The Lore & Story of Dead Cells (with ALL DLCs)

upon its full release in 2018 dead cells captivated players with its unique gameplay Loop which combined aspects of the Metroid Vania genre of games with Rog likee elements procedurally generating the structure of each level at the start of a run thereby ensuring that no playthrough of the game was the same as another the main draw of dead cells is in that gameplay Loop but it also has a story in its backdrop that is pretty interesting in its own right which centers on the downfall of an island Kingdom as its populace is transformed into monsters by

a disease known as the malaise after its release the game received several DLCs and content updates that introduce new items enemies biomes and lore expanding the world and enriching the story however due to how expansive the game has become along with a slew of design choices like having most of the lore appear in randomly generated lore rooms in the biomes or randomly generated blurs when entering a level and locking the story's true ending behind two clears of the game on its hardest difficulty it's so easy for players to miss important information to piece everything together

so let's go ahead and gather all the information from the base game and all of its dlc's put it all together and present it here so we can see the lore and story of dead cells obviously spoilers for the story of dead cells are ahead so if you don't want to be spoiled why the heck are you watching this seriously just go play the game if you don't want to be spoiled if you're confused after playing it you can come back later and watch this and hopefully it'll clear up some of the confusion you have

also just as a warning some of the storytelling may be a little weird but that's because there's not really a firm timeline of when events happen in the story which means I've had to kind of piece things together myself hopefully it isn't too distracting and you enjoy the video nonetheless lastly if you want a more focused telling of a particular DLC or the base game itself I have several other videos in the lore of dead cells over on the YouTube channel so go ahead and check those out if you're interested all right with all that

out of the way let's get started the story starts with an unnamed Island Kingdom which by all accounts was a fine place to live most of the populace lived in stilt Village a shanty town on the shores of the island where they spent their days fishing in order to gather food for their families others lived in the Island's Lighthouse working around the clock to ensure that its Beacon never went out an important job as its light kept the ships that came to and went from the island safe from its Rocky Shoreline there were also people

that worked in a large Cavern on the island mining crystals which were used for trade an extremely dangerous job but necessary for the economy of the Kingdom sharing the island with the Denis of the realm Was a Race of creatures named Gans who ran the bank that held the wealth of the realm the bank was a unique area of the Kingdom because it didn't actually exist in the physical world it was a pocket Dimension that seemed to be the home world of the Gans as there were statues honoring gons of the past all over it

as well as a large library that held various books authored by the creatures while the location of the bank wasn't definite the money contained within it certainly was and the breadth of that wealth was impressive to behold most of the funds in the bank did not dwell with the common folk though but instead to a noble aristocratic class who used the money to do things like buy up Land by the Island's lighthouse in order to flaunt their status and wealth these Nobles and Aristocrats regularly met with the Realms King in his home of high peak

castle and it was here in the home of his majesty that the true wealth of the realm could be appreciated the king lived in extravagance exemplified by the decorative bobles that lined his halls and the Priceless paintings that covered his walls he had a massive Distillery built to produce various alcoholic drinks to serve at his lavish Banquets and even had an entire Arboretum built so that he as well as the other Nobles of the Court could take breaks from their stuffy work to relax in the calmness of nature protecting his majesty in his politial home

was the royal guard which was made up of many skilled and capable Warriors the two most prominent were the Giants a gargantuan soldier who guarded the Royal Gates of the castle with his life and the Hand of the king a personal bodyguard to his majesty who was incredibly loyal to him and totally idolized him perhaps due to the idolization he received from his soldiers or maybe due to The Prestige of his position getting to his head the king is quite arrogant and egotistical and he made grand displays to ensure the people of the realm knew

who ruled them the best examples were the statues of of himself that he had built all over the island there were statues in high peak castle and stilt Village and even all the way down in the cavern there seemed to be no end to his arrogance likewise the King was used to ruling with absolute Authority and he had no qualms about using his power to get rid of something he didn't like which made him a bit of a desperate for instance citizens that were sick or extremely poor were often banished from the kingdom and forced

to live in a low-lying swampy area that came to be known as the moras of the banished these people were forced to live a life of squalor sharing their home with the pests and parasites of the swamp the worst of which were the ticks to escape the filthy pools and biting insects the banished took to the trees constructing tree houses where they could be insulated from their repulsing home the banished of the moras weren't the only people banned from the kingdom as the king had also made Royal decrees for bidding two other groups of people

from living in the realm the pagans and the apostates the pag were a people who followed a mysterious foreign religion out in an area named the fractured shrines which itself was highly mysterious it was covered with floating Rock islands with gigantic swords that had gigantic snakes coiled around them driven through the islands all of which had some shrines or altars on them these shrines actually predated the establishment of the realm belonging to a people known only as the Ancients but what happened to the Ancients and how they built the shrines was a mystery never solved

