Perhaps some of you had long seen the writing on the wall.

In all honestly, I should’ve too, yet I have lived in denial. Too indecisive to do what was inevitable over a month ago. Ignoring any questions because for some reason avoidance is my default answer to any uncomfortable truth I don’t want to confront. But as I sit here, on the train headed towards the next stage of my life, literally, I should make it official. I hereby declare that I drop the Crown of the Martyr and will try to explain why (besides my rampant procrastination). I will also talk about what comes next at the end.

There are many reasons why I have come to make this decision. As you have probably noticed, the updates in the past months had been haphazard and far apart at best, though that is perhaps only the result. Had Crown not retained such relatively high follower numbers, I would’ve made this decision a lot sooner. But my natural disposition for crippling indecisiveness as well as retained support stalled my decision which I just kept putting off. Day after day, week after week. Soon enough, it had become months of sparse chapters. Months of having the time yet not the willpower to write. I am sorry to all the people my decision might have disappointed but I have come to be certain that either way, I will not be able to finish Crown, so I might as well not string you on any longer.

I have previously said that there were many reasons. The largest of them has to be the main character himself. I just stacked the odds too far in Irwyn’s favour; no mystery he wouldn’t already comprehend, no challenge he hadn’t expected and prevented. It had reached a point where I only had 3 options: Let things be as they are and let the story devolve into a boring monotone of Irwyn’s omnipotence; completely break Irwyn’s character to get him into more interesting situations in which he never would’ve found himself as he was set up; or repeatedly pull insane levels of deus ex machina, somehow creating unexpected dangers to someone with millennia of extensive survival experience. That doesn’t necessarily mean the story was no planned (In fact, you can go back to the first chapter and read the first letter of every paragraph – a message I had left there intended to reveal it in the very lasts chapter); rather, it was the setting itself that had been inherently flawed. And by the time I realized, it had been far too late to fix things. I had already set on a path where I only had those three options. If I were to do something like Crown again, I would probably stack every odd and even against Irwyn to make things more interesting. I also think that I haven’t properly handled the Blackburg family setting; there was much more I had originally wanted to introduce there. But alas, I have completely failed in that department. Besides Avys, I did not properly develop anyone. And please, let’s not talk about the time Irwyn got his sister killed. The idea of using a scapegoat to not show weakness might not have been wrong, but I was once again humbled by my inability to execute and the over-edge that had apparently driven my soul at the time. Live and learn I guess; fail faster. There were also other mistakes and missteps, too many to count in fact. From randomly shoving characters down your throat and expecting them to be remembered to Brite’s entire character concept. I have learned a lot, especially about introducing characters and developing them but I am a selective perfectionist: I either completely ignore flaws I cannot fix or agonize over them constantly. Or I might just be a hypocrite, who knows really. When remembering those early chapters I always felt like the social anxiety demon was whispering into my ear about that embarrassing moment from when I was 12.

Well, enough self-loathing. I had previously mentioned a train taking me forward in life. I am actually riding a wagon, headed for my country’s capital where I will be starting university life soon. As a highly introverted person who rarely meets new people, I am a bit jittery with both anticipation and anxiety. I dug out my old laptop buried deep in the abyss of beneath-my-bed on which I am writing right now. Since I will finally be separated from my desktop, I hope to start making something out of my life. Get a part-time job, start writing again, maybe pick up programming, etc. I will actually be taking my Cambridge CAE exam this weekend. I don’t want to give up writing as it is something that had taught me much and brought me great satisfaction as I was finally able to turn my swirling ideas into text and gradually refine that ability. I honestly have settings for half a dozen novels floating in my head, I just need the bloody will to get down to writing them. For now, I hope to return to writing God complex. Despite my constant procrastination, I at least managed to channel the power into watching videos that would technically count as research for GC. I hope that I can overcome my garbage personality and become a more hardworking person as I transition into university life.

