I am doing 30 short stories challenge to improve my writing skills. Please give me feedback if you happen to read this book. 

30 different stories that do not have any relation to one another. They may appear similar but I will try to ensure they are different from one another.

First Story: Gate of Lies
Synopsis: 
Manfred Walsh, an orphan, enlist himself into the Village Regime to change his life. 
Lowsfall Creek Village is a border village that requires a strong regime to protect its border from invading country.
Manfred having joined the Village Regime is thrown into the chaos of war. Will Manfred ever survive the war despite almost being a cannon fodder level?

"Will you still say yes if I ask you to go out with me."
He stared at me with those beautiful hazel eyes. He squinted, his eyebrows were slightly creased. "Define go out."
I was a bit surprised. "Uhmm.. just go out?"
"Like a date?" 
"Yeah?"
"How many?" 
"What?" 
"How many dates?"
Okay. That was unexpected. I was just hoping for one date and let everything run it's course. "Seven?"

 

It's hard for me to write this. I'm sorry that there won't be an upload today. I spent the day with my daughter and ex. After my daughters ballet performance, she and I spent time together in the city. We made love then I cooked some sort of tortilla pie recipe from HelloFresh delivery service. I cooked it from scratch. Then it was 9:30 by then, we ended up getting hooked on the tv show Kingdom- a korean pre-apocalypse zombie tv show on Netflix. Which brought many inspirations, a few for my novel and a lot for a zombie themed story, which is probably my strongest point. Though I'm only doing one novel and finishing season 1 of it.

I plan on continuing my dream job and making a marketing company. 

I'm thinking of introducing rest day every week. 

Inspiration day?

"You're trying to use that day to write a double uploadnarent you? You cheeky bastard"

Hehehe

But for now we'll do what I call a no research challenge. My chapters can be long because of my intent on realism and double checking the facts. However it can also be limiting my creativity and slow my writing time.

For this challenge I will only do light fact checks. It'll be up to my imagination rather than researching too much.

So let's see how we go!

Once again thanks so much for your patience and understanding.

An alien parasite inside a cat ambushes Hikaru. Unbeknownst to it, he's a psychopath who killed his mother and can reverse-hack the parasitic cells, taking its body and powers for himself. 

Evolving from absorbing other living organisms, he begins changing as he becomes sensitive to emotions. Ironically, an alien made him more human than ever. 

Dragged into an ever-growing war between parasites and humans, will Hikaru become the dark hero humanity needs? Or will he fulfill his dream of world domination?

At the same time, the Master System and its power are in peril as a result of Hikaru's actions. A simple nobody named Elijah reincarnates with the Hero System and is sent back in time to restore order to the universe.

Read between the Dark and light chapters of Parazyte, explore the Naruto and Sasuke type dynamic of the two characters, the vast world-building and in-depth character development with rich side characters (sprinkled with 2D characters for fun). 

Warning: Book recommended for 18+. Realistic violence and death is the theme. Hero chapters are sometimes light-hearted but often contain sad realities.

The world shakes under their overwhelming power. The fate of the world depends on who becomes a God first. 

Readers from a parallel universe can affect the storyline with their quantum tremors.

The shout out for this poem goes to,chiluba there is no emotional attachment,it was simply a challenge made to me to write a poem in 30 min using this three keywords,model,sleep,love.
But I was kind of thinking of girl 2 when writing it so shout out to girl 2as well
The day i knew I was in love,was when I couldn't sleep because reality was finally better than my dreams 

From that day My love for you become a journey ;
Starting at forever ;
And ending at never.
But what will happen when you finally fall asleep but this time it's forever,Wil you model past me in my dreams wearing nothing but your seductive smile just like the first time we met,making me think about you 68 hrs a day thats like 48 days a week,making sure you are my only role mode,till I fall asleep and this time it's forever too,

By @john mukuwa 
Instagram :@mukuwajohn

Tell me what you think in the comment section below👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽and don't forget to vote 🌟 🌟 🌟 😁😁thank you

At times,people say love is the best feeling in the world,especially when you experience it with someone meant for you,but that can't be more further from the truth.

you see,I have found love 600 times now,but it all ends in regret,i got to learn that love is just a brief moment of bliss.

I should have known better than to believe in something that stutter's whenever it gets nervous,something controlled by a Little naked peace of shit with a bow and arrow in his hand.

shout outs
So for this book I'll be doily ng shout outs to the people who inspired me to right this poems and
The first shout out goes to the first and second loves of my life 
Girl 1
And Girl 2 
HAhaha,I won't be mentioning any names.

             AUTHORS NOTE
Finally!!!,I now get to publish my second book,and this one is different,it is a compilation of  some of the poems I wrote due to some of the experiences I had from two very special people the first and second love of my life and some few other friends as well,so enjoy 
And get a first class ticket to the shity love life of mine.
So let's begin.

