When I opened my eyes, the sun was shining brightly through a thin layer of clouds as a faint wind blew around and rustled the flowers I was lying in.
The wind brought a slight chill as I realized that I was soaked and muddy from the rain, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
I was confused, of course, I have no idea what happened during my tribulation, but I felt at peace with everything. I didn’t mind the flowers tickling my neck, the mud sticking to my back, or the rain soaking my hair.
I smiled widely at the sky as I took everything in. The world after the storm was calm and pretty. It almost made me sad to leave, but I couldn’t just stay here forever.
So, reluctantly. I got up and stretched my arms above my head. My back made a satisfying popping sound as a sigh escaped me.
Yep, I felt great. Just like last time. Full of energy and refreshed only this time, I wasn’t asleep for that long. Just based on how high the sun was in the sky, I’d say I was asleep for maybe an hour at most.
Realistically, maybe like thirty minutes if that. Yet, it felt like I had just gotten a full night’s sleep and a deep tissue massage all at once.
Oh, a massage sounds so nice. I wonder if they have any massage parlors here? If they do, then I’m going to hit them up after I save up some money.
I looked around after I had gotten up and was surprised at how nice everything looked. The field of flowers I was in not only survived the tribulation, but they looked like they had gotten healthier.
I kneeled back down and looked at the ones that I was close to, only to widen my eyes in shock.
They were herbs now! Like they had a high amount of Qi and everything. I gently brushed my finger against one and watched as the Qi around the plant danced and swirled for a bit before settling back down.
They were young, obviously, so they didn’t have much, but they were definitely herbs. I thought about picking some, but then I felt strangely sad when I was just about to pluck one of them.
It was a strange feeling, but it just felt wrong to do. Like kicking a puppy or not helping someone off the ground. It just went against something in my gut.
I stoked the flower’s petals for a moment before drawing my hand back. Yeah, I couldn’t pick these. They accompanied me through my tribulation. It would be wrong to kill them.
I felt bad and weirdly worried about just leaving them in the field, but I didn’t have the proper tools to uproot them and put them in a pot to take back with me. Namely, I didn’t have a pot or something to substitute.
Oh, I know! I’ll go ask the nearby village if they have one that I can use. Then, I’ll come back and transplant a few to take with me. Kinda like a keepsake.
I stood up again and glanced up at the sky to get my bearings. The sun served as a rough guide for me to track down the road that I had been traveling for the past few days.
I made sure to step around any flowers now that they had Qi and went on my way. I must have been moving faster as I got back to the road pretty quickly.
Soon, after a nice half an hour walk, enjoying the freshly rained scenery, I arrived at fields of freshly tilled soil.
Well, I think they were tilled. I couldn’t tell because of how wet everything was, but they were obviously farm fields. Meaning I was close to the town.
Sure enough, I soon saw a crude wall built of stone surrounding the village after a few more minutes. There was a guard with a spear standing in front of the opening with an open wooden gate behind him.
The guard was a young man about my age. He had freckles across his cheeks and sun-fried hair. His eyes locked with mine, and I saw confusion flash across them as he raised his hand.
“Hail, stranger, what business do you have with Agris?” He said, his tone questioning.
“Hello! I was wondering if you guys had any pots I could use. Oh, and a spade. I need to go dig up some flowers and don’t have anything to take them back in,” I explained cheerfully, only for the guard to furrow his eyebrows.
“Pots? Like, clay pots?” He asked, and I nodded.
“Um, yeah? I think there are a few that Martha sells,” He says after a moment of silence.
“Great! Can you point me in the direction of her shop then?” I smiled and said.
“You’re only here for clay pots? Not for anything else at all?” He said, confused as he looked me up and down.
Alright, Leon, think about this. Why was he so suspicious of you? It was a strange request, sure, but he was being weird about this.
I looked down and felt the urge to face my palm when I saw my clothes. They were a mess to put it simply. They were wet, muddy, and had some tears in them as well. I looked like a beggar.
Yep, that will do it. Don’t exactly look trustworthy right now, do I?
Alright, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. I just need to think of it.
“Oh yeah, I also want to get some new clothes. I was out in the fields and accidentally fell when I was looking for flowers because of the rainstorm,” I quickly explained.
“You went out into the fields to look for flowers when there are monsters around?” The guard’s eyebrows shot up in surprise when he said that, and I had to think about how to respond.
