I hope you enjoyed reading both Book 1 and Book 2! Did you know that I originally began writing my story more than eight years ago? The first spark of inspiration I had that compelled me to write this series was a certain scene. Unfortunately, due to time constraints and development issues, this scene was eventually cut out and pushed back. I anticipate that this scene will finally make its introduction at the end of Arc 1! Hopefully you read until that point.

Back then, the story outline was extremely rough and vague. In fact, most of the characters had entirely different names. For example, the Xingyuu Empire was originally a mixture of Japanese/Chinese descent, the Alzar Kingdom was supposed to be a steampunkish civilization (hence the gliders). For better or for worse, the Zino Kingdom did not change much besides some small details. My entire novel 'database' was actually ten pages of a word document, sectioned by dividers and headers. Needless to say, it was hard to navigate and I had no idea what I was doing! When I transitioned to Evernote (bless), my story really began taking root. Right now, my database is probably several hundred pages long!

I rewrote Book 1 so many times, the first few drafts were actually completely different from what is presented now! I got stuck in a loop of writing, revising, editing, and rewriting that I would trash entire manuscripts constantly. It was kind of upsetting that I could never reach the level of quality I wanted. My advise for anyone in the same situation is to publish it, no matter how strange or awful it is. Webnovel was a saving grace that way, since there was no reasonable way to change something in Chapter 1 while publishing Chapter 200. It forced me to progress through the story till now!

Now, let's talk about the actual content. Book 1 introduced the world of Sor, the three main civilizations and their continents, as well as a plethora of characters. It spanned over ~4 months starting from the fall of New Havens to Elizabeth's return to Algard. The Second Great Kingdom War was a huge event that affected the entire world so there were plenty of big battles and fight scenes.

Conversely, in Book 2, the main setting was one (or two) cities and it took place over a night. I tried to go for a 'simpler' story line rather than a complex one like Book 1. Along with the twin perspectives, it took a lot of ingenuity to keep them distinct, but also similar enough to run parallel. Hopefully that worked! Not many characters were introduced, but those that were are important ones. For example, Lord Wenmord, Sword King Sin, Protector Avin, Inari and his partner, the Conquestian, Sir Sebastian and Lady Valentina, and even Drifting Snow Serenity Emperor... I wanted to formally reveal the size of the world (beyond the human world) to fully integrate the story at a higher level. I hope that my story was not too much of an info dump.

Finally, in Book 3, we will return to the Xingyuu Empire. I mentioned it many times the political instability and civil unrest brewing. Book 3 is anticipated to be a longer story, possibly longer than both books, depending on how I write it. The Four Great Nobility Families, the Imperial Council, and, of course, Princess Xiuying and Ming... as well as many other new/old characters. Obviously, we will keep Elizabeth, Benedict, Shirley, and Freon, the main characters as core to the story line. I will have to see how the story works... You will have to wait and find out. :)

Anyways, that's about it from me. I may or may not consider adding auxiliary information or afterwords if I want. The next few chapters will be an interlude (or a prequel?) before Book 3. Please support the official release if you liked it. Thanks for reading. :)