It is the twenty-second of February, the Year 2021. I have started this story today, because I failed the 100 words every day challenge, I will actually punish myself If I fail. I will probably fail. I will fail because 1000 is a lot of words. If you try to write 1000 words, you either need to type quick, or spend at least 30 minutes just typing, which isn't really fun if you are just reporting about your day.
The block above, for example, is 80 words, I took 1 minute to write that, mathematically, I will need at least 12,5 minutes just to write the thousand words.
As you might have noticed, I will write everything about a certain topic in one tile without pressing enter, but if it isn't directly related to that, I will press enter.
You might also notice that I like commas, which is not true, I love commas.
Anyway, I would definitely not fail the 100 word challenge again, because everything above is 155 words, and I wrote some other stories, if you can call them that, so I will at least be able to write hundreds of words, which might sound impressive, but really isn't. Normal chapters in actual novels have a length of 1500-6000 words typically, with 2500 being especially liked.
I also have a *******, which I will not name till later in the days, because I don't want to search for the link right now. I also write on Royal Road which I somewhat recommend, because the community normally isn't toxic, they just like GameLit and LitRPG and System stuff, which isn't necessarily bad, they are just somewhat low quality normally. They do have a novel called Mother of Learning which is over 1 million words, and is top quality, would recommend. They have some wonderful stories, some bad ones, and some that just started. Scribblehub also exists, but I don't write on the website, they too have some good and bad one.
I only read novels that are 100k in words, just because I like long and mostly finished stuff, I think everyone prefers a good story, with a high amount of words where none are superfluous, but most stories simply don't have that, they either fill their word count, or have a low one.
My opinion about what constitutes as Fanfiction and what counts as Original is really simple, Fanfiction is something which uses specific characters of a story, or specific buildings, I don't consider character traits as fanfiction, but if someone simply copies a character, then that's fanfiction. I don't consider concepts as fanfiction too, If someone uses a magical world, and the other uses the same one, it isn't really fanfiction, because MAGICAL WORLD is a cliche and not really original.
As a tiny little reminder, the words above amount to 466, which is quite a lot considering I am terrible at writing a lot. To be fair, I do concentrate on writing currently and am not hearing any music or have any distraction, which might help with talking about stuff.  
I, like most people, am unfit because I do not exercise, I know I should, it makes the brain more active, let's you lose weight, but my inner pig simply is stronger, I also happen to like instant gratification which is why I don't train, If I can't see results in under 5 days, I simply am disinterested or simply think I am doing something wrong. You know what, Im gonna start to exercise, I will document my progress in this uh... Blog, I suppose.
Do any of you know about the movie: I care a lot. I personally found the lady's heinous and really disgusting, which the makers wanted to. I even closed Netflix for about an hour simply because I felt ashamed to see them, which is the main reason I don't watch a lot of dramas or similar and simply read, If I watch something, I associate with it more than I would with writing.
I am also a connoisseur of old memes, not because new ones aren't funny, but simply because I grew up with older ones.
If you ask me, if everyone can write, I would say yes, but I wouldn't say that everyone should, not because of Mary Sue's or Gary Stu's because everyone likes a bit of overpower-ness, no, simply because most don't have the patience and will feel discouraged and then amazing stories will simply be on hiatus forever.
I like Fork this Life! I find it funny, but it also is one of those system novels that everyone just likes, because it gives viewers a sense of progress, that the main character is developing, which normally just hides the missing plot. I can't remember enough to say that it definitely was that, but I think it was.
I wonder if I should put something in the auxiliary volume, I mean, a brief introduction to how this works? Or the fact that I love commas, which you might have noticed, because I use them a lot. I use commas because I am typing what I think, and if I don't put commas, It will look ugly, dumb and most importantly my brain thinks like that, in sentences with commas, so it fits.
Only another 115 words to go, which makes me remind you, those are words, not letter, I am unsure how many letters I have wrote and I am not competent enough to check via Office.
Apparently many people write with Office, which is nice and all, it has a grammar checker and stuff, pretty much everything you need to write, but I actually use the inbuilt Writing Software from Webnovel, simply because I won't need to adjust anything to fit the website.
I also use ProWritingAid to check my grammar, because, while I might not make many mistakes, I do still make some.
This sentence will use the 10 words to complete the challenge.

I will write [a reasonable amount] of words every day.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
If it shows that it got uploaded within the first 7 hours of the day after it was supposed to come out, it's still the previous day for me. It is simply a time-zone problem.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Am currently unable to write due to reasons.

