Sierra Fairyfriend, Student Professor (Spiral Cup Gauntlet)

(A quick brief primer - if you don't know what Wysteria is or are coming onto this blog as this is your first read post, I strongly suggest you read the following posts - it will help you understand what is going on. Also, I got the Spiral Cup Gauntlet[at great deficit to my bank account which I must repay for life] but I decided to give this to Sierra as the one-month pre-paid time would be useful to her account as it was due to expire in a couple of weeks. This is now my favorite bundle as Wysteria is probably my favorite world in Wizard101 and this expands on it. I had exercised artistic license as the first post explains clearly, some of the stuff doesn't happen in game.)

1. The Great Magical Tournament
2. Of Goblins and Girls
3. The Tournament Continues
4. It's Not Easy Being Green... Men
5. The Spiral Cup Is Claimed

 (With that, allons-y! ^_^)

The appearance of the fountain on my estate was confusing to say the least. As was the note attached to it. It was an invite from Pigswick. It had been a long time since I had visited that place. It read:

We have a matter you might find intriguing. Return to Pigswick Academy and visit me in my office. Headmistress Belladonna Crisp.

I wondered what the deal was but I shrugged and took the Spiral Gate to Wysteria.

"You know, I am still not forgiving you for the rudeness you displayed towards me and Grace," I said with a sneer. "And the way you belittled my school..."

"Actually, your school is exactly why I called you here," said Belladonna. "You see, after we... lost the Spiral Cup to Ravenwood, Hugo discussed the future of the school... we made a decision with the professors and agreed that maybe we would humble ourselves and get someone from Ravenwood to teach us a little about your magic. Perhaps our founder was... wrong about Ravenwood. As you know, we were founded by Mr. Pigswick, who was expelled from Ravenwood for questioning the ways of your schools. Perhaps we need to re-establish ourselves, so I swallowed my pride and sent a letter to your headmaster asking for a student to come tutor some of our best students in magical dueling. He referred me to you two and one other..."
 

I was surprised when Christina came in, smiling. "Is this where I get to be a student teacher? Man, what memories of this place. And you still haven't fixed the Green Man problem? Lame."

"Her?" I asked.

"Christina Dawnblade is your school's second best Sorcerer next to Christian Storycrafter, and you are the second-best Conjurer and Diviner next to Sailors Venus and Jupiter," muttered Belladonna. "But Mr. Storycrafter was unavailable for comment, and we think the Sailor Wizards are myths, no offense intended, so Ambrose gave you two as references. Go talk to Benedict in the tournament hall and I will be there shortly."

"I don't see what the deal is, Mma, but if we can teach these people some of our magic, they might work together and this rivalry will end," said Grace. I nodded. AND I wanted to humiliate them a bit further by stealing students from Pigswick.

Benedict was there and told us what we were going to be doing in our curriculum - basically, beating up the top students in Pigswick. "Your first students are Rusty Tinderspark, a student of Ember magic, and Cora Winterbranch, a student of Frost. Don't be too hard on them, but don't be too gentle either!" I laughed at the irony of it all.

"Woo! Let's get this party started, girls!" cried Christina. I laughed even harder at Benedict's disgusted reaction to this display as we headed into the Hall of the Hydra.

 

 

 

 

These two were pretty good and they had summoned minions - an Evil Snowman and Fire Elf - but we took them down well enough. Blinding Light really helped. Other than a Tower Shield the Snowman put up, we were good. I laughed at Cora's decision to transfer, recalling how the Ms. Crisp said we should transfer to Pigswick after seeing how 'great' they were. Shoe on the other foot! ^_^

(The enemies are around 1000 HP but nothing too hard; Tower Shields are your biggest threat here.)

Benedict grudgingly acknowledged our success and told us to head to the hall of the Specter for our next "tutoring session." When I heard Chaos and Tempest, I turned to Grace and sighed.

Sure enough, the students were Myth and Storm elemental and had a Troll and Riverclaw minion with them. We switched to our boss decks so we wouldn't be wasting attacks on the enemies we couldn't damage.

Christina had no such qualms as her Power Nova was not resisted by anyone. :p

We had to deal with puking frogs but I was used to it by now. (Goldrook will do a gimmick which happens at the beginning of each turn and casts Humonofrog on you if you use anything on the storm guy, and the storm pig uses a gimmick if you don't harm her each round, casting a Stormblade on herself. This can get very dangerous very quick - Grace and Christina were dropped to half health by the sudden Humonofrogs and Blade-boosted Storm Sharks.)

 

We cleaned up and then reported to Benedict, who sent us to the Hall of the Harpy to fight a couple of exchange students, Elia and Gemma.

 

I was surprised that the Earth student was Nalia's cousin, and bowed. The other was a fox in knightly armor. They had a river elemental and specter as minions, so we were wary.

"Greetings wizard," said the fox. "I hail from Avalon, a wonderful place. I am unimpressed with this school, I want some excitement!"

"Well, we'll give it to you!" I chuckled.

