Trapped in Another World With No Magic

Hey there Dear Readers! Silas Kriegsende here! I wasn’t quite sure when and how to do something like this, and since there’s no ‘perfect time’ for anything, I figured I was at a good point with the end of Chapter 284.

For starters, let me just say, this is not an ending or anything. I simply wanted to try to give us all a moment to breathe, consider how far the story has come, and tease a bit of where the story will go next. Of course, this is something I discovered authors do sometimes, and it makes sense. A volume would have an afterword, which I have been writing for the mini-volumes when I post them. It mostly just ends up being the ramblings that tumble out of my brain about as efficiently as the rest of my writing, but perhaps you wish to see the insanity that becomes the story you’ve been following for 284 chapters or more (Depending on whether or not you’ve been reading the bonus chapters and NSFW chapters, which I know some people skip).

So, where to begin?

Obviously, Daniel’s journey mainly started as a man who was down on himself and down in spirits in general, drifting through life. He starts to have embers of hope when he becomes friends with Wenlianna, but only after starting his adventure does he start to really find the drive to claw his way out of the mud of his own reservations and insecurities. From there, he meets Hekate and together, they capture the Citadel, which becomes the foundation of their combined ‘cheat powers’, allowing Daniel to accelerate into challenging the things threatening the friends he has made, and romantic partners he has entangled himself with.

Each monster that Daniel encounters acts as a sort of goal post being moved. Though he always has the nukes as an option following the Devourer, he knows it’s not practical to simply use them every time a challenge faces him.

We see with Kernuules that Daniel is willing to sacrifice his stockpile of ‘cheat power’ mana within the Citadel if it means defeating an otherwise-unkillable monster. This reinforces Daniel’s priority on developing weapons, even if his goal was sincerely not to change the military landscape of Zenkon himself. But, he is more afraid of the monsters that may attempt to attack or otherwise stand in his way and in the way of the future he wishes to push for on behalf of his growing and abnormal family.

As for the others, the Dragon Empresses are, of course, a driving force for the harem side of things. They act as a “we’re allowing you, if you want. If you don’t want, that’s fine. Go away.” type of dynamic with the situation, which is why many of the other ladies are a little hesitant, but also accept the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing their feelings and joining the large, sometimes-goofy family of the Fievegal.

As for the Fievegal, it is clear that its small size, like a small company, is the only way it can continue to function with such a neglectful Emperor and ‘Council’ of Empresses. Daniel routinely reminds everyone that Hekate is supposed to be the true final say, but he doesn’t hesitate to accept the responsibility when she and the others either defer to him intentionally, or if Daniel makes a choice that they have no objections to.

Of course, as the threats escalate, from Lugrae the Feral Feldrok and the Devourer, to the dragons and Kernuules, so too does the need to explain how and why the Fievegal is able to withstand them with such small numbers. Obviously, I leave a low-level implication that more and more tribes from all over the Demon Wildlands are slowly being incorporated into the Fievegal, with some wildcards like the Selkethia and Kobolds getting a jumpstart in spite of their remoteness simply because of the events that led them there.

I’ve said every now and again in comments that my primary goal with writing this story is to have fun. Maybe that means some of my characters have more plot armor than is enjoyable, or certain things play out in unbelievable ways. But, I didn’t set out to write Game of Thrones or anything like that, and I don’t yet have the talent to write something on par with Lord of the Rings, which would be naive of me to even dream of in the future. But, I have fun writing this story, and if you guys all have fun reading it, then I’m a very happy man.

So, what’s next?

Well, I kind of teased it above, but with the mana fire extinguished, the story will transition into a bit of a ‘drama’ for a little while. Daniel is going to do his best to actually act like an Emperor for a bit, so that means a lot of the chapters for at least a little while are going to be focused in and around the Citadel, banquets, trade negotiations, Imperial audiences, and various other things. There will be planning and staging for the Imperial Wedding to unite the Fievegal and the GZE, and finally give the other Empresses what they want in a formal capacity.

