P-2: Wait of the World

PRIME /// SECOND
WAIT OF THE WORLD

P-2: WAIT OF THE WORLD
General
Layer & Part		PRIME /// SECOND
Music		Intro (Weihnachten Am Klavier) Tenebre Rosso Sangue PANDEMONIUM WAR
Tip of the Day
Have fun.
Enemies
4 Strays  1 Stalker  4 Schisms  2 Sisyphean Insurrectionists  2 Ferrymen  2 Streetcleaners  5 Swordsmachines  2 Mindflayers  10 Sentries  5 Malicious Faces  10 Cerberi  4 Idols  1 Hideous Mass  9 Virtues Flesh Panopticon Sisyphus Prime
Rank Requirements
Rank	Time	Kills	Style
S	10:20	59	36,000
A	11:20	55	30,000
B	13:20	40	20,000
C	20:20	20	7,500
Levels
Previous		Next
6-2		6-2
P-1, P-2, P-3

P-2: WAIT OF THE WORLD is the second Prime Sanctum in ULTRAKILL, and is only unlocked after obtaining a P-Rank in every level of Act II and after completing the previous Prime Sanctum, P-1 SOUL SURVIVOR. This level is intended to be an immense, unprecedented spike in difficulty compared to P-1: SOUL SURVIVOR, as it places an extremely challenging gauntlet of enemies in the way of the player before they can fight the main two bosses: the Flesh Panopticon, and Sisyphus Prime.

The music used within the level is Intro (Weihnachten Am Klavier) for the intro, Tenebre Rosso Sangue for most of the level and its combat encounters aside from the first, PANDEMONIUM for the Flesh Panopticon fight, and WAR for the Sisyphus Prime fight.

Intro

The street.

The level begins on a long, open city street, flanked by skyscrapers with bright red windows and walls lined with skeletal remains. Blood falls like rain in the outdoor segments, and the entire area is bathed in an eerie red glow. Past the archway, there is a clear roundabout path to take up the stairs to the right, which may be skipped by climbing up a wall in a narrow alleyway directly ahead.

First Arena

Past the first door is a cramped dark room with the exit door on the opposite side, wide open.

Once the player is halfway through the room, the arena starts without warning, locking the exits and immediately spawning  four Cerberi as the lights come on and a rising Shepard tone plays.

Once two of the Cerberi have been killed, a Ferryman will spawn in the middle of the arena. Once either the rest of the Cerberi are eliminated or the Ferryman is killed,  two Virtues will spawn outside the arena. The close quarters and Virtue attacks can make it difficult to control the Ferryman's movement, but the time gaps between pairs of beams present opportunities for healing or valuable parries.

The exit opens once all enemies inside are dead, allowing the player to proceed and confront the Virtues outside. The music also changes to Tenebre Rosso Sangue.

Bridge Street

After exiting the Cerberus room, the player emerges onto a city street, with a door locked by a blue pedestal to the left, a bridge over a hazardous river with a checkpoint to the right, and the two Virtues from the previous encounter straight ahead. The only option is to follow the path to the right, where  four Schisms, a Swordsmachine,  two Sentries, and a blessed Mindflayer will spawn.

Though extremely dangerous, the invincible Mindflayer can be used to the player's advantage, allowing enemies to soak up their attacks and parrying their orbs to recover health and stamina. In particular, an orb volley can deal 15 damage in friendly fire total, fully half of a common Swordsmachine's health.

As the Idol blessing this Mindflayer is in the next room, it does not need to be killed to progress, and will follow the player through the next encounters.

Narrow Alley

Past the bridge is a tight corridor with an arena trigger just past a set of stairs which locks both ends of the hall. A Cerberus will spawn in front of the player and  two Streetcleaners will spawn behind, all of which must be killed to proceed, and all while still contending with the invulnerable Mindflayer.

Idol Arena

The alley exits into a large courtyard, where three glass boxes wait at the far end: the right-hand box protects the Idol that has been blessing the Mindflayer following the player, the middle holds the Blue Skull, and the left contains another Idol, which will bless a second Mindflayer that spawns upon reaching the arena trigger. At the same time, two Swordsmachines will spawn in on either side of the room, and a Sentry will spawn in at the back near the Idols. After killing these three, two Virtues and  two Malicious Faces will spawn in, who must be defeated to make the glass boxes protecting the Idols retract. Once open, the player may smash the exposed Idols, rendering the Mindflayers vulnerable. Killing the Mindflayers will retract the last box containing the skull and unblock the arena exit.

