Ahem! First off, to celebrate the end of this long and tedious volume, my dear Patron Readers have decided to grant me a day off tomorrow. I'd like to thank all of you for your generosity. Thank you!
Applause!
Clap clap clap clap clap!
And now, for everyone's favorite part: the critique session (doge)...
Everyone feels this volume was tedious and long, but in terms of length alone, it wasn't that long.
To be more precise, it was probably tedious and padded.
First, let's talk about the tedious part. The biggest issue was likely Michael's personality shift. Because his "darkening" actually happened in the very short span of time between the birth of the Twelfth Herrscher and Elysia's disappearance, making him too dark all at once might have seemed abrupt.
So, when I was cleaning him up... ah, I mean, so I didn't make him pitch-black from the get-go. Instead, at the beginning of his "darkening," I first had Michael undergo a shift in his goals. It looked like he had turned dark, but he didn't kill anyone. Simply put, aside from his goal being different, the "darkened" Michael wasn't much different from his previous self.
Then came the Kolosten arc, where Michael started to cross the line of his own kindness. The fate of every character who appeared in that volume, from beginning to end, was calculated within his power over time. The entire story was scripted by Michael, and all the deaths could be attributed to his arrangements. In fact, in that volume, Michael already had hundreds of thousands of lives on his hands. It's just that these people had no names, and their tragic ends weren't described in depth, so it didn't hit very hard.
The named characters who died and left an impression were probably only Kallen and Elinor. But when writing that part, I deliberately made it ambiguous. Readers couldn't be sure if Kallen and Elinor were truly dead or if they had, like the Flame-Chasers, received a ticket to the Elysian Realm. But based on Michael's past behavior and the letter at the end that seemed to be from Elysia, most people probably thought those two didn't die.
At the same time, whenever Hua appeared, her internal monologues would repeatedly tell the readers that, his actions notwithstanding, Michael's heart was still good, that he would...
This writing style made Michael's darkening seem less dark, preventing such an extreme change from making his character completely collapse. But it also led to another problem, which is...
Michael had too much of a "sense of security" around him.
This "sense of security" isn't the literal kind, but a common phenomenon in fiction, especially webnovels. Because the protagonist must live for the story to continue, no matter how dire the situation is written, readers subconsciously feel the protagonist will turn things around.
In Michael's case, readers knew he had his bottom lines and that at least one of his ultimate goals was to resurrect Elysia. So, they didn't think he would go that dark. Comparing him to Otto was mostly just for memes; deep down, they didn't really believe Michael could be that evil.
Even when Michael was constantly feeling guilty and repentant in his heart, readers probably just saw him as being a bit naive.
So, one of the goals of this volume was to destroy that sense of security. Now, no one knows how insane Michael might become or what unexpected things he might do. In a sense, it seems I succeeded...
As for whether it breaks his character, I don't think so.
I deliberately made Michael's descent a gradual process: from fake kills, to a mix of fake and real kills, and finally to all real kills. His personality has become more and more twisted. As long as there's this evolutionary process, I don't think it's a huge problem.
And all of this is built on one foundation: the power of Origin prevents time from eroding his humanity. Otherwise, I genuinely wouldn't know how to write a character who has lived for fifty thousand years.
As for whether that twisted personality, especially the sudden bipolar shifts in attitude, is reasonable, I can only say that there's a small detail from the Previous Era—Michael has always been a mental patient who needed medication for treatment.
That's it for the "tedious" part. While there's a rationale behind it, there might have been some issues during the execution. Maybe the previous foreshadowing wasn't quite enough.
As for the "padding" issue, I think one aspect is a matter of perspective.
If you look closely, the perspective in this volume is actually a bit strange. Most of the time, Michael is just a secondary perspective. The main point of view occasionally switches to him, but for the most part, the main perspective is actually Mei's.
I feel this might be a bit of a problem. After all, Michael is the protagonist. It's fine to have a few chapters from other characters' perspectives, but when more than half a volume is from Mei's POV, it can feel weird.
I don't know how to solve this problem for now. I can foresee that in future storylines involving the growth of the main trio, this issue will come up again. It's the only way to present their psychology and actions in more detail. To avoid it, I might have to change things from a plot-planning level.
Another issue is the time span. As I said, this volume isn't that long, not as long as the previous two, it just seems like it has more chapters. But the number of chapters actually reflects the time span. If this volume had been forty, or even thirty-something chapters, instead of over fifty, it might not have felt so padded.
Basically, it's about going back from 4k words a day to 6k.
But I really can't seem to do it anymore. This is the first time I've written a story this long. In another twenty days, this book will have been updated for a full year. In the beginning, I always felt like I had endless things to write in my head and could write a lot at once. I still have things I want to write now, but I just can't get the words out.
Sometimes it's not that I don't know what to write, but I know what to write, and yet sitting in front of the computer, typing out a single line feels more tiring than running a lap on a track.
I remember there was this god-tier creator on Douyin who ate canned luncheon meat every day. I started watching him in my freshman year of college. Back then, he had only been doing it for a hundred or two hundred days. I thought, what's the big deal? It's just one bite of canned meat a day, who can't do that...
Now he's been at it for over a thousand days.
All I can say is, I can only look up to him in awe.
When you turn your hobby into a profession, and then write every day, every day, every day, that mental resistance is really tough to deal with.
Sometimes, when the characters in the book are having a meltdown, it might not be because they want to. It's because I can't take it anymore, and I'm having a meltdown in real life, and I just end up describing my own state.
It's not that I don't like writing anymore. If I started a brand-new story, I might be full of energy again. But with this story now in its final thirty percent, I really feel that the further I go, the more tired I get.
So my updates went from 6k-8k words a day to a baseline of 5k, then dropped below 5k, and now I'm just muddling along at 4k a day.
I can't help it. I procrastinate and procrastinate, and then at 11 PM, I see I've only written a little over 3k words. I struggle to get past 4k, see that it's a perfect spot for a cliffhanger, and then quickly schedule the post and go to sleep.
I've been trying to adjust my state, but it seems the more I resist, the more excited it gets... no, the more I resist, the stronger the resistance becomes.
Of course, everyone is different. I also really admire those who never miss an update, except for... ahem!
Regarding the update volume, I'll try my best to adjust it later. If it really doesn't work out, you all might just have to let the chapters pile up for a while. Just remember to clear them out every half a month or month. I might write a bit slower, but at the very least, I will definitely finish it.