P-1: Soul Survivor

P-1: SOUL SURVIVOR
General
Layer & Part		PRIME /// FIRST
Music		The Spinal Staircase CHAOS ORDER
Tip of the Day
Parries can be used as a powerful healing tool. Parrying any enemy projectile or melee attack will fully replenish your health up to the hard damage limit.
Enemies
Flesh Prison Minos Prime
Rank Requirements
Rank	Time	Kills	Style
S	03:33	2	7,500
A	04:00	1	5,000
B	06:00	1	2,500
C	10:00	1	500

This article covers a simplified account of the boss fights for the Flesh Prison and Minos Prime. For more detail on both bosses, see Flesh Prison and Minos Prime. For more information on Minos' lore, see King Minos. For the location of the P-1's entrance, see 3-1: Belly of the Beast.

P-1: SOUL SURVIVOR is Act I's Prime Sanctum, acting as a reward for Perfect Ranking every level within Act I and Prelude. The level is separated into two main sections: the intro's Spinal Staircase, and the main Boss Arena, where the bosses Flesh Prison and Minos Prime are fought. The songs that are used within the level are CHAOS for Flesh Prison and ORDER for Minos, with The Spinal Staircase for the intro.

Spinal Staircase

The start of the Spinal Staircase.

Starting the level, the player will reach a small ledge holding a pedestal with a torch, which the player is required to pick up to progress. Behind it is a large section of spine connecting to the platform, which the player descends down using the torch to light up the way.

As the player continues down, the level's track, "Sourire d'Avril" will start to distort as wind-like white noise grows, before eventually turning into incoherent noise. At the end of the staircase lies a mouth-door found in other areas of Gluttony, which the player drops down into.

Below lies another pedestal and a large stone door preceding the boss arena, which the player needs to place the torch onto in order to open the door. Behind it lies a Checkpoint and a Terminal before a narrow entrance leading into the unlit arena.

Boss Encounter

Entering inside will turn on the lights inside the arena, starting the boss fight with the first boss of the level: the Flesh Prison. The Flesh Prison will spin idly for a few moments, before summoning a horde of eyeball minions to start the fight.

The first boss of P-1, the Flesh Prison.

Flesh Prison

The Flesh Prison is a large, octahedron shaped organism that sits within the center of the arena. During the fight, it will summon a group of Eyeball Minions that float around Flesh Prison and shoot at the player. If the player does not kill all the eyeballs in time or damages the Flesh Prison too much, it will use remaining minions to heal back lost health, determined by a timer underneath the health-bar. It will then summon another set of eyes once the timer resets.

The Flesh Prison itself has three main attacks, each determined by a colored flash: White, Purple, and Cyan.

• A purple flash will summon a Black Hole, which will slowly move towards the player and deal 99 Hard Damage on contact, reducing the player to 1 HP until the hard damage cap eventually wears off.
• A white flash will cause large light beams to be summoned into the arena, similar to those of the Virtue, though much larger.
• A cyan flash will cause the Flesh Prison to summon a volley of homing Hell Seekers in a spiral formation. These Hell Seekers can be parried back into the Flesh Prison for considerable damage.

In order to kill it fast, the player can use large explosives such as Core Nukes from the Malicious Railcannon to wipe out the eyes shortly after they spawn in, with the Marksman Revolver being useful to kill remaining eyes. Shotgun Swapping along with the Knuckleblaster up close, Sawblade Traps and parrying the orbs during the Cyan phase can deal significant damage to the Flesh Prison, if not kill it outright with enough damage and speed. Slide jumping around Flesh Prison can also help dodge it's attacks, as the Black Hole is slow and the Virtue beams have a wind up before firing.

Once the player has defeated the Flesh Prison, it will start to violently shake before it is destroyed in an explosion of blood. A translucent blue orb will appear where it stood, before slowly descending to the ground and shattering as the arena goes dark.

The newly released glimmering orb, freed after destroying the Prison.

Minos Prime

Kneeling where the orb shattered, lies Minos Prime, freed from the Flesh Prison. As he gets up, Minos will give a speech to the machine who released him: grateful for freedom, yet cannot let it live for the crimes against his kind:

Ahh...
Free at last
O Gabriel
Now dawns thy reckoning
and thy gore shall glisten before the temples of man
Creature of steel...
My gratitude upon thee for my freedom
but the crimes thy kind have commited against humanity
are NOT forgotten
And thy punishment...
is DEATH

Free at last, Minos Prime emerges.

