Once upon a time, there was a person who liked creating stories.
Rather than writing though, she would construct the worlds, characters and the plot all in her head.
However, being too lazy to start writing, the ideas and concepts kept piling up, so she decided to note them down and number them.
Occasionally, she would write a chapter or two of one of the stories, but would quickly get bored or start writing another one.
But even if she did write a few chapters, nobody except one or two of his close friends would ever get to read them.
One day, she got inspired from several sources and mashed them together, creating yet another nameless project.
With the serial number of #17, it was simply called 'determination' at the time.
It would have a young girl, who gained immense power through hard work, as a protagonist. ~ Inspired by 'CounterStop', a Japanese webnovel.
It would have expansive dungeons with massive monsters, pitting the main character against them. ~ Inspired by various sources, such as 'Arifureta' manga/novel.
And last but not least, it would have the main character go back in time whenever she would die. ~ Inspired by the 'Re: zero' manga/anime as well as the 'All you need is kill' manga.
The first iteration of this story was an image of a little girl with a puny knife jumping on arms of a massive golem, who would try to crush her.
It was supposed to depict an 'against all odds' kind of scenario.
Around that point, the author realized that if she was stuck in a time loop for long enough, she would naturally learn combat skills and also the world's magic.
So, the second iteration was the image of a girl blowing up a gigantic slime, that covered the entire cave, with some magic spell.
The concept was solid and the enthusiasm was there.
The author finally started writing.
Without any complex planning, she simply wrote what she wanted.
She did not know what the next chapter, paragraph or even a sentence would be about.
She just kept writing.
And it was fun.
Once she wrote the prologue and a chapter containing the 'slime blow up' scene, she made a decision.
This would be the first work she would share with the world under its official name 'Endless cage'.
It was by no means a simple decision, but one she decided to make nonetheless.
The 'upload' button was pressed and she was overcome with all sorts of feelings.
Feelings like anxiety and anticipation of all the readers' reactions.
But excitement... was by far the most prevalent one.
She went straight back to writing more chapters.
She pushed back the 'slime blow up' scene and inserted what was initially omitted between the two.
Of course, she didn't stop there and continued making more and more chapters.
The very early first review by 'Ianaiaponenko' boosted his spirits to even higher levels.
She expected her work to get some attention, there was no doubt it was going to happen.
What she didn't expect, though... was that her story would get into the site's top #100 within a few months and stay there for a good half a year or so.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
And that her story would be the first search result if one were to type 'Endless cage' into google.
What a strange achievement, huh?
...
But all good things must come to an end...
Over time, her enthusiasm for the work gradually declined.
It was around the chapter 42, that she considered dropping it.
But when she thought about all of the readers his work had attracted, she decided to press on.
In order to renew her enthusiasm, she thought of all sorts of plot twists, additions and side stories to add to the work.
One of these included a crossover from his other works.
...
But all of these additions merely postponed the inevitable.
Although she kept writing, her enthusiasm dropped with every chapter.
Eventually, she felt like writing a new chapter was a chore that she had to do.
She would distract himself with writing other works, but she would still 'have to' write endless cage afterwards.
The time between each chapter release grew.
She still liked the concept, but felt like the whole story needed a rehaul.
Since she learned a lot since first starting this whole project, she felt like he could make it better if he started over.
The idea of rewriting it came to his head.
Her decision?
Finish writing the original and then work on the rewrite sometime in the future.
...
The story was nearing its end, as was the author's will to finish it.
She thought about what else there is left in the story and estimated how many chapters it would take to write.
And so, with the finish line within arms reach, her enthusiasm returned and she wrote two chapters in a row, where she also announced how many chapters were left.
She thought, 'Why not? A few manga like Fairy tail did the 'chapters left', so what could possibly go wrong?'
Naturally, everything went wrong.
Other than almost nobody understanding the last chapter, there were also complaints about the 'chapters left:' part.
The number of followers dropped by ~20 and her enthusiasm was gone once again.
And this time, completely gone.
Even after three weeks, she only managed to write a total of 6 chapters for 2 different stories.
But whenever she would sit down to write chapter 69 for endless cage, the words and sentences just wouldn't form.
Maybe I need a little more time away from it...
Or perhaps I just need to clench my teeth and go through it.
Such were her thoughts.
But she soon came to a realization.
Those kinds of 'tactics' shouldn't have to be used for something she liked to do.
Wasn't writing supposed to be fun?
Where did all of that go?
I should just drop it...
So what if fans will hate me for dropping it near the end?
And thus, she came to a decision.
Even though there were still a select few, who loved Endless cage... for the sake of her own sanity, she would drop it.
The original endless cage is done and the rewrite will happen some day in the future.