Anyway, I have probably rented for long enough. I think I have said all that needed to be said. I was originally going to write out how the rest of the story would turn out but soon enough realized that most of it would make little sense without a 3k word info dump about the world (I am still fascinated by how much thought I put into the world-building while also completely overlooking some fundamental parts of it). I will just write down the plot twists I guess: The academy headmaster is basically Irwyn’s nephew (Elizabeth’s armor was made for his mother by Ignis Umbra as a lover’s gift); that one guy who called time travel in Intermission Gedon and described exactly what kind of time travel happened: props to you if you are still reading, you were spot on; Irwyn would later on break his oath to never create in order to save Elizabeth since I needed something cataclysmic to move the romance subplot along; Desir, Alice, and Minet end up in a threeway relationship; significantly later on, Minet would die, causing Desir to turn to necromancy, bringing Alice alongside him to oppose Irwyn; speaking of Desir, I never really revealed what he was: My idea was something alongside a lab rat in a project of some archdemon, merging various bloodlines until Desir came to posses significant affinity in all Major elements. I planned to never directly reveal that, just gradually hint at it (Desir being uncharacteristically irate when dealing with various researchers, strangely kind when they help some poor victim of human experimentation, etc.); in desperate search of ways to revive Minet, Desir frees the primordial king of necromancy (the skull Irwyn checked on in the Abyssal Ridge); afterward, that primordial king sneaks into the Spire, sacrificing the immortal soul of Ignis Umbra in a ritual to revive the Traitorous aspect through the Crown (which is his artifact in case I didn’t make that obvious). Seeing their arch enemy revive, the other primordial kings cut the realm Spire is in off from the rest of reality, well aware that it would be a temporary measure; since there is time travel, there has to be a time traveler. That would be the mage with dreadlocks who killed some guy running away from assassins. Throughout the story, he would be trying to subtly manipulate Irwyn into becoming more powerful. After the revival of the Aspect, the time-traveler opens up some of the seemingly un-unlockable storage units within Logos, in number 2 is the Heart of Ignis, something powerful enough to let Irwyn breakthrough into 8th tier and become the equivalent of an aspect. Final confrontation ensues, the traitorous aspect claims to not be a traitor, claiming that only he remained loyal and granted Ignis’ final wish for death. Irwyn doesn’t believe him and manages to reseal him into the Crown. In the meantime, Elizabeth fights Desir and Alice; just as she is about to finish both of them, Desir uses one of the jewels from the Crown to fuse his, Alice’s, and Minet’s souls in some sort of necromantic unity, surprising Elizabeth enough to escape to who knows where. Then, as everything seems to be over, Irwyn suddenly finds himself beside the time-traveler, talking to Azure eyes: The mysterious character that I think just kind of popped up a 2 or 3 times (Intermission Gedon screaming 'I found you', possessing Ignis Umbra in Irwyn’s dream, short appearance when time-traveler was introduced). Azure eyes would actually play an increasingly major role as the story progressed. He would appear in unexpected and impossible places, manipulating things that sometimes benefited yet other times impaired Irwyn. In this final chapter, he reveals to be from without the universe they live in, saying he had once upon a time created ‘the great beyond’ as an eternal prison for Ignis. Time-traveler confirms that Ignis had feared the being in front of them. Azure eyes eventually reveals that he is pursuing something he calls ‘The Stare’, a power capable of changing the past, speaking of his minor accomplishments in the same field. As the conversation goes on, he progressively starts getting increasingly meta, saying for example that he can sense the difference between ‘entering the room’ and ‘walking inside the room’. Finally breaking the fourth wall as he speaks directly to the reader “Why are you surprised I can feel you? You are the reason I am here in the first place. If you wish to witness my reach, read the first letter of every paragraph. That is the power I seek to fully usurp”, The letters spelling ‘Return to where this all began'. Then, Irwyn is returned to reality, reunited with Elizabeth but aware that their universe is slowly leaking it’s mana into the ‘great beyond’ and will eventually succumb to this inevitable loss.

I guess I ended up writing out most of the story anyway. Doesn’t feel right to leave out so much but it cannot be helped I guess. If you have any questions, I will try to answer them in the comments. That is the least I can do now.

I hope to see you again, perhaps on a different story. I actually have a real litRPG story in my mind, Azarinth Healer-ish setting with a system that is designed to allow those sweet sweet upgrades with unique conditions and level-up without becoming too convoluted and unbalanced. The gist is that a nuclear physicist gets transported into a world where knowledge is literally power (Still deciding between steampunk/reinessance style setting). I want to try and finish God Complex first, though if you are interested you can just leave a follow here and I will post an announcement when I eventually get down to it.

Anyway, good day to everyone and goodbye to those who leave.