Chương 500: Afterward

Welcome to the end of time well spent, or at least well entertained. I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who have read my story and reflect on a few things in closing. This story I have been trying to write was about an average guy, who isn't necessarily hero material or have the desire to be a hero. He doesn't always make the perfect choice or remember exactly what he should have.

Which is part of the reason, especially early on, he makes some questionable, silly or even stupid choices that people have been quick to point out. Plot armor aside, I tried to make it so he would have to think his way out of most situations, which he usually did. Not a perfect hero, but the one we were stuck with. On to other matters. First, the official ending is the first final chapter.

The other two are just alternates that I felt would be interesting to explore, but if you like one more than the official ending feel free to think of that one as your official ending to the story. Second, roads not taken. There are numerous storylines that I curtailed or abandoned. Some, because I decided they were not quite right for the story, others because I did not want to rinse and repeat the same sequences in different places. For instance, Elicia.

Originally, I was going to have her whisked off by Teft and Damion would have no idea, not even know she was pregnant. (Which after the mass of. 5 ratings I got for Teft doing similar with his parents I decided against it.) In that original outline for her, once Damion found her and his family his son was a year or so old (Teft did not tell him until he reached A Rank in that outline) and he had already fallen in love with someone else.

Since I wasn't trying to write a love triangle, I was somewhat glad I gave up that plotline. Another was D was going to go to the moons of Nerotath hunting a rogue guild that Headmaster Sorin hired and sent after him. This one I had a hard time giving up, but I felt I was overdoing the trope of those in power getting away with everything. There were others, most of which I abandoned, an entire volume worth in fact, because the arcs would have been repetitive.

I've struggled to avoid rinse and repeating things in this story. Lots of webnovels I have read go on for, well, a long time, and many just because every 50 or 100 chapters it's the same story with a new temporary bad guy that has to be overcome instead of genuinely moving the plot forward. I wanted to avoid that and I hope I have, at least for the most part, after all, there are only so many ways you can kill a bandit. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

I'm a big fan of cultivation stories and the hierarchy of magic I used and its progression can be seen in that. I wanted to give it that slowly growing more powerful feel in both spells and magic as a whole. I hope I accomplished that. I tried to also make sure that other characters grew, not just the MC. I see that in a lot of stories; side characters just come and go and get overshadowed by the MCs awesomeness within a dozen chapters.

Here we had characters that D met who came and went, but grew (usually in the background since I focused on him), but they were not static characters. My new story, if you haven't already taken a look at it, is slower on releases, (sorry, I want to have a life, (okay, I want to play video games)) but longer in chapter length. I haven't set a minimum length, as I feel I trapped myself in Reborn by doing that, but so far all of them have been over 2k words with some 3k+. I learned a lot from writing Reborn.

And you all have helped me see my weaknesses, which I hope I have been able to improve on. Runic Magic is a bit darker, but it is not a horror or grimdark by any means, just the MC is not the hero type. Eryx is not a true anti-hero either, he just doesn't care about anyone but himself. Maybe that will change in time, maybe he will go full Vader, you'll just have to wait and see.

It isn't a LitRPG/System novel, there are plenty of others of those around if you want, but there are strict rules on the magic system, cough, magic hierarchy I have created especially for it. Bits and pieces have been inspired by different universes and combined, I think, into a pretty good overall magic system that is in depth and fresh, yet still familiar to many. A final word, to all of you who enjoy reading and coming up with stories of your own. Tell them.

You don't have to publish, post on Royal Road or any other site if you don't want. But don't let the stories die in your imagination. Write them down. Refine them. Build up the world of your dreams or continue on a story your felt ended too soon or could have gone in a different direction. The world you create will be yours and it will show you things about yourself you may not realize, but if you don't explore them, if you don't write them down, eventually they will just fade away.

Since this is the end, I feel no shame in asking for anyone who has made it this far to rate or review the story. Thank you all for reading.