Minos Prime is an incredibly tough foe, and is the hardest challenge the player will face within Act I. Minos is able to almost immediately kill any unfocused player in a matter of seconds if they do not pay attention to his moves and cues.

Minos has a total of 5 main moves cued by a voiceline, with other non-cued moves which usually served inbetween his main attacks. The main set of moves proceeded by a voice line are:

• Die: which has Minos quickly jump into the air, then dive to the player's position, creating a shockwave upon impact. To dodge the attack, slide away after Minos cues the voiceline, then jump over the shockwave.
• Crush: a faster version of Die performed when Minos is directly above the player. Dash jumping backwards or using the same procedure as Die can help dodge the attack.
• Thy End is Now: a 4 hit combo where Minos dashes towards the player 3 times with a parriable fourth hit. To dodge the attack, it is recommended for the player to either walk or slide away from Minos for the initial swings, then dash or parry the finisher.
• Prepare Thyself: a 3 hit combo, where Minos dashes to the player 2 times, before summoning a homing snake projectile. Walk or slide away from Minos to avoid the initial hits, then slide backwards from Minos as he readies up the snake throw. Either parry or cause the snake to hit a wall to dodge the projectile.
• Judgement: which has Minos ready up for a dropkick before teleporting to the player's position and causing a large explosion. This attack can be either parried or dodged by dashing out of the way.

Other moves which aren't preceded by a voice line include:

• Snake Throw: which has Minos summon a homing snake projectile which can be parried and deflected into him.
• Uppercut: an unparriable fast attack which launches the player into the air if connected.
• Overhead: another unparriable fast attack which will send the player into the ground with an overhead strike.

When the player has damaged Minos to half of his health, he will reach to Phase 2 of the fight, where his attacks are a lot more relentless, and Minos will more often summon snake projectiles between his moves.

WEAK

To fight Minos Prime effectively, the player needs to react accordingly to these moves, take advantage of parry windows and short gaps in between moves, and maintain their stamina for quick dodges and to avoid getting comboed. Keeping to the ground is also crucial as the fight will become much harder in the air due to Minos canceling his attacks to juggle the player. Marksman Revolver ricoshots and Sawblades are great for throughout the fight, and Railcoins along with Shotgun Swapping can be used to rack up lots of damage between waiting times.

End

Failed to save his people, once again.

After the player has successfully defeated Minos Prime, the arena will go dark once again. Minos in his final words laments to himself for failing once again, before slowly rising as his soul shatters apart in a flash of light:

Forgive me my children
for I have failed to bring you salvation
from this cold, dark world..

The exit gate will light up and open after Minos vanishes, revealing a special Prime Terminal at the edge of the elevator drop, housing special lore about the Terminals themselves:

TERMINAL DATA 01 [ENCRYPTED]

INTRODUCTION TO TERMINALS
(DRAFT! DO NOT SEND!! // todo: ADD PICTURES SO THOSE FUCKING SUITS DON'T FALL ASLEEP LIKE LAST TIME)

The elevator room terminals are an advanced interconnected network built for the purpose of transferring materials and tools between different areas. They are capable of transferring physical material as information across a radio signal, which other terminals can receive and use to reconstruct the sent object. The original item is lost, as it is transformed into the energy that is used to transmit the material information, and the process is quite slow due to the amount of information that physical matter holds.

An early test of a matter transfer's accuracy was a mint condition 78rpm vinyl record, which was sent from the lab to all connected terminals. The vinyl was a single of Russ Morgan Orchestra's recording of the piece Were You Foolin' (a favorite of the CRO), though the label was removed to reduce the amount of matter to be transferred.

[note: fuck you tom im^[sic] so fucking tired of this stupid song and having to listen to it every morning over your garbage intercom]

Soon after, the Hell exploration and excavation project was abandoned and this vinyl record remained the only matter to have been succesfully^[sic] transferred before connection between the surface and the terminals was lost.

The terminals now use the record to lure machines into a symbiotic relationship (For further information, see TERMINAL DATA 02: LINK REMOVED). However, the terminals only play short instrumental sections of the original record for undetermined reasons.

Some researchers have joked that perhaps the terminals are simply "too shy to sing", though rumors have been spreading of mechanics who, after fixing a faulty or broken terminal, said to have heard the terminal play a vocal section when only the mechanic is present with no recording equipment, making this an unverifiable claim.

END OF DATA 01. For more information, see [LINK REMOVED] and [LINK REMOVED].