by the people of the realm the shrines eventually became the home of the pagans and due to their foreign ways the king and his people distrusted the pagans a feeling that was apparently Mutual thus when the king forbade his denisons from interacting with the pagans they celebrated the decision superflous as it was but even with this decree the king showed how self-serving he was as he ignored his own ruling and took the queen of the pagans as his wife the reasoning for this marriage is unknown the King could have taken a fancy to her or

forced her into marriage to subjugate her and her people he may have even done it to get a hold of her vast treasure which judging by how packed full her treasure vaults were could rival his own whatever the case once he married her the queen was moved into the castle and given the Royal Treatment she was decorated with jewels and fragrant roses and a large painting of her image was hung among the other paintings in highe Castle just like the king the queen had a royal protector to ensure no harm came to her but unlike

her husband who only had one the hand of the king the queen had three named Kopi uteri and Cleo they were three female warriors that were very skilled Fighters individually none of these women were as strong as the giant or the hand of the king but unlike the other two who didn't get along with each other and thus didn't cooperate well the Queen's servants had amazing teamwork and when they fought together they could rival and even surpass any other soldier of the royal guard giving the Queen the strongest Guardians in the Kingdom just as the

hand idolized the king the Queen's servants were totally dedicated to her majesty and would give their lives to see her safe the story of the apostates the other group banished by the King was kind of the inverse of the pagans while the pagans were shunned until one of their own was brought into the Royal Court the apostates were part of the Royal Court until they were eventually shunned the apostates used to be a group of healers and medicine men in the employ of the king while their work was respected by the court the apostates also

employed some questionable methods when pursuing deeper knowledge methods that bordered on the unethical eventually a line was crossed and while the exact details of what happened are unknown what is known is that the apostates were charged with crimes against the crown as punishment the most senior member of their organization was put to death and the rest were banished from the kingdom they eventually took up residence on the rocky Shoreline of the island not far from the illustrious Lighthouse where free from the morals of those that would constrain them the apostates continued their amoral research rumors

swirled about what this research was about it was said the apostates conducted experiments with artifacts of the Ancients and that vile creatures were being seen in the area but given the apostates fascination with death the most prevalent suggested it was necromantic and subject which gave the home of the apostates a new name the undying Shores The Arrogant King and mysterious Queen living in their palacial Castle the common folk living in wooden Shacks or rocky tunnels or swampy filth the beacon of the lighthouse seeming like it would stay lit for an eternity and the apostates doing

Secret experiments out in the undying Shores this was the state of the island when a watershed moment occurred that changed it and the realm forever in stilt Village People started to get sick symptoms started mild itchiness nausea headaches but got worse and worse until they finally culminated in death making matters worse was that this illness which came to be known as the MS was incredibly contagious and before long the number of sick and dying in the village was astronomical some people blamed insects for the infection While others thought it was rats or other pests that

were responsible there there were even rumors that the crystals of the cavern Were Somehow responsible for the start of the illness but the exact Vector of transmission was never uncovered in the early days of the infection as people succumbed to their sickness they were buried in a manner befitting their station the common folk were buried in small plots in the common graveyard of the island while the Nobles and Aristocrats were emomed in sarcophagy and buried in a creepy Seiler often times with their delegation as the Mala picked up steam and the number of dead began

to dramatically increase incase the graveyard started to get cramped while the Seiler was nearly completely forgotten about things eventually got so bad that bodies began to pile up across the island even lying in water sources which only worsened the pandemic a solution to this problem eventually arose although it was in no way helpful the people that had died of the malaise Rose from their graves to come back to life but had undergone mutations while they were dead becoming violent horrifying monsters that attacked the living as these monsters swarmed over the island killing people and destroying

the realm the king took Swift drastic action against the malaise there was a prison complex on the island that hadn't seen use in a long time so the king ordered any infected person to be arrested and quarantined within the prison thereby separating them from the rest of the healthy population however as the mala's pandemic grew worse so too did the king's desperation to contain it and he eventually ordered his troops to imprison people that were only suspected of being infected and even executed them he also ordered the warden of the prison a man named Caston

to keep people imprisoned even after they were proven to be healthy and their sentence expired this of course led to overcrowding of the prison since people weren't getting taken out but only more and more were being thrown in and to deal with this the king merely ordered the warden to start throwing people in the outdoor jail cells and ubets in addition to the awful condition the prisoners were forced to live in they were seen as less than human and even as less than Animals by the prison guards who often used the prisoners as toys for

