The Longing-ist Playthrough: Day 22 – 22/01/22 – 347 Days, 5 Hours, 49 Minutes and 59 Seconds to go…

I didn’t spend Day 22 how I had expected at all but I made sure to make good use of my time. More and more I’m having my patience tested beneath the mountain, and I realise now (all too late), that I need to have Monty spend more nights at home in order to move things along a little more.

I was excited when I fired up my Switch – I knew that Monty would be at the [tall ledge] and I had my fingers crossed that the green mushroom would have grown and would allow me to progress a little….

Nooooooooope! 😑

And even more annoying, there was another huge mushroom – even further back from the ledge than the last one! Arrrrrgh! I had Monty smash the new Abomination and then pluck another small green mushroom that had sprung up where the last one had grown… You’re not stealing ANYMORE nutrients from the Chosen One! I wasn’t willing to plant another green mushroom up here so I’m afraid I had to have Monty eat this one; he wasn’t too keen on the idea but it didn’t seem to do any long term damage.

Equal parts disappointed and annoyed, I decided to continue my mapping mission down in the kingdom. It was a million miles away from where I started, but if I had missed two rooms slap-bang in the middle of the domain, who knows what I might have missed down in that rats nest of tunnels by the [Halls of Eternity]! I put my Switch down for a while and waited for Monty to reach our planned destination.

Now, when Monty finally got there, I picked up my screenshot-map and systematicallly went through each and every door in the caves around the [Halls of Eternity], and what I found was that it was even more of a jumble down there than even I had realised! Honestly, it really was a warren. I diligently marked out all of the entrances and exits in the deep-west corner of the kingdom but in the end, it was for nought. It seems I had been especially thorough when searching this area the first time and hadn’t missed a single thing down there. This should have been another blow to my evening, but honestly, I was just glad to know for sure.

The mapping exercise took a lot more time than I had wanted to play, but I didn’t want to end having not really achieved anything. With that thought in mind I urged Monty to head over the [treasure room], hoping that we might finally be able to have a go at breaking that glass and getting those gold coins. We arrived there and this too was a disappointment, with the game still refusing to let me try and break the glass. Maybe I just can’t break it after all…?

That was the last straw and I asked Monty to go home for the first time in a few days. He made it home and played a trio of six notes on the horn before sitting down to check what the new book was. Unfortunately without scouring past screenshots and comparing, nothing jumped out as being the new book amongst the pile. I checked through Monty’s diary again but I couldn’t see that anything had changed there either.

Just before calling it a night and choosing a book to read, I decided to light a fire. That’ll zoom things along a bit – maybe enough to finally grow that stinkin’ mushroom! Opening the menu, I noticed that I finally had enough sulphur to light – and I quote – ‘a smelly fire’. 😅 Wondering what was the worst that could happen, I went for it… One stinky fire, coming right up!

As soon as Monty lit the fire he commented on how bad the smell was and told me that he had to get out of the room. And suddenly, I wasn’t in control anymore – Monty was moving himself out of the room, past the king, up the stairs and into the kingdom-proper. I tried to steer him a couple of times but he kept walking – ignoring my inputs. With that, I put my Switch down and just watched – intrigued as to where Monty would go if left to his own devices.

I sat and I watched as Monty climbed higher and higher through the kingdom, finally stopping by [our friend], the spider. He was almost as far away from home as he could be now, and again right near the [tall ledge] and the Case of the Incredibly Slowly Growing Mushroom! I took this as a sign that I should head up there one more time, so I sent Monty that little bit higher and turned off my Switch for the night. We’ll see if third (or fourth, or fifth) time’s a charm…

Continue reading: Day 23