Yep the Immortal Kobold is DONE.
Some may think I'm rushing the ending to get it over with but the truth is this is the ending I've always envisioned for Xing Lei. Well for this book at least. Before I explain what I mean I would like to thank you, dear reader, for following this story to its conclusion. Its been a long road... mostly due to lazy author slack asking for a few months when the ending was a mere two weeks of releases away.
Part of my hiatus was because I knew this day was coming.
I don't think any author wants to close the back cover on his or her creation. You envision more, you want to still walk beside the characters you dreamed up. You want to share further stories of their life. Truth is with TIKs ending so near at hand I'd rather flog the dog than finish my first book. Which is surprising since even I admit this book isn't the best.
To explain, its been almost thirty years since I've done any creative writing, it was back in my high school days when I last had the urge to tell a fantastical story. Yet I found webnovel, found many stories that inspired me. One in particular, Advent of the Kobold Era by EternalEden is what prompted the creation of Xing Lei. I found the story when it was on hiatus, the intro for TIK is a blatant rip off from Advent by the way, a bit of a homage to a story I hope will one day reach this stage as well. With that tale greatly left untold I decided to write my own.
Thus the Immortal Kobold was born.
Now I freely admit this book has issues, I'm no expert by any stretch, there are plot holes, pacing issues and questions left unanswered which further along I'll hopefully answer. So without further adieu let me answer some of the questions I've seen pop up and some I know are kicking around.
1. Why does an elf fall for a kobold, it makes no sense!
Thing is, while Advent of the Kobold Era inspired this book I am also a bit of an erotica lover. Much like other smut novels I originally envisioned TIK as a romp around with plenty of harem esk tropes. Thing was, suddenly people started to really like this little book, going back rather than just saying Alustriea was a scaly fetishist it occurred to me she is very much the impressionable princess. Put in peril she fell in love with her shining knight. Cliche I admit especially considering her hero worship is for a three foot tall kobold, but weirder romances have started for less so I ran with it.
2. Why does Xing Lei keep getting captured, how can he be so weak/stupid?
I never envisioned Xing Lei to be a super hero. He has faults, the primary of which is arrogance while the secondary is ignorance. Through out the book you never see Lei trying to acclimate to his new life. He was a cultivator and he always will be. He might not be human anymore but as long as he has two arms, two legs and his picture perfect memory he will rise up.
The reason in the early chapters that he got captured so much is mostly because of this. I never explained it properly but kobolds are weak. I mean in some settings a fat chicken can easily kill an entire party of kobolds weak. D&D kobolds are slightly stronger but think of it in this light: If a mixed martial arts master was reborn in a toddlers body, would they still beat groups of adults easily? Of course not. The knowledge is there but the physique is not able to match.
Same here. Kobolds versus trained knights or worse, drow, stand literally no chance of one punch manning the situation. Skilled as Xing Lei is as a kobold, he's just not that strong in his body until much, much later.
3. Why does he never evolve?
Simply its called the Immortal Kobold, hard to maintain the title if he took any of the other forms. However this is a cop out, in truth I tried to present his other evolutions as clear dead end choices. Most of them would cripple his stats or never allow another evolution. I had thought I made this clear in the evolution chapters but apparently not.
4. What happened to his kids?
Towards the end like most cultivation stories I've read I thought to give him a family but when I reached further along I felt like a complete douche having wrote him into a corner for having to concern for their welfare versus his own growth. I just couldn't do it so I retconned them. I had always intended for them to be born later but in the end I never made it happen. I'll just save them for later.
5. Okay enough hinting, what's later?
While Advent of the Kobold era was my inspiration for this book the way I chose to present it was following two other great artists. R. A. Salvatore and George Lucas, both of whom started their epic fantasy operas on book FOUR rather than book one. While I am not so ambitious to think I have enough material for so many books, TIK is actually book Two of a trilogy.
