more sense for Joshua given thay his central slot is forced 時.

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What’s Tornado we are talking about? Getting Aerial is straight forward, but I also manage to get Lightning (wind), Fire bolt revised (fire), Stone Impact (earth), and La Tear (water heal) on Estelle.

Now, I have to fear 封魔.

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It’s Aerostorm, basically a bigger and more powerful Aerial.

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I should have guess based on the EP cost and two shots. Normal Aerial isn’t big enough to cover everyone in the first place.

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Week 22 is ready

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