True End Blog – Visual Novels, Otome, RPGs –

 Okay, Mathis does come back to his senses and apologizes to her. He also gives her the manuscript they’ve been writing together with a new love scene where he’s replaced the character’s name with Ceres’s name to confess his feelings for her. He doesn’t want to go crazy and be horrible but something about Bourreau breaks him.

 When the foreshadowing pays off, it’s worth it. You learn that Jean is not Jean but the real Camille Claude, and Mathis is a homunculus that he created as a test subject for bringing back his lost love, Rosalie. He’s experimenting putting false memories into a body, something that isn’t possible with current reliver tech, so he can remake her even without a memory back up. Every little personality quirk, his horrible driving, his past with “Jean” and “Camille”, and even his writing is stolen from someone else. There’s little glimpses of this throughout the route where you meet someone who drives just like Mathis, and a book that is identical to his own. Sister Salome also speaks about how she knew Mathis’s mother and speaks quite fondly about her, not matching the description of someone who would lock their youngest son away for most of his life.

 Jean/Camille has also fostered a rumor among local prostitutes about a “deliverer” who will help women escape Arpéchéle, but has murdered them and used their wombs to build his homunculus creation. In regular relivers, the genetic back up and memory back up must “match” so to speak. But as Rosalie never had a memory back up made, he needs to be able to implant memories that aren’t her own to bring her back.

This obviously shakes Mathis to his core, doubting if he even really loves Ceres or if that’s manufactured, too. Jean/Camille sees Mathis and Ceres’s feelings for each other as the perfect opportunity to test how strong this emotion is. Can his love for her last through various memory resets? It’s quite touching when Ceres assures him that the time they spent together and their budding romance is something, even if it’s the only thing, that is true to him. Even if his past is fabricated, the time they had spent together is real. There’s a real Mathis in there, one that loves poems and books and spending time with Ceres. Those memories and experiences only belong to them.

 The despair ending involves Jean/Camille wiping and rewriting Mathis’s memory and him falling in love with Ceres over and over, no matter how horrible the new personality is. That is, until the memories are that of Camille, who sees Ceres as Rosalie. Ceres is broken down and so desperate to be loved by Mathis, she allows this pantomime relationship to be her new reality, completely controlled by Camille. Ankou even offers to help her escape, but she refuses, accepting this as her fate.

Once everyone is safely at the church, Ceres agrees to stay at Lucas’s home for the time being so she doesn’t have to walk home alone at night. He’ll be a great bodyguard as Lucas’s father was the founder and leader of the Corps and trained Adolphe and Yves before he passed away. Lucas shares his father’s incredible physical strength, but followed in his mother’s footsteps instead as a teacher.

 It’s revealed that all of Bourreau’s victims are relivers, making these attacks targeted. Ankou breaks in while Lucas is gone one night. He’s covered in blood and tells Ceres she needs to get away from him now, but at this point Ceres is falling for Lucas and still cares deeply about him. She goes out and finds Lucas in the act of murder.

 Lucas is Bourreau. He’s Bourreau. The serial killer. Lucas. He is the serial killer, Bourreau. Well, there’s a handful of other Bourreaus in the Society of Exorcists who do his work when he can’t, but he’s the main Bourreau.

 Now, I didn’t see this coming but in hindsight there are signs. The super strength, the sprite poses, how… odd… Lucas kind of is at times… but honestly? I was blinded by love. I was shocked, I was gagged. He looks so good as Bourreau, too, almost better than he does regularly. Oh my god, that high ponytail. Ceres is knocked out, and we’re taken to the Society of Exorcists’ lair. Lucas is completely different, he doesn’t see the relivers as humans and happily takes their hearts so the Society can prolong human lives. Notably, Lucas sees the hearts as an offering to God who will save his sister.

 To keep her “safe” and avoid her telling anyone the truth, he puts Ceres in a human-sized birdcage in his home. Otome game classic! He lets her out pretty quickly, admitting he loves her and never wants to make her uncomfortable or unhappy, and asks her to marry him. He also has one of the most intense kiss CGs I’ve seen in a while, which I loved. They fall asleep, but Ceres wakes up to Lucas crying out in his sleep, apologizing to everyone he has killed and begging for forgiveness. Ceres realizes that the kind, gentle, teacher that she is falling in love with is who Lucas truly is.

 Dr. Capuncine is revealed to be a disgraced Institute scientist who was booted and supposedly executed for his horrible genetic experiments. He’s particularly infatuated with Nadia’s genes as her genetic disease makes them “beautiful” in his eyes. Lucas was forced to go along with everything and is constantly drugged and brainwashed to hate relivers enough to murder them, thinking it will save his sister. It really killed me, he came to the hospital to try and save Nadia and Capucine saw the perfect pawn for his scheme. Nadia is essentially a hostage. Every time her symptoms worsen, Capucine tells him that they need another “sacrifice.” The genes that made Lucas unbelievably strong also made his sister unbelievably weak.

