AFTERWORD

Before I go off spouting my own opinions, I’ll take a moment to answer all of your questions first. Eh, let’s go then.

Q: Are you planning on finishing The God of Lyn?

A: Honestly, I had plans on completely rewriting The God of Lyn before finishing it as it’s a rather… loose story, of the lack of a better word. However, as I kept delaying it, I probably won’t have enough time before the summer break for it, so I’ll try and finish it sometime soon as there isn’t much left.

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Q: Why did Ella (Thalia’s Master) betray humanity?

A: She was supposed to be the 8th Guardian before Lynne, which is also the reason why she betrayed humanity as she was suddenly replaced by Lynne. I rushed her storyline too much and is actually one of the points I regret, as I quite liked her character. Hopefully, during the rewrite, I’ll fix it up.

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Q: Do I intend to release the novel on Amazon?

A: I don’t have any plans in the near future, as the novel simply isn’t in the publishing state. Moreover, I don’t really know how Amazon publishing functions, but perhaps I’ll look into it once I finish patching the story up. If you’re simply interested in compiled chapters, someone was kind enough to put them together into 3 books, which I’ll link down below.

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Q: When did I decide to put Lynne and Y’se together?

A: The moment I introduced Y’se, as she was intended to be the main love interest. To elaborate a bit, I never had any plans of Thalia and Lynne ending up together, and I didn’t even want to pair them up initially. The first love interest was supposed to be Fen’er (and Thalia was the one who was supposed to die), but I grew to enjoy writing the dynamic between Lynne and Thalia which is what led to that turn of events. However, I still never intended for them to end up together.

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Q: So in the end, after all this, he got his cousin pregnant?

A: A much older cousin, actually. But, yup, in a nutshell.

Alright, now that the questions are answered, I suppose I should share some of the ‘behind the scenes’ moments that will hopefully explain some things. As you may have noticed, the very first Arc in the novel (from start until Lynne leaves the Kingdom) is pretty rushed, and the whole war thing kind of came out of nowhere. The reason is actually rather simple, but, before that, I should probably tell you that I initially intended for Skyfire Magus to actually be a parody of Harry Potter (mages, academy, mysteries etc.). But, uh, I kind of quickly got bored of writing that which is why there’s a monumental shift in tone early on as well as the overall storyline.

I simply wanted to rush through the initial parts so I can basically ‘kick’ Lynne off into the world and start writing the fantasy adventure, but I had already created a setting and introduced several characters, so I needed an excuse for Lynne to abandon them. Hence the whole ‘extermination’ thing.

This type of situation permeates the whole novel, actually, and it mainly stems from the lack of foresight – or rather, planning – on my part. As the entirety of Skyfire Magus was written on day-to-day basis (meaning that chapters were released as soon as I finished writing them), I never really had a clear-cut goal for where the story is supposed to go. While I did some basic ‘planning’ in my head, I’d often stray from that midway through the chapter because I thought of something ‘better’, which is also how the ‘Primordial God Luna’ chapter came to be. I initially intended for her to actually become relevant to the story, but after rereading the chapter, I felt just how out of place she was, which is why I practically abandoned the whole concept and turned the entire chapter into good ol’ filler.

Because of the lack of planning, I often had to pull shit out of nowhere to patch up the ‘foreshadowing’, which is why some plot threads feel disjointed, and why certain things feel random (it’s because they are). I tried to connect everything as much as possible toward the end, but I still didn’t manage to do it which is why there’s a whole heap of loose storylines in the story (such as the random teenagers I introduced during the ‘peaceful’ arc; I intended for them to become rather important characters, but simply abandoned them after a while).

You can also see this when it comes to Alchemy. When I first introduced it, I wanted it to become the integral part of Lynne’s character, but as I basically did 0 planning, nothing ever came of it, and I also simply abandoned it at random point. One of my main goals for when I decide to ‘rewrite’ the story is to patch up all these loose ends and fix up numerous plot holes that exist throughout the story, as well as to give more detail to some arcs (such as the introductory one) because I feel they’re lacking.

The whole ending was planned as such from around 140th chapter, and I never intended to actually kill Lynne despite throwing numerous ‘death flags’ all over the place leading up to the final battle (and even during it). However, I did intend to kill a lot of other characters (the monkey, both Dragons etc.), but once I looked back at the death count throughout the story, I held back a bit. One of the reviews actually mentioned the death count and how ludicrous it is, and when I look back… it really kind of is. While I do think that major characters dying is a decent way to both develop character and story, I kind of spiraled out of control by basically scything any named character that got any form of development. I also realized that I have tendency of killing off female characters (Ella, Anna, Fen’er etc.) much more than guys. Bury those harem hopes quickly…

Ah, I may as well write a bit about that ending. First and foremost, I’d like to apologize if the ending was slightly vague or ambiguous as that wasn’t really my intention. The ‘long story short’ version is basically that the world continuously goes through these ‘cycles’ where it’s destroyed and then begins anew, while the Source is also reborn each time while retaining ‘memories’ of the past cycles. The reason the whole ‘unbalance’ thing happened was because humans developed far too much in regards to Magic when compared to the previous cycles, which narrowed the maximum Mana in the world, which led to shortage of Primordial Gods, which led to latter invading humanity, which led to Source intervening and granting humans the ability to fight back (the Ninth Cycle spiel). As Mana of someone who dies goes back to the universe, it was basically just an excuse to scythe a whole heap of people in hopes that the whole thing will fix itself, but, well, humans are humans and they’re very good at breeding. This is the reason the ‘deal’ was made, where Primordial Gods won’t attack humanity anymore, while the latter won’t be able to ascend to Divine Realm.

