I continued H'aanit's journey in the aftermath of wrapping up the Chapter 1 stories. She'd been a strong character thus far and I didn't anticipate that changing in the near future thanks to having strong damage capacity and access to all 12 damage types. My pattern with past Octopath Traveler characters has been to knock out the various side dungeons in the inner ring after finishing the Chapter 1 stories, and I saw no reason to deviate from that approach with H'aanit. She even managed to stumble across the first Cait of the run while heading off to one of these optional side areas, breaking a Medium soulstone in exchange for the 1000 XP reward which was worth about another full level. I'd been a little unlucky not to find a single Cait up to this point though H'aanit remained very much on the standard leveling track thanks to gaining all of that additional Provoke experience from fighting every townsperson in sight.
I started with the Untouched Sanctum for no particular reason other than wanting to knock out the first Noelle, Seeker of Knowledge quest. This was a surprisingly tricky dungeon thanks to the skeletons inside having high health, no easily exploitable bow/axe weaknesses, and the chance to inflict terror on their strikes. H'aanit wasn't in too much real danger thanks to having Medium Healing Grapes on hand for their 1750 HP restore, but she did have to eat those things on more than one occasion to stay safe. The Ambling Bones had a fairly useful monster ability when captured, a 4 star Mighty Slash that hit everything on screen with a sword attack. I was able to snap a picture of what it looks like when H'aanit successfully captures an enemy, which resembles a Pokeball throwing out a net and sucking the unfortunate target inside. Where exactly is she storing these beasts again?
After finishing that small side dungeon, I sent H'aanit venturing off to some of the towns in the second ring where she would be able to unlock better equipment. Stonegard and then Goldshore both had some juicy stuff available and were easy enough to visit by this point in the gameplay:
The Forbidden Bow was the biggest prize, held by this random Elderly Woman in the faroff seaside town. Just like the Forbidden Sword in Stonegard, the Forbidden Bow can only be gained via Purchase as Therion has 0% odds to Steal the item for some reason. The physical attack value of 282 was a gigantic increase for H'aanit's arrow shots, with attack increasing nearly 250 points over the heavily-outdated Arcane Bow that she had been using previously. Now H'aanit's bow and axe attacks had roughly the same strength as the Forbidden Bow was comparable to that Golden Axe from earlier. All of the Forbidden weapons come with some kind of a negative tradeoff, however, and for the Forbidden Bow that happened to be an increased rate of random encounters. I didn't have much experience with the Forbidden Bow on past playthroughs and it quickly appeared that this weapon roughly doubled the rate of monster battles (technically it likely cuts the hidden step counter in half). That was definitely a bit on the annoying side but I didn't have much of a choice as this weapon was far too good for H'aanit to pass it. She would only have to equip it until (check notes)... defeating the Giant Python for the Transcendent Bow of Shadows, argh!
Elsewhere on this item-finding mission, H'aanit also made use of Tressa and Therion to acquire the Dragon's Vest with 183 / 185 physical and elemental defense, plus the Protective Bracelet accessory which adds another 50 points to each stat when equipped. Together with the rest of her gear, H'aanit was up to about 500 points of both physical and elemental defense which was solid for this point in the game. I was a bit worried about her having such innately low defensive stats although she was making up for this weakness by dodging a lot of incoming blows. H'aanit also killed things fast enough with her excellent offensive abilities that this wasn't as much of a concern as it had been for some other solo characters.
Once H'aanit was done beating the stuffing out of every NPC in each town, it was back to the side dungeon grind once again. I headed north to Hoarfrost Grotto this time and resolved to make a full circle around the inner ring, visiting all of the various optional areas in turn. H'aanit was doing enough fighting to unlock her final non-Divine Hunter skill, the useless Take Aim ability, which also had the far more important effect of opening up her last passive skill. This was Patience and it's on the short list of the best support skills in the game: 25% chance to act again at the end of the current turn. This is essentially like getting an entirely new turn for free and I hardly need to tell the reader that Patience was downright incredible when it kicked in. I could use the extra turn to launch another attack, use a healing or status recovery item for H'aanit, whatever was most useful at the moment. There were times where H'aanit would attack, get an extra strike from Second Serving, then have Patience grant her the extra turn followed by Second Serving activating AGAIN for four full, unboosted hits in a single round. There were only two downsides here: there was never an indication as far as when Patience would succeed on the 25% dice roll so it was never something I could plan ahead of time, and H'aanit did not gain an additional boost point on the extra Patience turn. Apparently boost points are only gained at the start of the turn and therefore they didn't activate in this situation. Even with these minor limitations, this was an amazing new tool in H'aanit's arsenal.
