Dragons of Yokai - Yokai Treasure

Yokai Treasure — A refuge surrounded by silver

The voyage reaches Takarajima with its passengers already failing. Baoyu reports impaired sight, numbness and loss of movement, while children and elderly people are suffering more severely. The clerics are holding the effects back, but he warns that continued exposure will lead to organ failure. No one needs to leave the ship to be affected: in this crisis, the mercury's vapors are enough. With silver covering the surrounding sea, Miko believes that trying to sail away would kill them. Evacuating onto the island appears to be their remaining option, even though it may be exactly what their pursuers want.

Baoyu can withstand the mercury because its manipulation resembles his own innate magic, which he normally keeps sealed to avoid accidents. Miko, trained as a shrine maiden as well as ruling as Empress, specializes in purification. This unfamiliar metal poisoning exceeds what she can readily undo; she can keep the Hero free of symptoms so that they can rescue the others. Brentan's protection has a different source. Admiral Shen Zheng gave him a charm, presented as a blessing and token of gratitude, when they met.

Miko recognizes the name from her mother's stories of Shen 'The Radiant Mirage' Zheng: an immortal admiral commanding a mist-veiled vessel whose shadow resembles a mythical sea serpent. Another tale credits him with slaying a dragon hatched from a giant clam's pearl, then gaining power to summon mist and break typhoons. These are the exploits Miko has inherited, not events shown on this voyage. The present suffering makes her dismiss the stories of his integrity. Yue, struggling with illness, tries to say that her mother told a different story about his connection to Miko, but Baoyu sends her back to rest before she finishes.

Brentan urges a parley. Miko answers that, although he renounced Greenguard's throne, his intervention still reflects a belief that he would rule better than Victoria; his judgment helped put them on the verge of capture. He cannot defend himself. The Hero turns the discussion toward what he can do now, and Miko adds him to the pirate deception as a supposed hostage. She will concentrate her magic on the passengers while they frighten Wuji's forces away. The accents remain ridiculous, but the danger is real: Baoyu announces that the ship is being boarded.

Yokai Treasure — Clearing the path to the cave

All Hands Report sends the Hero to Baoyu, Haruki and Yue before attacking the intruders. Their accounts show a divided defense. Yue has taken Ramona, her baby and the passengers who can move high up the ship for better air; Haruki fights despite his damaged ribs. Below deck, Baoyu protects those unable to move and the clerics trying to heal them. The refugees' safety depends on finding enough room and time to move everyone together.

The invaders include Quicksilvers, mercury familiars that can slip through a ship's crevices. Baoyu's records describe their use in distant assassinations, and their bodies emit the vapors harming the passengers. The apparently ghoul-like Needle Mouths are not undead. He identifies them as immortal commoners altered by sorcery, with mouths narrowed until they cannot eat normally, kept on short rations and put to hard labor. His family's records associate this punishment with criminals, but the explanation moves him to pity rather than removing their suffering from view. Baoyu also places snakes among the Wu Du, the five poisons, and describes Wuji as blessed by the Avatar of Metal, linking that blessing to its potent metallic magic.

Starving Ghosts requires eight Needle Mouth ID Tags while the Hero protects Yue's group. Sudden Striker clears the Quicksilvers below deck, asking for four Mercurial Molts while Miko continues purification. Her completion speech interprets the attacks as evidence that Zheng is willing to take the refugees home as corpses. That is her conclusion at this stage of the pursuit, before the Admiral gives his own explanation.

Once the ship is clear, Onmyoji Maiden requires a report from Brentan and the placement of Miko's paper talisman on the cave's sacred rope. His knights have dressed as pirates and are helping escort the passengers. Miko says the island once hid the Yokai royal family's treasures; she has now placed the twelve Wuji royals and their family heirlooms inside its cave. A seal is intended to admit only relatives of Yokai's ruler. She has temporarily removed it to shelter the crew and passengers, and the talisman prepares their next defense.

