Update – 11 March 2023 (Sneak Peak At Arc 4’s Illustrations!)

Hello!

Welcome to the Update Post! In these little segments, I like to talk about the story and how it changed from the original conception to the finished product, as well as my thoughts on some story beats, plot points, or characters.

I usually do these after every Arc/Book (as in the case of my first story, but I decided to do it after Arc 3 since I consider Arcs 1-3 to be this story's 'Prologue.' 

First of all, I'll talk about the previous versions of Chimeric Ascension that were scrapped. 

True Demon Lord Training System - AKA Version 1

Okay, let's get into it! Over a year or two, I just can't tell you how many different many revisions this story has gone through. the overall aspect of 'Revenge-focused Isekai Story with a Focus on Guns' was the same throughout all of them. Some of you early readers might remember a story I had posted called True Demon Lord Training System, which could be considered Version 1 of what would be Chimeric Ascension. 

TDLTS was just about 9 chapters long since I wanted to get feedback on it-- it was just going to be temporary-- but some of the core points were the same. The Dark Lord of Tyranny was still around (Now called a Demon Lord, with no Tyranny added to the end of the title) and yes, the character that would become Mila was still summoned by her. But instead of Mila being a chimera formed of the Soul Warriors (They were called Heroes) that sealed the Dark Lord of Tyranny, Mila was a gross creation cursed by the DLoT using the failed Heroes' corpses.

Mila didn't go by Lyudmila Springfield. I can't exactly remember the name, but it wasn't good. The basic premise was that the DLoT would submit herself to the MC, unlocking the True Demon Lord Training System (which was only available to a Hero that had fallen to the Dark Side, aka resolved oneself to destroying the world and going against their task as a Hero, and who had enslaved or gained the undying loyalty of a Demon Lord).

In this version, Tilde did not exist. But there was another horny fairy that was just a fairy the MC found rather early on after leaving the cave that held the DLoT. Instead, the MC would be given an RPG-like quest system, where she would gain different bonuses depending on much chaos and destruction she caused. And there were different systems like the Crime System, the Bounty System, the Slavery System, the Quest System, etc, etc. Whenever the MC accomplished a milestone, she would be given points to spend in the True Demon Lord Training System Store, or the TDLTSS, which would offer things like [Map], [Storage], and the other abilities that we know from [Hermes Trismegistus]

But onto weapons... Soul Weapon was still the same. And it used MP, not mana. And the DLoT still used a mace, but they were called Demon Armaments. The DLoT would have hers, but it would be unpowered. But because the MC was her Master (In this version, the MC had no qualms about owning slaves. Overall, the story was going to be much darker, almost like Redo of Healer levels of dark. It was going to have a crazy focus on gore) the MC could use the Demon Armaments. And the SP sharing aspect of [Tyranny Control] was going to be a thing.

To be honest, I can't remember that many other details, but I do remember this. The characters that would become Ichiha and Irisa would've both fallen in love with the MC, and there were going to be some spicy threesomes/foursomes and some tasty oyakodon...

The character that would become Kokan didn't exist, and Irisa's character was working at the adventurer's guild as an instructor. This character was going to take a caring role, and she would almost be a second mother, I suppose, to the MC.

The first enemy was still a boar.

But here's a pretty interesting thing. The whole Chimera thing? Yeah, the MC was one of them, but it was more of a passing thought and an excuse to do some body horror. Originally, I didn't plan on doing anything else with it except having it act like flavor text. 

Bellerophon didn't exist. 

Too Much Edge - AKA Version 0

Yes, there was a version 0. And I'm so ashamed of it, lol. It started in media res, with the MC walking through the forest with his slave, a demon girl, and he suddenly stops and has sex with her against a tree. Then he takes his gun, shoots some boars, orders the girl to skin them, has sex with her again, then returns to an inn he's been staying at. The innkeeper says something stupid, kills the keeper, has sex again in the shower, then has the girl pleasure him while he writes his memoirs.