“Oh, really? I heard about them, but I thought the adventures had come and taken care of them by now,” I said, confused as to why that was still a problem.
“I don’t know where you heard that, but they haven’t come yet. So it’s still dangerous to wander around. Especially without a weapon,” The guard glanced at me and said.
That’s weird. It’s been a few days, and Adi said they would be down here to clear them out soon. I would think they had done it by now, considering a whole village was at stake.
So if they haven’t arrived yet, then something might not be right. Either they are late for some reason, or they just ain’t coming.
Meaning that the monsters might decide to wander on over here, and if they do that, then people could get hurt.
I can’t just stand by and let that happen when I’m right here and able to help them. I just need to figure out where they are, and that will be that.
“Ah, don’t worry about me. I’m strong enough to take care of myself,” I said, grateful for the worry but deciding to move on. “You said there were monsters still, right? I can help you out.”
“Huh? How can you help? You don’t even have a weapon, and you look like a beggar,” The guard said in disbelief.
Wow. Okay rude.
“I’m… an adventurer. So I’m way stronger than you would think. Trust me,” I lied after a few moments of thinking about it.
There wasn’t anything else I could claim to be that would get him to believe me. Still, he was being weirdly stubborn about accepting my help.
“Really? Why were you in the field then?” The guard asked suspiciously. Man, he was getting on my nerves. Just accept my help!
“I was out looking for herbs to make potions with,” I repeated the same lie I told Adi, making a mental note not to forget my flowers after I’m done with my monster slaying, before I continued, “Now, tell me where the monster’s are so I can go kill them for you and we can be done with this.”
“Why? I’ll tell you right now, we don’t have the coin to pay you. Everything has already been set aside for the other adventurers, and we aren’t about to piss them off by giving it to you,” The guard said questioningly.
“I don’t need money to care about people. Also, I just want a pot and a spade to dig up some flowers,” I frowned and said.
I was reminded of those xianxia protagonists who only do shit for money and felt myself revolt at the thought. That was the one thing I wanted ot avoid.
The guard stared at me in disbelief for a moment before saying again, “I’m serious, you know? Even if you go and kill the monsters, we don’t have anything to pay you with.”
He was starting to annoy me. Like, I get that I look like a beggar, but I literally never mentioned money.
“I don’t need a reason to care about people. It’s human nature not to want people to end up dead. You said you are waiting for the adventures, but who knows when they’ll come here. If they are late, then people can get hurt,” I said with a glare.
It was incredible how mad he was making me. I don’t know why it was getting to me as much as it was, but he was pressing on a nerve I didn’t know I had. The fact that he was suggesting that I was even close to those xianxia protagonists made me angry beyond belief.
“Look, if you want to go off and fight them, then please do. I just don’t want you to come back and get all angry at us. That’s all,” The guard explained.
“I want to help. That’s all I want to do. The reason why I want to help is that I care about a bunch of people, when I could have done something about it. It’s not hard to get,” I said slowly, trying to stay calm.
Something was weird here. This was getting to me way more than it should be. I need to get out of here before I lose it.
“It is for adventures,” I heard him mutter under his breath. He didn’t mean for me to hear it, but I did.
And I felt my heartbeat pick up, and I exploded.
“I’m different from those bastards, alright!” I shouted and stomped my foot on the ground in frustration.
BANG!
A spray of dirt and grass erupted into the air. It didn't go very high or far, but there was now a small hole in the ground where my foot stomped.
I looked down, confused and startled as to how I did that, and saw the Qi around my foot and the ground acting funny. Before, it would just passively go in and out of my body if I was full of Qi.
But now, it seemed like I forced a bunch of Qi out.
Cool. But I need to deal with the guard whom I’m pretty sure I just scared the crap out of.
I looked at his expression and felt guilt boil up in my chest. I didn’t mean to scare him, like at all. I wanted to control my temper, too. But it just came out.
“I-I’m sorry for scaring you,” I said quietly, full of remorse. That wasn’t fair. He didn’t mean to make me mad, and I overreacted for no reason.
“Oh no, I’m sorry for making you mad. Really, it’s my fault. So don’t apologize, please,” The guard continued to wave his hands in front of him frantically, and I just felt the guilt grow bigger.
“I…” I started to say something before I closed my mouth. He just seemed scared of me now, and that probably wouldn’t change until I left.
“I-I’ll go take care of the monsters and come back afterwards, okay? Can you tell me where they are?” I asked, and the guard nodded his head.
