You feel a strange compulsion to check your current pyromancy level. As you thought, it is of course, five, because four plus one is five, not four.

>>861
You stamp firmly upon the abominable morsel of flesh. It squelches apologetically beneath your bare foot. You attempt to coax the mysterious little girl above you to fight you honourably, but to no avail. "Don't be silly," she admonishes, "I'm the final boss; you only get to fight me somewhere around >>960, and only after tying up all the side-plots."

>>862
Enjoying the thought of your newfound dominance of the element of fire, you take a remnant of tentacle, hold it at arm's length and spend five mana (to leave 130 remaining) on wreathing it in flame. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem particularly flammable.

"Surprise!" shouts the girl upstairs. The double doors at the North end of the ballroom explode from their hinges, and in burst four men, each of whom look exactly like Mecha Alexei Fujiwara, including the mechanical implants, and even the lack of trousers and the angular bulge in the underwear. They are all armed with laboratory equipment; one with a retort stand (complete with boss and clamp), one with a large chromatography column, one with a stack of petri dishes, and one with two glass conical flasks filled with a reddish brown, fuming liquid.