A treasure chest had to be among the better prospects of things that could fall out of a woman's vagina…
That's why Ben was looking forward to opening it. Touching its cold slick metallic surface, he admired how the small light blue chest gleamed, its shininess making it look more valuable...
[Booty Chest(Consumable, Fine) x1 - Guaranteed to drop one object of the associated quality]
The system explained a chest like this would drop from every woman the first time Ben had sex with her. The tier depended on the girl, but the system wouldn't give any information on how it evaluated that.
'So, Penelope was only fine quality… If someone asked me to rate her, I'd give her an 8.5, but it seems the system's standards are higher than mine… I'm curious how it appraises girls, but I doubt I'll learn that any time soon. The tier evaluation should be a hidden function…'
He remembered that the reboot only unlocked primary functions. Although he didn't know what those included yet, the word primary hinted at the existence of more advanced ones. 'I'm guessing there'll be a rating system later…yea, that'll definitely be one of the tropes…'
Despite having already seen rares and epics, Ben was still eager to open the chest. "Fine can still produce many great things. The lucky cloves were fine tier and they saved my life. There's also the positive that I won't have to worry about the large chance of getting uncommons or worse..." After he finished comforting himself because the system didn't judge the first girl he slept with as legendary...Ben pulled back the lid of the chest…
Like the mystery boxes, a light blue radiance filled the room…
A few seconds later, he was gazing down at a rectangular yellow paper with esoteric writing…
[Talisman of Opportunity(Consumable, Fine) x1 - Use to create a high chance of encountering one opportunity to increase stats. Lasts 24 hours. If used while a Stat Growth Multiplier is active, the opportunity will associate with the Multiplier's targeted stat]
'A good thing!' Ben's eyes lit up. This would be very helpful if he used a Stat Growth Multiplier, and even more so if the targeted stat wasn't a simple one to develop. He stored the talisman away and continued to the next thing—challenges.
First, he observed that he received another netori challenge.
[Special Challenge: Booty Burglar- Steal a woman from another male, ending their relationship. Target: Penelope]
[Reward: Mid Level Mystery Box]
[Punishment: None]
He already had an active one for Lia, but since Lia wasn't answering his calls or texts, there wasn't anything he could do about it at the moment. Penelope, however, now she had potential…
The other thing Ben noticed was the lack of a new weekly challenge. The system explained that those were a perk of the Tutorial stage and would no longer exist. In their place, Ben would now receive monthly challenges, except they wouldn't be as virgin-friendly. She summarized the current challenge to show him what she meant.
[You have one month to seduce four women or you will shorten]
"…Shorten? That's not good, I'm already so short. It would be awful if I lost even more height." Ben frowned as he opened his challenges screen to see the exact description.
[Monthly Challenge: Four-Score and Two Inches Ago - Seduce four women within one month]
'Weird name…'
[Reward: Stat Point(Random) x1]
Ben smiled. 'Although the challenge is much harder, at least I have a way to continue earning stat points.'
[Remaining time: 30/30 days]
[Punishment: Penis shortened by 2 inches]
…
His smile evaporated once he understood what she meant by shorten…
When Ben realized the sinister nature of this punishment, he believed it was much worse than reducing his height…
In defiance to the oppression of the system, he shot up off the bed. "Not my little brother! Don't you dare threaten my family! I volunteer as tribute!"
…
Ben continued to yell but the punishment didn't change. She didn't care if his random weekend hunting archery could become comparable to a top-level Mongolian horseman after only 3 days of training…
She preferred fresh meat...and didn't mind ridiculous plot holes as long as people only noticed them after spending their money...
When Ben understood he couldn't change it, he sighed. Then he became determined to complete this challenge no matter what. He wasn't willing to take such a loss. He worked too hard to get to this point, getting a random lucky drop of a pill that increased penis size…
It would be a shame if Ben wasted so much of his blood, sweat, and tip…
He was not at all interested in donating to the system's tip jar…
The last thing on the screen was the Novice Welcome challenge that almost killed him. He only managed to complete it at the last second and was now looking forward to seeing what reward he would get for such an arduous task.
[Congratulations! You've completed the Novice Welcome Challenge - Seduce a woman within one month or die]
[Reward: Unlocking of primary functions(Store authorizations, Flag System). Granting of store purchase authorization for Low Level Stat Growth Multiplier]
[Completion status: 1/1]
[Activating reward]
[System reboot initiated]
[System reboot completed]
[Reward active]
Ben read through the notifications he received when the system shut down for a day. When he reached the reward description, he grinned like a fool. 'This is great!'
He knew what Stat Growth Multipliers were capable of! These were items that would help him skyrocket in stat growth! If he was only 30% certain to complete the death challenge before, he was now at least 35% certain!
The problem with the multipliers before was that besides a few challenges, getting them depended on the luck of the mystery boxes. Now, it seemed he'd be able to buy them!
Ben hurried to open the store page. There, he discovered two new items.
Low Level Stat Growth Multiplier(Consumable, Fine, Random): 2000 points
Low Level Stat Growth Multiplier(Consumable, Fine, Choose Stat): 5000 points
Although the prices were high, Ben knew how powerful these items were. They were worth it. 'Looks like I can choose the stat but it'll cost more than double…'
Seeing this, he generated some initial plans, but first, there was one last thing to check. 'Before I make any decision, I should try to understand everything about how the system changed.' There was still another unlocked primary function that Ben hadn't explored—Flag System…
He had no idea what that referred to, but he was about to find out.


"With this system, I'll become the world's greatest seducer! If it doesn't kill me first..." I was a nobody, a short fatty Otaku. Then, a girl's voice popped into my head: [Seduce a woman within a month or die.]
"What the hell...how? I'm an 18-year-old virgin..."
[7+ looks only. No slam donkeys.]
"You’re forcing me to die!” 

Facing annihilation, I saw no choice but to join the international community of pick up artists, and from that day forward, my boring student life became filled with craziness and womanizing. I just had one problem: "Why are all these guys insane?!?"

Pick Up Artist: One who uses specialized tactics to seduce women.

Additional Tags: weak to strong, supernatural, action, fantasy, funny, dungeon, face smacking, bloodlines, modern, harem, r-18, litrpg,magic, cultivation, martial arts, shameless protagonist, parody, satire, succubus, netori, adult, ecchi, sex, hidden gem, drama, wuxia, adventure, mature, school life, seinen, princess, billionaire, werewolves, xuanhuan, erotic, erotica, romance, revenge, polygamy, psychological, r18, 18, 18+, smut, hentai, comedy, light novel, alchemy, system.

*No Netorare or Yuri.

*If you dislike harem, I guarantee this one will be different and become the best harem you've read on WN. There are colorful characters, no bad romance, and no annoying female conflicts driving the plot.

*Every volume so far has been even better than the prior one.

*If you're wary of reading originals, I assure you that I'm a native English speaker and you'll find the writing here to be at a print professional standard. If I said this story had the 2nd best grammar on Webnovel, no author or translator would dare say theirs had the 1st.

*If you doubt any of the above, please read the hundreds of 5-star reviews. Some originals may have more reviews because they're older or get more marketing from Webnovel, but I doubt they have more glowing 5-star reviews.

RELEASE SCHEDULE: 1 new chapter posted every day by 12 pm Est/12 am GMT+8. Bonus chapters don't have a set time, but if there are some pending, on per day is posted for 2 chaps/day total.

Join the largest Webnovel Discord of 2500+ readers for character art and more: https://discord.gg/VSKzgzV8J9  (case-sensitive)

If you'd like to make a Paypal donation to support the cultural cause of the novel and author: https://bit.ly/3lU4xD1

At House of Zeus

Because of the tiring treadmill challenge, Zeus decided to postpone the night party for the CEOs last night which everyone had agreed.

"What are you doing? Why are you sharing our food with him?" Bernard exclaimed when he saw Shawn put some vegetable dish in a bowl and then gave it to Denver.

Dean grinned and said, "Don't be a killjoy flower boy. Can't you see our Bro is consistent? That's the persistent spirit of a man who is trying to get the approval of his in-laws."

"Have you ever been in love flower boy?" Ryu interrupted as he got more meat and vegetables Dean cooked for them.

Bernard almost choked on Ryu's question that made Shawn laugh.

He gave vegetables to Denver since his group was only eating meat the whole time, literally fried or boiled meats only. Gaby did not picked any vegetables for the stocking.