 As things unravel, Ceres and Lucas visit Nadia again, but she’s been turned into a reliver, which Lucas immediately notices and abruptly kills. The real Nadia has been modified into a monster to be Capucine’s “bride” deep in his secret laboratory underneath the hospital, unknown to even the members of the Society of Exorcists. Lucas attempts to attack him, but is stopped by “Nadia,” now loyal to Capucine through his modifications. Capucine injects Lucas with a large amount of drugs which causes him to go on an unmitigated rampage across Arpéchéle, killing almost everyone in his path to the Institute to kill Scien, the “ultimate evil” as the creator of relivers.

 This sequence is brutal. The sound effects and Lucas’s utter agony made it a tough read for me, in a good way. I kept thinking, how much of this is in his Salvation ending as well? How can you fix this? Ceres is chasing after him, but stumbles across the bodies of all of her friends and loved ones along the way, and can’t even stop to see if they’re still breathing. Ceres goes to Ankou for help this time, who asks if this is really what she wants, to which she says yes. The pair meet up with Lucas in the Institute amongst all of the massacred scientists and researchers.

 In the despair ending, Ankou distracts him, but Lucas ends up fatally stabbing Ceres.

 This is what snaps him out of it. He’s murdered his angel. He takes her body to a secluded cave while Arpéchéle reels and tries to rebuild and he finally succumbs to the effects of the curse. He has Ceres’s remains in a cage and puts a ring on her finger, promising he will never kill again and will always protect her.

 There’s a really interesting dichotomy between Lucas as Bourreau, a serial killer targeting relivers and ripping out their hearts, and his view of Ceres as a pure “angel” that he almost idolizes. Lucas is traumatized not only by what he and his sister had to go through, but also from being brainwashed and forced into being Bourreau to save his sister. Lucas at his core does not want to be Bourreau and doesn’t want to kill, and Ceres is able to bring that back out of him. She is what saves him but ultimately breaks him.

 There’s a moment that is set up like a “reveal” when Scien takes Ceres to a locked off section of the Institute where he does experiments on human subjects, convicted prisoners, at the behest of the royal family. I suppose it shows an “evil” side to him and what he’s willing to do to perfect relivers. He mentions people have tried to assassinate him before because they see him as the real evil instead of the curse. I can’t say I was too shocked by this after Lucas’s route. In a conversation with Dahut, he tells Ceres that if anyone can convince Scien to focus on emotions instead of strength in relivers it’s her because he already likes her! Use the power of love, Ceres! That’s what I’m talking about!

 Back in the lab a member of the royal family bursts in and demands a new reliver body. He even goes so far as to break the capsule where someone else is being cloned, effectively killing them. This is where my opinion on Scien started to shift to a more positive one. He beats the hell out of the royal family member and tells him he’s banned from ever becoming a reliver again; a death sentence. Aww, he does care! Even if not about the actual people he cares about the integrity of his work! Ceres tends to Scien’s wounds and feeds him more sandwiches. Scien is confused why she’s sticking around to which Ceres says she wants to see him finish a puzzle he’s been working on and if she leaves he literally won’t eat.

 Things start devolving when the scorned royal starts spreading rumors that Scien has purposefully created defective relivers to kill people. It’s not just rumors either, someone supplied the royal family with some seemingly incriminating evidence. The people quickly turn on him, and he is sentenced to death. Ceres resolves to stay with him, and Scien deduces that she’s in love with him but reiterates that he doesn’t intend to love anybody. Rude.

 It goes from bad to worse when the Royal Guard massacres everyone at Sister Salome’s orphanage for their connection to Ceres, and therefore Scien. While Sister Salome escapes, the royal guard murder all of the children and decapitates Adolphe for trying to protect them. This made me feel kind of sick, it’s a very emotionally impactful sequence and scene. Scien is slowly watching all of his work crumble around him. He’s severely injured and hiding out in an abandoned home, but Ceres is still with him. Sister Salome, still cradling Adolphe’s head, wants revenge on the royal family and wants to see them all dead, but Scien wants back in his lab.  While tending to his wounds, Ceres notices that his body is covered in scars to which Scien admits that he does almost all of his experimentation on himself, first.

 I do really like this route because you know what? Love is the answer. Ceres asks him why he is focusing only on reliver longevity, and not on the curse itself, and finally gets through to Scien. He wanted more people to see the world like him, logically, hence the relivers not keeping their emotions. But Ceres has finally changed his mind. She is fully an emotional human and is able to see and understand something that he wasn’t! They gotta get back to the Institute where Scien will clone himself into a new reliver body with full emotional carry over and capability. That will get everyone back on his side! I was kind of confused as to why, if he was able to create relivers that could withstand strong emotions, he didn’t just do it in the first place, but I came to understand that he is, or at least was, incredibly arrogant and felt like others should be like him. 

