First and foremost,
Thank you for reading and I hope you liked it!
Now… where does everything go from here? I have no idea! But here’s what I can say with confidence:
* I will have two other works available here: ‘Hartmend’ and ‘Heroes Are Useless: I’ll Kill the Demon King Myself’ (HAU). Both are fun short stories. The first is complete and the other is a slow progressing WIP.
* HAU will also be available for free in my Ko-fi shop. Unfortunately, ‘Hartmend’ is too spicy. I may make a censored version as I really want my Ko-fi to be a complete library. But here will always have the best version!
For ‘Dead Legacy’ (DL)… I’ve been writing DL for a little over 2 years as of May 2024. While this version was regularly cleaned up several things simply work because I say so and I ignored defining the world. These things were background noise to me. However, even if these things never reach the spotlight in any edition they still do wonders for a story. While I have around 30,000 words with perhaps 20,000 of them being good ones for Part II my focus is on polishing Part I for a fuller edition.
The plan for content availability:
* I won’t be updating the beta edition here to a newer edition. I have to draw lines of what and where I want my work to be available for free somewhere.
* Don’t forget the gimmick chapters are available for free on my Ko-fi page. They were initially shady rebrandly links to gdoc PDFs in a page post. I fully intend to move them to the shop to reduce the sketchiness, but I keep not doing it… haha.
* I want up-to-date versions of ch 1-3 to be consistently available for free in my Ko-fi shop. Note that this is 1-4 of the beta and I’m still reworking a scene in 3.
* The extremely tiny extra scene ‘Candor’ is available in my Ko-fi shop to donors. It’s a 280 word flashback of the main cast’s grandfather and grandmother. It might not automatically unlock for one-time donors though so if it doesn’t please message me on Ko-fi to ask for a PDF download! Also check out the portraits in the gallery if you do donate!
* I will post a couple chapters of Part II here. Whenever the hell that is…? Check back in a year?
* IF I end up requiring a Part III, possibly all of Part II will be shared here. I don’t know if everything I want to happen will fit into 100k words. The problem if it doesn’t is I don’t have another scene that would serve as a functional end in a 3 part story. So if you didn’t like where Part I ended… well… let’s just say this is a very pressing matter if I can’t finish in another 100k words.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
What exactly will even be different in the next version? Well…
* The magic system has been almost completely overhauled. The foreground use wasn’t altered too significantly but the internal workings have been.
* The continent and its countries have more definition. I’m really bad with landmarks / geographic locations, but they’re on the docket too!
* Their home country’s sister cities have more definition. Some was early enough to be inserted into late chapters of the beta.
* Their grandfather’s store has actually been named. I don’t know how I overlooked this one to begin with. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
* An actual calendar. Time-keeping is incredibly hard for me so I’m still working on what year(s) it actually is but I’ll get there.
* Languages and writing systems were upgraded. A little made it into the beta, but I’ve made an entire substitution cipher to serve as another language which now appears here and there.
* Chapters are being rebalanced. Several may be combined or splintered. Some minor scenes and moments have been cut or expanded.
* Trimming Avery’s journals. I love them but I’m looking for as many opportunities as possible to move their contents into the main story exposition.
* Moving the introduction of the summoner. 25 is simply already packed. This may trigger a significant rewrite of 24, 25, and even 26.
* Heavy dialogue scenes are receiving much refinement. Several dragged too long, weren’t believable exchanges, or too shoehorned for the reader. Particularly any discussing magic.
* Speech patterns. I’m trying. I’m hoping to achieve more clarity on who is speaking and separating the personalities of the main three better. Including 10% more pun-ishment from Rowan!
* Naming and defining ‘NPCs’ more. I’m not very far along with this one at all.
* POV. Again I’m doing my best. I like my third-person partially omniscient but current lead skewed POV, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been consistent. I’ll likely need an actual editor for this one in the end though…
* The entire closing arc is up in the air. I just don’t know about it fitting into the world. As Avery said ‘It’s barbaric’. So let me know what you thought! I’ve already changed it once from an outright sacrifice and last minute added Kyne as a character. But was that enough to fit? Did I focus too much on Rowan’s shenanigans? Too derivative of FFVII? Did you fall in like with the twins in such a short amount of time? Was having the entire arc before this revolve around side-quests stupid!? It felt important to establish party dynamics and Rowan’s life for the last 6 years…
* Probably a lot of other things I don’t specifically remember.
To stay updated just follow me or this DL page. I’ll add more notes for any significant updates. I’m on Ko-fi and bsky (Bluesky) as kazutrashpanda. Both have a couple art posts for my stuff and I’m always down to talk DL.
Otherwise, for now… farewell from ‘Clan’ Chanoix