“They are hiding out in the Shreme Old Castle Ruins just a little bit northwest of here. Go that way and you should come on it in about fifteen minutes or so,” The guard pointed in the direction and said with a quiver in his voice.
“Thank you. Again, I-I’m sorry for scaring you. I’ll get going,” I said quickly before turning and jogging in the direction of the fortress.
I didn’t hear him say anything as I left, though maybe that’s for the best. Hell, maybe it’s for the best that I don’t even come back.
I smiled bitterly at the thought as I walked. I hated that he was comparing me to those young masters, and what do I do? I act like a young master and terrify some random dude.
I sighed as I thought back to what happened. Why was I so angry? No, the real question was why couldn’t I control it?
This wasn’t the first time this happened either. My way back up on my first dungeon dive, I lost myself to anger. Hell, back when I faced the hobgoblin, I felt a little like this.
I needed to figure out what was happening and why it was happening. If I kept acting like this, then I really would become a young master…
Yeah, I would rather die.
There was only one time that I had the opposite problem. When I fought the infant dragon, I entered into a state that was the exact opposite of this.
Something I need to try and replicate, then. The last time I tried, I didn’t have good results, but maybe if I try it outside of combat, then I would have better results.
Still, this little incident made me realize I never bothered checking what I had gained from my breakthrough. I got distracted by the flowers.
That was also very weird. Since when the hell would I just ignore my cultivation gains and try to collect souvenirs? Like, I still want the flowers, but I should have confirmed my gains first, not wander off somewhere.
Let’s add that incident to the pile of my behaving weirdly. For now, I need to figure out what I gained from my breakthrough. Especially before I go into a fight.
Hence, I got off the road and went to rest on a rock and sat down. I got into the lotus position and started to meditate.
Last time I broke through, it was obvious. As soon as I opened my eyes, the world lit up in colors, and I could see Qi like I never could before. This time, however, the change was internal rather than external.
As soon as I meditated and turned my attention inward, I nearly gasped in wonder. My Qi, previously just aimlessly wandering around in my body, now flowed smoothly in my meridians.
It formed an elaborate network of channels that acted like highways as the Qi from my body entered and rushed around like it was on a rollercoaster.
What stood out were the colors of the Qi as they ran about. In most of my meridians, it was a kaleidoscope of every color, but in eight of them, there was only one color.
I was wondering what the point of making them was, but now I have found the answer. They stored and supplied a steady stream of elemental Qi into the rest of my meridians. Without them, I wouldn’t have access to pure elemental Qi.
Now the question was what could I do with it?
I opened my eyes and held out my hand. I tried to focus on the Qi rushing through my meridians and pushed it to the surface.
I expected something dramatic to happen. Maybe a flash of light, or a burst of pain, or anything really.
But nope. The Qi, the one that was a mixture of all the colors, eagerly flowed from my meridians, through my skin, and into the surrounding environment.
No fuss, no mess, no reaction from anything at all, other than feeling the drain on my reserves.
I cut off the flow, and my Qi easily went back into my meridians before resuming its flow around. I sat there staring at my hand, confused as I tried to figure out what had happened before.
So, it didn’t naturally react with other Qi when it exited my body. Then, how did I use it? What could I even use it for?
I tried it again, only this time, I didn’t let the Qi just flow into the environment. I thought about keeping it close to me as I let it out of my skin.
It did exactly that. The Qi exited my skin before settling in a fine layer just above it. Some of it still wandered off, obviously, but most of it stayed around my skin.
I looked at it for a moment before glancing at the ground I was sitting on. Well, there is only one way to test it.
I balled my hand up into a fist and punched the ground in front of me.
BANG!
The result was the ground shot up and away in a shower of soil and grass. The hole was a little bit bigger than the last one since I put more force, but I also felt a more notable drain on my reserve of Qi.
I decided to punch the ground again in a different spot, only this time without any Qi reinforcement. The result was far less dramatic.
It didn’t hurt my hand or anything, and the dirt had a little dent in it, but that was all. There wasn’t any difference in my physical strength from before.
So, I could control Qi better and actually expel it from my body. That had a lot of uses; I just had to figure them out. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ NoveI(F)ire.net
Still, I did the mixed Qi. What would happen if I did it with pure elemental Qi?
Well, only one way to find out. I gathered some of the green Qi and pulled it to my skin. It flowed just as smoothly as the mixture, but there was way less of it, and it took more focus for me to control.