 Bourreau is being used by the Royal Guard to help keep Scien out, but they manage to make it to the center where relivers are born. Before cloning himself, Ceres mentions that he should experiment on her as well, to which he says his best line, “Why would I experiment on the woman who will be m wife?” AND he kisses her! He hops into the pod to gain his new, fully emotional, reliver body.

 But, this is the despair ending. While he is incapacitated, Bourreau fatally injures Ceres while  she tries to protect Scien. Once he’s out, he desperately attempts to save Ceres by cloning her but is unable to. He downloads Ceres’s memories into his own head to preserve them. Scien was correct that this new reliver breakthrough would let him regain his position, but now he must live with this “fake” version of the woman he loves, now fully and deeply, but will never be able to be with her again.

 This is where we learn Yves’s story. When he was a child, he was visiting a friend at the orphanage Ceres was at when the fire started. This led to him saving Ceres and ending up horrifically burned on his face. The burn was so bad that his own parents abandoned him, saying he was touched by Death. Later in his life, he received his mask. His whole reason for “loving” everyone is because he just wants to be loved by others and not pitied. He’s really just throwing out all this love hoping it will come back to him which really broke my heart. 

 Rumors of Ceres and Yves being involved romantically start circulating and Hugo confronts Ceres about them, saying if she’s not serious about Yves she needs to leave. Hugo confesses that he was a pretty awful guy before. His family is wealthy so he never had to worry about not having enough money to become a reliver, and was just kind of bumming around aimlessly as a reliver before he met Yves. He was so inspired by him that his whole life changed and he joined him in Courrune. Hugo really just wants Yves to be happy, but everyone who gets close to him ends up horrified by the burn under his mask. I started trusting him more, here, but my guard was still up. It’s also very obvious he does not really like Ceres, so much so that Yves notices it, too.

 She goes to a lycoris field to try and talk to Ankou, but finds Yves instead, lovingly speaking to lycoris flowers and taking care of them. I really loved this part! Turns out, the mysterious drifter is Yves’s ancestor who made a deal with death to nurture and cultivate the lycoris flowers. Yves’s full name is “Yves Noirges” and he is the protector of the Lycoris Noirges. The flowers so hated by the people of the country, just like Ceres, are something precious and beautiful to him.

 Unfortunately when more deaths happen Ceres becomes the scapegoat for the populace and the royal family. Yves promises to protect Ceres no matter what, much to Hugo’s anger who thinks Ceres will reject Yves once she sees his face under his mask. The continued investigation into the deaths reveal that the ones who ripped out their own hearts were all couples in love, but at this point Yves’s reputation is tanked for harboring Ceres in his home. Eventually, the townspeople try to burn down the lycoris fields around his home but he manages to stop them. In the scuffle, his mask falls off and the terrified villagers flee. The CGs of Yves cowering are so well done. He’s heartbroken and terrified for anyone to see his face, especially Ceres. The way the scar is described is a bit gruesome, but in the CGs it’s not really anything crazy. Ceres doesn’t react and calmly helps Yves inside. Hugo kind of flips out and tells Ceres to die for stealing Yves’s happiness, but realizes that she’s “won” because even Hugo had a strong negative reaction to seeing Yves’s scar and he can’t stop him from loving her.

 Yves tries to cover his face again but Ceres kisses his scar. Yves confesses that he doesn’t want to share his love with anyone else anymore, just with her. They step outside and find Hugo’s dead body, where it seems like he tried to claw his own heart out just like the others. If you didn’t catch it, Hugo was in love with Yves. BL, in my otome game? Yes! And it really broke my heart! These deaths are caused by feelings of love literally overloading reliver bodies, which is why it almost always affected couples in love with each other, and Hugo who just loved Yves so much. Apparently, a lot of players hated this development but I loved it. It really added another layer of “despair” to the story and fit with the theming in a horribly appropriate way. He wasn’t a bad guy after all! And now I’m sad that he’s dead!

 Things start happening pretty rapidly and there’s a lot of science and lore. Yves is rapidly showing symptoms of the curse and Ceres gets in contact with Scien, who tells her to come to the institute. Turns out Ceres’s parents were some of the first of a second generation of relivers who had emotions, but their love for one another is what killed them and overloaded their bodies. Their hearts hurt so much physically that they attempt to rip them out. Ceres was actually born in a lycoris field shortly before her parents died in this manner. Back at Courrune, Yves is almost killed by the townspeople, but is saved by someone he helped in the past. Ankou appears, thanks him for everything he’s done, and tells him to find the drifter’s diary to fully understand the lycoris flowers.

 The lycoris flowers were not originally black but actually red and contain allelopathic properties. Basically, they absorb toxins and that’s why they turn black. It’s not some unscientific “curse” but a literal poison in the land that affects everyone born there. It’s also the reason why the lycorises cause death when someone destroys otherwise harms them as it releases all of the toxins they absorbed. The deal the drifter made with “death” was actually to protect the land, as least as much as possible, by cultivating the flowers.