Zeus: "It's your second warning Shawn. I will only give you 3 warnings and if you still break any of my rules… Punishment will come your way…"

Bernard shook his head because Shawn seemed to not care at all.

Dean noticed Bernard's expression so he said with a wicked smile, "You know flower boy that's the power of love. You're willing to sacrifice yourself and give all you've got for the person you love…"

"Stop! For real??? Oh please Dean, you're creeping me out!" Bernard cried out and he saw Dean laughed at him.

Dean was intentionally bullying him. 

"So flower boy tell us, have you been in love?" Dean asked, still grinning.

"Of course I have! I only love one woman since childhood and she was snatched before I even start approaching her!" Bernard hissed.

"Oh really? Such a snail… Hmm, why don't you tell us more about it and let's see what I can do to help you." Dean said teasingly but suddenly paused for a while.

"Oh but before you tell us, I have a love story… a real love story I want to share. Then tell me if this will become a hit if we try to make a movie based on it." Dean suddenly blurted out of nowhere.

Xian who heard the conversation interrupted and said, "Let me hear it too and I'll tell you my opinion, if it can be a big movie hit or not."

The rest of the CEOs started to show their interest too.

Zeus: "All the housemates are informed that your next challenge will be an interesting one and all the rules and guidelines related to that challenge are kept in the store room. One of you please go and get it. Along with the rules you also have three sets of notebooks and pens, one for each team, that are to be used for only writing for the challenge. The task looks simple but I am sure it wouldn't be as simple when you start on it."

Zeus: "It would be an interesting task as it will show your creativity and I hope you all enjoy this task especially the person who talks too much inside my house."

All housemates turned their heads to Dean and the latter raised an eyebrow.

"What? I love to exercise my freedom of speech. You should all thank me since Zeus said it's a very interesting task." Dean responded defensively that made Bernard chuckle.

"So defensive and so guilty…" Bernard muttered mockingly.

Luke entered the living area with the rules book and notebooks and pens that he got from the store room.

Zeus: "So the task is each team will write a good story it could be based on real life or it could be just a fiction and tell that story in front of all the teammates. We will have an audience poll to decide which story would be best fit for a movie. It doesn't matter whatever genre you pick but give it a title. Whichever story won will be given a chance to be produced into a movie under Cooper Entertainment with the approval of Mr. Bernard Cooper of course and the winning group will win great reward. The winning team will be given a day off."


"Day off?" Murmured by the housemates.

Zeus: "Yes, a day-off where you can ask anything you wish for as long as I'm able to grant it then I will."

"Going out of your house!" Shawn, Ryu and Dean answered in chorus.

They heard Zeus' laughter…

Other housemates agreed to grant the winner a day out from the House of Zeus.

Zeus: "Alright then… A day off out of my house for the winning team. Each story should be of a duration of 15 to 20 minutes with no less or more than that. Because I will minus 30% from the total votes should the story is lesser or more than 15 to 20 minutes. The story will also be judged on the dialogues written and spoken, the plot, the originality as well as how well it is actually narrated."

"Before we start remove all the visible clocks in the living area. Why? Because one of the team will tell the story while the other three housemates will count the time manually to become an alarm clock once your teammate reaches 15 to 20 minutes time allowance for the story and you have to stop him, else the vote deduction will take place."


Dean's shoulders dropped and said, "What a stingy Zeus. But at least I will have the chance to tell a story, a great story none has ever told..."

"Yeah, it's your moment and I'm pretty sure Ryu and Shawn will be a clock like me since amongst us you are going to be the storyteller." Bernard commented sarcastically.

"I'll take your sarcastic words as a compliment instead flower boy. I'm in a good mood so listen well." Dean said then shifted his look to Ryu.

"Big Bro, I will tell the story of Auntie Cecile which is not a secret to us," Dean said in a voice enough for Shawn to hear.

"It's okay Dean. Mom won't mind. It's okay if we lose in this round, what matters is that you give justice to mom's real life story, not missing a single detail… She is a brave woman and her life must be an example for many young girls to overcome their worst times and live a life with full of hope." Ryu replied in full conviction.

This was the moment they've been waiting for. He should not miss a single detail.

This was their plan A and it was decided that Dean should tell the story because he was afraid to get emotional and ruin everything in case he be the one to narrate his mom's tragic story.

Zeus: "Alright, you all proceed in the living room and get ready, in thirty minutes we will start."

Untouchables team picked number 1 in the draw so they will have to do the 'Tell Me Your Story' challenge first.

"Don't distract me while I do a summary on this story." Ryu said seriously as he began to outline and write the important details that Dean must not forget to narrate.

After hours of writing...

Zeus: "Housemates are you ready? Dean sit in the center couch and tell us the story your team has decided to share."

Dean began with his introduction and said, "alright this story which I will narrate is based on the real life story of my Uncle and Auntie, my Big Bro's parents. Me and Big Bro Ryu decided to entitle it as -Waiting For You-"

He let out a deep sigh, looked at Ryu then at Shawn where he paused and began to narrate everything…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Support the author by donating at:
paypal.me/eustoma 
OR 
https://ko-fi.com/eustoma

Kindly read this novel at WEBNOVEL site only. Link:
https://www.webnovel.com/book/12591236105024705/The-CEO-Who-Hates-Me

“He knew he should not go easy on her, but his heart was challenging his mind…”
(Warning: Novel is r-18 with strong mature content but NO rape and violence!)

****
Arya Tan, a beautiful, young, wannabe actress, was in a difficult situation that her only option was to agree on a deal offered to her to save her loved ones' lives. The deal was to make the aloof man named Ryu Ken fall in love with her, only to leave him heartbroken and devastated afterward. Would she succeed, and if she did, would she be able to escape Ryu’s wrath? 

Ryu Ken, a ruthless CEO who never gave a second glance to any woman how-much-ever beautiful she was, gave his heart to one woman. And despite his warnings, the woman broke his heart and left him. So he vowed to find her and punish her as brutally as he could. But could he really punish her when deep in his heart it was still her he longed to be? Could love overcome the hate buried in his heart?