sport to alleviate their boredom they even threw condemned prisoners from the ramparts to make things more exciting for themselves as conditions grew worse for the prisoners some began to plot and conduct Escape attempts one prisoner tried to climb the ramp Parts but died on the climb instead of taking him down the guards in keeping with their cruel ways left him up there to serve as a warning for the others it didn't work though and the Escape attempts continued the most common path that prisoners took was digging a tunnel through the prison to reach the vast

sewer Network underneath it which they hoped to navigate to reach freedom however their hopes were misplaced as the sewers had become a Dumping Ground for the prison meaning it was chalk full of monsters of the malaise monsters that quickly killed any Escape bees there was also another danger in the sewers one that resided deep within them past its most ancient Parts here there was an insufferable Crypt that was made into a store Room by The King and in the time since its conversion it had become the home of a terrifying monster named conjunctivius conjunctivius was

a monster that had burst from the body of someone in the sewers whether she was the result of a malaise infection or some sort of mutation brought about by the toxic slime of the sewers is unknown but after she was born she lived in the sewers for an unknown time killing another prisoner and spinning a cocoon to undergo a metamorphosis into her adult form eventually she was captured and imprisoned in the converted storo the King was evidently aware of the existence of conjunctivius as he ordered soldiers to throw dead bodies down to the sword room

in order to feed her whatever the reason he had for keeping her alive was unknown but any prisoner that did make their way through the sewers had to pass through her home before leaving the labyrinths and conjunctivius wasn't going to let a fresh meal escap her as the Escape attempts failed and the overcrowding got worse the prisoners began to become unruly and disobedient the warden dealt with them by tossing them into the prison depths from whence they never returned but despite this punishment the Disobedience continued eventually a night of bloody riots broke out in the

prison the guards managed to quell the riots but afterwards had a huge number of corpses to deal with not wanting to deal with the body reanimating they decided the best course of action was to condemn a whole wing of the prison and throw the bodies inside of it creating a makeshift uary in the prison complex they then set the bodies a blaze and the smoke from the fires were so thick that prisoners within the main prison choked on them however despite their hopes that burning the mala's infected bodies would prevent them from reanimating to their

dismay monsters Rose From the Ashes and the whole Wing was left to their shambling Corpses while the king and Caston desperately tried to keep Affairs in the prison under control outside the prison things were devolving into chaos it was soon found that the malaise could infect animals as well as people and Mala infected animals were soon seen across the island the most terrifying of these monsters were the ticks of the moras of the banished who grew in size speed and power every day before Dawn these ticks swarmed from their nest in order to gather food

for their mother Mama tick whose only M's transformation was unprecedented as she ballooned into a bulbous multi ey monstrosity the banished soon found themselves in the sight of the ticks and although their arboreal homes could keep them safe for a while the banished knew it was only a matter of time before they would be overwhelmed by the insects they decided on an unconventional method to solve the predicament they found themselves in instead of fighting against The Brood they decided to appease it knowing what the tixs hunted for the banish offered them the only thing that

could appease them blood fresh blood and in the swamps they called home there was only one place to get that the banish thus created a religion centered on the sacrifice of the highest order to their holy maternal figure mamati offering up dozens if not hundreds of their bodies to the creatures all to receive Mama's blessing and be allowed to see the next day while this way of life was brutal it seemed to have a hidden benefit of the banished as while the rest of the realm was utterly devastated by the Mala they seemed to be

fairing better than the rest of it as unmutated banished could still be found in the Trees of the moras perhaps by ridding themselves of corpses and therefore possible contaminated bodies did the banished inadvertently find a method of slowing the spread of the Mala however they were not immune to the disease evidenced by mala's monsters being present in the tree houses meaning it was likely only a matter of time before the malaise eventually consumed them all in addition to infecting people and animals it was discovered that the malaise had the ability to infect plants as well

as the mushrooms in the Arboretum of the castle sprouted arms and legs and began to attack the Guard Station there Additionally the Venus fly traps swelled in size and gained a new appetite for flesh strangest of all though was the Malaysia apparent ability to infect inanimate objects deep in the prison there were rumors that Stones were being infected a ridiculous rumor at first consideration but one had to look no further than what happened in the Island's bank and Distillery to rethink that initial reaction in the Island's Bank the very gold itself seemed to come alive

and the large bags that gons used for storage grew huge Ms filled with rows of teeth while the gons themselves seem to be immune or at least resistant to the infection given one of the creatures closest association with mala's infected corpses these monstrosities along with gon's Driven Crazy with greed wre havoc on the bank to the point where it had to be sealed up by its Proprietors in the castle Distillery which had since been converted into a powder keg Factory perhaps in an effort to create weapons to battle the monsters of the malaise barrels of

