Afterword - Book 5 - Chapter 23 (Patreon)

Author's note: Still one behind, but wanted to go ahead and get this one done before I take a break. Sorry for the delay!

Chapter 23: Friends and… Threats?

Extremely high-level people in BtDEM's System get to do some utter fucking nonsense and, hilariously, most of it boils down to dexterity. There's really just kind of a rational upper boundary for how graceful and dexterous someone could be, but Selkie bridged that problem by deciding that high dexterity just means you get to give physics the finger.

And being able to bend or break the rules of physics is always going to be the coolest possible superpower.

Moving on, writing cultural clashes is one of the most challenging things about writing high fantasy. Elves are fundamentally different than humans—their curse twists their worldview and they grow up with significantly less hardships in life. It's honestly a challenge to make everything feel sufficiently different, but this chapter has one of my favorite moments of misunderstanding.

To Ranthia, Anthelleon's prolonged silence was evidence of anger. But from Anthelleon's point of view, it was obvious that she was just trying to rein in her natural urge to argue against a damned valid point, even knowing it was valid. Her behavior was only elven, after all.

Unfortunately, Ranthia had never run into such a thing before. Most of her experience came from Avyna, but she had broadened her horizons in ways that Anthelleon never had. And I think this should be pretty clear by now, but Avyna isn't quite a typical elf.

Also, once again, it proves to be impossible to be around Ranthia for very long without giving in to chaos.

She just has that effect on people.

I really don't have much to say about Sunny's disappearance. Even without her present, it's one of my favorite Sunny moments, and not just because of the guards' Monty Python-esque reaction to the piece of art she left behind. But are her final words a threat or a promise?

I'll admit, part of why I love Ranger is just the simple fact that he was there. When? Whenever! Night had a lot of emotional baggage about the early days of Pallos, but Ranger's far more willing to spin a tale or two. And I couldn't resist the opportunity to canonize (disclaimer: I'm not Selkie, so they might someday contradict it) the fan-favorite request that the fire goddess not be a dragon. Logically, she really should be one, but it's easy enough to change that logic—I just needed the first dragons to stupid themselves out of the domain.

And fortunately, the fact that no one knew how anything worked gave me a wondrous opportunity to do so.

And yeah, Ranger isn't exactly flying through the levels any longer. The world is largely peaceful, aside from low- to mid-tier skirmishes and monsters. There just aren't exactly many near-divine beings throwing down. Which is a good thing, when it comes to preserving trivial things like civilization and the land itself. We've seen that battles at Ranthia's level can wreck havoc on the immediate vicinity.

And at Ranger's level, a true conflict could reshape the world itself.