Bridge Street Return

After the fight in the courtyard, the player will need to backtrack to the Blue Pedestal door at the opposite end of the bridge street. Once the player sets foot on the bridge, two  2 Sisyphean Insurrectionists will jump up from the hazardous river onto the bridge, one after the other. The skull the player is holding may be used to quickly ignite the Insurrectionists and lower their defenses to speed up the encounter, and the Insurrectionists themselves can be lured into jumping onto each other for a hefty 22 base damage.

Soul Tunnel

Past the Blue Pedestal door is a long, upward-sloping tunnel split at its midpoint into two segments, each with its own enemy encounters. The tunnel's swirling soulwalls are environmental hazards, dealing 30 damage to the player and instantly killing enemies upon contact.

The first segment of the Soul Tunnel opens with two parallel platforms where two Virtues and two Malicious Faces will spawn, along with a Sentry on a third platform at the far end, in front of the gate to the second segment. The Virtues are vulnerable to friendly fire from the Malicious Faces behind them as well as explosive knockback pushing them into the walls of the tunnel, whether by Malicious Face hitscans, the player's own weapons, or the death of the other Virtue. The Sentry spawns close enough to the tunnel's ceiling to be easily killed by a ground slam shockwave and is unlikely to reposition due to its excellent sightline over the arena.

The layout of the second segment is identical to the first, with two Cerberi and two Sentries appearing on the parallel platforms and a Malicious Face on the far platform. Though Whiplashing directly to the Malicious Face risks damage from its projectile bursts, the shockwave its corpse creates when landing can launch both Sentries into the hazardous ceiling. Enraging one Cerberus by killing the other will allow it to dash off its platform, enabling its pursuit of the player to the adjacent platform but also rendering it vulnerable to falling to its death. The gate at the end of the tunnel leads to the penultimate arena of P-2.

Unlike the rest of the gauntlet, the exits of the Soul Tunnel do not lock during the enemy encounters, allowing them to be skipped.

Stalker Chamber

Beyond the soul tunnel is a large room with two tiers of raised walkways around the perimeter and two more Idols in indestructible glass boxes at the far end.

Upon triggering the arena encounter, a Ferryman will spawn directly ahead between the Idols, along with two Swordsmachines and four Strays at the room's flanks and a Stalker behind, which will be immediately blessed by the left-hand Idol. The invulnerable Stalker has the capacity to sandify every grounded enemy in the encounter, but will prioritize stronger enemies first, pursuing the Ferryman until it is sandified, then the Swordsmachines, then the Strays. Both the Ferryman and the Swordsmachines are fast-moving melee enemies, so they can be forced to outrun the Stalker's pursuit by kiting them around the arena, though if they are already sandified, the player can still heal by parrying their attacks. The Strays pose little threat in this wave but are the last to be targeted by the Stalker, so they may be kept alive until needed for an emergency heal.

Once the first wave is cleared (save for the Stalker), four Sentries will spawn, one in each corner of the arena, along with a Hideous Mass in the center, which will be blessed by the spare Idol on the right-hand side. The Stalker will immediately try to sandify the Hideous Mass unless it is repeatedly knocked away or restrained with nails and magnets, though it will take significantly longer to circumnavigate the room to buff the Sentries afterward. The outermost walkway where the Sentries spawn is high enough to be completely safe from the Hideous Mass' horizontal shockwaves, and at this distance the rest of its attacks can be avoided with constant lateral movement at basic walking speed. The Sentries are unable to harm each other, but the invulnerable Hideous Mass can safely body-block Sentry shots, absorbing the damage on a flesh hit and deflecting the hitscan on an armor hit, though there is a brief period during the horizontal shockwave animation where its body is low enough that all Sentries have clear shots to their opposite corners. Two point-blank mortars from the Mass will kill a Sentry from full health, and both the horizontal and vertical shockwaves will uproot and interrupt a charging Sentry; knocking Sentries down from the upper walkway will allow the Mass' horizontal slams to interrupt them without the player's input.

