Hello everyone that is still interested in this story. After a massive delay, I am back to working on this tale. I have done a slight rewrite and I will be posting that soon, along with new content. To catch everyone up on the rewrite, I have made changes based on both reader feedback as well as my own desire to fix some areas that I felt needed a rework. In the earlier chapters, I have not changed a lot except to hopefully show Joe as a better outdoorsman than previously. This is reflected in just a few new passages that show Joe using his survival knowledge. Also, I have cleaned up the rewards that Joe receives and made them more consistent. Although those may change again in the final rewrite before I publish this down the road.
The biggest change however, is that i have removed the romance between Joe and Iona completely. I had an idea originally based on games like Skyrim that allow you to marry NPCs with a quick quest and suddenly you've got a devoted spouse. I had thought that would be an interesting idea to pursue if it was the System forcing a relationship by meddling with people's emotions, but after hearing some feedback and rereading it, I decided that the entire idea was too forced and so I have gone through and erased any idea that they two could be romantically inclined. I think the story flows better and allows for me to refocus in Joe and Bixby as the main protagonists. Not to knock any of the other characters, but the rest really are supporing characters and I have far more leeway to take Joe and Bixby to different places without there being a "third" character involved.
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I truly appreciate all of the comments, reviews and criticisms so far. I look forward to seeing more as the story progresses. So, to that point, I will be adding the rewritten chapters as new ones with the chapter title noting that it is part of the rewrite.
Again, thank you all for sticking with me. Here we go again.
Argentraven