Brentan's participation does not erase the political failure behind it. He says he renounced his claim alongside Tara after Malgor's defeat because his conduct during the Mana Crisis shamed him. His solitary journey was meant to broaden his understanding, but he is still making mistakes. Miko describes Victoria as an attentive correspondent who sets aside her insecurities to care for her people. Her letters have recently slowed with the Queen's work, while Brentan knows her largely through messages to the nobility and reports of Swordhaven's recovery. Neither conversation establishes a new whereabouts for Victoria.

His distaste for piracy also acquires an awkward qualification: many of his knights enjoy the performance. Brentan reports that Victoria has persuaded pirates, including Rhubarb, to sail under Greenguard's colors in exchange for pay to explore and plunder the Queendom's enemies. For the present operation, though, their pirate roles serve Miko's evacuation. Proper Parley rounds up the Imperial Warriors for seven Warrior Helms, then begins the hostage performance intended to force the mercury's withdrawal.

Yokai Treasure — The hostage speaks honestly

With Imperial Warriors in their hands, Miko and the Hero play at bloodthirsty captors while Brentan poses as a valuable Greenguard hostage. The warriors denounce the pirates' lack of honor. Miko demands that their Admiral remove the mercury or bear responsibility for Brentan's death, while the Hero quietly helps her keep to the part. Their deliberately vicious words are threats within a ruse, not a decision to murder Brentan.

When Brentan begs for his life, the performance becomes a confession. He says he could not live up to his own expectations and that his efforts worsen matters for his friends and family. He thought he was bringing peace to Greenguard and realizing Brittany's dream, but now admits entitlement, using their marriage to seek the throne and resenting Victoria for doing better. His lack of malicious intent no longer seems an adequate defense to him. The Hero cannot immediately tell where the acting ends.

The Imperial Warriors are moved rather than repelled. To them, admitting wrongdoing demonstrates strength and a pure heart. In reassuring Brentan that his intervention was not wasted, one reveals that Zheng has cut through the cave's seal to reach his family. Miko knows that the seal admits relatives of Yokai's ruler. Pressed to name the Admiral's grandson, the warrior identifies the Snake Prince. Yue's interrupted warning now makes sense: Zheng is Miko's ancestral grandfather.

Brentan again asks Miko to talk with Zheng, but the kinship does not persuade her to overlook her subjects' poisoning or Wuji's treatment of commoners. She says she prepared a backup if the seal failed. They must enter the cave, act on that plan and stop him. The family revelation therefore changes the threat's identity without resolving the conflict.

Yokai Treasure — Fuses beneath the shrine

Hunger Pains confronts the Needle Mouths after Zheng has broken the seal and let his forces into the cave. Miko's task requires eight limbs, describing the attackers as unable to die but still capable of being disabled. Terror-cotta Warriors then drives back the Imperial Warriors for nine Armor Latches. Its completion remarks that their armor is designed never to be removed, leading Miko to question what valor and loyalty are worth without a good life. The pursuit exposes further costs of the order that wants the descendants returned.

Indoor Fireworks puts Miko's last resort in place: four crates of explosives at specified points in the cave, with a back exit available for escape. She acknowledges that a mistake in detonating them could bury the passengers alive. Sons of Biscuit Eaters holds the line against both kinds of pursuer for six Criminal Markers and six Imperial Scales. A mercurial mist signals Zheng's personal approach. Pearl of my Heart finally requires his defeat before the shrine where his grandson rests.

Zheng admires the Hero's skill while condemning the life he believes they have chosen. The Hero maintains the pirate fiction, claiming that gold from the captives matters more than justice and denying any Yokai involvement. Elsewhere in the cave, Yue refuses an Imperial Warrior's invitation to follow him, and Brentan tells the soldiers he only pretended to help them so he could betray their plans to his pirate friends. They remain ready to die to save Zheng's family, while Brentan works to push them farther out.

The Admiral notices the restraint hidden inside the fight: the Hero has the control to look as though they are struggling while injuring opponents rather than killing them. Burning fuses expose the other part of the plan. He recognizes that explosives could collapse the cave and tries to prevent it. When the passengers' symptoms worsen, he asks whether his side's magic is harming them. The Hero continues the cruel-captor act, saying their treasure will go down with the ship. Miko refuses ever to become a prisoner. With a pistol raised, Miko holds to that refusal; an explosion cuts off the confrontation.