powder had been infected leading to the barrels attacking the workers that made up the facility workers are retaliated by trying to blow up the barrels eventually all the explosions from living barrels and infected workers led to the Distillery being derck and disused as the king's failures to contain the malaise continued to mount Panic gripped the denisons of the realm many began to openly revolt against the king and disobey his orders others saw the Hopeless situation of the kingdom and attempted to flee the island by building ships to sail away from the realm however just like

the prisoners that attempted to flee through the sewers the hopes of those that attempted this Escape were misplaced as at some point either shortly before the malaise pandemic or during it the king had ordered the lighthouse to be extinguished after a strange scallop had washed onto the island perhaps worried it was one of the vile creatures rumored to have been seen in the undying Shores considering recent events in the realm relighting the beacon of the lighthouse was likely low in the king's priority list and as a result when people tried to sail from the island

their ships crashed into the rocks of the shoreline and sank creating a mound of wreckage around the structure that used to safely guide them to and from their home in an attempt to solve this problem a number of people went to the lighthouse to relight the beacon but none of those that did ever returned likely dying to either the monsters of the island or the monsters that infested the Shipwreck at the base of the building however anyone that did make it to the lighthous found that there was something else that was preventing the beacon from

being relit and it had to do with one of the Royals that ruled the kingdom not the king though but the mysterious queen and the story of how she ended up there began with the apostates in the undying Shores the apostates were indeed conducting a variety of Blasphemous experiments particularly around life and death one big area of focus of theirs was centered on creating homunculi artificial humans the apostates had tried several times to create one of these homunculi and although they were able to produce some of these beings the early versions were seen as failures

it's not exactly clear why but it could be because the produced homunculi mindlessly shambled about until given Direction instead of acting as an independent entity perhaps a result of the apostates using corpses instead of a live subject during the process in any case after countless failures the apostates were able to finally create a successful homunculus using the queen of the realm to do so however after the queen transformation her servants stormed the chamber that the work was taking place in slayed all of the apostates and freed Her Majesty actions that implied the experiment wasn't exactly

consensual and gives rise to the theory that the apostates may have kidnapped the queen and forced her to undergo the homunculus process in any case once the queen became a homunculus she technically had been given away to survive the malaise as her body was now artificial meaning it could be infected but with the death of the ones that created her this process was something that couldn't be replicated eliminating the possibility that the rest of the realm could become homunculi to Outlast the Mala thus she and her servants decided upon a new purpose they would ensure

that the malaise never left the shores of the island and infected the rest of the world to do so they took up a residence at the Lighthouse and prevented its Beacon from being lit so that the people of the realm couldn't escape and that travelers from foreign lands couldn't come to the realm and get infected even going so far as to imprison or kill those that came to the lighthouse hoping for salvation she may have also taken more direct action against those trying to escape using her sword which had the ability to slice through reality

to sink ships sailing in the waters around the island in any case the queen and her servants took up their endless vigil knowing that they would be condemning the realm but for the great greater good of the world like the king and queen there were a number of other people within the kingdom that also tried to find a solution to the pandemic tearing through the realm one such person was a sorceress named The timekeeper Who in a deal with unknown details had convinced the king to build her a large clock tower in the castle from

the clock room at the top of the tower the timekeeper used a multitude of clocks on the building to control the flow of time in an effort to contain the Mala initial results seemed promising as she was able to eliminate dozens of creatures in a single day however the longer her fight went on the less effective she became at eliminating the monsters indicating her solution was not going to be a permanent one despite this the timekeeper still played with time at the top of the clock tower hoping to find a way to deal with the

malaise in addition to the efforts of the timekeeper were the efforts of one of the royal gardeners in the employ of the King after seeing the transformation of the plants in the Arboretum of the castle The Gardener's curiosity was peaked and he conducted a wide variety of experiments with the plants of the gardens and the Monsters of the malaise all of which had interesting results unfortunately none of the experiments gave him a cure for the sickness but he was able to glean some more information about how the malaise was spread determining that the water supply

was contaminated and at least partially responsible for the spread of the infection but before he could develop his theories further the king ordered that the Arboretum should be burned to the ground much to The Gardener dismay he ignored the king's orders which resulted in a Stern letter being sent his way from Caston who threatened to throw the gardener to the ticks of the moras if he continued being disobedient despite this warning The Gardener apparently continued to defy the king resulting in his imprisonment in the prison where he eventually died under unclear circumstances however death was

not the end for the gardener as before he died he was infected with the MS thus not long after he died he rose again and unlike most he found that he had not yet totally lost his mind to the terrible infection but he could feel the madness beginning to encroach on him he then marched across the island hoping to come across someone that could help him resist the infection he started with the morass of the banished where one of their priests who was friendlier than the gardener thought he'd be gave the gardener some unknown plant

