Kingprotea

Kingprotea is one of the Sakura Five that didn’t happen.
She’s the Alter Ego of craving and desire.
On one hand she is the lowest ranked of the Sakura Five, but on the other hand she is the strongest within SE.RA.PH.
A giant Sakura with the id_es skill “Huge Scale.”
She tend to come and interfere with players who spend a long time in the labyrinth. She destroys paths as she moves along, so she would prevent players from repeating the same actions or grinding the same area. She’s an adorably foolish character who destroys parts of the dungeon when she trips and falls.
In areas outside of the Arena she was to be a rare epic encounter. A wondrous colossal colossus, just like the massive warship that comes along in Darius¹. Rather than being a character designed to liven up the story, she is a character to liven up our game design.
For example, within the Arena, she would evoke situations like “I can see an item box ahead, but there is a huge hand blocking the way,” or “I see a transparent box-thingy over there with Sakura stuffed inside, I can’t get through.”
We were thinking of using her as a “living wall” type gimmick where after eventually defeating her you would be able to get at those item boxes.
She was set to be a slave-tier character who is constantly bullied and abused by attack programs on the far side of the Moon.
“A main personality of a Sakura who is more worthless than those lowly mass produced Sakura enemies,” Kingprotea Sakura was to be the materialization of this bullying mentality. Isn’t it just terrible that there exists a Sakura being bullied even within Sakura’s inner mind!?
Actually, she just barely missed the cut as a boss character.
Since she was not involved in the story we were planning to make her a hidden boss, but unfortunately she was cut.
Here are some bits and pieces that were planned for her in the game:

• Waste:
  Kingprotea is an Alter Ego created from BB, however she is considered too dangerous to reside anywhere on the Moon, so she is disposed of into a place with “nothing,” in short, the emptiness of outer space.
  This Alter Ego should never come into contact with anyone.
  She is the materialization of the desire for love.
  She gobbles up anything and everything around her and grows bigger and bigger, which results in her having a bigger stomach that requires even more food. She engages in a malicious cycle of consumption and growth which represents the human desire itself.
  Passionlip and Meltlilith are her sisters, but it’s unknown if they are on good terms or not.

• Fallen Seraphic Cage:
  Klein Cube.
  A baby with a bottomless stomach, basically a giant hole. A cage built to contain the Kingprotea who blindly desires love. Just like Angelica Cage in the Moon Cell’s Core, it is a physical container made using photonic crystals.
  BB, who realized the danger Kingprotea posed, seals her in the Fallen Seraphic Cage. Although BB sealed Kingprotea inside, nobody knows how massive Kingprotea might have become.

• Huge Scale: EX
  An id_es skill. id_es skills are the inborn special powers of the Alter Egos.
  Her “Self Modification” cheat skill goes out of control and activates Huge Scale EX.
  It enables unlimited expansion of her size and scale.
  Due to limitations imposed by the force of gravity on Earth, life forms have an upper limit on their size. Even in the sea, the size of a whale is more of less as big as it can get. The same goes for buildings, due to limitations of construction technology and financing; there is nothing that can be infinitely enlarged. This also holds true in the cyber world where the laws of physics don’t apply.
  All programs have a limit on their level, and no matter how greatly a program excels, in order to surpass its boundary it must separate and optimize itself.
  (As a rule, when a program gets bigger the speed of communication with the hardware terminal drops, so a program needs to be split into various specialized parts. So called God-spirits are an example of this, having successfully split up their processes into multiple avatars.)
  However, the owner of this skill, Kingprotea, can grow without end. When her level exceeds the limit, she expands the boundary herself and sets an even higher max limit. This can be repeated infinitely.
  Kingprotea has no desire to complicate things, it’s just that she has specialized in “swallow” therefore she is unable separate from her ability to enlarge which is vital to her specialization.
  The result is that she is unable to create duplicates of herself (avatar) that is of normal size and limitation, and as a lone Ego she is destined to continue to enlarge.
  If left alone, she will end up becoming a disaster on a universe scale that would destroy the stars, however she would not destroy the universe itself. This is because the speed at which the universe is expanding is faster than the speed at which Kingprotea is enlarging.

• Grow Up Grow: EX
  This is her cheat skill “Experience Point Bonus” gone out of control.
  “Experience Point Bonus” is supposed to increase the amount of XP gained from battle by a certain percent, but Kingprotea further hacked the skill so that she receives a continuous stream of XP. Although this skill seems rather threatening, there is an upper level limit set for all programs.
  Anyone who obtains this skill can effortlessly achieve the highest level in the game; however it only increases the target’s level, and does not improve their stats.
  If you compare a character who achieved max level through fair play to a character who used this cheat skill to achieve max level, the cheater character’s stats will be far lower. This is, in other words, a so-called “trap skill.”

• Infantile Regression:
  The opposite of aging.
  BB created this cursed skill with much difficulty in order to impose some restrictions on Kingprotea.
  Once Kingprotea’s age has surpassed a predefined value this curse restores her to the state she was in at a younger age. It’s a protective process that prevents her from ever reaching an adult age.
  This curse starts to take effect when Kingprotea reaches age 20, and restores her back to her 8 year old state. When returned to the age of 8 her growth resumes again, so this cycle is a repeating loop.

• Setting:
  The limit of craving and desire:
  Because it’s fun, because it tastes good, because it’s warm.
  Without these kinds of animalistic impulses she pursues love without a reason for doing so— This is Kingprotea’s Ego “Craving and Desire.”
  The incarnation of a certain bodhisattva carries the sin of “without a goal, to fill the universe with love for myself,” but this Ego follows “without a goal, for myself, crave the love found in the universe.”
  Originally no one was supposed to find her, to understand her, to defeat her. She would simply be floating along in the void of space. But eventually a curious Master would come across her, and they would do battle.
  Is Kingprotea just a pure infant? An abominable disaster? Has she sinned? In any case, those of us who live in this age of mass consumption have no right to judge her. The proof of humanity that everyone has.
  The strongest and most fundamental Ego. But until the day comes when her “desire without limit” can be used for good rather than evil, she is destined to continue floating in the empty sky.

By the way, her natural enemy is Passionlip. In theory Lip’s “Trash & Crash” skill makes it possible to seal Kingprotea away. The Alter Ego sisters seem to enjoy a triangular power relationship where Lip beats Protea, Protea beats Melt, and Melt beats Lip.

• Noble Phantasm:
  None. Huge Scale essentially qualifies as a Noble Phantasm.

Translator’s Notes

1. ^ An old arcade game.