Yokai Treasure — What the rubble reveals

After the collapse separates them from Zheng, the Hero believes the deception has worked and proposes gathering everyone toward the back exit. Brentan asks them to wait and listen. Outside the debris, an Imperial Warrior says they cannot clear it unaided and pleads with the injured Admiral to stop because his fingers are broken. Zheng answers that, even reduced to a head, he would use his teeth to dig out his family. His desperation gives the people listening another account of their pursuer.

He names his grandson Jiang and admits having failed him repeatedly. He disregarded Jiang's tears over ordinary people's treatment and his suspicion that the Emperor had killed his mother. Zheng says it took too long to change, too long to persuade the Emperor to let him search after the children fled, and too long finally to disobey him. Centuries of pursuit have not brought him to Jiang. He misses both grandson and daughter, and questions what immortality offers without them.

At Brentan's urging, Miko speaks through the barrier. She asks Zheng to set aside his blade and assumptions, then identifies him with an intimate detail from family memory: the once-boisterous man who preferred water because tea leaves were always too bitter. He recognizes something only his daughter, then her son and later descendants, could have passed down. Miko offers to remove rocks from their side. The work will give them time to begin knowing each other.

The shrine completes the revelation. Jiang and the other princes and princesses are resting there in death. Miko explains that their immortality faded after they made Yokai their home, but they lived long, fulfilling lives among growing families and people who loved them. She intends the same happiness for their descendants and hosts. Zheng finds a peace in the shrine that he says Wuji no longer possesses, and relief that Jiang escaped the follies of both his father and grandfather.

Zheng surrenders. He says mercury is used as a healing agent in Wuji and that his fleet did not know its metallic magic would poison the refugees. This is his explanation for the harm, not proof that the pursuit or its effects were harmless. He offers to accept punishment, and Miko's first proposed repair is to fix the Needle Mouths. The conversation does not itself show that restoration being carried out.

Rejecting elaborate imperial titles and an endless chain of 'greats,' Miko asks him to stand and call her his granddaughter. She says no lives were lost and offers service to Yokai as his punishment if he chooses to remain. Zheng promises to protect her and the Isles from future storms. When she asks whether he fears losing immortality, he worries instead about whether she eats well and has time to enjoy her life. Reconciliation changes the purpose of his guardianship from recovering descendants for Wuji to caring for the family before him. Their reunion ends in an embrace before the story returns to the ship.

Yokai Treasure — A larger family, an unfinished journey

Miko's later account confirms that Zheng has announced his defection from Wuji and pledged himself to Yokai. Baoyu anticipates paperwork and new members of the Akiba Navy. Both he and Yue receive sweets and pocket money from their ancestral granduncle; Yue describes his emotion on holding Ramona's baby. Haruki is still arguing with Imperial Warriors, now because they are ashamed to have fought someone with injured ribs. He reminds them that his ancestor gave up royalty long ago and that he simply wants to return to guarding Akiba.

Dream of the Mists is a separate optional request after Pearl of my Heart. Zheng needs time with his enshrined grandson, but asks whether the Hero will spar with him and his men. The task calls for one Shapeshifting Pearl, four Condemned Brands and four Imperial Seals. Its captured definition is non-once, alongside the ten once-only main quests; this describes the source's classification rather than an observed reset or unlimited availability. Miko hopes to learn current events in Wuji from Zheng and remains unsure whether the Empire still seeks them. For now, she chooses time to talk, laugh and grieve with him.

Brentan privately asks the Hero not to worry Victoria with his confession, believing it would distress rather than anger her. The Hero asks whether he has learned the value of talking things through, and tells him he can answer old mistakes with future conduct. He sees his stubborn pride and loneliness reflected in Zheng and is glad the day ended in a reunion. Victoria and Tara are Brittany's sisters and therefore his family too, he says. He intends to return when he can support them, and the Hero wants Victoria to hear that promise whenever they meet again.

He will resume his search for understanding, but first accepts Miko's invitation to tea with her family and asks the Hero to walk with him a little longer. The farewell does not complete his personal journey or place Victoria back in their company. It leaves a promise that their paths, including hers and Tara's, will cross again, while Yokai gains relatives and allies it had expected to confront as enemies.