These memoirs would detail the basic plot and act like a little info dump. In short, the MC was sent away from the goddess that summoned them because she saw one look at his Hero Weapon (not Soul Weapon) and thought guns were just about the worst thing ever. And then she paraded him through the streets after he tried to fight back. He lost, was sent to the gallows, and burned alive while onlookers cheered for his death.

This demon girl summoned the MC, but she harbored the soul of the Demon of Tyranny, and that soul used all its energy to harbor itself inside the MC. And the point was for the MC to cause destruction and needless chaos until a meter was filled, at which the DoT would emerge and destroy the world.

So yeah...

Look, I was like super inexperienced. I started writing this right after I finished Version 0 of my other story.

It was all around a mega-giant mess.

Unable to Decide an Intro - Version 2

Okay, so the second incarnation, or third, I guess, failed to even get off the ground running because I was lost on even how to start it. I went back to the drawing board and decided to do it all over from scratch.

First of all, I needed to decide what kind of characters I wanted. And I thought I wanted a Brother - Sister Isekai Duo Adventure. Okay, so how did I try to start that?

Like a thousand different ways, lol.

A part of me wanted the MC and his sister to be very, very, very close.  I tried to come up with something that felt somewhat natural (I know, I know) and just couldn't get it down. Then I thought, hmm... Why not make them playful? So I tried to come up with a 3-4k word prologue of them living by themselves after their parents committed suicide to escape from death. In their little rundown apartment, the two would eventually satiate their needs with the other, and they would get isekaied while getting ready for the morning. 

In this version, the sister would be sacrificed to contain the soul of the DLoT, leading to the MC growing insane. He would be experimented on and turned into the world's first chimera, then escape and rage havoc upon the research facility to rescue his sister. In short, he would rescue his sister, die, his blood would enter her mouth, the DLoT would awaken using the sister's body as a catalyst, destroy the facility, and emergency teleports them away. Upon waking up, the MC would find his sister, and half of her body would look like the DLoT (Dark Lord of Tyranny). And it would be a two souls one body type of deal with each half controlling one half of the body. 

I dropped that version pretty fast.

I honestly didn't get past the theory crafting portion.

But another idea was something that almost remained. 

The school trip aspect was there, but the MC was a delinquent. His sister would be the model student, and she would be dating the bully that would turn into Tokko.

It started at the train station, getting ready to board the train. And, and this is the weird part, the personality of Quella and Mia were switched. Mia, the MC's sister, would be nice and sweet, and Quella, the snobby rich girl, would be a total bitch to everyone. 

The problem with this build was that I was having trouble just writing at the time. It was a lack of motivation. I didn't get to the stuff after being isekaied, but what I theory crafted for that remained kinda the same, with some obvious differences.

80,000 Words Just to Meet Sekh - Version 3-10

Judging by the title of this section, you can infer what the problem was, lol. 

But these versions are where the story started to take on its core shape.

I changed the train to a plane and finally decided on Shuuta's character and design. But Greggie, Keeth, and Will weren't invented. 

For the most part, Chapter 1 of these versions remained mostly the same, except for Greggie, Keeth, and Will, who were added in Version 11. 

Another difference was the length. Chapter 1 of these versions was like 7-9k words.

But characters like Tokko, Shiku, Damon, and Mia, were established and hadn't changed. Quella, Mary (The teacher), Elly, and Ami were the same. They retained their personalities. 

Meruria was the same. 

However, when it was time to open their Hero Crystals to get their Hero Weapons (Up until before release, warriors summoned by Holy Lords were Heroes of Justice, and those summoned by Dark Lords were Demonic Champions. Heroes received Hero Crystals and Hero Weapons, and Demonic Champions received Demonic Crystals and Demonic Weapons, but they were functionally the same as the published version's Soul Weapons and Soul Crystals. Just different names.)

