Chapter 3 Insight

When all of a sudden everything has gone to hell.

Heavy suspense still persists, yet I threw in quite the escalation. Though it has a few mystery elements by virtue of its design, this is still coined as a thriller. Escalation is necessary, and we’re just about at the half way point where mystery is replaced with the other unknown genre. I need to set everything in place to make the transition smooth and appropriate, but the whole political undercurrents will remain throughout.

Even more cameos in this one! I thought hard about who would likely stand up to servants, but I got a bit wary on my options. As much as I do want to show how badass some people are, I’d rather not get their styles/personalities too off. Admittedly, I’m missing quite a bit of information on Aoko and Zelretch, so I didn’t want to go too far with them. I still wanted them to make a cameo, mind you, but I’m sorry to inform: Chances of seeing the battle are very low.

I dipped a bit further into the enemy. The fog unravels slowly, but now it should be obvious that there are four factions at play. I also dipped a bit into his powers which were partially inspired by Satsuki Kurogiri from Kara no Kyoukai. It’s definitely not at that tier because it’s not the universal language, but specialization in mind control and manipulation certainly makes for a crafty, underhanded opponent.

The question is, he’s a major player, but still supposedly the underling. Who’s the big shot that managed to get a control-loving magus to help so dutifully? The answer is a bit more obvious than you’d expect when you consider what this supplement is designed to do. 

I didn’t want to go too in depth with some of the details otherwise everything would have been a bit drawn out and buried. I kept things a bit specific and gave enough cues though. Trust me: I would have gone nuts over designing how UN soldiers looked or how intricate some spells were. I’ll leave it in your courts rather than potentially confuse more people and create a tangent from the main points.

Unofficial soundtrack: You’ll know when this one is supposed to play. I think it fits that ambush sequence and the following attack scenes pretty well. The slow also fits a bit nicely to the contemplation scene for Da Vinci.