======
Excerpt:

"Leaving already? You seem to be in such a rush to talk to me. Why don't you spill it out now?"

Stunned, Arya wondered if she was hallucinating. The voice was very familiar. The man's arm encircled her waist, abruptly pulled her towards him. He then leaned forward and scornfully whispered into her ear, "Aren't you here to negotiate? I was hoping you had a better offer."

She tilted her head to look up at the rude man and was left open-mouthed looking at a familiar face. She was shocked but mumbled, "Ryu?"

Ryu smirked and stared at Arya's slightly opened lips and said, "Did you miss me? How about this?"

Before Arya could utter another word, Ryu captured her lips abruptly and kissed her roughly.

==========
Author's Note:

Hope you enjoy reading this ORIGINAL novel of mine (It's absolutely a happy ending! Author hates the sad endings!). 

Many thanks in advance for your support.

With Lots of Love,
EUSTOMA_reyna

Other Books: (www.linktr.ee/eustoma_reyna)
The General Who Hates Me (completed)
The Doctor Who LOVES Me (completed)
The Law of Attraction (completed)
Kiss Me Not (in writing)

The Untamed: Game of Hearts (in writing)
The Crown's Entrapment (in writing)

contact me at:
Discord Link:
https://discord.gg/PNGkTUy
Instagram: eustoma_reyna
Facebook Page: @eustoma.reyna

The book cover is mine, art created by laylee_hiu (instagram)

Hey everyone! We are past the 50 chapters mark, and I think it is time for an author's thought chapter!
As usual, don't worry, the next story chapter is coming right after.

Some of you may, or may not, know that Rebuilding the Sun Kingdom was rebooted a few months back. I wanted to flesh out some characters, fix some of my mistakes, change the pace of the story as well as many of the events, basically I wanted to make of RSK a more engaging story.

If you are curious about the old story, you can find the old chapters here : https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6ulmkzckkl5zc81/AAD_6WJUYqOpN5GSTThBrJp5a?dl=0

If you have questions don't hesitate to ask them in the comments, I will not answer here but I will make another Author's Thoughts chapter later on, where I will list and answer everything I can.

******* ******* ******* ******* ******* *******

As some may know (from my previous posts) I did not just jump in and say "let's scratch everything and start from zero". I first started improving character dialogues and descriptions, I rewrote a few events and it quickly became obvious that the changes were too much for me to just edit past chapters without doing a proper reboot. As readers would miss important changes and be confused by their consequences. And so I decided to start over which would, in turn, allow me to do even bigger changes (more on that later). 
But I did not want to just come back to old chapters and just edit out/in what I wanted. I felt that this had to be a true rewrite and so I had to start from scratch and rewrite every single word of every single chapters even if I was describing the same events. This meant starting from a blank page and writing the chapter. This gave me more freedom and since I didn't have to worry about what was already written the changes were more natural. I also felt it was more honest for my viewers.

* * *

And so my first challenge, after deciding to reboot, was what to do with the first (ten or so) chapters. I was fully aware that many readers would be unhappy with the reboot, and the first chapters would not help as they would not be changed much.
Those chapters are, after all, the foundation of the story as well as the reason I started to write RSK. Messing too much with those would mean writing a completely different story. They were also very close to what I wanted as I had spent weeks preparing them.
Luckily I still had some things to fix for the story to flow more naturally, and some extra details to add to explain what was happening better. 
This was, for example, the legend of the Human Goddess, details on how the king was chosen, what the royal garments meant and so on. The goal was to add legitimacy to Chris' status. This is not enough to guarantee a prosperous and long reign for Chris, but I believe, as I like to say, that it is enough for the people to follow the 'clothes' right now, and perhaps later follow the man himself. That is when Chris has proven himself. 

But I still wanted to go past the beginning quickly, as I had tons of new stuff to share. This lead me to prepare a stack of chapters before announcing my return with the reboot. And so I wrote 30 chapters in secret, which took me two full months of work. This allowed me to publish them at a rate of 2 every day for 3 whole weeks. (I continued writing every day as I was publishing them, which allowed me to stretch that release spree to a little more than 3 weeks.)

Strangely, the first ten or so chapters, took me longer than the next 10. I did not have much to change, but every change was much harder to do. Because they would impact events much later in the story. 
For example, we are still not at Chris' coronation. We are probably a hundred or so chapter from that, but I still have most of it ready, and I had many (cool) changes done because of the new details I added early on (legend of dawn, royal garments, and so on).

** ** **

My second challenge was obvious, but it was to re-work the story events, by making them more appealing but also by moving them in the timeline and sometimes completely removing them.
This was one of the most complicated aspect of the rewrite for me. As moving around the events can have cascading effects in the story line. Like how and where characters are introduced or what consequences this change will have in future events.

This is because the author is (or should be) trapped by his own work (in a good way). Bad writers just don't care and will write anything they want even if it goes against a character's personality or against the world itself. While the others will notice that their previous words open and restrict the world they are creating.
Let's take a very simple and non-spoilery example : Rinat (the chief carpenter). She is a strong person, she is very talented in carpentry, one of the most important profession in that era and she is also very liked by everyone. In the original draft she was introduced in Brine City, which made no sense at all. If she was from Five Cave Village, how could Chris not even hear about her before then? And so I moved her introduction to the FCV arc. This seems simple enough. But now I had to explain why there were so few horse-drawn carts in the village and why they were in such a bad shape. They have an awesome carpenter around, how is that possible?! 
This is a little detail, but it's the kind of things I had to pay attention to, for every single change made in the story.
I'd say, this troubled me for most of the chapters between 10 and 40. Those chapters were diverging more and more from the old draft, but there was still plenty of things in common to which I had to pay attention to.

