Hix backs away, like he’s positive he’s not man enough for the Test of the Sparkly Unicorn. When he tells her he isn’t sure about going through with this–are we still talking about the test?–Tengaar replies, naturally, “Of course you do! I want you to become a real man!” Or maybe she could just go find a “real man” instead of wasting both their lives trying to change Hix? But that’s crazy talk. Barry follows them into the chief’s house, hoping the test involves Hix practicing his blowjob technique on a fake unicorn horn.

Sadly, by the time Barry enters, the chief kobold (with a cute white fumanchu) is in the middle of woofing at the couple that the Test of the Unicorn is a fairy tale (mmm hmm) and they were stupid to believe it exists. Hix is visibly relieved and begs Tengaar to let them go home, but she will not be denied. “What are you talking about!?” she yells at either the chief or Hix. “A Unicorn will only appear in front of a ‘Noble Warrior and a Pure-Hearted Maiden’. If you pass the Test, it proves that you’re a real warrior!” And we all know that Pure-Hearted Maiden is code for virgin, right? Since that’s the only way to be pure and stuff. Sigh. So the game basically just confirmed that Hix has never partaken of Tengaar’s vagina, like we really wondered or even wanted to know.

The kobolds are also afraid of Tengaar’s vagina.

The chief protests, “Well that’s such an old custom. We don’t really do that anymore…. And it’s dangerous in the forest! Even our villagers aren’t allowed in…” Tengaar is just crestfallen, but the chief insists that they spend the night in his smelly, flea-ridden village since they came all this way. Of course, Hix is happy to take his offer and “take a load off,” hee hee, but this is obviously the wrong thing to say right now to Tengaar. Not that there is ever a right thing to say, as far as I can tell. She jumps in his face again and yells, “Why are you so tired? You were barely carrying anything! At this rate, they’ll never let you back into the Warriors’ Village. I give up!.” I give up, too! What the fuck is that period doing there? But the chief is surprised for a moment, and asks her, “The Warriors’ Village?” before the fade to black.

That night, Barry and Hix are hanging out in the chief’s “library,” or an alcove with a small bookcase and a rug he can scoot his butt on. Barry’s been waiting for Tengaar to go to bed so he can get to know Hix a little better, wink, but Hix is whiny even when she’s not around. Jesus, dude. “Oh…Barry, was it?” he asks. “I’m sorry to pull you into this whole mess…” Pull him in? Like he can’t just leave anytime he wants. Barry asks him, “What’s the point of this trip?” because Tengaar shouting out “REAL MAN” every five seconds like a bingo announcer hasn’t been quite enough to convey the message. Hix explains, probably punctuating every clause with a weary sigh, “We were born in the Warriors’ Village, and as is our custom, I have to go on a quest for my manhood to be recognized. Tengaar wants to make me a great warrior, so that’s what she’s so excited about… She’s really…a very nice girl. I think maybe…she’s too nice.” That’s one interpretation. The wrong one, but still. Tengaar needs to chill the fuck out. Hix faces the wall, and orates melodramatically at Barry, “This isn’t the first time I’ve had doubts. I wonder if I can really be a warrior…” Right. “Warrior.” We all know what this is really about. “I just can’t get into the idea of having to fight… But if I say that to Tengaar, I know she’ll get angry…” Oh, I bet she will. Barry just stares at Hix’s back as the scene fades, wondering if he could shrug out of his clothes and solve Hix’s doubts once and for all.

The next morning, Barry is eating an English muffin in sullen silence at the chief’s dining table, because Hix did not miraculously turn into a fantastic lover just from the magical power of Barry’s penis. And Barry has high standards by now. When he walks over to the other side of the house, the chief is standing back as Hix hovers spastically over Tengaar, who is still in bed. He’s shouting, “Tengaar! Tengaar! Wake up! Tengaar!!!!” When Barry asks what’s going on, the chief stammers a bit as he tries to explain, but then Tengaar, who’s “asleep,” remember, goes, “Ah-HEM!!!” Hix somehow doesn’t notice this, and the chief collects himself and goes on, “Eh? Oh, yeah, that’s it! It’s the Curse of the Unicorn…” Hix is all, “OH MY GOD, WHAT’S THAT?” and the chief tells him, somehow with a straight face, “It’s uh… It’s… It’s a very terrible curse… It’s because she spoke too freely about the Unicorn Test. This girl may never open her eyes again….” Dude, really? Really? Hix sputters, “B… But… Isn’t there a cure!?” The cure is not being such a gullible dipshit. The chief basically goes, “LINE!” again, actually walks over to Tengaar to have a whispered aside with her, and then announces, “Oh yes! There is one way! You have to bring the Blue Stone, Red Flower, and Green Bell to the Unicorn’s tree in the forest.”

