Well, I'm not going to lie. Sitting down to write this piece of text was actually harder than churning out about 6k words for the last few chapters that I did kinda in a single sitting. Maybe its because I wasn't ready to tackle the emotional side of doing so, maybe because it would give me this sort of closure that would nail down the point that this journey through the world that I created is now over… Something that maybe I wasn't ready so soon.
So, let's start with the reasons why the novel ended way earlier than I initially imagined it would. In reality, I had plans for writing faaaar deeper into the story, with the political games, a war for the crown, entire civil war and fully-fledged war with Muscovy, implementing the plants from americas, forcing the innovation through the entire Europe just to make others rich enough to let them afford Mike's products… But there is this one thing that made it impossible for me to continue the novel.
Time.
Ever since its beginning, and even after I started writing Phoenix (which is far more ambitious than Road), this novel was taking the great majority of my time, effort and attention. Due to how detailed I wanted it to be, I never compromised on the quality and the research necessary to write the chapters. There were some times where I would sit down with several different maps just to find an actual spot that would fit the purposes of Mike in the novel (the location of the New Tarnow is actually one of them (The real name of the location is Bałtów, about 15km northeast from the city of Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, you can type Ostrowiec to find it on the map). Sadly, all those efforts fell on a rather niche market or maybe the cover/synopsis/first chapters weren't appealing enough to bring enough readers to make writing it further reasonable.
Right now, I have three insanely big things going on for me, starting with a huge contract that can literally change my life (and that I focus 90% of my attention since a few weeks ago), a potential job as a writer in CDPred (applied for it, we will see if it will work) along with a project that I will mention further down the line. Keeping the novel that took more than 50% of my time while earning less than 10% of my total (webnovel only) income was simply unreasonable. With Uni added on top of everything and my wish to have any resemblance of social and physical life, I simply had to find something that I could cut out of my daily schedule.
Sadly, the reality pointed at this novel as the most obvious choice.
There is also the aspect of slowly getting burned up with writing it. When I started it, I had huge expectations, given how it was my second novel already, where I could avoid all the mistakes that I did while learning the craft with my first one. Once again, sadly, but it wasn't the case.
But does this mean that this novel will end?
The novel, yes. I do not plan to return to the WORLD of "Road to the Crown". It is something that I finished and intend to fully put behind me. But it doesn't mean that its the end of the story for the characters that showed up in it.
For those who are reading all of my novels (or at least my battlesmut - the novel with longass title) this should be already obvious given how openly I used the name of a certain character from Battlesmut, but to shed the light on the biggest project that I will ever create on Webnovel - all the stories that are written on this account, starting with battlesmut, will actually share the universe. Not the world, not the timeline, not the genre. The universe. At this point, I have yet to decide, but there should be two more novels coming (and ending) before the return of Mike. (For those who had the chance to see its quick lifespan, Battlepope is back on the menu, along with "Druglord's restaurant in another world!" a new comedic project of mine). Once those two stories will be over, all of my novels will converge into a single continuation of them all.
In short words, I plan to make all my novels be a part of Slothverse. Chronologically, I can already tell that Road will be in the third place, battlesmut will set the foundations for the entire thing, while Phoenix will be the last solo novel that will focus on just a single character. It will also be the thing that officially kickstarts the slothverse of mine. That's also the reason why the last chapter is called a prologue (part 2) instead of epilogue (part 2). Because when looking at it from a greater perspective, its ending is at the same time, a beginning.
Okay, now that I got the big news out of the way (I'm rambling, but please, I just finished my very first novel in my damned life. I feel strange not getting dead drunk, but the deadlines for the other projects of mine do not wait for my emotional state to stabilise…) let me thank everyone that contributed and helped me during this project.
First off, something that many of you may take as offensive or asslicking - I would like to thank webnovel for offering me this kind of opportunity. Even with all the stress, paranoia and exhaustion that this novel introduced to my life, there is no denying that there were far more moments when I was so excited about the next part that I was about to write, the next chapter where something big would happen, that my fingers would literally and no-jokingly itch to write. Itch to help me explore this story of mine. An itch to… write.
Let's be honest here. If not for webnovel, I would never start writing in English. Without the exposure (that directly translates into comments that motivate me to work like nothing else) I would never learn how to work hard and on a daily basis to create something so big. Even if in webnovel terms 332 chapters is nothing much, when translated into wordcount, Road has 425k words, which makes about 5 fully-fledged tomes of a paper-back released novel. I wrote five fucking tomes worth of story here!
Outside of the webnovel at large, I would also like to thanks all the authors that ignored my quirky (to put it shamelessly nicely and gently) personality and helped me a lot whenever I had problems related to developing plotlines, characters or just struggled to find the proper wording to what I wanted to write about. Some of them helped me a lot, some of them just randomly responded to my inquiries on webnovel authors inkstone. Without their help (I would most likely just learn how to use a proper translator to get those answers far quicker) I would struggle to overcome some silly problems that can easily stall the process of writing for hours if not days (as seen in the last month of Road).
And lastly, I would like to thank you guys, the readers. While it might seem as nothing much, reading the comments on my novels is usually the first thing that I do after waking up, just to get the motivational burst to get from the bed and keep working hard. Especially with all the shitty stuff that makes me think that just by waiting a few months would allow me to write about Polish civil war from the first-hand experience, even those simple "thanks" that you guys would leave on the newest comment… It might not seem as much to others, but it truly meant a lot to me.
Okay then, to not make it longer than necessary, especially with how I doubt that anyone would bother to read something as unimportant as afterword in an auxiliary chapter, let me bring this freshly emotional rant to an end.
Once again, thanks to all those that positively contributed to both this novel and my life over the course of me writing it. Thanks for the opportunity to create something that I can proudly put beside my name. Thanks for the ride that your comments and involvement made so much more fun than just writing something for the sake of my shelf only. And following the example of a certain Vtuber, if you didn't like it, fuck you and never come back :D (just a joke, I'm that direct only on DM's when someone asks stupid stuff)
At the end, where only the most bored and most loyal readers could be still bothered to read, let me shamelessly promote my other novels. You can find them by going to my profile and clicking on the original works. If you liked Kingdom-Building aspect, then some of it will appear later on in RotPG. If you want to see my rise form an awful writer to someone who can write two sentences without making 194 grammatical errors, or if you just want to follow the Slothverse from its very conception (or maybe if you are just looking for a light, comedic read) you could try my battlesmut. If you are history/politic/kingdom-building freak only, then I will have to ask you to wait for when I will be able to start writing Battlepope again. Those who read its first attempt might already find some elements that appeared in the epilogue, instantly putting it in the proper chronological piece on the timeline. And that's generally all I can say unless I want to get emotional once again. Gosh, why I didn't think about getting some vodka while the shops were still open?
With that said, for the last time in this novel, thank you for the read, and I hope that you enjoyed the ride at least as much as I did!
Cheers!