Oh, and Holy Lords were all called Holy Lords of Justice, and Dark Lords were called Dark Lords of Chaos. Holy Lords were locked in an eternal war with the Dark Lords, but they couldn't fight directly. They had to use their Heroes and Demonic Champions to fight for them in proxy wars.

But Shuuta was still a 0-Star Hero, but he, and everyone else, received their Hero Weapons right off the bat. 

However, there wasn't a trial. Instead, Meruria threw Quella, Mary, Elly, and Ami to the side when they tried to defend and speak for Shuuta, but he was still sacrificed to the void.

But here's the kicker. 

In this version, there was no entity to turn him into a chimera. Nor was there any sort of Divine Skill of Wrath to keep him whole in the void. 

Instead, he was thrown in one second and summoned the next, but when he came to, he was in the body we're familiar with.

Yes, Shuuta had turned into a chimera with that body that resembles Mila, but she was in a different location.

And that's where the problem lay. In this version, Mila would have to travel down the very dungeon that Sekh was sealed in before the dungeon had a chance to alter itself to become an inescapable void with no exit or entrance. 

Do you recall Murag's tomes? How he detailed the trip down to the very bottom, where they sealed Sekh in the deepest, darkest, cavern located at the very end?

Mila followed in their footsteps, but the seal prevented any enemies from spawning. It was just her, surrounded by the millions of corpses of monsters that were decaying. Mila would come by the safe rooms with the tomes, that still acted as the seals, in a way, and read them, learning the story of Amos, his Heroes, and their journey to seal the Dark Lord of Tyranny.

But I got carried away and spent about 60k words on this descent alone...

So, by the time Sekh was freed...

It would've been 80k words.

And to make matters worse, the very next version shortened that by 20k words, but it added another 50 because I introduced Tilde at this point before they escaped.  Pacing is something I've always had trouble with. Sometimes, I can just get lost and write, and write, and write some more.

And It isn't a lie to say I went through about 7 versions and rewrites, cutting down more and more and getting rid of the fat while leaving the meat.

And even then... I had to trim some more. The dungeon gradually became smaller and smaller until it was a circular room with five paths extending from it, leading to the graves of Amos's warriors.  But that was still too many words, so I removed the rooms and kept the graves in the same spot.

Sekh's seal changed a handful of times. I went through different jewels/designs, like having her be encased in a giant ruby, then a giant sapphire, and then a combined crystal of both of those, to her being sliced into many different fleshy parts and having to be glued back together with Mila's blood acting as glue.

I kinda got weird with it.

And the fight against the Soul Warriors' astral forms? Originally, it was just Sekh destroying them with what was left of her power, at which she becomes Lv. 1. But it was altered to include Mila executing them with a bullet to the head.

The biggest changes were the following.

• Removal of Hero Crystals, Hero Weapons, Demonic Crystals, and Demonic Weapons into a standard Soul Weapon with Soul Crystals. Heroes and Demonic Champions were turned into Soul Warriors.
  • I think this change was definitely for the better. It simplified a lot of things. At its core, I could see the appeal of the two being two distinct factions, but the truth was that Heroes and Demonic Champions were just different names to refer to the same thing. And it's not like their true reason has changed. Soul Warriors are still used as a deterrent to prevent other Lords from waging war because they just have the potential to be so powerful. Although it's not like that helped that much. In the past, there's been a lot of wars from overeager Lords willing to let their Soul Warriors loose on a target while not caring about the consequences. 

1. The requirement to strengthen your soul before you can obtain a Soul Weapon. AKA Soul Armatization.
   1. This one was probably the biggest because it required a substantial rewrite of pretty much everything. I was able to get around it somewhat by using Reina's Mana-Linked Pistol. But before I made the change, Mila acquired a Beretta 92fs, a Springfield 1903, and a Mossberg 835 shotgun that she used. Having multiple weapons, and her favorite rifle, altered the storyline more drastically than you might think. My initial reasoning for this change was selfish, I admit. I wanted Mila to be weaker for a while longer before she obtains her Soul Weapon. And judging from how Arc 3 ends, I think you can make some safe assumptions about what's going to happen in the early-to-mid portions of Arc 4. 

