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The prince marvels at the huge belts and wheels turning throughout this level. Elika, on the other hand, says machines are evil and should be torn down. She wasn't so hard on technology back in the Windmills when she was praising the workers and their grinding gears. Through out this encounter the way the princess would rule is being more apparent and I am seeing hints toward a pro-worker anti-technology socialist state.

The Alchemist:

• Most of the Alchemist's context sensitive attacks are countered by hitting the "X" button so get ready to tap it frequently.
• Let the Alchemist make the opening move, block his attack, and then follow up with a combo.
• Perform this combo on him: press the Elika button (Y for xbox users) followed by the gauntlet toss (B) and then an Elika attack (Y) a sword hit (x) to send him up again. If you keep him away from the wall, you can repeat the Y then X combo over and over.
• Pretty much just keep reusing that toss combo, it got me through this whole game.

In his final moments, the Alchemist hucks a huge ball of corruption at the Prince and then vanishes. Elika can't remove it herself but she thinks that if they can just get up to the fertile ground she can strip the tar from him. Contrary to fifth rule video games, in which an infected protagonist becomes stronger when infected by the enemy, the corruption doesn't give the prince any magical powers like summoning a plague of hornets or tentacles. It does make the screen borders black like you have a vision problem. Based solely on studying the posters at the ophthalmologist's office, I would say that this is a corruption induced glaucoma.

At the top of the platform ridge is the fertile ground. Just as the princess had suspected, healing the ground also removed the corruption from the prince and the camera's temporary glaucoma.