The green Qi gathered just above my skin, and I made a fist. Alright, here goes nothing.
I brought my fist down on a new spot in the grass and braced for the noise and debris.
Except it didn’t do anything destructive. My fist hit the ground with a thunk as the green Qi spread out over the surface in waves, like I had dropped a stone into a pond.
I stayed in the position for a moment, my fist slammed into the ground like a bad superhero landing. I was confused by the lack of reaction as I slowly pulled my fist away before I noticed something odd.
The grass that was touching my fist had flourished green and grown taller. There was now a lush green spot in the grass that stood out like a sore thumb.
I also noticed just how much of my green Qi, which I guess was wooden Qi now that I think about it, that little stunt took up. I could do that maybe two more times before I ran out.
Each color was a different element. Some of them I could guess: blue being water, red was fire, yellow was earth, but what were the other colors?
A short round of testing later, and I had my answer. Running through everything, green was wood, red was fire, yellow was earth, blue was water, silver was air, black was dark, white was light, and gold was metal.
It took me a long time to figure out gold, if I’m being honest. My finger gained a slightly golden glow, and that was it. I had run through everything else before, out of sheer frustration and desperation, I put it in my mouth and tasted metal.
I was still a little confused, though. It was called the Nine Color Purifying Elemental Body Manual, yet I only had eight colors and eight elements. Where the hell was the ninth?
I flipped open the manual and started looking for answers. Though as I flipped through, I realized something. The manual never mentioned the color of the Qi at all. All it mentioned was the different types of Qi, but it never described a color for them.
Nope, the colors that it was talking about were the different stages. They were described by color, due to the color of the cultivator's main meridians at each stage. So, not the elemental ones that I made, but the ones I was born with.
Taking a quick look and focusing past the kaleidoscope of colors that was in my meridians, I could tell I was at the silver stage. Very neat.
That begs the question as to why the hell the colors were listed in the manual. You know, I'll just throw it into the ever-growing pile of questions that are probably never going to be answered and keep going. Besides, I had bigger fish to fry.
There was one thing I had to try before I continued. The dream of anyone who likes anything fantasy. I had access to fire Qi, and my earlier testing confirmed that I could heat my Qi enough to scorch some grass.
So that begs the question, can I cast Fireball?
I grinned as I brought my hand out in front of me and gathered the pure fire Qi again. This time, I thought about it, gathering it into a ball above my hand.
That was the plan, except the Qi didn’t do that. Instead, it gathered in a layer on my hand just like last time, and if I tried to go higher than that, it would just disperse into the surroundings.
I frowned and tried again, only to get the same result. I tried with different elements and got the same result. I tried with mixed Qi and got the same result. No matter what I did, once the Qi got maybe a centimeter away from my skin, I could no longer control it.
I thought that maybe I could start a fire in my palm and then use it to ignite some grass, but nope. I couldn’t make fire, or any element really, appear in my palm, much less throw the elements around as an attack.
The most I could do was scorch some grass when I touched it, but the grass never caught fire and burned after I removed my hand or stopped supplying Qi to it.
This sucks!
My dreams of throwing fireballs around were gone. The elemental Qi wasn’t dense enough, and I wasn’t good enough at controlling it to make that happen.
The elemental Qi was way less useful than I thought it was going to be. Something I was pretty sad about, but I did comfort myself with the fact that my attacks were way stronger now if I used mixed Qi.
I’ll probably get better at using pure elemental Qi later once I break through a few more times. It was a staple of cultivation novels to do some frankly insane shit with it. I just had to wait for now.
With that revelation in place, and my disappointment somewhat managed by the fact that I could punch things harder, I got up and continued on my way.
After a short walk, I continued on my way and soon, the fortress appeared over the horizon.
The fortress was in better shape than I thought. The walls, made of dark stone bricks, were mostly intact except for a few crumbling sections at the top and a large hole in the center of one of them.
I think that hole was where the gate was supposed to be, but it must have been destroyed with age, as nothing blocked my view of the inner courtyard as I grew closer.
And it was in that courtyard along the far wall that I saw my targets. There, sitting around a campfire with some animal roasting over it, were monsters.
I quickly hid just outside the hole in the wall before they could see me. I peered my head around the corner and got a good look at them.
They were tall, hairy, wore cobbled-together clothes, and wielded clubs. Their faces had short, smooshed noses, tusks that stuck out from their bottom jaws, bushy eyebrows, and glowing eyes.