• Greggie, Keeth, and Will. I was talking to a friend about my story, and he suggested adding some male friends for Shuuta to have.
  • The plan to have Mila have a harem/practice Polygamy wasn't a recent one. I wanted her to have multiple lovers, but I also wanted her to have some additional friends she would spend time with when she was Shuuta. And about him being abused by his parents and Mia and forced to endure a living hell as their slave? That was always the case from Version 4 onward. 
• Chimerism became a major deal as the primary source of Mila's growth. Since she didn't have a Soul Weapon, I needed another way for her to obtain power. 
  • Eventually, that led to what Chimerism is as we know it in the story. I cannot understate how minor it was in the earlier versions. But now it's grown to be a substantial part of the story. 

But now let's talk about Mila's adoption! Remember the events of the Monster Train Incident? When Mila woke up, that was when she was going to be adopted by Ichiha. Again, Kokan wasn't in the picture, but he was still 'around' as he was in the final, published version. 

But I figured Mila being adopted after being known for like 3 weeks, while still being a total stranger, is much too soon and wouldn't make much sense. So, I'm glad I put it off until near the end of Arc 3. It allowed them to develop more as a family.

Let's see... Hmm... As for any other changes... I can talk about Aetos. Instead of him showing Mila and Sekh a flashback of the past, he was going to participate in the talk. He and Sekh would make jabs at each other. Insulting the other with every other sentence, but I decided against that because I wanted to show off his power first.

Which led us to him showing up during the fight against the EoW and Sekh. And yes, that fight between them was always there. Once I wrote it into the story, I made very little change other than altering the EoW's appearance. Well, that's not entirely true. The latter half of the fight?

Originally, the EoW would have a fire mode and an ice mode, but I played around with replacing the ice with lightning after I already had it all written. And while it made it fun to come up with new fighting sequences, I decided against the changes and kept the ice because I wanted Sekh to overpower the EoW when it came to its elements. 

But who knows...? The stuff I had planned for a potential lightning mode may come to light in the future. 

Oh, and let's discuss Erin. She was originally going to be 5 years old during the incident, which would make her 10 years old now, but I felt that was too icky, even though Karen would do something like that. But I aged her to 10, and now she's 15-16 in the main story. I think that was a good change if I'm being honest. 

Oh, and we need to talk about Niva!

At first, I wanted her to be a necromancer. That would explain why all the damage she took was transferred to Noelia (remember her?). So, Primrose did not exist. She was a very late addition to the story. The idea was that Niva would have a natural affinity to death and decay, which would attract a Demon Lord of Necromancy, who would give her skill forcefully. Her overall childhood was still the same.

But there was a problem with this, and I can't talk about it without going into spoilers for my other story, of which the rewrite is in progress. Safe to say, necromancy plays a giant role in that story at some point, and I didn't want the two stories to share something so similar. Instead, I decided to make her a spirit summoner, added Primrose, and the rest is history.

But that's to say that Necromancy doesn't exist in the world of Chimeric Ascension. It most certainly does, and it might play a role later on in the future Arcs, but it's more important to the world of Interconnected: Spliced Souls.

For the Future!

Okay, now let's talk about what's in store for the story!

As I said, Arc 1-3 is kinda like the prologue. I didn't intend it to be about 300k words. In contrast, what I considered to be the 'Prologue' for my other story was about 1,000,000 words. So in terms of pacing, I think I am improving, lol.

But the story does ramp up from here. I'm going to try to make each Arc take about 25-30 chapters. With 4k words, or around 4k words per chapter, we should be looking at anywhere from 100-120k, plus or minus about 30k in either direction.