mixture that didn't seem to help much he then made his way to the fractured shrines hoping that the isolation afforded to the Queen's former subjects gave them enough time to find a cure but his hopes were unfounded as the pagans too had been affected by the infection mutating into halfman half snake hybrids he then turned his hopes to the apostates of the undying Shores but was dismayed to find that the apostates had also succumbed to the infection like the rest of the island The Gardener's next destination was the darkened Lighthouse perhaps hoping that he could

light its Beacon to call for help or to meet with the queen to see if she knew of some way to cure him but he never made it to the building he took up residence in a maalum near the undying Shores and underwent his Mala transformation becoming an entity known as the Scarecrow who grew plants in the mausoleum a sort of horrifying echo of what he did in his former life there was one other person that was trying to find a solution to the malaise a man known as The Alchemist who like the gardener was

more science oriented than magic oriented although he wasn't liked by the giant nor the hand of the king a rare thing that the two did agree on the king trusted The Alchemist immensely so much so that he built a huge astrolab and observatory in the castle for The Alchemist to do his work in add addition to conducting a wide variety of experiments in these locations The Alchemist also traveled across the island to do the same with the corpses left in the wake of the malaise as well as on villagers that volunteered their bodies to his

cause like the gardener he was interested in the Botanical manifestations of the malaise in the Arboretum and got some of the royal guards to get him a specimen using the specimen as well as a living volunteer The Alchemist performed an experiment in high peak castle that resulted in a half man half plant hybrid the experiment unfortunately cost the volunteer his life so The Alchemist gave up on doing further research in this vein but the fact that a whole wing of the castle was eventually dominated by the branches of a large manlike Plant suggests the results

of his experiment may have differed from his conclusion the alchemist's travels across the island eventually led him to a slumbering sanctuary that stilt Village was built over a location that like the fractured shrines may have been built by the Ancients the society that predated the realm set in the walls of this Sanctuary were pipes with a strange orange sap running through them he noted that the same material seemed to be running through the pipes in an ancient part of the sewers and theorized that if something happened to one of these pipes then the sap could

have contaminated the water supply and led to the spread of the malaise this finding also lined up with the findings of the gardener who thought contaminated water contributed to the spread of the malaise believing that understanding this sap would lead to a cure The Alchemist took some samples of the material and started performing experiments with it while some of them seemed to be promising slowing the rate at which an infected person transformed there were also less positive results like melting the skin off the bone when applied to someone more work with the sap was needed

before it was fit for purpose but before long some members of the royal guard came to The Alchemist with a new lead the soldiers have been sent to the undying Shores by the king who believed the apostates were in some way responsible for the start and spread of the malaise after the apostates fled from them the soldiers ransacked their labs and brought their Scrolls and notes to The Alchemist who was so intrigued by the knowledge that he went to the undying Shores himself once there he met with the apostates and finding that they were of

similar mind and disposition to him shared notes with them where he learned of their work creating homunculi along with another facet of their research blue cells that seemed to hold the essence of life itself seeing all these notes gave The Alchemist the hope that by using the homunculus process along with the cells the spread of the malaise could finally end and the time to put his hope to the test was quickly thrust upon him as by this point things had considerably worsened for the realm the king's autocratic Behavior had become so bad that he was

now a full-blown Tyrant resulting in even his loyal soldiers questioning his methods the king responded to this doubt by executing soldiers that didn't follow his orders even the giant was not spared this fate as when he met with the king in an attempt to persuade him to change a spear was thrust through his gut and his body was thrown into the prison which was no longer the Bastion of safety it initially was as it was getting overwhelmed the guards of the prison were finally getting sick transforming into monsters a fate shared by the warden Caston

who transformed into a monster known as the conci the concur perhaps holding on to some remnant of his duty from his former life took up residents on the Black Bridge into and out of the prison stopping anyone that attempted to cross it with the deaths of the guards and the warden the prison fell and so too did the primary method of containing the Mala meaning mala's monsters soon swarmed freely over the realm in a final Retreat the royal guard pulled all the way back to highe Castle and sealed the gates hoping they would be able

to survive but it was all for not as the malaise made its way into the castle decimating the guard and worst of all infecting the king with his infection it seemed the final death nail for the realm was nigh however it was at this point that The Alchemist stepped in using the knowledge he gained from the apost States He successfully created a homunculus and imprinted the soul of the king into it however unlike the queen whose homunculus transformation was perfect the king's transformation was imperfect like the failed homunculi of the apostates the king had to

rely on possessing corpses typically without a head to take a form that wasn't the slithering Blobby Mass he now was unlike his kin though the King was able to retain his sentients and could freely move about and make decisions but but in the process of becoming a homunculus he had lost all of his memory and empathy forgetting he was the king and the responsibilities he had to the realm meaning when he awoke he didn't choose a new noble cause like the queen did he was a blank slate that was learning about the world all over