The screenshot above showcases what Patience looked like when it triggered; note that there's a "10" damage printout still visible on H'aanit from when one of the monsters had just hit her. Her face would suddenly appear out of nowhere on the action bar at the top of the screen and I would find myself getting an unscheduled extra turn. This was quite useful in the Hoarfrost Grotto because the place was packed with Ice Elemental enemies, the same crystalline things that I've highlighted in many past solo reports due to their outrageous damage output. Everything else would be scratching H'aanit for 10-30 damage at a time and then those jerks would cast a spell that did 1000 damage, sheesh! I had to hit them with max boosted True Strikes as the highest damaging option available and H'aanit was still chomping down one Medium Healing Grape after another to stay alive. Oh, and remember how the Forbidden Bow was still causing that boosted encounter rate? Fun times. 
These things were definitely worse than the J�tunn boss at the end who died to a series of axe hits and True Strike bow shots.
From the Hoarfrost Grotto, H'aanit continued to the Whistlewood and then Whistling Cavern, both areas lacking a boss of any kind. The poisonous monsters in Whistling Cavern were pretty annoying but otherwise there wasn't much to report. H'aanit was doing enough fighting with that boosted encounter rate that she reached 5000 job points while traversing the next optional dungeon, Twin Falls, and unlocked the final Divine Skill for the Hunter job. This is known as Draefendi's Rage and it's by far the strongest offensive move in the Hunter's toolkit. The damage is about 50% higher than True Strike and it always hits everything on screen, a fittingly grand ability for the class Divine skill. (It's not quite as powerful as Brand's Thunder on the Warrior class, which has a base strength of 12.75 compared to 9.40 for Draefendi's Rage, but compensates by having area-of-effect properties that the Warrior skill lacks.) Against the Monarch butterfly at the end of this optional dungeon, H'aanit simply cut through its shields with her bow attacks and then let fly with Draefendi for the pictured damage. This poor insect only has 9000 HP in total and therefore expired instantly, yeesh! So much for that fight.
H'aanit followed the exact same tactics against Heavenwing, the other optional boss located at the end of Carrion Caves. Auto attacks with her bow to break the shields, then Draefendi's Rage for the big kill shot at the end. The fact that H'aanit was already dealing more than 7000 damage with her Divine skill this early in the game was downright amazing, though I knew she was going to crash into the 9999 damage cap pretty quickly. The remainder of the optional areas in the inner ring were uneventful aside from one oddity: H'aanit kept running into more Caits! She fought no less than six of them while clearing these places and crushed a Medium soulstone every time to ensure the big XP reward. This may have been due to the increased monster encounter rate or it simply could have been dumb luck but I certainly wasn't complaining.
At this point it was time to begin the Chapter 2 stories and Alfyn's easy setup was a good place to start given that H'aanit had already walked out to Goldshore. The toughest part of this story sequence was the trip out to the Caves of Azure because the Sea Birdian enemies along the way could inflict confusion status and a long string of that could spell death for H'aanit. She was wiped out once and I had to start over again from town; this sequence of bad luck was probably because I had to fight more monsters than normal. Once inside the caves themselves things became a lot easier and then Vanessa Hysel at the end didn't put up much resistance. That's Vanessa and her hired goons pictured above although the flashy Octopath Traveler spell effects make it hard to see what's going on. Her sellswords had a weakness to bows which allowed me to put Arrowstorm to good use; remember, this skill is best used to break through shields, not cause actual damage itself. Once the shields were down, Draefendi hit both of the minions for 7500 damage apiece which was enough to wipe them out instantly and then it was just a matter of chopping through Vanessa's axe weakness before unloading on her with more Hunter abilities. Like I said, this isn't much of a boss and I can't remember any solo character struggling here.
I decided to tackle the double Chapter 2 stories in Quarrycrest next, mostly because there's a Conscious Stone in a chest during Tressa's story and that accessory is needed against some of the other Chapter 2 bosses elsewhere. H'aanit began by thoroughly pummeling the various innocent people living in the town, which I definitely didn't need to do but had fun engaging in anyway. One of them had the Silent Bandana available for Purchase, a helmet with slightly lower physical/elemental defenses than the Oasis Hat that H'aanit had been wearing but which added 111 points of evasion. This was better for her setup and I swapped over to the Silent Bandana as my default gear. Then I walked all the way to the gates of Morlock's Manse before remembering that I hadn't actually activated Tressa's Chapter 2 quest yet, whoops, forcing me back to town to trigger the story and then return again.