It took me a moment to place them, but I thought back to the monster manual I had read in the library and realized that they were bugbears. They typically hunted in packs and relied on stealth to ambush prey.
I counted five of them, though I didn’t know if there were any deeper in the fort. I frowned as I pulled my head back and thought about what I should do.
A part of me just wanted to walk through the front and fight them. They were surface monsters after all, meaning they were way weaker than dungeon monsters. The odds that they could hurt me were pretty slim, and I had just broken through.
The other part of me, the part that remembered how the hobgoblin and infant dragon fight went, wanted to be a bit more cautious. If these were goblins, then I would absolutely just go in and wreck shit.
But I had never fought bugbears before, not on the surface or in the dungeon, so I had no idea what to expect. I also didn’t know about the fortress’s layout or if there were any more of them hidden.
I rolled the ideas around in my head for a moment before I thought of something. They were by the wall on the other side. If I could just climb over that wall, I could literally get the drop on them and then kill them from there.
They won’t have much time to react, and I was reasonably confident I could put them down without too much trouble. Plus, it was better than just lore walking toward them.
I started moving around the walls, keeping an eye out for any lookouts, but nothing noticed me as I made it to the far wall where they had their camp.
I paused and listened to the garbled noise they were making from the other side as I looked up and tried to figure out how I was climbing this thing.
There were a few handholds that I could see from where some stone brick crumbled and jutted out, but they weren’t close enough together for me to get all the way to the top.
Hmm, if only I had one of those spiky things that rock climbers use or anything hard enough to pierce the stone. I could just make my own, and everything would be peachy.
…Wait a minute.
I felt the lightbulb go off over my head as I brought my hand up and gathered some Qi to coat my fingers. The mixture of colors appeared, and I pressed my fingers into the wall a little above my head.
It took some effort, but after a few wiggles, I was able to jab my fingers into the stone pretty solidly. I cut off the Qi and gave it a light tug. My fingers stayed stuck in the wall until I activated my Qi again and pried them out, which left behind deep holes in the rock.
Perfect. I glanced up at the wall and saw it was maybe twenty feet or so high. Now to do that about thirty more times.
I smiled and got to work. The method was simple: coat the right hand in Qi, press it into the stone, remove Qi, and coat the left hand before pressing that into the stone. Slowly but surely, I climbed the wall using my hands to find places to hold on to.
I discovered that I could only manage one limb coated in Qi at a time. Hence, I had to constantly switch where my Qi was coming from, which was wearing on me more than I thought it would.
Still, I made progress, and after about ten minutes, I had clawed my way up to the top of the wall. I gently peered my head over the edge, and after making sure the coast was clear, I dragged my body up.
There was a little walkway up here that I pressed my body against before I slowly crawled to the edge and looked down. The bugbears didn’t seem to notice me at all as they loudly munched on the butchered animal.
There was one position right below me that was perfect as my first target. I slowly stood up and looked around one last time to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.
Then, I circulated my Qi and coated my right leg before hanging it over the edge. I looked down and lined it up so it was just above the bugbear below. I took a deep breath, got ready to move my Qi to my other leg, and took a step forward.
Whoosh
The wind brushed past my ears as I rocketed toward the ground. My left foot was curled back for protection, while my right foot was out to take the brunt of the impact. I saw one of the bugbears stop eating and point at me, clearly trying to warn its companion that I was above it.
The one directly below me stopped eating and glanced up, just in time for my Qi-reinforced foot to meet its face.
Crack!
Too late.
The beast’s neck gave way, as did its spine, when I landed. It folded beneath me before it got reduced to a paste as I landed. My leg compressed to absorb the momentum, causing me to kneel for a moment, but other than that, I was completely unharmed.
Qi reinforcement was the fucking shit. I take back any disappointment or grievances that I previously had.
The bugbears sat shocked at watching one of them turn to a pancake, allowing me to stand up and circulate my Qi into my right fist. I punched toward the one closest and landed firmly on its chest.
Only, instead of its chest getting crushed and the rest of it going flying like I thought would happen, my fist went right through it and out the back.
Gore and viscera exploded from behind the now impaled bugbear and landed on my and the other bugbear’s faces. That was enough to get them to move as they roared and sprang to their feet.
I pulled my arm up and out of the bugbear I had impaled and watched it crumple into ash and smoke. Looks like I hit its magic stone.