 Yeah, that tracks to me as someone who doesn’t know much about poison or botany. Here’s where it gets… a little more out there. Ceres was born from two relivers with unstable genes in a lycoris field. This caused her DNA to become part lycoris, essentially. She’s constantly absorbing and releasing the toxins which have caused all of the mysterious deaths around her over the years and even the orphanage fire, as the airborne toxins are incredibly flammable. 

 Scien hatches a plan to finally stop the “curse” but it will come at a horrible cost. He plans to genetically modify Ceres to enhance her allelopathic properties, clone her, and bury her (and her clones) alive around the island to absorb as much of the poison as possible. Yves, and myself, are understandably horrified after hearing the plan over a communicator, but Ceres agrees. She feels as if she can finally do something good instead of causing death all around her. Scien threatens Yves if he attempts to intervene. 

 Even though it’s what Ceres says she wants, Yves resolves to save her. Ceres is part lycoris, and it’s his duty to protect them. It’s the moment he decides to be selfish for almost the first time in his life to save the woman he loves. With the help of Adolphe and Dahut, the former sacrificing himself to help Yves get to Ceres, he makes it to the inner laboratory where Scien and Ceres are. Ceres begs Yves to stop and that she doesn’t deserve to live, to which Yves says that even if she is “death” incarnate he doesn’t care because he loves her and won’t let her die for strangers. Yves defeats Scien, but the genetic modification process has already progressed to the point where Ceres is essentially giving off poison radiation and the majority of the institute explodes. When Yves and Scien wake up, Ceres has run away. Scien is very interesting in this route because at this point he’s definitely a villain, but once he’s realized he has lost he gives Yves a medication that can suppress the poison and allow Yves to be near Ceres.

In the despair ending, he finds Ceres being chased by an angry mob of townspeople, but the toxins in the air have ignited around her. She plans to end her life away from everyone in this massive blaze. Yves can’t read her through the fire and burns alive in front of her, causing Ceres to completely break. She says that this way, they can truly be together as her poison can’t affect him if he’s already dead, and burns with his body.

For such a depressing game, Ankou and Adolphe have a really funny dynamic. To Adolphe, Ankou is some weirdo who has convinced Ceres he has magic powers. Ankou is just constantly insulting him only to turn around and be incredibly charming and lovely to Ceres. Ankou even calls her “himegimi” which is roughly his “princess” and now Adolphe has to play nice because he wants Ceres to be happy. Adolphe is also very obviously deeply in love with Ceres, I clocked him from the moment he talked about not seeing her as a sister. Now, Ceres is living with him (yay!) but on the condition that Ankou can live there too (boo!). He’s going through it. I mean, more than usual on Arpéchéle.

While Adolphe is at work, Ankou confirms that he’s the same apparition of “death” that appeared before Yves’s ancestor. When he comes back, he’s angry because Ankou has been snooping around in his stuff but this argument is cut short when they get a call from Yves who requests that they visit Nadia in the hospital. Dahut is also there, as he has been getting close with Nadia as a friend. He also off-handedly mentions that any information about the curse would be in the royal library, so that’s our trio’s next stop. Dahut catches them in the act of trying to sneak in but helps them get inside to learn more about the curse. While inside, Ceres accidentally opens a secret area where they find the diary of a “Christine Revepoir.”

 Christine was queen of Arpéchéle who has been erased from history. In her diary, she wants to use her power and influence to lift the curse from Arpéchéle and save the people. However, the rest of the royal family wasn’t so inclined and sent assassins after her as she did her own research. She is actually instrumental in setting up the reliver system and the legal aspect of it, which makes it even weird that no one seems to remember her. I was surprised that Scien didn’t mention her either. Later in her life she has a son named Liam, but it is recorded that they both died.

They tell Dahut what they learned and Dahut wonders if Ceres could be related to the royal family as she was able to open a secret area. He also admits he wants to revive his own mother, but as a normal human with emotions. Dahut has also been keeping up with Nadia via letters and wants to cure her disease along with lifting the curse. We get to a point where we are back to chasing Bourreau, who begins targeting Ceres?! I wondered if this could be another member of the society of exorcists. Sister Salome basically has Adolphe hostage at this point and wants to do the same to Ceres to keep her safe but Ankou helps her escape. I was wondering if something was up with her, no one with a sprite in this game is safe from being a little evil.

 Capucine continuously drugs Lucas to try and get him to kill Ceres, but he just can’t get him to do it. Sigh, how romantic, and I mean that genuinely. But he does get a bit of Ceres’s blood to analyze. Ceres is hiding out with Ankou and notices he has Adolphe’s dagger. Adolphe escapes  from Sister Salome to reconvene, but we learn that Scien has been killed. The king, now in full control, tells the populace that they can live forever, too, but they must find and bring the “Lycoris Saint” to them for sacrifice. This, of course, is Ceres! The royal family has learned about her poison-absorbing properties and want to use her and Ankou as test subjects.

