Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 28 (Patreon)

Chapter 28: An Erstwhile Flower

(Original Chapter Title: N/A)

Ranthia and time have always had a strange relationship. Part of that is her tendency to hyperfocus and just... miss how much time passes. But obviously time itself is pranking her just as often!

The lack of food options during the nightlife was a fairly random idea while I was editing/rewriting this chapter. But it makes sense! Most of the people enjoying the nightlife are out for snacks and treats (...by every possible meaning of the words). A big stall dedicated to cooking meals isn't going to see much traffic.

Life on Pallos isn't quite the same as it was at any period on Earth (citation needed). It's actually kind of fun to use the worldbuilding of Pallos and try to logic through how different goods and services might differ in quality, demand, and price. Take cloth for example. In Earth's past, say early Holy Roman Empire era, cloth was expensive because people had to hand stitch everything. (Seriously, throughout most of history, clothes were the most valuable things a lot of people owned.) But on Pallos, the System exists and classes and Skills can do a lot of the drudgery—fast. Their textile industry is probably closer to modern than Roman Empire.

All this to say, cheap cloth should be cheap in Ariminum. But good cloth is still spendy, thus why Ranthia's eager to unload it.

I don't think anyone would be surprised at this point that Ranthia ran straight to Green for advice after everything. Ranthia might have grown more than a bit since her time in Ranger Team 6, but Green's still one of the only people that Ranthia's ever truly looked up to. Her advice really can be distilled down to 'don't stop trusting yourself as you try to improve'—which is good advice, even if it's not what Ranthia hoped for.

And yes, we have another BtDEM cameo. For those that don't know, Flora is a somewhat special character in BtDEM—she represents Selkie's actual child. Honestly, that's personal enough that it left me really hesitant to use her, but... well, as I edited book 1 it became blindingly obvious the Green was basically the perfect mentor for Flora to get her started on her own journey. Selkie's fine with us using Flora, we just have to be respectful.

Flora's a young early 20's woman at this point, which means her BtDEM appearances aren't terribly useful for indicating how to write her. I did my best, I hope it was good enough!

Related topic: my writing style is a bit different from Selkie's here. No one in Blind Chaos is based on a real person—I've never been comfortable doing that. I tend to let my characters develop as they will, rather than trying to shoehorn an outsider in or force them to comply with some preexisting mold.

But I'll wrap this up here. The chapter ends with Ranthia getting a... gentle reminder of another obligation—so look forward to that!