again upon seeing the results of his homunculus experiment The Alchemist deemed it a failure and disappeared likely to run away from his shame and embarrassment however un announced to him by transforming the king into a homunculus he had set into motion events that would eventually lead to that goal that he and everyone in the realm had been searching for for so long the cure to the malaise that path started in the prisoners quarters upon taking his new homunculus form the king slithered here and possessed a headless body after familiarizing himself with his new form and

looking over the corpse of his former Confidant the giant he met an Knight who commented on the unique condition afforded to him by his new state of being he could no longer die being a homunculus he was immune to the malaise and if he were attacked by the monsters of the island and sustained enough damage to die it was only his possessed body that was destroyed his homunculus form would remain undamaged and the King could just return to the prisoners quarters to possess a new body if this happened upon his next Journey Through The Realm

the king would notice that the monsters of the Mala had returned and the Landscapes and environments of the island had shifted around now being different from what they were before the only explanation for this phenomena he received was from the Knight he met before who simply said that it seemed the island was alive another possible explanation could have been the time Shenanigans of the timekeeper who may have been messing with different timelines to keep the realm from falling completely in any case using his Newfound powers and the seemingly endless amount of corpses in the prison

the king explored the island seeing the extent of the damage that the malaise and its monsters had reaped on its realm as he did so he met a few friendly faces amongst the various monstrosities of the land the first was a hooded man named The Collector that had a large vat of the blue cells of the apostates upon his back among the new abilities the king gained from his transformation was the ability to gather these cells from various sources on the island like old chests random Vats just lying on the ground or most commonly from

the creatures of the malaise when they were killed The Collector told the king that he would give him some new weapons and gear in exchange for these cells he didn't say why he was gathering the cells nor how he knew about them but the king wasn't in the business of asking questions so happily handed over any cells he gathered in his journeys for new items alongside the collector were Gans that had thus far avoided being killed by monsters of the malaise that offered to temporarily upgrade his weapons for gold permanently upgrade his gear for cells

or give him mutations to Grant him more abilities these latter offerings were only temporary and were different from the runes that the king could find in the realm which gave him new abilities that were permanent with the help of his new found abilities and allies the king made his way through the remnants of his kingdom seeing many of its sights and killing many of its mutated denisons along the way the only one who managed to escape him was The timekeeper Who after being defeated in battle in the clock room o top her Tower warped away

through time before being killed the king eventually made it to his old throne room where his personal Bodyguard the hand of the King still guarded his Kos body the hand cast a spell around the King on the throne and obviously not recognizing the king in his new form attempted to kill him but he himself was defeated by his leeg afterwards the King used the hand's Lance to break the bubble shield around his body and not recognizing himself killed it by driving the Lance through it a power then welled up within his body and erupted disintegrating

The Corpse The King currently possessed his homunculus form stayed intact though and slinked into a nearby Fountain crawling through the plumbing until ending up at the prisoners quarters whereupon the king possessed a new body immediately afterwards he noticed that the body of the giant was gone and a booming Rumble in the distance pulled him to investigate upon catching a glimpse of the reanimated soldier descending into lava the king began to consider the thought that things might have changed on the island a thought further supported when he reached high peak Castle again and found that all

that remained of his body and his throne was smoldering ruin however at the same time much more seemed like it hadn't changed the monsters of the malaise were just as numerous as before and all the bosses he' killed had returned including the hand of the king who now guarded the ruins of what remained of his throne and no matter how many more times he completed his journey through the realm it never changed from the state it seemed like he found himself in a sort of endless cycle and was doomed to spend the rest of his

Immortal days trapped in it however there was a way for him to break the cycle and it lied in a reward he received after killing the hand of the king which was a unique Red Cell called a boss cell that modified the island on his next journey through it making the monsters of the Mala more dangerous and numerous reducing the number of resources available to him and unlocking wooden doors that were previously inaccessible after the king completed a run through the realm with one of these boss cells active another would become available which when used

Amplified their effects even further and unlocked more of the wooden doors the hand was not the only person that the king could gather these boss cells from there were two others that dropped them when defeated one of whom was a monster from another world and the other was an important person from The King's past in the case of the first one day a pedestal appeared in the lobby of the prisoners quarters that told of independent Legends heroes from other worlds after its appearance the king began to find strange rooms in the prisoners quarters that held

the weapons items and if you met certain conditions outfits of these Heroes there was the flask and armor of a penitent one that hailed from a land of Deep religious worship named custodia there was the Letterman jacket and rooster mask of a vigilante nicknamed jacket who used a wooden bat to cave in the skulls of his enemies there was the bathrobe hairstyle and Katana of a swordsman named Zero who was able to slow his perception of time in order to enhance his prowess of battle and many others with the appearance of the items of these