 Over the communicator, they learn that Mathis has also been killed and Jean’s hidden laboratory has been raided by the Society of Exorcists. Their only real hope is to somehow expose the truth of the curse. Yves luckily has a copy of the drifter’s notes and research, but it needs to be translated. A mob of villagers catches up to them and begs Ceres to come with them and to die for their sake. The same people who scorned her for her entire short life, mind you, now try to convince her to die for them. The worst part is that she basically agrees! Not only because her own self worth is so low, but also because they start to attack Adolphe for protecting her. They also see Bourreau, revealed to be Lucas, trap and kidnap Ankou.

 Ceres is brought before the royals who explain what we learned in Scien’s route about her being a human lycoris and how they’ve surpassed Scien’s research. They plan to make themselves immortal rulers of the island. Ceres is thrown in the dungeon to await whatever horrific experiments they will do on her. Dahut has been imprisoned as well for refusing to assist them, and is set to be executed. Before he’s taken away, he gives Ceres a strand of his hair to use on the DNA lock on Scien’s lab where he believes Ankou is being held. Dahut is executed, and I started believing literally everyone was going to die in this route. However, we never saw bodies for any of these deaths, so I was holding out hope. With the theme being “despair” however I was expecting the worst.

 Ceres is taken to the lab, where Capucine is now in charge and admits he gave the royal family all of their twisted ideas. He’s currently experimenting on Adolphe who has survived much longer than he expected. He looks into Adolphe’s genes and reveals his secret: Adolphe’s genes aren’t like those of the citizens of Arpéchéle. They’re normal. Adolphe is the second drifter to have washed up on the island. I don’t know what I was expecting, I think that maybe Adolphe was just immune to the curse. In the country he’s from, children are only useful as far as they can make money and he wasn’t useful. His parents tossed him into the ocean, and he ended up on Arpéchéle where Sister Salome picked him up. She’s the only one who knows the truth about his origin. Adolphe expected to die at 23, but kept on living and is actually 25 years old at this point.

 Capucine sees a whole new avenue for experimentation on Adolphe, but eventually he’s tossed into the same cell as Ceres. Adolphe tells Ceres his complete truth. He had resigned to his death at 23, almost looking forward to it, and was devastated when it didn’t come. Ceres finds him, and in his frustration he lashes out at her, blaming her for his death not happening, calling her “death.” Ceres, poor baby, takes it calmly and agrees with him. She doesn’t know what happened but she thinks she deserves the blame. He also admits this is when he fell in love with her and promised to protect her for the rest of his life.

Which is… a little weird. I don’t think that makes sense as a reason for falling in love with someone. But at this point, I really liked Adolphe. You can tell how much he does really love and care for Ceres but also his paralysis and fear which caused him to be unfortunately passive up until now. He’s a man full of regret and love! He also asks Ceres to answer his confession, and she tells him she has to ruminate on it a little bit. Fair enough. The plan to escape kicks off with the entire royal family essentially exploding from memory overload in their new “immortal” reliver bodies. Ceres escapes and finds Ankou’s head suspended in a strange container that stops him from regenerating. He apologizes for not being able to cure her. Ceres, Adolphe, and Ankou’s head escape the institute through the sewers.

 They trudge through until Adolphe’s communicator goes off, and it’s Scien! And Mathis, Lucas, Yves, and… Jean. I was happy everyone was alive, but also I’m kind of against resurrecting characters because it ruins some of the emotional impact. However, their deaths were always “off screen” so I’ll allow it. Lucas actually never killed Scien, but begged for his help instead. Scien was able to orchestrate all of the fake deaths and get everyone together. Jean is also there, and admits he was killing prostitutes but now he’s after Capcuine who stole his lover’s body. Everyone is a little too okay with him being around. He also tells Mathis the truth about his origins, which I guess they will just have to deal with later because there are bigger issues right now. That’s fair, I suppose.

 The communicator cuts out and the group ends up in another hidden room. There stands Dahut, in his own secret laboratory, who introduces himself as Liam Revepoir, son of Christine Revepoir. He was behind the royal’s believing they could become immortal, and their death. He despises them for executing his mother. He barely escaped his own execution, living until the age of 15 where he was able to change his appearance and become the reliver “Dahut.” He explains that to revive his mother perfectly, he supported people like Jean and Capcuine to do illegal research. To finally revive Christine, he needs Ceres as she absorbed some of Christine’s genes when she was born in the same field where Christine died. This is… the weakest part of the science. Not only is she part lycoris, she is part Christine, I guess.

 Ankou manages to regenerate and protects Ceres from a clone of Lucas, but she’s ultimately captured as they try to escape back through the sewers. Adolphe’s hand is cut off in the process, and he and Ankou are washed away out of a drainage pipe on the beach where Adolphe first washed up. Soon after with Ceres in his custody, Dahut declares war on all of Arpéchéle, saying they are all inhuman and must die so he can remake “real” humans. He plans on blowing up the island and causing everyone to fall into the toxic sewer system to die.