Once I could actually get inside the blasted mansion, the dungeon was pretty straightforward for H'aanit. The most obnoxious enemies in here tend to be the War Dogs who can inflict terror status and block your characters from using boost points. H'aanit had a ready answer for them by using the Second Serving / Patience combo to break them using bow attacks, then eliminate them quickly before they could land their fear-inducing bites. As far as the main boss Omar was concerned, H'aanit found an opportunity to call on Linde outside of a Provoke battle. Omar's two Footman minions were weak against swords but not against spears, and therefore if Linde could land a single Sweep attack, she would do nothing but utilize Sweep on every round thereafter. I made use of Linde to break both of the Footmen simultaneously and then blew them both away with Draefendi to leave Omar unprotected. The big guy had enough health that he absorbed two more Draefendis, with H'aanit breaking out more crazy monsters to cut through his daggers weakness, before eventually dying to the fourth instance of Draefendi's Rage. Omar's big windup attack named Overhead Swing must have had low accuracy because H'aannit successfully dodged it every time that it appeared.
I was finally able to get a really good screenshot of Draefendi in action during the next dungeon:
That's the graphical display when the Hunter Divine skill is activated, looking like a giant arrow getting called down from the sky right followed by a huge explosion and then the damage numbers printing out. H'aanit herself also looks strikingly like a catgirl in this picture, which I guess the Octopath Traveler developers liked enough that they just straight up made the Hunter in Octopath Traveler 2 into a catgirl (Ochette says hello). Anyway, I needed to have H'aanit spam-cast Draefendi's Rage throughout Cyrus' Chapter 2 story because the Sewers dungeon was legitimately dangerous. It was full of Marionette Bones and Puppet Bones that could inflict terror status combined together with Thunder Wisps and Wind Wisps that liked to fire off elemental surges. Each wisp spellcast was hitting for roughly 300 damage, and with three of them per encounter, that was about 1000 damage inflicted each round. Since none of these foes were weak against axes or bows, there was no way to break them aside from using monster captures, and therefore I fell back on killing everything with Draefendi over and over again. It was the only safe way to make progress even as H'aanit had to keep consuming more Inspiriting Plums for SP restoration after each fight.
Gideon proved to be a lot easier than the random encounters in his own dungeon, kind of like the combat in the original Final Fantasy come to life again. Gideon started the battle with two Dancing Bone skeleton minions which fortunately had a weakness to axes. H'aanit concentrated on breaking one of them with auto attacks, flattening it with Draefendi, then doing the same thing to the other skeleton. I had extra Patience turns roll several times during this process which allowed me to heal H'aanit without having to waste a real turn and then later cure her terror status during the free round. That ability is so, so helpful for a solo character who otherwise has to waste a whole turn for any kind of healing or status restoration. Once the minions were gone, Gideon's own weaknesses unlocked so it was a whole bunch of hacking away at him with H'aanit's axe followed by using Draefendi once again when his shields were broken. Nice and easy.
At this point, I took a short detour from the remaining Chapter 2 stories in favor of traveling south to the town of Wellspring. There are no Chapter 2 stories located here, with Wellspring instead hosting the Chapter 3 stories for Olberic and Therion. Normally there would be no need to visit this desert town until later on, however H'aanit had a real incentive to get past this pictured Guard who blocks entry to one of the buildings. There was just one problem: this guy had a full 9 star rating (!) which was far higher than anyone H'aanit had faced thus far in a Provoke battle. I think that she had defeated several townspeople with a 6 star rating and that was as tough as I'd been willing to try. But I needed to get past this individual if H'aanit was going to access the items inside this house which meant gritting my teeth and initiating the fight. (Note that Olberic wouldn't even be able to try this battle since his level wouldn't be high enough to open up Challenge as an option.)