*** *** ***

This lead me to my third challenge, which kind of sneaked up on me.
I soon noticed that I had trouble remembering to which draft some of the small details belonged to. These were not crucial to the story and were just there to flesh out the characters. But since they were not crucial, they could be placed pretty much anywhere in the story without much consequence. They just helped you understand more the character or discover a bit more about the world. 
Luckily my earlier decision to rewrite every single word in the novel instead of editing chapters one by one helped me out quite a bit there. 
But there were still a few times where I forgot I mentioned an aspect of a character and introduced it later in the story, luckily, LtBeefy my editor, caught these for me :).

**** **** ****

And my current major challenge. We are closing in to chapter 67 of the old draft, (the attack on the Kunalls camp), but there has been so many changes (many new characters, new potential antagonist like the prince, many events removed or added, PoV chapters, new factions introduced like the elves and so on) that the story is now very different to what it was.

But there are also many things from the old draft that I was have not written about that I plan to bring back. And it's really tough for me to mix that completely new content with the 'old' one.

An example would be Carl, one of the scouts under Titus.
In the old draft he was introduced after Chris had 'published' his tutorial on how to recruit people. "Suckering them in - 101". Carl appeared as a simple pure man, who followed his king's order and was completely convinced by their efficiency. After all he had managed to recruit a refugee camp thanks to these very words.
But in the current story, Carl is a very active man who has done much for Chris, he was there when they found the necromancer cave, he was the leader of the expedition to find a spot for Brine City, and he might have found a potential romance doing so.
It is now much harder for me to write about him taking advantage of Chris' tutorial on recruiting to 'sucker in' a group of refugee. After all he has recruited many groups of refugees so far, it wouldn't be interesting to just see him doing it again with a new technique particularly if it's just with a random group of refugees. it would be a "it worked great before, so what's the point?" moment.
So there must be a special reason for him to pull out the 101 techniques. And as it turns out, he still has one group that refused him, the one his potential romance interest is part of. And so the story, logically, pushes me towards this.  (See? The author writes the story, but the story also shackles the author). But now I have more parameters limiting me, and the event is now harder to write.

And that's where I am at, which explains (partially) the delays for each chapter. I might not write every day right now, as I lack time. But I am thinking every day of new stuff to add to the story. I have a 3 pages long list of events saved on a text file on my desktop, each event taking a single line at most. So I have plenty of stories to tell. 
Do not worry if the updates are spaced out lately, you will always have a chapter released soon :). 

***** ***** ***** *****

And finally, I was asked previously if I have an end planned for the story.
And the answer is "Yes". I already know how to end the story. I have not written the chapter yet because the characters and the world will likely change outside of what I am envisioning right now. But the main script is done, and I am in love with it and can't wait to share it.

And I do plan to end the story logically and not stretch things out. I will never add filler arcs and chapters and will always only write because it's either necessary or fun. 
I've got an ending planned  and I want to share it. Not delay it to the 22th century:). 

That's all for this chapter's on my thoughts and challenges. I hope you enjoyed it. The next chapter will be published in a few clicks!

Chris, our hero, wakes up in a world where different races are fighting for supremacy. Humanity is in a tough spot as the humans are now scattered in the ruins of their kingdom. Cities are no more, armies are long defeated and survivors are hunted.

The first map revealed to the MC: goo.gl/v4ACBU
More maps are revealed as the story progresses.

I had woken up at approximately 6:30. Actually, if you count the time I woke up to turn off my alarm at 3:00 and my subsequent momentary awakenings that went by like a flash, I woke up many times. Yet now it's 6:37, so who cares. I care, because if it wasn't for that REM sleep I wouldn't have slept so well, and seen her my sweetheart.

 I can't remember much of anything, all I remember is that there were 4 girls with me on a snowy mountain. It was for some sort of school challenge where we had to get back to school the fastest after investigating a small dome on the mountain, The dome was completely metallic, but because we knew it was being held by the school, nobody was worried. 

So the girls and I along with everyone else who was able to keep up it was along the hike up the mountain entered the dome. It was completely dark, but we were able to sense the way to the other side of the dome, perhaps due to a ringing coming from over there, maybe a bell? We trudged along, hoping we could get home quickly and get out of our fluffy gear. 

Everyone tried to stick together, although a few people got lost inside the dome. We called to them, telling them to follow our voices when suddenly a loud bang came from near the exit we were searching for. At that moment, I recalled that the challenge of investigating the dome was meant to be a challenge of wit, and as we are unable to see anything going on, it would be right to presume we couldn't use our wit in such a situation.

 We weren't even given flashlights  so I figured I needed to escape quickly from the box, in hopes to figure whatever was going on from the outside, then I grasped a blue haired girl's arm from among the four called out "We need to go back to the entrance!" and started to run. Strangely she followed obediently, asking no questions, but giving a noise of surprise

 I don't remember what happened to everyone else there, as I was partially fueled by fear and an intense passion to win the game. After exiting, we once more the glimmering white landscape again. Yet this time on the slope to the dome, there was a snowmobile seating there. Oh, and I saw far off in the distance that the other students had taken a gondola up the mountain...

i brought her along to the snowmobile, where there was a person standing beside it. His face was completely impassive but he said, "Oh so you finished investigating the dome?"

I was about to say no when I realized "I did investigate the dome, I know there was a loud bang, I know it was gigantic, and I know it was dark on the inside! That's an investigation! Not like I have to actually solve anything, or they would have told us to solve the mystery of the dungeon!"

"Yes, we're done," The blue haired female said beside me, jogging me from my day-dreaming. At that moment it seems my memories became suddenly blurry and all I remember after that is leaving school with her beside me.

She had long navy blue hair, and a part of it tied in a ponytail with a red hair clip. She seemed to shine more gallantly than the skin with her pale skin complexion seemingly accentuating the light that came off of her. Her blue eyes seemed to see right through me, although she started to get nervous for some odd reason.

She wore the school's uniform, with white long socks and brownish red shoes and a white shirt. I had to say it.