 You cannot trust ANYONE with a sprite in this game. I was sad and didn’t want to believe it, even when I saw the writing on the wall after every other side character was also evil. I knew his time would come. It’s also revealed that the curse came from a war in the distant past where Arpéchéle couldn’t defend itself, so the people deployed a kind of chemical weapon around the perimeter of the island as a “barrier” that backfired and poisoned the entire nation.

 Adolphe and Ankou meet up with Scien and the others and discuss how to save Ceres and stop Dahut. Adolphe also confronts Ankou, who admits he’s not any kind of Watchman of Death or other mystical being, but a human with regenerative properties. He’s kind of embarrassed to admit it with all the theatrics he put on to sell the idea of the “Watchman of Death” to Ceres. Adolphe, wallowing a bit in his inability to protect Ceres, tells Yves he should be the one to save her but is eventually convinced to go himself so he can hear an answer to her confession.

 All of the love interests, who happen to come from families who were bestowed one of the original Drifter’s books, do their part to make it back through the sewer and to Ceres. Ankou and Adolphe make it back, where Dahut not only has Ceres but also Nadia. In his time visiting her in the hospital, he’s really come to care about her and see her as the only true “human” left. Poor Nadia, god!! But, it showed some of Dahut’s own humanity here, he even talks about how it’s kind of hypocritical for him to save her but he can’t help it. It added a lot of depth to his character.

 Dahut sends out Bourreau clones and clones of Lucas’s father to try and stop them. Dahut feigns defeat before continuing his plan, but guess who shows up? Sister Salome! Looking back, I’m not sure how she got here. It’s revealed that she is Christine Revepoir, Dahut’s mother, secretly revived by Scien with a new appearance. She had been secretly working with Scien to raise exceptional children and those who might be related to the curse, like Adolphe and Ceres. She apologizes for not realizing Dahut, her son Liam, was alive sooner, and stabs him.

 Dahut only sees this as further betrayal, as his mother is no longer human, and retaliates by stabbing her back. The plan to resurrect his “real” mother is still on, and he throws Ceres back into a tank where her genes start to mutate. Marks resembling the lycoris appear all over her body. Ankou becomes extremely frantic here, ripping Ceres out of the vat and feeding her his blood to slow the mutation. In her final act, Sister Salome crawls over to Dahut and fatally stabs him, before asking Ankou and Adolphe to save Ceres.

 Believing Adolphe to be useless, Ankou carries Ceres to the lycoris field where she earlier attempted to take her own life. Slowly, Ceres starts to realize something as she gazes into Ankou’s face and calls him “Adolphe.” Ankou smiles and tells her it’s been a long time since he’s heard someone call him that.

 Ankou’s face is overlaid with Adolphe’s. They’re the same person.

We switch to Ankou’s point of view to learn his origins.

 In Ankou’s life as Adolphe, Ceres succeeded in killing herself in the lycoris field. He was too late to save her. That’s the very first scene we see in the game. In this original timeline, everyone on the island only lived to the age of 18 and most of the Lycoris flowers around the island are no longer present. Ankou/Adolphe goes into detail about his life and how he became Ankou:

After Ceres committed suicide, he was eventually captured and experimented on after the Institute finds out he is the second drifter. He develops his regenerative properties and stops aging after (possibly hundreds of) years of torture. Yves (now a reliver) and Hugo break him out.

While hiding out, Ankou/Adolphe learns about how the lycoris noirges absorb the poison in the earth from Yves. He leaves the island and finds a country that has developed time travel, steals it, and goes back in time to cover the island in the lycoris flowers, hopefully stopping the curse and ultimately saving Ceres.

Because of the years and years of experimentation, his body constantly regenerates and morphs, changing his appearance. The flowers successfully extend the lifespan of everyone on Arpéchéle from 18 years to 23 by absorbing some of the poison, but doesn’t fully stop the curse.

The first drifter arrives and meets this version of Adolphe, and with his knowledge of botany explains that the flowers will never be able to rid the soil of the curse, but if Adolphe eats the flowers he can perhaps synthesize antibodies in his blood as he can no longer be killed by traditional means. However, the process still incredibly painful.

The drifter gives him the name “Ankou” and helps him make up the story of the Watchman of Death. The drifter promises that his descendants will protect the lycoris flowers.

Ankou waits for Ceres to be born while consuming the flowers, eventually stopping her suicide with an ultimate goal for her happiness.

So that’s why Ankou hates Adolphe so much, he hates himself for not being able to save Ceres in his original timeline. He’s also physically unable to tell Ceres anything that this timeline’s Adolphe doesn’t know, so he can’t just tell her the truth. That’s the cause of the garbled speech when they first meet. All he can do is point her to the people who might be able to figure it out.

 But he’s failed again. Liam Revepoir was never born in his original timeline, so he never accounted for him, and now Ceres is dying again. In Ankou’s despair ending, he carries her into the Lycoris field where they met, lights it on fire, and they burn together.