Barry has two blue stones right here. Sigh.

The chief tells Hix that the Blue Stone is being sold at the item shop in South Window, which is only natural for a mystical curse-destroying artifact. But Hix goes, “The South Window Item Store! Let’s go right away! Please come with me, Lord Barry!” Barry doesn’t even have the heart to break it to the kid. After all, Hix is probably convinced Tengaar saw them playing “Catch the Unicorn” last night and fell into a trauma-induced coma.

There’s a reason I waited until now to tend to this sidequest: without the Blinking Mirror, it is the world’s biggest pain in the ass. With it, it’s relatively simple. Barry returns to the castle and walks two steps to Viki to get a teleport to South Window. When they get to the door of the item shop, before they can enter, a kobold barrels out past them. HINT HINT. Inside, Hix asks the proprietor about the Blue Stone, and she replies, “Eh? Already? Ah, I mean, yes, we have it. Right this way.” Hix offers to pay, like Barry is wasting a red fucking cent on this, and the shopkeeper talks herself into the highest number she can name without feeling terrible about herself, 30 potch. Hix goes, “Huh? Really? Okay……….there ya go.” And since the chief didn’t tell them where all three items are at once, because they’re not actually there yet getting them one at a time is important for the ritual, they have to return to Kobold Village.

When they hand the Blue Stone to the chief, he says, “Ah, yeah, that’s it, that’s it! Excellent work. Okay, the Red Flower is next. The Red Flower is…ummm…” and after Tengaar fucking sneezes as a mnemonic trigger or something, he “remembers” that the Red Flower is in the “Cave of Wind, south of HoYay Castle.” Barry fucking knows where it is, thanks. Barry has the option, instead of saying, “Let’s go, Hix,” to point out, “But she just sneezed…” but like Hix was with Barry last night, I’m too quick on the trigger and Barry misses this crucial opportunity to point out that Tengaar is an emotionally manipulative liar.

At the Cave of the Wind, again as our boys approach the entrance, a kobold emerges, this one backing out slowly, only to turn around, notice them, walk away too-casually, and then bolt when he doesn’t think they’re looking. Barry and Hix look at each other, and insulting little “?” bubbles appear over both their heads. Fuck that, Barry knows exactly what is going on here. And sure enough, right inside the entrance, a red rose is lying conspicuously on the ground. The Red Flower is symbolism for Tengaar’s virtuous and noble vagina, so it’s natural that Hix needs assurance that it’s the right item, asking, “There it is!!! This is it, right Barry?” Like Barry would know! Barry can choose to respond, “I wasn’t here before….” which I think is supposed to be “It wasn’t here before,” because it wasn’t, but either way Hix is not listening. Back to Kobold Village!

But uh oh, the game is up–when they enter the chief’s house again, Tengaar is sitting at his table, eating a scone or something. She goes “!” when she sees them and sprints back to bed, but not to worry, because Hix is really that fucking unobservant. He just thrusts the Red Flower at the chief, who says, “Oh! That was quick!” Blinking Mirror, bitch. As for the Green Bell: “The, uh, Green Bell is in the sewers beneath Two River City,” the chief intones. “Good luck, Fledgling Warrior.” This time, Barry absolutely does comment, “Was she just out of her bed…?” but is literally dragged out of the house by determined, selectively deaf and blind Hix. He must really love her if he can continue to ignore all of this shit in the name of “saving” her. Barry doesn’t even know what to think of the whole thing anymore. Maybe Jowy and Jillia are going to have a happy marriage, too.

Now that Barry wants to barf and then jump off a bridge, he figures he may as well help Hix find his stupid Green Bell first. And why not? Let’s go recruit a fucking kobold, too. In Two River’s kobold district, with Gengen in tow, Barry enters a one-room house on the east side. A younger kobold freaks out when Gengen shows himself. “Gengen!!!!!!” the kobold pup, named Gabocha, screams at him. On one hand, he’s cuter than Gengen. On the other hand, anyone actually that excited to see fucking Gengen must be as moronic as he is. Gengen replies, “Gabocha!!!!!” and they sniff each other’s butts for a moment. Gabocha asks what happened to the mercenaries and Gengen stops to look sad for a moment, but then says, uh, diplomatically, “The Mercenaries were beat by bad guys… But Gengen fought hard!” Right. Gabocha responds, “Wow…that great….. Gabocha want to see Gengen fight like that…..” Well get in line, because I’d like to see Gengen be a good fighter, too. But Gengen tells him he’s too little, and to wait for him to come back after the war. He goes, “Yeah okay, Gengen,” probably rolling his eyes, but as Barry and Gengen leave, he walks right out after them, whistling. Just what we all needed!

