Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Chapter 4: The Tower on the Horizon

(Original Chapter Title: Broken)

A bright and cheery chapter! ...Wait, I'm being handed a note.

In all seriousness, one of the weirder aspects about this arc for me, as a writer, is how much time passes. In the OG draft I spanned everything in a couple of chapters—but I'll have more to say on that in a future afterword. Up until now when I allowed time to pass, it was because little of interest happened. Here the feel to the timeskip is different; "and two years of tragedies later" has a different weight than anything I had written before this point.

Repetition isn't fun for a reader, but the weight of each and every one of those years is carried by Ranthia. It, in some ways, makes the timeskip feel unfair to her, as ludicrous as that sounds.

But things steadily... well, I hate to use the word 'improve', but Ranthia and the other survivors find their equilibrium. Not that it helps them escape the situation.

But nothing can remain static indefinitely. And so, Ranthia faces her third twin! (Yes, third. The assassin in Remus that killed Hylla was technically a twin. And then the Lightning [Mage] that forced Ranthia to heel.)

This was another moment where Ranthia didn't quite follow my original plan. I expected her to climb the tower and confront the ogress directly—a grand match where she earns a win through the ogress' build being more focused on extreme range combat—but, as you know, that isn't what happened. Ranthia instead played to her originally planned assassin build roots and went for the sneak-attack kill.

It was a mix of extremely clever and extremely reckless, given the ogress wasn't alone. Fortunately for her, the bodyguard for the ogress was a statement more than anything. The most unwilling possible host—a rebel that had tried to form a grand uprising against those that oppressed and enslaved the ogres. And so his captor threw a punch instead of smashing Ranthia to bits.

Him speaking Creation was a factor of convenience, of course—he wouldn't have used the shimagu tongue and I wanted Ranthia to understand him.

Ranthia survived the top of the tower bruised and a bit broken, but she was still willing to fight on. At least until she got a lungful of poison. Also, if you're a disposable shock troop there's a lot of logic in carrying aerosolized poisons that you can shatter if you need. Take that pesky heroine down with you!

But Ranthia is getting healed and is enjoying a perfectly normal class up experience.

Until next time!