The Ancient One

"The answers of the abyss are far more cruel than you could imagine."

- Captain Nemo

The Ancient One is the boss of The Meteor, and also the last boss of the game. Uniquely, it can be skipped should you not awaken it, which will allow you to enter the Time Portal and activate an endless mode.

Description
The Ancient One - the core of the Meteor, the progenitor of life and reason that awaits beyond the reach of mankind, forever imprisoned beyond the veil of dreams so maddened and inhuman that they would be nothing but fitting for such a monolith of insanity, a bastion to madness, a being so vast and indecipherable that nothing but itself could ever hope to comprehend, should it even be capable of the same form of reasoning we so stupidly call 'human', albeit even that seems all so alien to us.

What lies in the depths of The Living Infinite defies all that had been thought to be known, for all logic and sense is folly before it. Attempting to describe it is a foolish prospect, and all that is left to be said is that due to the deeply flawed, inconstant and insufficient perception of a human mind, should its form ever be revealed from its casing of stone, the poor souls unfortunate enough to witness its glory shall perish in madness, and betwixt their inhuman growls and incoherent ramblings, should these poor husks ever cry and scream anything resemblant of a sensical language, let it be known what they scream of - they shriek of misshapen mountains of flesh, of limbs so segmented and misshapen to instill disgust even upon the long-since deceased, and that beyond endless networks of tendrils and pustules and fleshy tubes, there is naught but an endless green light, so vast and bright that nothing can be seen beyond it, should something beyond it even truly exist. It is a light so pure and vast that all that it could ever convey is beyond the reach of any mind, human or inhuman, and all that be awash by its light shall be reduced into mindless husks driven to insanity in screams of fear and mutterings of madness...

Should you have any sense left on you, I beg you to return from whence you came, for the Ancient Sleeper yet slumbers deep inside the festering wound of the Earth, and should it ever be awakened, nothing shall remain unchanged by the senseless maws of Its ancient madness as it furthers its hold into all that lies on this planet.

Behavior
The Ancient One will at first be shackled to its eternal slumber, its eldritch skin turned to stone and its light faded into the dark. Should it be shot at, the rocky layer will slowly crack and shatter, and with a last shot, all will crumble into the abyss, and its great light will at last glow once more, its eldritch glow driving all unfortunate enough to witness it to the brink of insanity as the world around it quakes, at which point the Submarine will be transported to the Space of Scholars.

Once it returns, the Ancient One will begin its onslaught, summoning Portals to other dimensions and timelines, from which it will release waves upon waves of enemies from every Biome of The Living Infinite, and will even teleport the crew to The Moon should they get caught on a portal as it opens. The Ancient One cannot be damaged in any way, and instead three Eldritch Obelisks (Red, Purple and Green) will light up in different parts of the arena, producing a small orb of energy of their respective colour in front of them, which will need to be activated in a correct order by driving upon them. This order is entirely randomized on each run, and can only be discovered if a player holds a Translation Book as they are on the Space of Scholars, wherein the aforementioned Scholars will reveal the correct order. Otherwise, the crew will have to do it by trial and error, making them have to endure continuous waves of unyielding enemies for much longer.

After the Obelisks are activated in the correct order, a triangular passageway in the guts of the Ancient One will slowly open up, allowing access to its insides, wherein a sole altar will be present and on which a sole Item can be placed, which will decide which Ending the crew will receive - all of which end in the crew's untimely demise, and even the very memories of them to slowly fade into nothingness as no trace of them is ever found... Or no one remains to remember them. Alternatively if you place the phonograph on the altar The Ancient One will be put back to sleep.

Tactics
One tactic is to not shoot it. Another is to activate the obelisks in the right order without dying.

Trivia

 * Like most monsters encountered inside the Meteor, the Ancient One is inspired by the entities from the Cthulhu mythos, with the Ancient One seemingly drawing heavy inspiration from Cthulhu and Azathoth.