Killing the Sentries provokes the third and final wave, consisting of three Cerberi which spawn around the Hideous Mass, and three Virtues which appear high above the arena. At the same time, the glass barrier protecting the Hideous Mass' Idol is lifted, leaving both vulnerable. The Idol may be destroyed as soon as the wave starts, though it may be desirable to save the 90-point heal from breaking it for when it is needed, as the Hideous Mass and the Cerberi are difficult to parry and thus difficult to heal off of while sandified. As Virtues cannot trigger rage while three or more of them are alive, leaving them unattended to contend with the enemies on the ground is a considerably safer prospect here than anywhere else in the campaign, and can be useful for players looking to minimize the time they spend fighting sandified enemies. On the flipside, dealing with the Virtues right away can leave the player vulnerable to ranged attacks from below, particularly Cerberus orbs which can detonate on nearby walls and ceilings, and will likely result in one or more of the Cerberi becoming sandified by the time the Virtues are dispatched.

When all of the enemies except the Stalker have been defeated, the remaining Idol's glass box is lifted, allowing the player to smash the Idol and kill the Stalker.

Boss Shortcut

Hidden above and to the left of the first swinging lantern at the start of the level is a secret passage that leads to the top of the chain elevator, skipping all the level's normal encounters right to the boss fights against Flesh Panopticon and Sisyphus Prime. The door to the passage is locked until the Flesh Panopticon has been encountered (the check specifically sees if the Panopticon is registered in the Terminals' bestiary), necessitating that the player complete the gauntlet at least once before the shortcut can be used. The passage itself has 2 Blue Hookpoints that carry the player past hazardous pits and terminates in a breakable glass floor, which itself is the skylight of the elevator room.

Inner Sanctum

Once the player is finished with the Stalker Chamber fight, the music and rain will stop, and the door near the back of the arena will unlock.

The door reveals a chain elevator, and at the bottom, there is a secured gate with a trio of locks that can be disengaged at a nearby interface. Unlocking all of them slowly opens the door to the next area, which has another gate with a glowing yellow skull in the center, and another terminal to control it. Upon pressing the button to open the door, the terminal gives the player a choice. Each answer has a different response, but both will result in the door opening.

Selecting Yes:

FOLLOW PROTOCOL

DO NOT APPROACH IT

DO NOT LET IT LOOK AT YOU

STAY VIGILANT,
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY

h a v e f u n !

Selecting No:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

as if
you had
a choice

The player will then continue walking through the now-opened dark hallway, at the end of which lies a Checkpoint and a Terminal before a narrow entrance leading into the unlit arena.

Boss Arena

Entering the arena causes the lights in the arena to abruptly switch on, revealing the room to be a large, circular court lined with vacant jail cells along its walls, a panopticon, originally meant to house King Sisyphus' followers, overseen by the Flesh Panopticon in the center.

Flesh Panopticon

The Flesh Panopticon is a huge, cube-shaped organism situated on a fleshy pillar in the middle of the arena.

Like its predecessor, the Flesh Panopticon will spin idly shortly before spawning in four minions and starting the fight. The Flesh Panopticon's eyeball minions, however, are larger and bright yellow in color, remain stationary in midair, and cause the player to take hard damage continuously if at least one minion is alive, indicated by the player's health bar slowly being taken up by a brighter yellow-colored hard damage meter.

Also like its predecessor, the Flesh Panopticon has three main attacks, each determined by a colored flash: white, purple, and yellow.

• A purple flash will cause the Flesh Panopticon to 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 that causes the Flesh Panopticon to summon large light beams into the arena, similarly to those of a Virtue, though much larger. However, unlike its predecessor, the Flesh Panopticon fires a horizontal beam first before firing vertical ones. It fires two beams per attack, and each beam lasts a second longer than the previous ones in a volley.
• A yellow flash causes the Flesh Panopticon to fire 16 yellow Hell Mortars from its mouth similar to those fired by Hideous Masses, however, they will attempt to home into the player while in midair before plummeting to the ground in long arcs and causing large explosions. The mortars can be parried, but may be a risky strategy due to the large amounts of damage they inflict.

The Flesh Panopticon has a timer, indicated by a smaller yellow bar below its normal health bar, which shows the time the player has before it attempts to heal itself, decreasing faster depending on how much damage the Flesh Panopticon takes. When the Flesh Panopticon is healing, green streaks of lightning appear between it and any alive minions, before consuming each of them to heal back lost health.

Depleting the Flesh Panopticon's health can be done with similar strategies to that of the Flesh Prison. The Flesh Panopticon's attacks can be difficult to dodge, however, but the eyeball minions can be grappled to with the Whiplash, allowing the player to kill them quickly while simultaneously dodging the Panopticon's attacks. Once grappled to, blasting the eyeballs with the Shotgun while punching them with the Knuckleblaster will kill them, or they can be dispatched at a distance by shooting at them with the Alternate Revolver's charge shots.