Yup, if the ‘long story short’ version is that long, I complicated it a bit too much. However, I do hope I’ve explained it somewhat so it won’t seem as ambiguous as it did initially. I kind of went with the copout route when it came to the final battle, but I felt like I was dragging the whole thing out a bit too much, which is why I decided to go with the whole ‘the battle is inconclusive’ story.

While we’re at the ending, I may as well mention the whole Lynne-Thalia-Y’se thing. As I’ve already mentioned above in the answers section, Thalia wasn’t even supposed to date Lynne initially (Fen’er was), but things happened and, well, she did. However, I never intended for them to end up together, which is why Y’se was introduced (she was initially supposed to be he). While I know that I didn’t really develop their relationship as well as I could, I tried to go with a different route than Lynne-Thalia. Lynne and Thalia always had this bickering, flirty relationship where they bounced off of each other, while I tried to make Lynne and Y’se’s relationship into a much calmer one, which emphasizes the feeling of ‘comfort’ over excitement, but I have a feeling I underplayed it a bit too much in the end.

Ah, there’s really a lot of things to say, as the novel is rather long (well, maybe not when compared to some other web novels, but it’s still almost 500,000 characters I believe, which is a ton) even I’ve forgotten quite a few things from the earlier chapters and arcs.

Hmm… I guess I could also mention a few things I did well I believe. I’m rather happy over how I handled Lynne’s character. It’s really nothing new as nearly all initially shameless, immature characters go through the journey to maturity, but I think I did it pretty gradually. Even though he does sometimes fall into the trap of pretentious monologues, I’m overall pretty happy with how I’ve written him. Also, I’m rather happy with how I’ve written the battle scenes. I generally tried to make them as detailed as possible to make it easier to discern what’s happening, while also leaving enough room for your guys’ imagination to run wild, especially so throughout the second part of the novel. I also tried to make the battles compact because I think there’s nothing more boring than a battle that goes on for several chapters. Battles are also one of the parts that I enjoyed writing the most, alongside those few chapters where I really did my best to convey whatever was the message of the chapter, as well as the purely character-dynamic chapters which mostly occurred after the major arc. I really like writing dynamic relationships between people and enjoy writing the scenes where they interact.

I guess that’s it, really. While there’s probably a whole lot more I could have written, nothing else comes to mind at the moment, and I think I’ve said enough, really. Writing Skyfire Magus was a great experience and I’ve learned a lot, so hopefully I won’t be making the same mistakes in my future projects. I think I’ve grown quite a bit as a writer ever since I started publishing my work on web (starting with The God of Lyn), and I’ll strive to continuously improve in the future as well, to create stories of higher quality that are fun to read.

While I have the space, I may as well write for a moment about my upcoming project: Legend of the Empyrean Blacksmith. You can find the link to the novel’s page down below or you can visit my profile and find it from there. Much like Skyfire Magus, LotEB is an action and adventure oriented fantasy with similar themes of growth and change. It will be mostly written in the light-adventure style with occasional serious moments, as well as overarching plot that will start in early chapters and will (hopefully) bind the side-stories together by the end.

As you may have guessed it from the title, crafting will be integral part of the story, and as it’s LitRPG, you’ll be seeing some numbers (but I have no plans to turn it into min-maxing number grindfest). Crafting will remain as the core element of the story throughout as it will be integral part of MC’s fighting style. Unlike with Skyfire Magus, it won’t be written on day-to-day basis (I’ve already stacked a decent number of chapters, and since it’s a three-times-a-week release, I’ll give me room to breathe and fix things up quickly), which will hopefully let me created a more tightly-knit story that won’t have as many loose elements as with SM. Anyway, not to take up too much space, it will have action, adventure, fantasy, Dragons, cultivators, levels, items, romance, and all that good stuff. If it sounds like something you’d enjoy, I invite you to check it out and leave a comment over what you think about it.

That’s… that’s really it guys. I’ll take a moment to thank everyone for their support – whether you’ve been with me since the early days or if you’ve joined sometime along the way – and your comments, both positive and negative. The first brightened my days, while the second inspired me to strive and become a better writer. There’s never a bad critique, just a bad recipient. So, again, thanks a ton, and hopefully I’ll be seeing you guys around in the comments of Legend of the Empyrean Blacksmith, which you’ll hopefully enjoy as well.

Thanks a lot, and see you guys around J

You can find the compiled chapters here (.epub format): https://armaell-library.net/novel/skyfire-magus-book-1 (courtesy of swordman009, thanks a lot man).

You can check out my new project here: https://royalroadl.com/fiction/16872/legend-of-the-empyrean-blacksmith

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P.S. - I'll be uploading a video as well in the next few days and I'll post a link here if you're interested.