And in terms of my current progress in Arc 4, I am at Chapter 72, going on 73. Admittedly, a good portion of my time was spent on trying to further develop Interconnected: Spliced Souls, the rewrite of my first story, and I'm at Chapter 16 on that. It is tough to focus on two stories at once, with a potential third in the very bare basics of theory crafting. But I'll try to remain focused. I won't further split my attention more than it is and devote enough passion and care to both.

And there's still the rewrite of my first story... May 19th is going to be the 1 year anniversary of the end of Book Four, and I would like to have something posted on or before that date. I feel like I've been doing a disservice to the fans of that story.

With that said, I'm looking for at least a 2-3 week break. Maybe even a month before I start posing Arc 4. But that's not set in stone. It's entirely outlined, but the outline is quite wordy. I was also determining whether I want it to be fully written before I post, or if I'm fine with uploading as I go along. There are pros and cons to both, and I haven't decided yet. 

At the same time, I also want a chance to go back over the outline for Arcs 1-3 to reorganize them, and completely redo the overall master outline because it's a hectic mess of a bunch of stuff that's no longer relevant. 

So, I'm sorry it's going to be a bit of a delay-- at least two weeks, but maybe a month. But I can talk about Arc 4 a little bit. From the ending of Arc 3, you can be sure it'll take place in Parthina, a country to the south of Dirge that is made up of seven city-states. It's a brand new location. And it's also the home country of Ichiha. Things between her and her family haven't been good since they found out about the crime Kokan was framed for. But Erin's with them, now. She can explain the truth behind the incident and hopefully bridge the relationship.

But it's a brand new locale, with new challenges, allies, and enemies, and a new direction for the story to branch.

Ah, one more thing. I'm going to go back through what I have now and put in some of the pictures I made in the chapters instead of leaving them for Author Comments at the end. So remember the picture of Ami and Quella? Where they're sitting down on the plane? I'm going to add that to Chapter 1. And I have that futa pic of Mila, too, that I'm going to add in somewhere. 

From here on out, I'm going to have these illustrations work as insert images and put them right where they belong inside the chapter rather than at the end.  So that might take a while to properly get all organized and in the right spots. 

Oh, yeah. I finally managed to get a decent image of Erin. It's before she was adopted by Kokan and the others. And it's from when she was still working at her mother's store.  (It's not until after her mother dies that her eyes become purple, like her hair and tail. And please ignore those human ears she has. I couldn't get rid of them.)

(Also, this image will be inserted into Chapter 14. Please look there to find it!)

I am still working on Irisa, though. It is just incredibly hard to get her just right. And if I'm still unable to, I'll have to make sacrifices and just use what I have. 

And with that said, I want to showcase an image or two I have prepared for Arc 4!

They will be in the spoiler tag below. And don't worry, I won't say any context or anything. It's just the images.

Conclusion!

And that brings us to the end of the images.

So, what do you think of them? Do they make you excited for Arc 4? My favorite one would have to be the one that's of the girl relaxing in that chair. I just love the pastel-like art style, and it's super colorful. If you can, click on Load Full Resolution to see it in its highest quality!

And then there's that girl in the cowboy hat. 

And then that floating mage? Oh my, I wonder if she's a friend or foe? 

I think it's safe to say Mila's going to meet a lot of people in Arc 4, and I hope you're excited for it!

The story of Chimeric Ascension has changed dramatically from its inception, so I hope this little retrospective on what it used to be and its beginnings was a little bit interesting. 

I'm never quite sure how to end these update posts, so I'll do so by thanking you all for your gracious support! 

Thank you so much! Seriously! I look forward to reading every single comment!

But with that said, I think this is the end of this update post. It quickly spiraled out of control and became much longer than I intended, which seems to be a running theme whenever I write, lol, so I'll end it here before this Update Post becomes longer than even the final chapter.

RuggyRuggy