"Shoko?"
"Y-Yes?" She kept staring down, perhaps not wanting to meet my eyes. Sadly I was so mesmerized by her, I couldn't pull her head off before saying, "Shoko I love you."

She didn't look at me, but I could tell by her reddening complexion she could hear me. She clasped my hand at that moment which I had left out, still not looking at me directly.

Then suddenly Shoko looked me dead in my eyes with a brilliant smile-

I woke up. I got out of bed, ended up at my laptop, writing my daily schedule into a word document. I even missed the prayer I should have done to continue acting spitefully against Him. 

Oh why can't I have a sweetheart like her?

I wanted to dramatize something extremely boring.

So how do you exactly change your life for the better? The answer is simple: step by step, by implementing small, 5-minute habits that will make you progress towards your goals. You might be tempted to think than you can't change anything with just 5 minutes a day but if you try you will be surprised with how much you've done in one year with just 5 minutes a day. Think about it: 5 minutes a day over the course of a year equates to over 30 hours, which is enough to read 3 books or to write one. I'm sure you can think of a lot of other useful things that you can do in 30 hours. 
What is a habit?

Habits are essentially routines. They can be good or bad, constructive or destructive. Some examples of constructive habits include: reading, meditating, sleeping well/getting enough sleep, exercising and so on. Some examples of bad habits include: smoking, drinking alcohol, sleep deprivation and so on. Think for a minute about the things you are doing on a day to day basis, basically, about your daily routine. Are your habits good or bad? Are they useful for you or they are slowly killing you? If you are not sure whether a habit is good or bad analyze it carefully. Ask yourself: is it making me healthier or happier, is it making my life better overall? If the habit does not seem to have any benefits look for its disadvantages and you will most probably find the answer.
Why do habits work? Because once a habit is established you no longer have the mental resistance that comes with decision making. You no longer have to think about whether you want to do something or not. Once you've established a habit it becomes part of your routine, a thing that you are doing not something that you want to be doing. 

How does a habit form?

Our brain loves habits and routines. It's because decision making drains its energy. That means that we are more likely to do something we have been doing for the past couple of months or years than something else because when a habit is formed our brain goes on autopilot. It knows what we should do next without consuming any energy. But it is possible to break an old habit and form a new one. You just need to approach breaking a habit the correct way. I will cover this topic later in the book. So how do you build a new habit? Let's say that you want to start exercising and you decided that you want to exercise an hour a day. That is good but it's not going to work. You will be excited for the first week or two but after that will come a day when you will not feel like exercising or just a day when you do not have the time. Days will turn into weeks and there it goes your new habit. You need to start small. You need to set yourself a task so easy to complete that you could be able to complete it even before starting to think about it. For example you can say to yourself that you are going to exercise two minutes a day. It is an easy task and you can't complain about not having the time to do it. You can always do more than two minutes if you want but if you don't want to you can just do the minimum of two minutes and you are going to fell more accomplished. Someone said: "I do not fear the man that trained punching 10000 times in one day but the man that trained punching once a day for 10000 days". Results come with time and you need to be patient about it. As I am writing this book I did not planned on writing entire chapters in one day. I would feel overwhelmed by the giant task I set to myself and decide not to write even a single word just because I can't do what I proposed to myself. Instead of writing for 5 minutes I would decide to not write at all just because I would not be able to write for an hour or two. Instead of doing that I decided to write a paragraph or phrase each and every day. Anything that comes to my mind would do. It does not be perfect the first time because I can come back and change it later. After all something is always better that nothing.
Let's say you have an upcoming exam in a month and you have to learn 30 pages. What does the majority do? Instead of learning one page a day (something that would take about 15 to 30 minutes depending on the content) they procrastinate. They feel this safety in the fact that the exam is still a months away. And there it comes the last week: they begin to feel stressed but they still don't begin to study and they keep going with the procrastination. They are totally stressed out and know that there is not enough time to learn the entire thing. They stay late and neglect sleep and after all not manage to learn even half of the material. And when you think that they needed to spend just 30 minutes a day and in the end there would have been no need for neglecting the sleep and they would have been fully prepared for the exam. Lesson: start small and keep going.
It takes 90 days for a habit to form. So you need to choose a habit to work on, set a small daily goal so that have no excuse for skipping a day and just stick to it. Except... it's not that simple. You most probably would not be able to maintain a 90 days streak first try. You either might forgot about it one day or not be at home for an entire day and that's fine. It's not the end of the world if you miss a day. The golden rule is to never miss two days in a row. The idea is to not give up. A good idea is to draw a calendar on a paper and mark with an "X" or however you'd like to the days you had exercised. First time you might get to 5 days and miss one. No worries. Just start again. The progress will fade only if give up on it definitively. Then you might get to 10 or 15 before something gets in the way. That's fine. Just start again. Eventually you will get to a point when you are on a 30+ streak and you're about to miss a day. When you lay down in your bed ready to fall asleep you suddenly remember that you have not exercised that day. You quickly jump off the bed and start exercising. You feel the need to complete the task you have set to yourself. You do not want to lose your streak. You do not want to start again. You feel accomplished when you look at your streak and think about how much progress you have made. And you probably won't jump from your bed and start exercising if you have to exercise for an entire hour. That's exactly why setting a really small goal works.
You need to remember that the calendar is in itself, a habit to maintain. For some people the calendar would be just a stressful thing and they will get demotivated whenever they miss a day, but for others a calendar will be a graphic representation of their progress and they will fill joy and fulfilment whenever they complete another day. Experiment with both a calendar and without to see which way it is easier. Also, if the calendar trick works for one habit it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to help you with all of the habits you want to implement. For example: I like to plan a couple of months of running ahead on a sheet of paper so that I know when to do certain workouts. I always write those "programs" with a pencil so that I change it later if needed. On the other hand, if I were to make a calendar for reading or meditating it would take from the joy it and I'll most probably read just for the sake of reading and not because I want to learn things or to relax. The key is to experiment as much as possible.