That said, I know that this story has been primarily an action adventure story with some modern and sci-fi-esque weapons sneaking in more and more, so I won’t abandon that, of course. I will try to aim for some chapters that include design and construction with Wenlianna, some merchant shenanigans with Treia and Veiranoei, and helping the Selkethians (the scorpions) and the kobolds get their footing in the Fievegal’s main territory as they expand westward to reclaim the land evacuated or destroyed by the Devourer.

But, as my attentive viewers may have noticed, nothing has been actually done with Shiuluka and her father, let alone the Abyssal Feldrok, who is now known as the Fellmother, in addition to her earlier names ‘the Lurker’ or the ‘Great One’. Unless something terrible happens, and I’m knocking on all kinds of wood right now, but this story will not end until the Fellmother is defeated.

And, if all goes according to plan, I have some story ideas in mind for long after that as well.

As far as my writing goals go, Hekate and Daniel are the primary focus, even if other characters get a lot of screen time or attention. Hekate is the ‘secondary main character’ in that, if I were to kill Daniel off, she would take up the mantle of continuing the story as the primary protagonist. This is not a spoiler, but just the ‘feel’ I want to have for Hekate, specifically. She is the cub to Daniel’s lone wolf, though she very much has romantic goals in mind for herself. When she is old enough, she could pick up where Daniel leaves off in his old age, or weariness, or whatever else may happen.

But, all of this is why I specifically wrote Daniel as the ‘weakest’ character in the story; he knows that, in the end, his allies being made stronger than their own counterparts is the best way for him to guarantee survival. He makes weapons that even the dragons can use. He doesn’t hesitate to share firearms and bombs with his companions, knowing that leaks will inevitably occur, and it removes Daniel’s ‘unique power’. But, this was always something that annoyed me in the Arifureta series; Hajime could pretty literally turn some dirt and rocks into whatever he wanted through his transmute power, but he only ever made enough firearms and trench coats for himself. Sure, the trench coats wouldn’t look great on the waifus, but last time I checked, most militaries of the world don’t use hammers as a primary issue weapon. That’s because guns are really effective.

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Hajime is the easiest example, but it’s extremely common in most of these types of stories, such that it was ‘odd’ when “The Executioner and Her Way of Life” shows a world where EVERYTHING had rapidly advanced thanks to the otherworlders.

Maybe it’s easy to aura-farm the MC if he’s the only one with the insta-kill modern and sci-fi weapons, but it just seems short-sighted to me. But, that’s why I wrote my MC sharing his developments because it wouldn’t do him much good to have the most powerful gun if no one could reach him in time with their hammer, sword, or fire breath when he runs out of bullets. If I’ve done well, Daniel still has moments where he gets to be a bit awesome, but he is never NOT the guy with no magic (with the exception of when he was slowly gaining it, of course).

As for why I’m going to aim for some more ‘drama’-like chapters for the foreseeable future, it’s because I like them, and it’s also a grounded route for the story to go in a sort of ‘refractory period’. It’s not that the story is in ‘intermission’, per se, but that the world is larger than world-ending threats every other week. Shiuluka is a problem that needs to be dealt with, but she is dangerous precisely because of how unknown she is. The same with the Fellmother. They know of her existence, but they also know she exists somewhere outside of the realm of reality as they know it. They can’t simply go to where she is and kill or capture her. They have to figure out a way to prevent her return to Zenkon, kill her while she is connected through her vassal connections, or wait until she does return and hope they have weapons that can kill her.

Now, I mentioned that I have goals after the Fellmother, and I have no illusions. Even if I had the talent to capture the scope, she is my Avengers “Thanos” or my Mass Effect “Reapers”. I have no illusions about the fact that, once she fights, and however she is dealt with, the other side of that finale is the biggest challenge that any writer can face. How DO you follow up an enemy that is a near-literal god in their own right?

Well, I will say definitively right now that Daniel will NOT be a typical “The gods are evil, so I’ll kill them next so I can go back and forth between Earth and Zenkon and stuff.” Obviously, again, this is essentially a major through-line of other light novel series and animes, where the god(s) are cartoonishly evil children with the attention spans of squirrels and utter maliciousness and ‘boredom’. There are stories that I like that do this. But, generally, it is extremely… diminishing to treat the god or gods like bored little children throwing eggs at a vase or a painting to entertain themselves. They’re gods. They’re supposed to be timeless. If you’re a believer of any of the deities of Earth, then the presence of that deity is essentially never truly experienced in a direct sense. At best, it’s often an unprovable certainty that divine intervention occurred; a construct. It’s not something that can be measured, tested, and ultimately conquered.

