End of Arc 3 Author’s Note

HELLO!

Am I sorry for the 108 Cliffhanger? No. That thing was planned for so long you can be happy that the waiting time between the chapters was this short. Arc 3 turned out a lot shorter than Arc 2 for some reason. Likely because I had a better idea what I wanted to achieve and didn’t want to stretch it like last time (Also less erotica, which I always use separate chapters for).

Goal of this Arc was to get John out of reactive and into pro-active territory. He saw something he wanted to change and tried to. Now the whole thing went a bit south because he didn’t know what exactly he was trifling with. While on the topic of saving Thana: It has been brought to my attention that the part of ‘Why’ John wanted to save her may have been a bit short. After thinking about I agree, I should have brought more reasons up aside from ‘Because it was Travolta’s last wish’ given John’s more cautious nature. A last wish is a good and powerful reason but there might have been a bit more needed.

All of the story from like Chapter 20 onwards, when I realized this would a bit more than a side-project for me, have been building up to the end of this Arc. Originally, I planned Aclysia to actually die at the end of this Arc and be replaced with Aclysia 2.0 (A2, anyone? No, I am not always creative) but that storyline got scrapped because I already have spent to much time building up Aclysia to go through the same motions again and end with almost the same character. So when I got my hands on a love plot Rave was the logical next person on the chopping block. Except that I didn’t plan to actually kill her.

The idea moving forward is a training arc, but I am getting ahead of myself. This Arc spells the **** of Victoria, Igor and the other Bloodfallen. The fight with them was maybe easier, maybe even anti-climactic, than some of you imagined and this is (for the most part) intended. You may have noticed it already but I generally don't follow many of the game mechanics around here, there is no HP-Bar, there is no Damage done or something like that, similarly the mold of levels had to be broken. Igor being a high level charismatic guy made him way inferior to John who is pretty much all combat oriented, and on that the fact that John's Innate Ability is the Innate Ability to acquire other Innate Abilities (if you break it down to just the core) you have an MC who should have little problems beating people his level.

Thana herself was also shallowly introduced after being teased for such a long time. I hope you are not to disappointed with the little you got to see. There is more to her, I promise, but it will take a while to get there.

The SB sub-plot also came to a ‘kind-of’ end. I think you can all guess that this is not the actual last we see of SecretBlonde in the story but at the very least his current goals are met so he will step into the background.

With Thana holding Rave hostage (Before you ask, Herman’s people were all ripped apart, they are dead) John will have to strike a deal with one of two groups/people. Who? Well, I think you know if you paid attention.

Lastly I want to talk about the Aclysia Side Story, which in my opinion worked out wonderful. It gave me the opportunity to show Herman a bit before introducing him into the story and (more importantly) allowed me to give Aclysia some concentrated growth that John wasn’t involved with. The problem with a one-character focused narrative is that the MC comes meddled up in to many things, to a point where it feels that nothing in the world can happen without him being involved, so this was my way to avoid that for a change.

FOCUS CHARACTER OF THE ARC- Victoria

Okay, to be fair she didn’t have a lot of screen time but I couldn’t make this last Arc without speaking about stuff that happens this Arc so here we are.

Most important question first. Did I introduce Victoria just to die? Yes. Yes, I did. I dislike doing such things because they feel dishonest to a degree. I try to keep my story somewhat ‘clean’ of planned character deaths because disrespecting ones characters quickly leads to a ‘I can always create more’ situation, which then turns the story a bit stale.

Was Victoria designed to die though? No, Victoria came into planning first when I made the plans for Arc 1 where she was simply designated as Girl 2 (Which since then turned out wrong because she is actually Girl 3, Girl 1 being Rave and Girl 2 Aclysia) but the base for Slavic Sniper was what I build upon.

I designed her fighting style first, because that was easy enough (Guns, Bang, Bang), then her character design and only at the end did I decide on how to introduce her and where she came from. It just happened that I had a much more prominent character in my mind, Thana, that I wanted to introduce with a BANG! So somebody had to die. Victoria is the one that was the best for this job because of how her and Thana’s backstories intertwined, sorry for the Victoria fans out there. If there are any.

When I made her character, I decided to go for the less likeable approach. Partly because I didn’t want people to get to attached, partly because having a story full of likeable protagonists is boring. So, I made her slightly bitchy but mostly the stern ‘Has not time for bullshit’ kind of character.

Running her with the Bloodfallen (Which I created separately btw) was an easy decision. She was from a fleeing family, they were anti-communist, bada-bing bada-boom, match in heaven. Things aligned nicely, happens sometimes.

And now she is dead. This will probably be the last you ever hear of her. Nah, okay maybe she will be mentioned one or two more times but don’t expect too much of me, a chapter only has that much space.

This is it for me. I will create another chapter after this that shows all of the current Stats of John and his Elementals as well as Aclysia. Then I will take a one-week break (maybe a bit longer, I will be on vacation for a bit) and see you all again for the fourth and final arc of Season 1 ‘Shadow of the Day’.