 In Adolphe’s despair ending, he catches up to Ankou and Ceres but he’s too late and Ceres has already died. Ankou tells Adolphe to try again. To go back in time once more, and try to save Ceres again.

Now that you’ve learned the secrets of Ceres’s curse, the island’s curse, and who/what Ankou is, I think we deserve a Salvation ending, please? Once you’ve completed all of the despair endings for all of the love interests, the Salvation Ending for Le Salut is finally unlocked!

 This time when Adolphe catches up to Ankou, Ceres is still alive, and reaches out, and says she wants to live to answer Adolphe’s confession. Ankou challenges Adolphe to prove he’s strong enough to succeed where he failed: saving Ceres. Ankou transfers some of his genetics to Adolphe in the battle (because they are the same person), and he gains the full strength of Ankou’s regenerative powers. Satisfied with Adolphe’s resolve, he tells Adolphe to use his and Ceres’s blood to create an antidote and save her. Ankou then shoots himself in the chest with a special bullet coated in mutagens that will finally allow him to die. 

 But Adolphe isn’t satisfied with that, and helps him gather a bouquet of Lycoris flowers so Ankou can propose to Ceres. He tells her that he’s always loved her, and thanks her for letting him fall in love with her again as Ankou, and turns to dust in Adolphe’s arms.

This is the first part that made me cry. Ankou sacrificed everything and lived hundreds if not thousands of years in agony to save Ceres and finally succeeded. Ceres is healed, and finally the island can as well, but he can never be with her as “Ankou.”

 After a 5 year timeskip, a vaccine against the curse (which we now know is a poison) is synthesized from Yves’s (because he eats lycoris bulbs) and Adolphe’s blood. Relivers are able to live like normal people, and even Nadia is improving. The soil is cleansed of the poison with all of their newfound knowledge, and relivers stop being made. There’s a round up of all the love interests: Jean is taking care of Mathis and an orphaned infant as his “punishment” (that really doesn’t seem like a good idea but I digress), Scien is now the leader of the nation and Lucas, after rehabilitation, is his bodyguard. Yves and Hugo plan to travel the world. Yves has a little moment where he mentions that he thought he was meant to be with Ceres in some way that kind of made me really sad. It’s mentioned in passing that Adolphe’s body also stopped regenerating at some point.

 Ceres finally confessed to Adolphe, telling him that she loves him in a field of beautiful, white, lycoris flowers.

 I’ve read other opinions where people absolutely love Ankou and are upset he doesn’t get his own proper ending (fair) but also hate Adolphe. I think Adolphe has a really good arc in this route. You see him too terrified of becoming a lab rat to really do anything which is a well grounded fear! He literally became one in the original timeline. Yves is a great friend to him, encouraging him to take that big step to truly be able to protect the woman he loves. Ankou was only shocked out of inaction once Ceres committed suicide in the original timeline. In this timeline, Adolphe is able to overcome his paralysis .

…well there’s a little plot hole in the whole thing but I think I can clear it up. If the lycoris flowers weren’t all over the island, how did Ceres absorb their cellular make up when she was born? Without that, she’d never be known as death, right? Well, the drifter still brought the lycoris flowers to the island and reliver technology still happened in the original timeline, they just weren’t widespread. I can believe there was a more isolated field of the flowers where Ceres was born and where Christine died. It wasn’t until Ankou (and then the Noirges family) cultivated them that they became so widespread.

 In this ending, Mathis is able to break through from the conditioning and stabs himself instead of Ceres, having regained his sense of self. Mathis really gives it to Camille about how he doesn’t love Rosalie anymore, he loves the idea of her in his mind. Bombs are set off around the lab, trapping Camille inside. Mathis believes Camille can atone for his sins, but Camille disagrees and urges him to escape with Ceres. Camille wants to be with Rosalie’s body and die with her. While talking to Rosalie, he calls Mathis their son. Mathis was made from the cells of Rosalie and Camille’s unborn baby.

 Unfortunately, the data in Mathis is corrupting without Camille and his laboratory to update it. He and Ceres sit on the beach, enjoying the time they have left together. Ceres has him promise to be reborn so they can fall in love again.

 In a time jump, Ceres is working hard taking odd jobs to save up money to become a reliver, even though she might lose her feelings, for the chance to see Mathis again. Lucky for her, Scien was able to salvage most of Mathis’s data and was able to turn him into a reliver, albeit without all of his memories. This new version of Mathis sees Ceres at the market, claiming love at first sight, asking to be with her. Ceres happily accepts.

 I really liked the bits about Mathis actually being more like his “son” but I would’ve wanted to see Jean/Camille care more about him in general for me to like… feel it. Obviously what Mathis said to him got through to him, and whatever version of Rosalie he eventually could resurrect would never be “correct” enough. Absolutely nothing was resolved in his route though, but Mathis is precious and pitiful.

