Get ready to meet the Circle.

A brand new dawn rises to shine a warm glow over the Pecho Peaks, eventually piercing over the top of the great, dark stone walls which surround the little town you've built. The morning air of autumn is crisp, though the land is relatively temperate, and you're thankful every day that this world of fantasy is far from medieval--running water, comfortable room, and even a magic stove. For one reason or another, it doesn't get frigid in your chambers at night, and there's even an orb which glows beside your bed after touching your hand upon it. It's time to get up, change out of your pajamas, and start the day. You almost forget in your half-asleep stupor that today may be incredibly important, but then you see the folded letter sitting on the end table beside your massive bed.

Today's date, a map, and that's all I got after it finished speaking to me aloud. I wonder who that voice belonged to, you think to yourself. Either way, it's not talking now. I guess there's no race of small paper-girls to worry about.

So you have a hearty breakfast of pork, eggs, and bread, though as plain as it may sound, the combined efforts of the busy bee Summer with her assistant Amara make for a delicious dish, especially with a drizzle of honey, though at a point, it was moments away from being ruined by that drizzle nearly turning into a tsunami. Not by accident of course.

There you stand, out in the courtyard, garbed in your Suit of the Demon King and pair of Winged Boots--Ring of Tol'vuus on a finger, and Awakened Lauo sheathed at your side. Just in case, you keep your Arcane Eye in your pocket as well. It's probably wise to keep as much magic on you as possible when dealing with a group exclusively of wizards. You have no idea what to expect. While you're not a mage yourself, at least you know a handful of spells: Flare Bolt and Blade, Mend, Entangle, Pleasure. It isn't much, but you're more of a quick swordsman anyway--a jack of all trades in a way.

You weren't told how many allies you could bring, if any at all, though you're not going alone. You'd rather not bring a small army either though. One, because that would certainly be threatening. Two, because you'd also rather not Bunny Hop that many people after all you've been doing already. There are mages among you that would make sense at first, though realistically, your allies being mages themselves may not add anything at all, and if the Circle is quiet effective at dealing with magic-users given how educated they'd be with themselves, it could even be worse.

So naturally, you bring the party.

Niki, Amara, and Eva meet up with you, thanks to the call of the devil maid Yin. There's one stop you need to make before warping away, and it's an important one. It's time to to find Dix, your (not necessarily) trustworthy gnomish alchemist.

You drum your knuckles against her door--sized for a human, which is likely not the best for Dix, but perhaps that can be remedied in the future. For now, you know the knob has been lowered, and smaller adjustments were made inside her home.

Eva leans over your shoulder. "I'm nervous. What is the queen going to say? What's going to happen?"

"Probably something like... thank you, brave adventurers! Here's a sack of ten thousand gold coins for your troubles, and a big ass suit of armour for me," says Niki.

"For her?" Amara asks.

"No, for me."

You turn an eye back to her. "Niki. You can get more armour literally anytime you want. I thought you specifically liked having a small ass suit of armour."

"Well, I wouldn't wear it. I'd display it in my room."

The door pulls open. Dix looks up at your party, and her eyes shine with excitement. "I told you I could do it!" she says with a snap of her finger.

"Does that mean--" You try and peer past into her home. "She's awake?"

"That's right. And with the leftover Men's Bane you gave me, I can make all sorts of fun potions..."

"I don't want to know."

"... Is that who I think it is?" comes a voice from inside.

Hi! It's me. I can't believe the stats we've got on this story over the years I've been writing it. Over 90k likes, nearly 4k favourites, 9k bookmarks, and we're almost at 9 MILLION views. That's nuts! 1085 chapters deep with 1,778 chapters total (or pages, or whatever you wanna call them). I can't thank you all enough. If CHYOA ever goes down, I hope to god I'll have either been able to manually save this whole thing (that'll take awhile, but I'm working on it), or there will be a way to, because I want to keep writing for you guys. I'd miss the choose-your-own-adventure format, but I'd still be willing to write it linear. Anyway, that doesn't matter. What matters is I've been able to stick with writing one project for this long, which is pretty rare for me! You probably all know how many other stories I have that aren't nearly as long. Haha

The reason I'm posting this is because you've finished what was basically a Part 2 of the story, which I brought up when it started. Now this is a sort of Part 3! You've met and dealt with the other Demon Kings of the area, and Elok Daven has started making some big moves. Now you're ready to take your next step, meet with the Circle, and make some big changes. It's just kinda worked out this way, splitting the story into three parts, and each one is about six hundred or so pages long.

I also hope people don't mind that there are only occasionally options. I do like having alternative routes too, and I'm not gonna stop that, but I figured if I only post a handful of pages each week, it's usually better to keep things going then be stuck at one single scene for a few weeks just to write all the different versions of it. But I've still been tracking certain decisions, and I still have them come up to have some continuity! I'm sure at some point I'll do a whole alternate route thing again, like with the noble ball way back, or how you could choose who to bring to the Demon King meeting.

Thanks for reading, thanks for liking/commenting/etc, thanks to my Patrons. I'll never stop writing something in my life. Maybe I should make a Twitter or something to make communication easier between stuff. I dunno. Now I'm just rambling. Enjoy the rest of the story!