Hello!
Funatic here, author of the work you care currently reading, as well as The Gamer CHYOA Edition (where I write a branch), Who a King Must Do (Where I make Anduin conquer Azeroth by building the biggest harem of WoW babes), and Welldark, a story about a student at a interdimensional university.
If you wish to support me please her here (https://www.patreon.com/Funatic) or here (https://subscribestar.adult/funatic). If you already do, I HEREBY SLAP YOU WITH THE GAUNTLET OF THANKS!
Alright, shilling done, let’s talk about the story.
Let’s start where we left off. In the Season 1 Author’s Note, I laid out several things that I was unhappy about and most of them I can say have been alleviated over the course of this season.
The chapter length was obviously the easiest one to fix, since I was deliberate holding myself back previously. From there flowed, naturally, a deeper description of the whys and hows of the actions taken, which helped flesh out the characters I would say. Some of you may say that my characters are still rather flat, and perhaps you have a point, but I think we can all agree that they are better now than they were then.
Up next was to plan out all of the arcs in advance, which has also worked quite well. I moved some things around within the plans to make sure they manifested in a sensical manner, but I mostly stuck to the outline and that made for a much cleaner flow of events. I haven’t, during the entire time, felt like I was forcing the plot along. One could leverage that it was a bit contrived that the Leaf they ended up on just so happened to have a portal in the final dungeon, but that’s a level of contrived I can live with. It’s not unreasonable that such portals would exist within a Leaf, as far as the worldbuilding is concerned.
Speaking of the worldbuilding, that’s definitely the area where I am not quite satisfied yet. What I have is a lot more stable than it was in Season 1, but it hasn’t been fleshed out that much yet. The major problem for this has been because of the constant movement of the trio and low interaction with society. I hope to alleviate this next arc, by having the group interact with teachers and clobber together an alliance to take care of the Deathhound chasing them.
As for the contents of the season I have… fairly little to say. It was all very straightforward. They dealt with their trauma, Apexus became a proper humanoid, and then they left. I think I did an appropriate job with the weight of each decision.
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As for the future, you can fundamentally expect the number of dungeons they visit to diminish from here on out. Rather than many dungeons, I will go for fewer and more difficult ones, serving as a noticeable challenge between societal endeavours. This is because I want to mix things up and because I need to slow down that rate at which Apexus acquires more Growths.
A typical hurdle of “acquiring power” stories is that the continues growth of the main character eventually leads to them being horrendously overpowered compared to everyone else. While I am happy to give Apexus a leg-up over most opponents due to his exoticness, I don’t want him to be able to create Omega Acid +15 on his wolverine-claw knuckles, which he can launch at supersonic speed whenever he wishes.
His powers, while unusual, should roughly stay in balance with that of equally levelled colleagues. This is not only to keep the threat levels up but also because Apexus outclassing his comrades would make things fairly stale. When the best answer to every problem is to throw Apexus at it, it makes Aclysia, Reysha, and any potential future group member essentially just pretty looking weight.
So, his Growths have to be fewer and I need to be very careful what I can put in his path. Luckily, there are enough levers to limit what he can usefully and reliably acquire that it shouldn’t confine me too much in my creative enemy design.
What should make up for this, at least in short term, is Apexus acquisition of a Class next Season. I think a lot of you have already figured out what he will end up as, but I will leave that for the comments to discuss, rather than outright confirm anything at this juncture.
So that will be the focus of the next Season: Worldbuilding, Classes and making an Alliance. Several pieces are already in place, several more need to be moved, and of course I have to package all of this in a logical and followable narrative. We’ll see how I fare.
If you wish to give me your feedback in an easily readable and comparable manner, please head on over here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScUPbUrYEkNQGlxGSNb0s8h2DzRstSuwZdGmwY_c2UBH22V8w/viewform?usp=sf_link
If you could also leave a Review on the story, that’d be much appreciated. Because people are more easily motivated by negative emotions and this story definitely did ruffle some feather tastes, the Review section (especially on RoyaRoad) is negatively slanted. Now, I am not asking anyone to just give blatant five stars. Just put your thoughts in a Review, if you would be so kind, it would help with visibility of the story.
Also, as a bonus to all of this, here are three pieces of artwork for our main characters. I’ve had them for a while, but only now make them public here. If you wish to see future artworks ahead of time, do join the Discord (https://discord.gg/aac3W9XyRJ).
Aclysia
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/561603168081805322/808980373027160074/Aclysia_Done_Downscale.jpg]
Reysha in a torn variety of a future outfit
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/561603168081805322/829065931656265778/Reysha_Finished_Downscaled.jpg]
Apexus
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/561603168081805322/857337196200591360/Apexus_finished_Downscale.jpg]
I will be taking a break from publishing Drip-Fed to lay all out I need to. Because I had some delays in buffering further chapters, this will probably be about two months long. Until then, I wish all of you a good time and hope to see you back for Season 3 – Allegiances.
Let’s turn a new leaf, everbody!