The other three bugbears let out screams as they all rushed toward me with clubs and spears. I picked the one on the far left to be my next target and rushed forward. It tried to swing its club at me, but I met it with a Qi-enchanted fist and watched as the club shattered into splinters.
My fist didn’t stop as it continued and blew the bugbear’s head clean off. I twirled out of the way of the two spears that tried to stab me before I brought my foot up and down on them. The spears snapped like toothpicks and left the two remaining bugbears even more defenseless from my assault.
I quickly dispatched both of them before a noise drew my attention. I turned and saw that there was a door that led to one of the ruined buildings. Said door burst open with more bugbears that screamed when they saw me before charging.
I felt my heartbeat pick up as I saw the sight, and a smile made its way to my face.
“Come at me then!” I shouted before rushing forward to meet the new monsters.
What followed in the next few minutes could only be described as a slaughter as I brutally made my way through all the buildings and killed every single one of the bugbears.
I was left covered in blood, surrounded by dead bugbears. None of them were able to get a hit on me throughout the whole thing.
I felt my heartbeat slow down as my excitement faded, and disgust replaced it. Ugh, I’m covered in gross blood and organs.
It wasn’t like I was in a presentable state before, with all the mud and tears my clothes had, but now I feel like these clothes were thoroughly ruined. There’s no way all this blood would ever wash out.
It was my own fault, but I was still going to blame the monsters. I sighed and started going around and cleaning everything up. The monster corpses still needed to get their magic stone extracted. Otherwise, I had no idea how to prove I came and killed them.
As I went around collecting the magic stones, I counted how many bugbears I had just killed without so much as a scratch. Thirty-four.
I just slaughtered my way through thirty-four monsters in a few minutes with practically zero effort. I felt my jaw open in disbelief and recounted the magic stones, but I got the same number.
Holy hell, that’s insane. Like, I did it and I’m having trouble believing it. Sure, they were surface monsters, so they were weaker than the dungeon monsters, but that’s still wild.
I’ve come a long way from struggling to kill goblins. And I had Qi reinforcement to thank for it.
All this has shown me is how big a game-changer being able to actively use Qi was. It also showed me how careful I need to be since I was tired.
My Qi reserves were low, and my body ached as if I had just done a crazy hard workout. So, it was a trade-off to be sure.
Still, I was very happy with everything. Now, let’s go back to the village and get a pot so I can go back and get my flowers.
Maybe I’ll ask for a bath too. I stink.
========================================
All done!
Leon learns some of his new powers and his limits as well. Reinforcing with Qi isn’t cheap, in terms of Qi expended or the strain it places on the body. Still, it is definitely useful.
Sadly, he’s not going to be casting fireballs for a while yet. His Qi just isn’t dense enough to be away from him for too long. But he will get his wish eventually.
As for the bugbears, I figured he should be able to just mow through them on the account that they are surface monsters, so weaker than dungeon monsters, and he has gotten way stronger when he uses his Qi.
Let me know what y’all think about everything. Until next time, friends!
Edited:
So the reason why I uploaded this new version was a.) I really liked the color suggested that everyone made, and I'm mad that I didn’t think of it before, and b.) I disliked how I handled the guard conversation the more I looked at it.
No one is going to believe me, and that’s fine, but the original draft of this conversation went more like this than the other version, with Leon thinking and then explaining his way to the situation. I cut it cause I made him too smart in that, and then I dumbed it down and made him too dumb.
Hopefully, I got a good balance finally. A core part of it was his emotional outburst, and he will have to deal with the consequences of that later. I was going to have him do the retrospective later, but I think I like the slow descent into anger, and despite knowing about it, he can’t control it. Also, I got the unknowing vibe in the last bit of the chapter with the bugbears, so that’s all good.
Lastly, thank you to everyone who commented. I really do like reading them, even if it's criticism. I don’t really get many mean comments. And by that I mean it’s just, you suck, story sucks. Most of it is based on how to improve things. Some are worded nicer than others, but I like all of them cause it helps me learn. I do this for fun, so it's not often I will rewrite stuff. I usually prefer just to move on, but this was just too big for me not to get right.
And of course, thank you to everyone who left nice comments, obviously. They really do make my day. Especially when I see people whose stories I read say they like my story. It’s a nice feeling.
Anywho, I’m not going to rewrite this chapter anymore, unless someone points out I made a massive plothole again or I cut something out. I’m tired and going to sleep now, so…
Until next time, friends!