Chapter 70: Thoughts on Going Premium, Important, with a Surprise at the End

This book will be going premium tomorrow. I’ve postponed it by a day to bask in the good fortune of the New Year. I also wish all of you that your dreams may come true in the new year. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to all my dear readers for your incredible support, and thank this platform and my editor for all their help.

Let me tell you a bit about my situation. This past June, my youngest son was born, joining my two-year-old eldest son in the army of money-spenders. The financial pressure on my family suddenly skyrocketed, so I started thinking about picking up a side hustle to supplement our income.

So why did I think of writing a novel? First, I don’t really have any other skills. I didn’t have the startup capital for a small business and was afraid of losing money. Second, after being a reader for 20 years, my tastes have gotten progressively weirder, and I couldn’t find any books I liked to read. That’s what gave me the idea to write a web novel.

When I first came up with the idea for this book, I never expected it to do very well. I just thought of my first book as practice, and a way to fulfill a personal dream.

After all, I’m not a full-time writer. I have to juggle my job, family, and kids.

But the success it’s had during the new-book period has been truly unexpected.

The stats are pretty good for a new author, and with my editor’s strong support, it even made it onto a major recommendation list. I honestly don’t think it’s because my story is that good; perhaps I just got lucky and caught the right trend at the right time.

Since I started publishing, many readers have given me suggestions. I’ve reflected on them deeply, taking the criticism to heart to make corrections and striving to improve where I can. Most importantly, I plan to stick to my current writing style.

Actually, when I first started, I made a lot of rookie mistakes, like a boring synopsis, not knowing how to use paragraphs, and dialogue that broke immersion. There were inevitably some ’idiot plot’ moments too. The first few Chapters you see now, including the title and synopsis, have all been revised. It must have been really tough for my very first readers.

There were times I was flamed by readers so badly my will to write was almost broken. But I’ve been getting chewed out more often lately, so I’m slowly getting used to it.

Writing up to this point, I feel like I’ve made some small progress. However, I know there are still problems, like the prose feeling a bit overwritten, slow plot progression, awkward transitions, and the system/cheat ability displaying too many stats. I’m aware of these issues and will work hard to learn and improve the reading experience. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

If you see any typos or awkward phrasing, please point them out. I’ll fix them all.

My own intelligence is limited, so it’s hard for me to write highly intelligent characters, which is a source of frustration for me. Some of the minor ’cringey’ moments are actually there to advance the plot or serve as foreshadowing.

But there’s not much I can do about it; intelligence is something you’re born with. So, my esteemed readers, please go easy on the criticism. There’s no need to get too serious about a work of fiction. It’s not an academic paper, after all, and I can’t possibly make it that rigorous.

This is the first book I’ve ever written. Before this, the longest thing I’d ever written was a 2,000-character investigative report. Now, I have to write at least 4,000 characters every day. It’s absolutely killing me.

Sometimes I can get Dseek to help with the prose and whatnot, but character dialogue, plot connections, and scene transitions are really difficult for a newbie like me. Each Chapter takes me nearly two hours to grind out, and sometimes even I curse at what I’ve written, thinking, ’What is this garbage?!’ Some readers seem to think I have some magic one-click generation tool. What can I say? You really think I don’t want to be pumping out over 10,000 characters a day and raking in the dough?

Let’s talk about the update schedule. To thank all my readers for your collections, comments, monthly tickets, and donations, I’ve taken another two days off after New Year’s Day. For these five days, I’ll be releasing at least 10,000 characters daily.

Ten of those Chapters are from a stockpile I built up by pulling all-nighters for all of you who have been following along. I hold all your support in my heart. This... is my last Hamon!

After that, I should be able to maintain an average of 5,000 characters per day. I have weekends off from my job, and I’d love to write more then, but with young kids, lots of chores, little time, and being a slow writer, all I can say is I’ll do my best to update more when I can. Maybe as I keep writing, my speed for plotting and writing will pick up. I mean, it took me a fucking two hours just to write this premium release announcement. I’m a lost cause.

Hmm... with an update schedule this pathetic, I don’t have the face to ask for votes or anything. Don’t bother donating, either. Just supporting the first premium Chapter is more than enough. In the future, feel free to save up Chapters and binge-read them; the story flows better that way. I can accept if the metrics dip a bit. I have a detailed outline for the first volume, so you don’t have to worry about me suddenly dropping the story.

Finally, I’d like to thank the works of many great authors for providing me with inspiration, including *Wizarding World*, *Warlock of the Magus World*, *Wizard’s Journey*, *The Great Traverser of Fantasy Worlds*, *Into the World of Cultivation*, *Sapiens*, *Path of the Puppeteer*, *Arcane Throne*... as well as various games, anime, and movies. This book borrows some elements from the Wizard genre and D&D, but the overall world-building is something I spent the last month painstakingly grinding out. It’s very fresh and very polished.

Some of the Golems planned for later in the story are also mashups of some big IPs, which will be a lot of fun. I haven’t written that far into the plot yet, and I didn’t want to give any spoilers, but readers in the comments section keep asking. People are also accusing me of making empty promises in the synopsis, asking if the first Golem is just going to be another Galio or something. I really can’t hold back anymore.

LMAO, you call that a big promise? You’ve seen nothing yet!

You’re seriously underestimating this old-school nerd. Here, let me hype up a few more ’empty promises’ for you guys to get a taste of!

"Jarvis, execute the ’Mass Production’ protocol! I need to spam units! Spam units!"

"Warning! Warning! Enemy Golem identified! —It’s the ’Freedom Gundam’! It’s making a solo atmospheric entry!"

"The rear has fallen!! It’s ’Android 18’... She’s tearing down our power core with her bare hands!"

"What? How was that powerful, genetically-engineered bio-beast obliterated into a bloody mist with a single punch from the Golem codenamed ’Crimson Storm’?!"

"Get ’Baymax’ over there, now! His life signs are fading—!"

BOOM! BOOM! The earth trembled. A soldier stared at the shadow rising on the horizon and let out a final, despairing cry. "Quick, get Lord Allen! ...The Black Wizards’ Emperor Titan... it’s back..."

"This is great! We managed to buy a limited-edition Terminator from Weisren Heavy Industry, and it’s the high-end T-5000 model!"

"What’s so great about that? My family bought a Starscream transforming Golem!"

This is all content for later in the story. Once the protagonist gets through the first mission, all sorts of items, weapons, and Golems will start to appear. Please, my dear readers, don’t get too excited just yet. Give me and Allen a little more time to grow. And it’s okay if you haven’t seen any of the source material; it won’t affect the reading experience. And hey, you! Put down your bolter and sit back down!

Friendly tip: the first large Golem the protagonist builds is a character from one of the ’Big Three’ shonen series. You get a gold star if you can guess who.