Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 29 (Patreon)

Chapter 29: Words Shared

(Original Chapter Title: Words Shared)

This feels like peak Ranthia. She takes care to actually bring her notes, confesses (to the audience) that her notes weren't finalized until the last second, then ditches them anyway to teach off the cuff instead.

Ranthia isn't exactly Pallos' most skilled teacher. She's a bit repetitive and she's just kinda regurgitating things she's learned while adding a few personal anecdotes. ...Including a kind of tasteless admission about one of her own injuries.

Look, she built up the Sentinel mystique during the hell months, she's allowed to tear it down a bit now. Hopefully.

She also has a (bit of an obvious) revelation: she kind of fell into heroics without meaning to. Becoming a Sentinel had never really been a goal of hers, it was just kind of a side-effect from other choices she made. But don't worry, I'm sure this is unimportant and won't ever come up again.

But yes, the big thing for this chapter is the return of Sentinel Hunting!

Behind the scenes: when I was writing what is now book 2, I waffled a lot about whether or not Hunting and Ranthia would ever reunite after her time at the Unbreakable Image. Ultimately though, I just liked the idea of having them shoot the shit together again, so I did it. Yes, he worked great for dropping some information that BtDEM readers would care about, but I'm sure I could have found other ways to get that information into Ranthia's ears.

And now, I feel like Ran kinda deserved a chance to reunite with the man. Hunting has a lot of death flags (to the extent I've had readers call 'we'll never see him again' twice now), but he's just as tenacious as Ranthia is. He knows the level 768 class up exists and he has a goal, with a clear buffet of enemies to help him get there.

But for the moment, he's taking a little time for himself.