Heroes it seemed like the boundaries between worlds were being blurred somehow this strange phenomena eventually came to a head when a large Sinister castle manifested in the realm unleashing evil creatures and waves of bats upon the kingdom when the king went to investigate he soon met a vampire hunter named RoR Belmont that explained that the undead Overlord Dracula was returning he asked for the king's help in preventing that return something the king agreed to do he then made his way through the outskirts and interior of Dracula's castle passing by many references to the original World

of Dracula and Rick and meeting Dracula's son alukard who promised to help in the fight as he was approaching Dracula's keep he was ambushed by the vampire Lord's Lieutenant death who intended to defend his Lord but despite wielding a huge amount of power The Entity was defeated by the king alukard appeared soon after and told the king that despite death's defeat the ritual to bring Dracula back had gone through complicating matters was that due to death being the physical manifestation of well death he couldn't truly be defeated and he would stop any attempts at reaching

Dracula's keep so a different path to his father's keep would have to be taken after some time alukard found one that went through the realm's Clock Tower and once the king took this path he was able to bypass death and meet the vampire lord face to face it seemed that Dracula underestimated the king as in the ensuing fight he was quickly defeated by his foe that was when he decided to reveal his true demonic bat-like form and attacked the king with the full extent of his power however thanks to the power of His homunculus form

the King was able to defeat Dracula and watch his castle crumble as the vampire lord Was Defeated once and for all once the king returned to the prisoners quarters following Dracula's defeat he would collect his new boss cell as for the other person the king could get a bossell from similar to his Castlevania encounter one day in the lobby of the prisoners quarters a tentacle delivered a letter to the king the writer of the letter was a portly tentacled creature known as the fisherman who was sick of being trapped on the island and hearing about

the king's repeated runs through it hoped he would help him Escape once the king met the fisherman and the sewers the creature explained that while looking for a ship to use to flee he noticed the extinguished Lighthouse of the island and thought it was the best method they could use to escape of course the lighthouse was also where the queen now resided who the king hadn't seen in who knew how long but due to his homunculus transformation he didn't remember her much less knew where she went after being transformed meaning the significance of his journey

there was lost on him so after making a stop in one of the lighthous keepers homes to gather a key to the building finding that the man had succumbed to a little crustaceous creature named a leg hugger at some point in the past the king sailed with the fisherman to the lighthouse blissfully ignorant of what awaited him there the two couldn't sail directly to the building though so the fisherman dropped the king off at the infested shipwreck and the King had to fight through the Malay monsters and Arbor shrimps that resided within them to reach

his destination when he reached the lighthouse and went to climb it Kopi utery and Cleo the Servants of the queen tried to fight him off adamant on performing the duty they and their Queen had taken up but despite their amazing teamwork they were defeated by the king with their defeat the king proceeded to the crown of the structure where he was reunited with his wife the queen herself in her homunculus form despite being reunited with her love the queen was determined to prevent the reignition of the beacon of the lighthouse and the spread of the

malays to The Wider world so attacked her husband however having lost his memory and empathy the king felt No Remorse as he defeated his wife and killed her by kicking her into the fires that had accidentally been lit when he entered the building as the sun rose on a new day for the realm the king noticed a ship on the horizon which had been led to the island by the relit lighthouse however all the sailors aboard the ship were Monsters of the malaise indicating the cause that the queen had been fighting for was all for

not as the Mala had already reached the outside world the king however wasn't too broken up about it and with his new boss elento headed back to the prisoners quarters to begin the cycle a new no matter which of the three the king got his boss cells from he repeated the cycle until he got four of them after which he could get no more from these foes four boss cells allowed him to open up every wooden door on the island every door except the one that led to the astrolab at The Alchemist which required five

cells to open in order to get this last cell the king needed to meet someone else from his past the giant who Dove to the deepest part of the Island's Cavern after rising from where the king threw his court after grabbing a key to the cavern and unlocking the region by putting it in a lock in the Island's graveyard the king descended down to The guardian's Haven to meet the giant face to face the gargantuan Soldier recognized the king even saying as much at one point and in a fit of anger attacked him as revenge

for his death and all that the king had wrought upon the real however the giant could not overcome his Lee and he was defeated by him when this defeat came with the King having four boss cells activated then the giant gave him the fifth one before blowing up in a brilliant explosion with all five boss cells now in his possession when the king made it to the throne room he could finally open the door behind his throne and explore the alchemist's astrolab the king explored the labs and Chambers of The Alchemist reading his notes and

all his failed experiments and seeing the diagrams and schematics of his work until he climbed to the highest point in the Kingdom The Observatory here he met an unex Ed face The Collector who had thus far been absent in the king's five boss cell run of the Kingdom standing before a massive Catalyst the man revealed why he hadd been asking the king to gather all of those sounds he was using them to make the Panacea a tonic that could cure any disease problem with that though is that the Panacea was a myth and as The