The Guard turned out to have a weakness to spears which was a huge relief; I wouldn't have wanted to try this without either a sword or spear weakness to exploit. The Guard could also hit for as much as 1000 damage but fortunately missed a lot of his attacks, I'd say a little more than 50% of them, and those misses greatly cut down on the damage that H'aanit was taking. She could therefore survive in this Provoke fight just fine, with the main problem revolving around finding a way to deal consistent damage. Linde was great for breaking through shields but not so great at inflicting real damage, only hitting for about 1000 damage at max boost. I knew that this Guard had something like 30,000 HP so that clearly wasn't going to cut it. After trying several other monster options, none of which were dealing more than 2000 damage, I switched over to using Large Soulstones which always dealt exactly 5400 damage. H'aanit broke soulstone after soulstone, even smashing two of them on the same turn once when she rolled an extra Patience turn, and I really wish that she could have just used Draefendi's Rage instead to save me all this time and effort. Still, as long as H'aanit didn't die from accumulated damage, she was bound to win eventually and that did take place at the cost of about half a dozen of those Large soulstones.
The Guard himself didn't hold anything of interest, however with him out of the way I could reach a trio of Merchants hanging out inside the building. One of them had the Forbidden Axe for Purchase with its insane 391 physical attack (wow!) that I was happy to grab with Tressa. And yes, this was another place where Therion had 0% Steal odds so I really did need to pay the listed sum, and also why I didn't travel to Wellspring until H'aanit had close to 100k money in her wallet. The Forbidden Axe's negative tradeoff was lowered accuracy but that didn't seem to matter very much, partly because every attack always seems to hit in Octopath Traveler and partly because H'aanit naturally has the highest base accuracy in the game anyway. While it would have been better to have this awesome physical damage boost in the bow slot as opposed to the axe slot, the Forbidden Axe was still a major damage increase for H'aanit and I was back to preferring the axe again until H'aanit could upgrade her bow.
With her shiny new axe in tow, it was now time for H'aanit to continue with the remaining Chapter 2 stories. I headed back to Noblecourt to tackle Therion's story which always has the annoying property of needing to Steal three different plot token items. Fortunately the player can use Cyrus to Scrutinze one of the townspeople and increase the odds of those thefts from 3% to 8%, which cuts down the tedium noticeably while still being a pain. (Obviously the developers didn't expect Therion to be Level 1 while doing these sequences.) Once H'aanit could get inside the latest mansion functioning as a dungeon, she steamrolled her way past a bunch of Bodyguards and those elemental-based Guardian monsters. Orlick is one of the easier Chapter 2 bosses and he certainly didn't do anything to slow down H'aanit. His minions had a sword weakness so H'aanit relied on Linde to cut through their shields simultaneously, then the pictured Draefendi's Rage was sufficient to one-shot them. Orlick himself was weak to axes and had the fun of getting to experience the Forbidden Axe up close and personal. I mixed in axe auto attack to break his shields, with Second Serving kicking in some extra hits, followed by Draefendi when the shields were down for the big 9000 damage outburst.
I decided to visit Victor's Hollow next which is a bit later than most of my solo characters head there. Many of them want an early trip to the town so that Therion can Steal the Robe of the Flame armor, which has the highest elemental defense value in the game and an additional +56 to max SP when equipped. While that was a great item on someone like Ophilia, H'aanit didn't really care about more SP and rarely needed to itemize heavy elemental defense. I still took the time to Steal it with Therion at 3% odds but it wasn't something that I used much with this character. Instead, H'aanit busied herself knocking out everyone in town with more Provoke fights:
Some of the innate limitations of the Provoke mechanic were really starting to make themselves felt by this point. Because H'aanit can only use her summoned beasts for these encounters, the player more or less has to rely on Linde unless they want to go running out to catch more monsters after every few battles. This is a real problem as Linde is permanently stuck at a 3 star rating, and while her damage slowly increases alongside H'aanit's level, Linde's Pounce and Sweep abilities will never come remotely close to the damage output from Draefendi's Rage. It was particularly bad against NPCs like this merchant who lacked a weakness to both swords and spears, thus remaining permanently unbreakable to Linde's two types of damage. I think that this guy had a 7 star rating and he couldn't do more than 200-300 damage at a time to H'aanit which was easily healed away with items. Therefore H'aanit would never, ever lose to this NPC but it took simply ages to defeat him with Linde hitting for 300 damage per round and a fully boosted strike barely clearing the 1000 damage threshhold. This would be so much faster if H'aanit could simply whack this guy with Draefendi's Rage instead of needing to work through her animals, sigh. There's a reason why I prefer Olberic's Challenge mechanic to Provoke.