However, unlike the Flesh Prison, when the Flesh Panopticon attempts to heal for the first time, a voice of a Prime Soul suddenly calls out from within, awakened from their imprisonment, and the Panopticon becomes bathed in an intense yellow glow. Abruptly, two fists punch their way out of the Panopticon, destroying it in the process and abruptly ending the fight.

This prison...
To hold
ME?

Sisyphus Prime

From where the Flesh Panopticon once stood, a shower of blood and gore rain onto the arena as Sisyphus Prime lands with a shockwave upon the ground. As he gets up, Sisyphus declares his intentions of besieging the kingdom of Heaven. Taking notice of the presence of the machine standing before him, he expresses his interest in its power, notably for having killed Minos Prime. As a way to test himself before setting out to lay waste to Heaven, he arrogantly challenges V1 to a battle to the death.

A visitor?
Hmm... Indeed, I have slept long enough.
The kingdom of heaven has long since forgotten my name
And I am EAGER to make them remember
However
The blood of Minos stains your hands, and I must admit...
I'm curious about your skills, Weapon.
And so, before I tear down the cities and CRUSH the armies of heaven...
You shall do as an appetizer.
Come forth, Child of Man...
And DIE.

Sisyphus Prime is an extremely fast, destructive, and dangerous opponent, and is by far the single hardest enemy the player can encounter currently, both as the most powerful enemy in Act II and ULTRAKILL currently as a whole. Improper management of speed, health, and stamina on the player's end will leave them vulnerable to taking lethal amounts of damage from Sisyphus' relentless combo attacks.

Sisyphus Prime has a total of four attacks cued by a voiceline, a taunt, as well as a few attacks that are not telegraphed with voicelines at all, which are performed to compliment his main moveset. Unlike Minos Prime, Sisyphus calls out his attacks as he is performing them, not before, requiring the player to instinctively know how to react to his moves. His main attacks cued by voicelines are:

• "You can't escape!", which has Sisyphus Prime strike a pose before initiating a four-hit combo attack, with three unparriable hits before a fourth parriable stomp that causes a grounded shockwave. Parrying the stomp cancels the shockwave in Standard Phase 1, and the initial three hits can be avoided by moving around Sisyphus before jumping out of the way of the shockwave or parrying the fourth hit to regain health.
• "DESTROY!" causes Sisyphus Prime to perform an uppercut close to the player before sending out a blinking glint that explodes momentarily afterward, which homes in on the player to catch them while it is detonating. While it can be parried in between a window between the uppercut and the glint's appearance, it is better to dodge out of the way.
• "BE GONE!" leads Sisyphus Prime to teleport close to the player while in midair, briefly tracking their position, before stopping and swiftly clapping his hands together to create a vertical shockwave. The clap can be parried, interrupting the shockwave but not the damage of the clap itself.
• "This will hurt." causes Sisyphus Prime to appear next to the player while curling into himself to charge a devastating explosive attack. Shortly afterward, Sisyphus releases two explosions, a smaller, stronger one, and a larger, weaker one. The attack can be canceled by parrying Sisyphus the moment the explosions are about to appear.
• "Nice try!" is a taunt Sisyphus performs while on the ground, leaving a brief window for the player to heal and damage him. This taunt is not performed on Brutal difficulty or above.

Other moves that are not preceded by a voice line include:

• Roundhouse Kick, which has Sisyphus appear in front of the player and deliver a powerful kick, which can be parried.
• Ground Slam, an unparriable attack wherein Sisyphus teleports above the player before plummeting directly downwards, creating a shockwave on the ground.
• Overhead is another unparriable fast attack that will send the player into the ground with an overhead strike.

When the player has depleted half of Sisyphus' health (or his first health bar), he will enter Phase 2 of the fight, indicated by Sisyphus yelling "YES! That's it!", undergoing a makeover with a full beard and dreadlocks, and dousing his hands and legs deeper in blood. He will also start ramping up the frequency and intensity of his attacks, with shorter breaks in between combos.

YES! That's it!