This is the second time I cried while playing this game. In this ending, Ceres is able to cut  Lucas’s throat before he stabs her. This is enough to shock him out of his brainwashing, to which he immediately breaks down in tears for what he’s done. Though he’s fatally wounded, his incredible strength and constitution are keeping him alive for now. He and Ceres agree that they must stop Capucine at any cost. They make their way back to Capucine’s lab, where he throws hoards of Lucas clones at them, but our real Lucas, even while injured, is able to defeat them all.

 This terrifies Capucine, who is using the grotesque mutated form of Nadia to protect himself. Nadia is able to come back to her senses as well to turn against Capucine for hurting her brother, and kills Capucine.

 Nadia gives a final farewell to Lucas and Ceres, asking to be killed to end her suffering, to which Lucas obliges. A regular man would’ve been long dead by now, and Lucas is finally showing signs of slowing down. He lays with his head in Ceres’s lap to finally die in the arms of the woman he loves.

 His voice actor really gave the performance of the century here. The pain and agony in his voice, telling Ceres how much he loves her, how he wishes he could’ve made her his wife, but how he’s the luckiest man and the happiest man on earth just to be with her in the end… this is where I was crying. He was really squeaking out those lines, somehow capturing the pain of death mixed with the peace he felt being with Ceres. After everything he had done, he was truly happy in the end to love and be loved by Ceres.

Ceres then allows Ankou to take her life so she can be with Lucas, and he buries them together. There’s an epilogue of Ankou visiting their grave, and a little girl puts a flower on it, even if it’s the grave of the perpetrator of a massacre. Lucas had found atonement and salvation, perhaps in the only way he could.

 I’m not sure what I really expected or how this was going to end in any “good” way, but Lucas absolutely cannot catch a break. I cannot catch a break. I thought to myself a million times, how could this be fixed? How can this end with both of them alive? Well, I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t fundamentally change Lucas or Ceres, and their love for each other. It had to end this way. I don’t think Lucas would’ve accepted living after all he had done

Scien is able to successfully revive himself into a new body with full emotional capacity and save Ceres, announcing that he now plans to find a real cure for the curse and to have a few kids with Ceres. Dahut gives up the fight because well, isn’t that what he wanted anyway? The Royal Family however is not pleased but are powerless at this point. Scien calms down the panicking masses, but Sister Salome appears brutally killing Dahut and a member of the royal family.

 She tries to take Ceres hostage as she has completely overloaded her memory with her strong emotions. She demands to kill the royal family for the sake of her dead child and Adolphe. Scien is able to command the Royal Guard to injure her just enough to release Ceres, and plans to run some unethical experiments on the royal family to create a new reliver body for Salome so she can redeem herself.

  Soon in the future, Scien and Ceres look for flowers to put on Dahut’s grave. Later, Scien goes into Ceres’s room to “test” his newfound feelings and emotions for her. He tells her that he loves her and asks how Ceres feels about him, and she replies that she loves him too. He promises to find a cure for her curse.

 I’m not going to lie to you, I was kind of mad at how easy he got off, especially coming off of Lucas’s “”””””Salvation””””””” ending. While nothing is fixed yet in terms of the island and Ceres, the relivers retaining emotions fixes one of the biggest problems with the whole system. I also believe that Scien can 100% solve the curse on the island and on Ceres with some time. Besides Le Salut, it’s probably the best ending we get. Thematically, I think his Despair ending is kind of what he deserves for never seeing the value of emotions before, but Ceres also deserves to live so I’ll allow it.

Yves’s Salvation ending picks up when Ceres is the burning lycoris field. Yves has a bouquet of flowers, gets down on one knee, and asks Ceres to marry him. She attempts to reject him, fearing that she will kill him or otherwise cause him suffering, but he promises to follow her into the depths of hell if he needs to. Ceres accepts and confesses that she loves him too, and they kiss while surrounded by the flames.

 Miraculously, there’s a sudden downpour! The flames are extinguished but Yves and Ceres are basically fugitives at this point for defying Scien and destroying the institute. Luckily, Ankou always secretly believed that Ceres should be with Yves, he is the protector of the lycrois noirges after all, and sneaks them into his underground hideout. Because Yves has weird eating habits and eats lycoris bulbs, he’s actually much more resistant to the poison that Ceres releases as well!

 They are permanently blacklisted from being relivers by Scien, but promise to be together until they pass away while enjoying the time they have left.

I was surprised at how… dark their Salvation ending was. They are both alive with all of their memories intact so that’s a plus, but the fact that they will still almost certainly die at 23 and must live their entire lives hidden away was really shocking honestly! I thought they’d “fix it” a bit more, or at least imply to. Maybe because Scien learned more about the curse in this route, he’ll solve it as well and eventually let go of his grudge against them…?  As he is actually the posterboy, so it’s a bit of a bait and switch when Le Salut ends up being the “true route.” There are actually two official covers for this game to prove his posterboy status. In the English edition, the box art is dual-sided.