Boss Battle: Lich

Villagers in Melmond will try to tell you that a vampire has taken up residence in the Terra Cavern to the South and is subverting the power of the elemental Earth Crystal found there, thus causing the land to sicken and decay. Well, as is often the case, the villagers are only partially correct. There is a vampire lurking in the Terra Cavern, but one good hit with Fire 2 will send him permanently to the grave, and you won't see hide nor hare of the Earth Crystal until you do some more digging, pun intended. The real fiend responsible for the decaying soil is the Lich, and one spell is not nearly enough to send him on his merry way.

It only took me one try to defeat the Lich, so I can't swear that he follows a set pattern the way that Astos did. I can tell you that he possesses all of the rank two black magics: Fire 2, Ice, 2, Bolt 2, Sleep 2, Haste 2, and Slow 2, and will make ample use of them. I attempted to cast slow once and silence twice and all three attempts failed, leading me to believe that he's immune to at least those if not all status effects. He also takes depressingly little damage from physical attacks, so be prepared to burn through your spells. Fire does the most damage, and Ice the least.

At least from my one experience, the secret to defeating this guy is to cast NulIce, NulFire, and NulBolt as quickly as possible. Without these protections the Lich's spells will deal out around 100 damage to your entire party, and keeping up with healing won't really be possible. With protection the damage is cut to 30 - 50, and a potion or Cure 2 here or there will keep you alive. Not once during the fight did the Lich hit me with a physical attack, I assume you don't need to worry about such a thing.

Burn through your spells and hope for critical hits from anyone doing physical damage and you should be able to outlast the gruesome corpse with the protection spells and a decent supply of healing spells or potions. Put the Lich in his place and then restore power to the Earth Crystal and you will officially have proved yourself a warrior of the light.