《Memories (Completed)》Chapter - 5
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Inspector Michael's POV
I wish the phones would stop ringing already.
I was having a bad day. Guess saying a bad week would be more accurate.
It’s been almost 15 years since I had joined the police force. It had been a somewhat quiet life, mainly since Mysore was a peaceful city with no significant crimes.
But everything has gone for a toss over the last couple of days.
The Murder at Lovers Peak, that how the media was calling it. And it was getting crazier by the day.
The pressure from the top was increasing. People were agitated. Murder was not a usual occurrence in Mysore, and seniors wanted this sorted out as soon as possible.
The only problem was that the police had no clue whatsoever so far, not even a single suspect yet.
For obvious reasons, we couldn’t say that to the press or the senior officials. The official statement was that the police were following several clues and were in the process of narrowing down the suspect list.
I couldn’t help but suppress a chuckle at that, as it is difficult to narrow down a list when there is no one on the list.
I decide to go through the entire case from the beginning in my mind.
It all started with the call on Monday morning. Two people were discovered unconscious on the Lovers peak. It was not sure whether they were alive at that time. The person who found them had called the Police and Ambulance immediately.
There were signs that at least one of them had a bit of life left in him.
I called the rest of the team to come to the site and left for the scene.
Lovers peak. A very fancy name. The peak was at the edge of a small hill, and there was a steep valley beyond that.
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Around 50 years ago, a couple had committed suicide from the peak, jumping off the cliff to their deaths. Their families were not in support of their relationship. Thus they decided to end their life together as they couldn’t live together.
Their bodies were never found. As the valley was too steep, despite searching for days, they were never found.
Only the note left by the couple at the top of the mountain was found.
As in memory of the couple, people started calling the peak the lover's peak. It had another original name, but no one remembered it anymore.
A small memorial was built at the edge of the peak. Couples came there to remember the decision of the two lovers who had decided to end their life together.
The place had another fancy name among the locals. “Suicide peak” considering how the couple had ended their lives there. But it was not as popular as lovers peak, and that’s how most people called it now anyways.
There are even a group of people who believe that the couple never jumped off the cliff. They believe the couple had just left the note at the top of the peak and left the city. By leaving the letter, their families would assume they were dead and would never search for them.
To date, nobody knew what truly happened.
Anyways that was in the past. Right now, the top of the peak had been surrounded by a rail to prevent any accidents. But the recent renovations at the site had raised the ground level, and the railing was no longer high enough. There has been a lot of feedback from parents to increase the railing heights as lots of teenage kids spend time there.
To prevent any accidents, the mayor had announced that the site to be off-limits after 8 pm. But there have always been incidents of people sneaking in late at night.
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When the call first came about the accident, my first thought was that someone had fallen off the cliff. But after the detailed talk, this seemed much different from my expectations. Seemed like I had a murder case on my hands.
Early in their career, every police officer fancies himself solving a murder case. This is driven by watching way too many movies and mystery novels out there. But once you get mature enough, you realize that it is not worth the pain and headache. I was lucky enough not to have any such case on my hand so far in my career. Seems like my luck has finally run out.
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2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. 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