Chapter 9 Insight

Arturia just can’t seem to catch a break, can she? To be fair though, this time she handled it much better and didn’t let it get to her. She’s getting much better at letting their words influence her in a positive direction, namely to take a more direct approach to mending the ties with her knights. At least King Hassan took her suggestions to heart as well.

Speaking of badass Hassan, I will admit that his reveal helped spur on the double chapter release… that and, if I’m to finish this thing by Christmas, I have to step up the release schedule somehow. What better way then showing a modified chapter after the assassin in question’s combat style was revealed in game? And quite the animations he has, I’d say.

It seems Lancelot took the madness in relative stride as well. The knights are starting to act like knights? What blasphemy is this? Well honestly, it had to go somewhere since one can only have so much negative stuff happen to them without creating the will to overcome it, especially since they are knights and not your average person. They’re finally becoming more aware of themselves in their fight against this once in a lifetime incident.

So the big thing is I killed off Tota and Sanzang. That means no development for either of them besides their two inserts over the past two chapters. Why would I do that? Well, if you think about it, every path in Fate/Stay Night developed different servants and killed off others in an untimely fashion. How was Caster treated during the Fate route by Gilgamesh? They would also only help to divert attention away from the main focus of this “path”, so their adventure has met an untimely end due to the circumstances involved. Love it or hate it, the path goes on without them this time.

At least Cursed Arm and Arash are getting roughly the same, or better, treatment. Arash gets his first glimpse of being a proper badass bronze. The original story did a lot to make him feel like a true hero with outstanding qualities and capabilities, but I still feel it can be taken a step further… by showing what skills he may have with the arrow. I believe I got that initial point across relatively well, and there’s still more to come.

One last note, Arturia was indeed to clouded in her thoughts of mending the bridges with her knights to realize the implications of the final line. She’s not stupid though, so if you were going to call me out on that, you only have to do what most have probably realized with my fics: Wait and see when the bomb goes off.

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