As many know, I've already started the prequel, Destorianaxe Birth of the Mistress. What most don't know is that when I began TIK I had also wrote the first twenty chapters of its sequel, The Dragon God's Awakening. They sit on inkstone waiting to be published. Though with all I've learned and will learn writing the prequel I want to rewrite those twenty chapters to be more on Des level than TIK. We'll have to see.
6. Your story is on X site!
Frankly as a non contract author I'm not really one to care that my story has appeared on other sites beyond webnovel. On one hand I'm happy that a wider audience will see my work on the other I should be upset but I can't bring myself to be such, TIK is a labor of love I give you the reader, if it reaches beyond webnovel... not a bad thing. I just ask if someone tries to sell it as theirs to throw a few bucks my way...
7. What happened to X character?
One of the greatest weaknesses of this book is that unlike many webnovels with hundreds of chapters alot of my walk on characters aren't fully flushed out. Beyond the arc in which they played a key part most barely get another comment. Which is a pity, I think I created a lot of interesting individuals in the road of Xing Lei. In particular down the road I'd love to revisit characters like Lady Pain and Umbra, Ottar Shalecove, The Heavenly Rose sect, Velusa, Xing Kah and His Only Shadow to name a few. Maybe once Destorianaxe is done I may do a spin off for one of them. Like the rest of my plans its more a tale of time versus interest.
8. He should have wished for infinite resources!
The thing about infinite resources is the logistics of transporting them. Cultivator storage rings only hold so much after all. While collecting what he needed was a chore it beats lugging wagon loads of supplies around. Plus he had to be careful of the djinn. Unlike Disney's genie, I favor the lore of disgruntled enslaved powerhouses who gladly twist wishes to inconvenience or directly under cut their would be master. Unlike alladins genie, my genie is a vindictive asshole, wishing for infinite resources would see Xing Lei buried under them as the genie literally drops infinite monstrous beast corpses on the kobold burying him alive.
9. Towards the end you stopped updating the character sheets, why?
Simply put consider any Rpg you've played, by the end of the game how often do you check your sheet? By your final quest you know your abilities inside out and don't need your sheet. Same principle here. Xing Lei simply doesn't bother checking his sheet since even without it he gets stronger. In all truth the character sheets were a system that the book really didn't need, while they gave an easy reference system for readers to see his growth I found more and more it was a system that was just extra baggage. By the end, there just was no need to update it.
10. At the end why is X doing Y?
I know these last few chapters will seem insane. Tyrix and Quellia, the Dragon God and Destorianaxe. These rather lewd scenes amongst instances where the story is moving along full tilt seem un necessary. For me they were needed to be there. I needed to show that amongst their peers that the gods are just this crazy. These are not the Olympians. There's nothing sane about these entities. They have their own ecosystem which by mortal standards is borderline loony bin... and they are the higher beings in charge.
The good gods are just as psychotic and deviant as the dark gods. This is just how I wanted to portray them, they are far from perfect beings, the fact Zee strong arms Xing Lei as a replacement for Halatrax should be the icing on the cake that none of them are overtly forward thinkers. The gods simply don't give a shit any more.
11. Just what is the Dragon God?
Heh. He is my mad hatter, the great oz behind the curtain. He is the devil that convinced the world that he's important after doing nothing. Just what he is is a plot hole unanswerable here otherwise I would ruin book three. Book one introduces him through Destorianaxe. TIK shows him twisting the strings. The Dragon God's Awakening is to be the culmination of the plan, revealing my Joker to you readers. For now, just realize DG is a bit of an asshole and yeah that's exactly his core processing feature.
Keep in mind my former explanation. The world's gods are jerks. Good, neutral, evil. The Dragon God is all of that and more. But there's a reason for it all. The plan.
12. Alright there's a plan, what's book three about?
In general book three will explore who and what the Dragon God is... by having a reincarnation assume his mantle. The game master has his dome hacked and the resulting chaos ensues as the plan moves forward regardless if the intellect behind it is the original or not. DG worked too long and too hard to let a simple thing like a reborn consciousness in his body let the plan fizzle. His new driver will simply gave to adapt.