And Barry is not done torturing himself. Recruiting another Tai Ho, another kobold, and running errands for the world’s most inexplicably straight man is not enough for this day. Since they’re down in the sewers anyway, they return to the room where Barry was spooked by a terrifying winger. With Cocko present this time, they enter the empty room and Cocko says forebodingly, “This place…it couldn’t be…” And then the lights go out. This day keeps getting better and better. But before Barry has to worry about Cocko trying to make out with him, a voice in the darkness cackles, “Hoo hoo hoo…..hee hee hee….[COOOOOOCKO]…….” Cocko screams like a big ol’ chickenwuss, and then the lights come back on. The owner of the voice, the same deranged-looking, lank-haired winger from before, is looming behind Cocko with his molester face on, which is incidentally his only face. Anyway, his name is Sid, he’s Cocko’s brother, or not, or something, who cares, and his entire character is that he’s weird and creepy. Cocko screams, “Stop! Don’t come here!!! Stay away from me!!!!!!!” and backs away, hoping Sid will trip over some of that excess punctuation. “WHAT’S WRONG, [COOOOOOCKO]?” Sid replies in what I imagine is Vincent Price’s voice. So Cocko hates him and is terrified of him, which is at least a silver lining. Sid apparently lied about leaving town–wow, he’s so gross that even the wingers didn’t want him around–and relocated to this room in the sewers. “What!!!!!!!” Cocko screams at this news. “We had a going away party for you! You got presents and everything!!” Sid responds, “Yeah, I really appreciated those. They were great presents. I felt kinda bad though…for about 5 minutes.” I bet great presents for wingers are wads of cat hair and broken marbles.

‘THOSE EARRINGS ARE KNOCKOFFS?!’

Sid basically bullies Cocko into telling him that he’s in “Barry’s Yaoi Army” now, a fact that haunts Barry every night. “Hmmmm…….. The Yaoi Army eh?…….” Sid creeps. “Okay, I’ve decided. I’ll go with you!!!” Barry and Cocko are both like “ICK, NO THANK YOU,” but Sid is not going to be talked out of this. Barry does his little spin move to “celebrate” this addition to his army, so Sid won’t get mad and suck his soul out of his peehole.

Ew. For once, I agree with Cocko.

Right, so what were we doing? Oh, just continuing to sap Barry’s will to live? Okay. A little bit further in the sewers, Barry spots yet another kobold actually dropping the Green Bell on the ground and disappearing behind a corner. SUBTLE. It even makes a little ting! as it hits the ground, so Hix would have to be a complete idiot to not notice it was just put there. But guess what! “Lord Barry! I just heard a bell!” he cries excitedly. Barry goes, “Uh…yeah…” It’s a good thing he’s run out of words at this point, because Hix ignores him anyway and wanders ahead. As he’s literally standing a foot in front of the completely conspicuous object in question, he durrs to himself, “The Green Bell must be nearby…” And then he freaks out when he spots it. Dude. Barry doesn’t know if he can deal with someone this stupid in his army. As it is he already has Gengen and Gabocha.

Now that they’re equipped with the necessary items to “save” Tengaar, though Barry is wondering if she’s really the one in this relationship who needs saving, they can return to Kobold Village. But when they enter the chief’s house, Tengaar is nowhere to be found. Maybe she realized this relationship is basically toxic and went home. But no. The chief says she is “gone,” which totally sounds like she’s dead. Which, in this weird little morality play they’re walking Hix through, would actually make sense. Instead, when Hix asks where she’s gone, the chief answers, “Probably to the Unicorn Woods… If you take all three items deep into the forest and fight the Unicorn, you should find her.” So she was never going to wake up again without Hix finding the mystical items from the Test of the Unicorn, but now she’s just buggered off to the woods on her own? But Hix, the least critical thinker in history, sees no issue with this, other than that he is scared to fight a unicorn. Of course he is.

As they head north into the woods, Hix pauses to psych himself up. “………………. I’ll be okay… I must save Tengaar… She’s all that matters… Let’s go… Lord Barry.” Dude, it’s just a fucking unicorn. That she apparently went to find of her own accord, and that’s assuming you believe this stupid fable, as Hix does. God, this is so stupid. And though there are treasure chests throughout the Unicorn Woods, they all contain necklaces and other kobold-specific accessories. Like I’m going to put any kobolds in my party ever again? Please.