FF6 - Brave New World

I did try fighting back,
The zone eater keeps beating the crap out of the underleveled party im using. Every attempt leads to death by its inhale attack. I could get my higher level heavy hitters and go to town. That by itself doesnt bother me, acctually its very cool monsters can beat me. (levels are terra: 20, strago: 17, relm: 16, shadow: 26. Their spell lists are pathetic, which im going to fix then retry. More ice spells!)
This and the striker thing change the circumstances of how a character is acquired, it just feels wrong. I'm not saying vanilla had it right by any means, but character acquisition is set certian way in my mind. I got a similar feeling when espers fenrir and palidor showed up in each others place. In that case I totally understood after finding out who could use who.

---

I just got engulfed, with that party and without gainging levels or learning spells. Go terra + icebrand. Fenrir + smoke bombs + float kept me alive. The only problem was areo. With a low level party in mind I dunno how id survive it. I'm going to load and try again.
Is there an npc that immissing who tells me to slay the zone eater? And for that matter what to bet for the striker?