Yes, this may sound hypocritical of me when Chaos, particularly, has made lots of ‘childish’ appearances. But, even if I wanted to have any characters challenge her, she could and would simply erase them. It’d be similar to the ‘instant death’ joke in Rick and Morty. “Wait, where did you send them?”

“What do you mean ‘send them’?”

“Where are they? What did you do with them?”

“I don’t understand. They no longer exist.”

“Bring them back!”

“I could, but I’m not going to. If you don’t want to meet the same fate, I suggest you go back to where you came from.”

*Tries to fight*.

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I don’t know how I would actually end that scene to emphasize that the character just literally ends right then and there, but that’s what it would be. Literally an abrupt ending.

The reason I present the ‘World Manager’ gods and goddesses is for fun, of course. I like the themes of spirits and polytheistic ideas (though, I myself am not all that spiritual in any capacity). Similarly, Chaos and Order are for the same reason. I thought it would be fun to give an “intelligent design” kind of feel to the universe, ‘personifying’ creation and destruction based on the idea of entropy; the existence of Chaos that defines everything from wavelengths and temperatures to the vary variations of the soul, as well as the unchanging state of nothingness; the Order of absolute stillness. As the beginning and end of all things, one could look at the interconnections of everything as the neurons of their minds, and thus, ‘existence’ is the ‘dream within the dream’, or the imagination, or ‘simulation’. Do I subscribe to these theories? Not explicitly, but the feel of Chaos and Order presenting themselves only because it is a function of coordinating things, both in direct and indirect degrees of intervention. But, even if you could meet them and attack, you would be attacking their own dream self within the dream that ceases to exist the moment they stop dreaming it, if that makes sense. The ‘Chaos’ and ‘Order’ we see are mere characters; self inserts of the two Primordial gods that make all of existence everywhere possible.

Anyways, there I go rambling again hahaha. The point of that was, Chaos and Order will never be Daniel’s opponents, but that doesn’t mean I have no plans for a post-Fellmother story. Some of it will further explain the mana fire, some of it will be adventures for the sake of adventures, and some of it will be because Daniel inadvertently shakes the biome of Zenkon, and the hornets that come out to attack will need to be dealt with. Some of them might be literal hornets. Heh heh heh!

So, as always, I want to sincerely thank you, my dear readers, for continuing on this journey with Daniel, Hekate, and all of their friends and new family. Every day that I say it, I feel more and more inspired to make it true, so let’s reach 1,000 chapters and keep going! We’re over a quarter of the way there, even without counting the bonus and NSFW chapters!

Now then, since I rambled quite a bit and probably spiraled down a rabbit hole or two, I’ll leave you all off here. Would you like to see more of these midwords where I talk about what is or was going on when I made some of my decisions? Is there more you’d like to see in one of these things? And, is there anything you’d like me to focus on? I know spreading out more attention to the ladies that get overshadowed by Hekate and the Dragons still needs more attention, so I’ll be working on that, particularly with arcs that I have in mind for the Honeydip family (Gwen’s family), Veiranoei and Treia, as I mentioned, I have some tentative ideas for Kera’tai and Vaergraes, and of course, Aoloan deserves some attention as well. Also, we need to figure out who Aramellianna’s paramour is, and I have been tapdancing around the… uh… ‘oyakodon’ joke I’ve subtly teased here and there, so even now, I haven’t committed hahaha. One side of me says “Do it, it’s slightly edgy, but not nearly as much as twins producing all three royal heirs sparking a war”, and the other side says, “Now hang on, how edgy and crass do I really want to get?”

So, we’ll see. As always, part of it revolves around the events of the story itself, which I evolve as I go, so due to the chaos that started, this conversation obviously ‘naturally’ fell onto the backburner, and I’ll eventually choose whatever feels the most natural to make it happen.

Anyways, I was supposed to close two paragraphs ago, and here I am rambling again! Hahaha thank you all so much for reading, and I hope, as always, that you’ll continue to enjoy!

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