Speaking of Olberic, H'aanit was visiting Victor's Hollow for the purpose of playing through his Chapter 2 story. I belatedly realized that there's two unavoidable Challenge fights as part of this story sequence and Olberic was still Level 1 - whoops. I've always had Olberic at a higher level when doing this story because I've used him to fulfill the various Challenge/Provoke side story quests with my other solo characters, and that inevitably would grant him some XP along the way. Not this time though as H'aanit was handling all those quests herself. Well, I was still able to win both of these Challenge battles by loading up Olberic with superior equipment (including double Empowering Bracelets for +1000 max HP) but again it took a while for Olberic to win while he was slapping his opponent for 80 damage per round with his pathetic Level 1 stats, heh. At least I did get a fun scene like this:
H'aanit had already knocked out everyone in town and their dazed bodies lying on the ground persisted into the cut scenes during Olberic story sequence. I actually laughed out loud when I saw this message: "Just do exactly what you did to the others!" Sure thing, Cecily! 
Anyway, once I had control of H'aanit back again, she got down to the business of ripping apart the various contestants in the arena. Victorino and his pirate buddies were all weak to swords which meant Linde hitting them all with her Sweeps into a Draefendi that wiped out the whole crew. The next three bosses all had two minions accompanying them and in each case I once again used Draefendi's Rage to eliminate the small fries before concentrating on the boss. Joshua was weak to axes and therefore was quite easy to cut down. Second Serving + Patience rounds were really useful in breaking through his shields and he had difficulty even hitting H'aanit, with most of his attacks missing entirely. I think he managed to get her into confusion status only a single time. I brought a Conscious Stone to block the stunning attacks of Archibold and that was pretty much all she wrote for that fight as well, with Archibold having an easily-targeted weakness to bows.
Gustav, the main boss of this chapter, had more health but fared little better. H'aanit began by wiping out his minions, again bringing a Conscious Stone for stunning protection, then focused on hitting the axe weakness on the black knight himself. Break the boss then hit with Draefendi's Rage, rinse and repeat. Gustav goes up to three actions per round once he drops below 50% health and also ends every single round by attacking with Black Blade which inflicts terror. The intention here is to keep the player perma-locked in terror status so that they can never boost their abilities. This didn't work against H'aanit, however, as she dodged most of those Black Blade attacks and therefore avoided terror status. She also had the chance for a Patience round to pop up and I was able to confirm that this did take place AFTER Gustav took his final move. Thus I could simply cure away the terror with an item during the bonus round and then still hit with Draefendi on the next round when the boost meter was charged. Short of bringing a Calming Stone accessory to the fight (something that usually isn't available this early in the game), I don't see how this could have been handled more easily.
I had some additional time on this particular evening and decided to do H'aanit's own Chapter 2 story next, as usual watching through the whole thing for my featured solo character. H'aanit arrives in the town of Stonegard looking for information on the whereabouts of her missing master Z'aanta and of course begins by checking at the local tavern. She is directed by the tavern keeper to seek out more information from a woman in town named Natalia, who has to be saved by driving off a local nobleman who's been pressing his unwanted affections on her. (This is a really shoehorned implementation of a Provoke battle that doesn't make a lot of sense plot-wise and is never referenced again.) I always hate doing this Provoke fight when playing other solo characters and it was a relief to have a H'aanit who wasn't Level 1 crushing it so easily.
Back at her house, Natalia reveals that her husband was friends with Z'aanta and she formed a close relationship with Z'aanta after her husband's passing. The text makes it clear that Natalia and Z'aanta were more than merely friendly which embarasses H'aanit when she realizes what her master has been doing. More importantly, Natalia doesn't know where Z'aanta is either though she does manage to coax an admission out of H'aanit that our huntress regards her mentor as an adopted father. Natalia also notes that she thinks H'aanit and Z'aanta are more alike than they might realize, particularly in their shared determination once they embark on a hunt. There's some nice character building here but it's unfortunate that nearly all of the conversation continues to be about Z'aanta and not H'aanit herself. This is H'aanit's story, could we focus a bit more about her instead of her master? These people all spend so much time talking about Z'aanta that H'aanit feels like a secondary character in her own story much of the time.