*head desk* STILL using that old Wizard City Voodoo? That's not a challenge! :(

 

My frog took down Nalia's cousin(sorry Nal) and Grace swamped Gemma with Tempest. (This group isn't too hard at this tier, none of them have over 980 HP. Still, they did spam Weakness.)

"Tell me a bit about Avalon," I begged.

"Oh, if you had only been there during the time when King Artorious had ruled!" she said, sighing. "But now it's... I can't talk about it."

"I hope to visit your homeland some day," I said, smiling. (Little did I know that dream would come true, but not for a very long time.)

"I can still taste the dirt!" coughed Elia, spitting. "Nalia's experiences with you didn't prepare me with how tough Wizard City students are!" I grinned - back when I fought Nalia in the Spiral Cup, I was much weaker than I was now.

 

Belladonna graced us with her presence but was rude as always. I frowned. Benedict told us what our final workshop would be and Christina sighed. "Equilibrium, balance, it's the same thing," she said.


"Don't fight them," I said as we entered. "We'll do the hitting. My Frogs will make them weep."

I was angry and amused at the rumors that I was hearing. Falmea was not a dragon and neither was Dworgyn. But we were going to show them real magic.

 

And they would regret calling us "hedge wizards!"

 
Of course, I didn't expect the last brother to suddenly summon a Balance-type Heckhound! (Gimmick: Once you drop the first two brothers, the third will cast this Sandhound that will do a ton of Balance damage to one target - it did over 600 damage, and it will be cast before you can act every turn. Luckily, it's not a Damage over Time like the other hounds. Christina took a lot of damage. She wouldn't have this problem had I farmed for her Grandmaster gear.)

"I hope you do," I said. "You need to work on REAL magic, though I would like to know where you learned that Heckhound variant." Suddenly, we heard a scream and raced back into the great hall...

And found Benedict and Belladonna nowhere to be found! I noticed that something had changed - a bunch of vines were clogging the doorway to the Hall of the Gorgon.

"Those look like Goblin Kudzu from the Wyrd," gasped Gemma.

"The Wyrd?" I asked.

"The Wyrd is a dark and terrible forest filled with evil spirits and ogres," whispered Gemma. "It is said that after King Artorius... disappeared, his queen vanished into that foul place."

"I see a portal, it must lead to the kidnappers," said Grace. "Shall we investigate?"

Christina grabbed my by the back. "Let's!" She pushed me forward as the Pigswick students watched us enter what they thought was certain doom. I was worried too, but I knew I couldn't falter. As much as I hated Belladonna, we needed to rescue her - I would have done the same had it been Ambrose.

We found Benedict and Belladonna in cages in a mystical place. I was spooked by the giant humanoid sitting on a throne. He ordered his minions to attack. (This actually takes place in Avalon because the music is the same as the Avalon battle music!)

 

We brought down the goons and the ogre chuckled and told us about some flyers he got from the goblins who had invaded earlier. I realized that the goblins and hobgoblins whose portal we had closed ages ago had returned here with Pigswick brochures.

"I liked the idea so much that I decided to start my own school here in Avalon," chortled the ogre. "I already have a master of arms and a headmaster, maybe you three will be teachers!"

"Not in your school, pug face!" sneered Christina. "We'll kick your butts!"

They kicked OUR butts. After summoning more minions, the ogre cast a Balanceblade on the last goblin who suddenly summoned a Tempest that nearly annihilated us. We had to flee and regroup.

(This battle took two tries. The gimmick is that on turn 2, Barbarous here summons ogres and/or goblins to fill up all the remaining spaces. Then on turn 3 and every other turn, they start a chia where the minions are buffed with +35% Balanceblades and the last one procs with a zero-pip Tempest that does 250 damage and adds +100 damage each time the gimmick chain occurs. With the Balanceblade, that leads to a LOT of damage if the battle isn't won quickly and if you take out the mooks, he'll summon a new one every turn. My group was dropped to double digits and Grace got defeated. I also stupidly used her boss deck when I should have focused on Tempest which does more damage than Triton with enough setup.)

 

We attacked again and this time Grace defeated the mooks with Tempest (and brought the main guy to 187 HP) and Chris finished him off with Power Nova. Then we cleaned up with Judgement and my Ninja Pigs. I sighed in relief. "You fail this course, jerkwad!"

I admit I was happy that was over. A ton of wisps refreshed us.

"But I thank you for saving us," she said humbly. "I guess we do have something to teach each other."

"Maybe you should..." I began to say...

But Cy interrupted me. I groaned as the headaches split my head. "Dang it!"

"Go on," said Christina. "We'll clean up here and make sure the portal is taken down. You go and take care of school business."

I sighed. I did admit that anything Cy put before me was nothing compared to this.

(And that's the Spiral Cup Gauntlet in a nutshell, folks. The final boss is the only hard boss due to that Tempest cheat, but if you have Dissipate, use it and you'll do fine. Barbarous has a low drop of pet eggs for the Rude Goblin which has a spell that summons the big guy and minions.)

[To be continued...]