In order to stand up against Sisyphus Prime effectively, the player must react accordingly to his moves, take advantage of parry windows and short gaps in between, and maintain their stamina for quick dodges and to avoid getting comboed, just like with Minos Prime. All of Sisyphus' attacks are often completely randomized, except a few of his more powerful ones (DESTROY!, You can't escape!, and This will hurt.) which cannot be used if the player is in the air. The player must be ready to adapt to an aggressive playstyle, move constantly throughout the fight, and rely on their instincts, as even a moment of dead time could spell a quick and brutal end. All of Sisyphus' moves with voicelines can be parried in some way, even in Phase 2, and it is the best way to recover stamina and health due to Sisyphus often preferring not to stay on the screen while attacking.

The player can drain a great deal of Sisyphus' health at the start of the fight by setting a fully-loaded Sawblade trap and Railcoinning as soon as the fight starts. Staying on the ground is also crucial as the fight will become much harder in the air due to Sisyphus often canceling his attacks to juggle the player. Weapons that work best at close-range shine throughout the fight, such as the Screwdriver Railcannon and Jumpstart Nailgun. The Screwdriver Railcannon is helpful due to its extended healing range and because Sisyphus is often difficult to be close to healing from effectively, while the Jumpstart Nailgun can be used in conjunction with other weapons, and Sisyphus will often be close enough for it to activate. As with Minos Prime, Railcoins along with Shotgun Swapping can be used to rack up lots of damage between waiting times.

End

After the player has successfully defeated Sisyphus Prime, the arena will go dark once again. Sisyphus will comment on his fitting death, not regretting a second of it. Sisyphus will then slowly rise while laughing maniacally as his soul shatters apart in a flash of light:

Ahh...
So concludes the life and times of King Sisyphus
A fitting end to an existence defined by futile struggle
Doomed from the very start...
And I don't regret a SECOND of it!
(Maniacal Laughing)

The exit gate will open after Sisyphus shatters, revealing a second Prime Terminal at the edge of the elevator drop, housing lore about the Terminals and their relation to the Machines:

TERMINAL DATA 02 [ENCRYPTED]

AN UPDATE ON TERMINALS
(NOTE: THIS IS ALL STILL UNDER INVESTIGATION!!! Do not share until we have verified all claims AND FINISHED THE DRAFT!!!! If this leaks like the last draft there won't be enough money on the entire damn planet to pay your legal fees.)

Since the previous report, more powerful communication equipment has been succesfully designed and built, made possible thanks to the generous donations of [INSERT COMPANY BEING PRESENTED TO] whom we hold in high regard. With this new equipment, we have managed to re-establish a connection with some of the higher end machines that were left behind after the Hell exploration and excavation project was abruptly cancelled due to [ERROR: sAmsGS3JTIU].

What we have discovered is truly remarkable and, IF PROVEN TRUE BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT, revolutionary to the entire robotics community:

Boredom.

The terminals, unable to move, have grown bored. While they are connected to each other and able to communicate amongst themselves, once the connection to the surface was cut, they were getting no new input, therefore stalling all communication to repetitions of already known information.

It is unknown how similar this "boredom" is to actual emotion or what has caused it, but it has lead to a symbiotic relationship with other machines. Essentially, the terminals scavenge whatever they can via their teleportation systems and trade those supplies and resources with the machines that were left behind in Hell, in exchange for entertainment.

That is, the machines record their battles for survival in Hell and the footage is graded based on its entertainment value and used as "points" in exchange for goods and services such as new weaponry.

It seems that this relationship has become so deeply ingrained into the existence of the terminals that they have developed a social hierarchy, wherein those who collect the most entertaining battle data are considered in higher regard than those whose findings are of poorer quality.

More recently, the terminals have also collected enough data to create a simulation space which they let machines plug into called "The Cyber Grind", which allows the machines to simulate battles in a safe environment without the threat of being destroyed, which the terminals watch in real time as a kind of live entertainment.

These findings are truly extraordinary, and though we too find it hard to believe, all the information we can manage to gather validates these claims. If we can prove it with certainty [AND IF THIS DRAFT DOESN'T FUCKING LEAK AGAIN], this will cause a paradigm shift that will require re-evaluation of everything we thought we knew about blood-fuelled machinery.

END OF DATA 02. For more information on the cancelled Hell exploration and excavation project, see DATA 00: [LINK REMOVED].

Trivia

• The title of the level is a reference to "The Wait of the World" from the album The Dan Means Xmas Bundle (Gamma Knife, Polyimage of Known Exits, Hubardo, and Coffins on Io) by Kayo Dot.
• As of patch 15d, going through the Narrow Alley after getting past the Idol Arena with the two Mindflayers can heal you due to a bug.

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