In gameplay terms, H'aanit has to travel into the nearby Spectrewood which was the last place that Z'aanta was seen before disappearing. There's another forced Provoke fight here against a giant tree called the Ancient One, something that I usually get past by tossing a Large Soulstone but which H'aanit could of course handle normally for this playthrough. The Spectrewood is heavy on monsters that like to silence the player, which can be a real problem for spellcasting characters who need to equip an Articulate Stone for status protection. H'aanit didn't really use her Hunter abilities that much though as she typically auto attacked where she could get the most benefit from Second Serving. She was silenced a bunch in this dungeon and she didn't particularly care. The Lord of the Forest boss at the end brought out a series of minions which H'aanit targeted with repeated uses of Draefendi's Rage thanks to its area-of-effect properties. I made sure to have a Conscious Stone equipped for stunning protection and otherwise focused on attacking into the Lord of the Forest's axe weakness. I did discover one thing in this fight: Draefendi's Rage could miss its targets if H'aanit was blinded, something that happened when the Weeping Treant minions managed to put H'aanit in darkness status. I had thought that the Hunter Divine skill would auto-hit and apparently that isn't guaranteed. Aside from that one whiffed Draefendi, the rest of the battle was pretty straightforward and H'aanit dodged a lot of the incoming physical attacks. The pictured Forest Ire did the most damage to H'aanit and it still wasn't too bad.
After defeating the boss, H'aanit discovers the nearby form of Z'aanta who has been turned to stone by Redeye. Z'aanta very conveniently left a note prior to being petrified explaining what happened to him and that H'aanit should travel to Stillsnow in search for a cure for his condition. H'aanit then has another conversation with Natalia and is joined by Eliza of the Knights Ardante, leading to the Bechdel Test-failing scenario of three woman discussing Z'aanta and how to rescue him. I know that this is a Japanese game but come on, really? In a game made in 2018, no less? I'd like to think the developers could have done better here. Thus we conclude the chapter with H'aanit heading off to Stillsnow in search of a cure for Z'aanta after a farewell gift from Natalia. Overall, I enjoyed the small amounts of additional information we found out about H'aanit during this chapter, I simply wish that there had been a lot more of them.
There were still two remaining Chapter 2 stories to complete, neither of which I anticipated causing any problems. H'aanit had been a very strong solo character thus far and these remaining story sequences were among the easier ones to complete; H'aanit's own Chapter 2 story is typically the hardest one and she had cleared it with flying colors. I visited Stillsnow next, probably because everyone had been talking about it during H'aanit's story, and took the usual time to fulfill the various side stories and pummel all of the helpless townspeople with Linde. Primrose has the Chapter 2 story here and the monsters inside the attached Secret Path dungeon were very, very easy to defeat. There were much harder opponents outside the town entrance in the Western Stillsnow Wilds which doesn't make much sense from a gameplay perspective. H'aanit had taken the time to catch a few of those monsters and I broke out one of them against against the boss Rufus. This was the Portly Penguin - yes, that's the real name of this thing - that hit Rufus with a double staff attack for about 3000 x 2 = 6000 damage at max boost. Rufus didn't have a weakness to bows or axes which made this the best way to cut through his shields. Honestly though, there was no need even to break Rufus since he was missing most of his attacks and barely scratching H'aanit. However, I had the chance to hit the boss with an attack from a gigantic fat penguin though and there was no way that I was passing up that opportunity. 
There was one last story remaining, Ophilia's Chapter 2 story in Saintsbridge. This is the one that I've extensively mocked for being about a disagreement between schoolchildren; for better or worse, the gameplay doesn't let you Challenge/Provoke these annoying kids. H'aanit had to change things up a little bit in the Murkwood dungeon as it was absolutely packed with Shambling Weed plants that liked to multiply, replacing defeated enemies with a new shrub immediately thereafter. The only solution was to wipe out everything at once with lots of Draefendi usage, something that was easily done even if it did require frequent Inspiriting Plums for SP restoration. The boss at the end was the Hr��vitnir who has an Old English name that frequently bugs out on the display of the characters (the � or "eth" letter dropped out of modern English more than five centuries ago). This boss likes to buff its own physical attack while debuffing the player's physical attack and defense, which can be pretty dangerous if all of those buffs and debuffs stack together. However, the Hr��vitnir has to land its Bestial Fang attack to debuff the player and, well, it missed every time against H'aanit. Whoops! That pulled the fangs (heh) of this particular monster which I broke using Linde's sword attack followed by the standard Draefendi for 9400 damage. This was getting to be old news by now but it certainly worked like a charm.
Another eight stories begun and another eight stories completed. H'aanit was probably challenged less in the Chapter 2 stories than in the Chapter 1 stories, at least in part due to unlocking such powerful passive support skills like Second Serving and Patience. My biggest concern was that Draefendi's Rage was about to slam into the 9999 damage cap while monster health would continue scaling up unabated. This would definitely make things more difficult down the road and it was going to be an obstacle that I'd have to work around. Stay tuned for the next chapter as H'aanit continued on to the Chapter 3 stories.