Collector went on a monologue about the implausibility of it working about the crimes he' committed and the failures of everything else he done something became clear he was The Alchemist despite disappearing following his failed experiment with the King he hadn't given up hope on finding a cure to the malaise and believing the cells of the apostates would eventually lead him to it he continued working on finding that cure it all led up to this moment his only hope being a fairy tale told the children he downed the blue liquid and to his surprise it actually

worked a huge surge of power to course through his body from a potion which prompted an evil terrifying grin to appear on his face addicted to the power given to him by the Panacea The Collector started a fight with the King intending to send him back to the prisoners quarters so he could gather more cells for him the king managed to survive the onslaught of The Collector but anytime he would begin to come out ahead The Collector would put up a shield and take a drink for the Panacea thereby restoring his vitality and undoing all

the work the king had done G this pattern continued until at the top of the observatory The Collector forgot to put up his shield and the King knocked the Panacea out of his hands he immediately took a drink from the potion himself which supercharged his own power and allowed him to finally beat the collector on his hands and knees The Collector lamented his final failure that he couldn't save the Kingdom from the King that mismanaged everything so much that it led to its downfall then his head was caved in by the boot of the king

as he stepped away from the corpse of The Collector the king began to feel the effects of the Panacea on his own body as he relished in the moment where he would finally be free of the cycle of the Kingdom the king's body disintegrated leaving his homunculus form behind and then that was it nothing else happened defeated the king slithered back to the prisoners quarters and took over a new body to begin and the cycle a new however this time when the king set out he was sucked into a portal that opened up behind him

he found himself in the clock room of the timekeeper who yelled at him for what he'd done requiring her to mess with the loop again after casting the spell the timekeeper walked over and kicked the king sending him through a portal that she didn't realize had opened behind him which was apparently a big mistake the king found himself in the prisoner's quarters again starting his normal routine but then at a familiar if glitchy face the Knight that had greeted him when he first set out on the island saying the exact same things as when they

first met it seemed like he'd been sent back in time indeed when he made it back to his throne room he found his komo's body was back on the throne of stone and was again guarded by the hand of the king indicating the timekeeper had sent him back to the original Loop before he killed the collector before he killed the king but after he had gained gained all the powers from his previous Journeys thus this time after he defeated the hand and shattered the shield around his body he used the homunculus Rune to detach his

homunculus form from his current body and reclaim his original one moments after reclaiming it the king noticed that it was still infected with the malaise and wondered if there was a way to cure the ailment of course he knew the collector's plan so again made his way to the observatory gave the collector the cells needed to make the pan IA knocked it out of his hands during their fight then drank it and killed his opponent once the fighting was done the king noticed that instead of dissolving his body like before the Panacea lived up to

its Legend and not only cured his body of the malaise but bound his soul back to it restoring the king to his true self however in the process of being restored the king had killed the only person that knew how to create the Panacea meaning that by Saving himself he had doomed everyone else in the realm and evidently the entire world he didn't seem too broken up about that though as a short time later he lounged on his throne sipping wine and complaining that he was having more fun killing the monsters that overran his kingdom

at that moment someone approached him it was a glitched out version of himself as a homunculus the version that originally inhabited this timeline after the two of them mimicked each other's movements and flipped each other off they each powered up and attacked starting a fight to see which of them was the strongest and as that fight began the story of dead cells came to an end while it's the gameplay Loop that draws most players to dead cells as they explore the island and come across the L rooms they begin to get pieces of the story

which is like a little mystery that invites players to solve it those that take the time to do so get to see a story about a kingdom ravaged by an Unstoppable disease the heroics of those that tried to save it from that disease and how its autocratic ruler robbed it of its salvation by being as the giant put it an encourageable ass it's sprawling and captivating and owes its existence to its developers motion twin and evil empire who deserve all the praise they get for the work they've put into the game over the years now

I'm not perfect so there may be some errors in there somewhere but this should cover everything or most everything in the lore and story of dead cells if you have any lingering questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them likewise if there was anything you feel was missed or wrong or you have some thoughts or theories of your own feel free to share your thoughts SLC Corrections in the comments I know I'd love to hear them and maybe they would help someone else understand things too before I go I'd like

to remind you that you can listen to the audio of this video along with all my other ones over on Spotify so go listen over there if you're interested all right I think that's everything so until next time thank you for watching and see you later