How to implement a habit?

The first ingredient you will need to implement a habit is "the why" - a reason to implement your habit. What are the advantages of that habit? How is your life going to look a couple of months or a couple of years from now if you decide to implement that habit? Write down at least ten reasons why you should keep going with the habit. An even better idea would be the write a detailed description of your future self if you keep up the habit and if you don't. This way, even if you happen to have a bad day you will have something to reflect on: which version of myself do I want to become? Do I want to become a loser that isn't capable of exercising for two minutes or do I want to become the fit, healthy and successful version of myself that can overcome any problems? The choice at that point should be a no-brainer. Writing down those descriptions will hopefully give you a boost in motivation by making you realize how important it is for you to not give up. If you decide to skip a day because you don't want to do something you become more likely to not do it the next day as well. Thus, days will turn into weeks and you'll come back where you were before starting. Don't let that happen! How? With the help of ingredient number two: a very easy to accomplish daily task. It's tempting to want to start exercising or running or reading for an hour a day but that just isn't sustainable from the beginning. You can do that for a month at best before burning out so you need to approach it another way: set a minimum goal small that it would be impossible not to do it. You don't need to read for an hour, or 15 minutes or 1 minute. Just open the book and read one sentence. Hard to run 1 kilometer every day? Just put your shoes on, jog for a couple of steps and go back. You might be thinking that jogging 10 meters or reading one sentence won't get you any results. And you are right in a way. However at this point the big idea is to implement the habit and make it stick. What is the way to do it? Show up daily! It doesn't matter how little you do on a particular day because it helps you implement the habit anyway. I'm not saying that you should read only one sentence a day or jog only 10 meters. All I'm saying is: don't put too much pressure on yourself, the only thing you need to do is to show up. Remember this: no matter how small, progress is progress.
Now that you set yourself a minimal task you need to decide at what time of the day you will be implementing your new habit. If you don't chose a good time you are less likely to do it. Chose a time when you know you will have free time. The best strategy however is to link the habit you want to implement to an already existing one. For example: "after lunch I'm going to read" or "before studying I will meditate". After you've successfully implemented a habit you can link another one to it. At one point my routines was: come back from school, have lunch, have a 30 minute nap, go for a run, after the run eat a fruit, read, write, code. Each time I added something new to the list it felt a bit weird and I was more likely to forget about the fact that I added something new to my routine. This, however, lasted for about two weeks and after that it felt exactly like before adding it. If you keep forgetting to do something I recommend setting an alarm, writing down your schedule or setting up a trigger, something to remind you what to do next. You can prepare your gym clothes the night before, or left an apple on your desk so that you don't forget to eat it when you come back, or left a book on your desk or bed. Try getting used to rushing into doing your habit as soon as the alarm kicks in no matter what you are doing at that time. If you say things like "I will do it in 5 minutes" or "I will do it immediately after I finish watching this video" you are most likely to forget about the habit and the alarm would be useless. Do not fall for these kind of traps.
Keep things interesting by setting yourself short-term goals. Gamify the experience and you'll be more likely not to give up. It's always fun to challenge yourself:" yesterday I ran 2 kilometers, let's see how much I can run today", "let's see how many pages I can read in a week", "I bet I will be able to run this fast by the end of this year". It doesn't need to be a big goal nor a small one. It needs to be something you think you could accomplish if you were to put the time in it. 
Another way to gamify the experience is by planning ahead long-term. Make yourself a "training plan" for improving your life. What you want is to have concrete goals and to know how to accomplish them. If you do not know how then work as hard as you can to find out. Try various things and see what works and what doesn't, what helps, even if just a bit and what does not help at all or even makes things worse. Dedicate some time to reflect on your actions. Put yourself the right questions and you will find the answers you need so desperately. After you get the answers think about how to make use of them, how to implement the things that you have learned into your lifestyle. Let's say you want to become a pro runner. You start running daily and set a minimum distance you will run every day. A couple of weeks go by, some days you run more, some days you run just the minimum you have set yourself. You improve for a while and after a few months you plateau. The key is to make your research. Read books and read articles of people that are successful in the domain you are looking to improve. It would not be a smart thing to ask for financial advices from a poor person, right? Do your research well and analyze what you are doing right and what you doing wrong and look up for ways to fix your issues. Do not get discouraged when you make mistakes and something does not go according to the plan. Seek in mistakes opportunities to improve, to learn something you otherwise would most probably not.

What habits to implement?

There are two categories of habits you want to implement. In the first category fall habits like reading, meditating, exercising, eating healthy and getting enough sleep. Those are the habits that will improve your life overall, habits that will make your mind clearer and your body healthier. You can start with whatever habit you like and slowly building your way towards all of them. The second type of habits are those that are contributing towards achieving your goals. This habits will differ from person to person. You might want to learn a foreign language, or run a marathon, or write a book, or just lose a few kilograms.
Build keystone habits. What are they? Those are habits that help you develop another habits. Let's say you want to start running. So you start running daily and after a while you decide that it would be a good idea to eat healthier. Also it is pretty easy to get injured if you are running a lot and not getting enough sleep. Running gives you energy and you become more productive and motivated throughout the day. So by simply beginning to run you develop other habits that would be otherwise pretty hard to implement. The best keystone habit I can think of is running. After only a week or two of running you will become addicted to it. It gives you a ton of energy, motivation and mental clarity. Just by incorporating running into your life it would become exponentially easier to implement other habits. For example: I implemented running daily about a year ago. After I came back from school I ate, waited for half an hour than I was going for a run. After a few weeks I decided to link another habit to running. So after I came back from my running session and after I changed my clothes I sat down and read for about an hour. I was not always reading for an hour, sometimes I was reading as little as 5 pages. And was much better than deciding to not read at all because I did not had the time or the mood to read for an entire hour. But that's just me. There is a high chance that running won't as a keystone habit for you, but reading might, or meditating, or getting enough sleep. Experiment!

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