Loved the whole messenger tablet idea. It doesn’t really fit the setting but, as you said, its more of a comedic fan fiction so even if it doesn’t fit, it can create a lot of funny scenarios. I just imagined our old squad having like a group chat or something and a mage sending them a meme after year and a half after their death. Anyway, good stuff 
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Thanks for your kind words. I am quite surprised that the “emojis” actually turned into real emojis in the post. I wrote them like “: heart :” or “: ghost :” except without the spaces. The emojis shown here are not exactly how I pictured them to be, but oh well.
This was a super fun read! Poor Alexis 
! Thank you very much for sharing, and yeah, the idea with the tablets is really cute. 
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You know, I’m wondering why Thalia never bothered recruiting MC and Eli like she did with young Mir. Woulda saved a lot of trouble considering she knew MC was stronger than sister would ever be.
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Im fairly certain that has to do with circumstance.
Mireil was ambitious and was conveniently placed to be sought after.
Eli died, and in the course of that the MC laid low and almost immediately fell in with the enemy after resurfacing.
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I agree with the fact that Thalia saw Mireil’s ambitions and decided to use that to gain her trust/loyalty. What I don’t understand is why she didn’t try to make an early contact with Mage and/or Eli. At that moment it would be easy to gain our trust, in my opinion.
I’m also trying to figure out her original plan for us as well. Was she planning for Mir to make a strong case for us to join her without making us a thrall, or did she wanted for Mage and Eli to be killed on the spot only to be later resurrected - just to make sure we won’t be able to disobey her? 
At the moment. I really can’t say for certain so will hope that we will be able to question Thalia later in that regard.
P.S. Also, can’t she just resurrect Mir, if need arises, or am I giving her too much credit? I wouldn’t let that past her so, unless she is physically incapable of resurrecting more that two people, we might reunite with Sister later down the line.
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In part it takes her a lot of time and resources to resurrect somebody at least that’s what its been stated in game. As for the rest I would be curious to learn more on the why the timing and so much more lol
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I think I remember her saying, after resurrecting us, that Sister was the best she could find. Eli was dead, and the MC was incognito for years after, and when they finally did “resurface” they were y’know, BFFs with Param’s new King, Prince, and the Saintess’s protege.
IIRC she also says to an… uncooperative MC, like mine, that she could just kill us again and bring Sister back in our stead.
I think the only reason that would give her pause in that is the fact that Eli would almost certainly revolt if she did, so she’d lose two good specimens.
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While possible I firmly believe that she was the one who freed sister from the collar which lead to events that followed and had she wanted to she could have attempted to bring Eli and MC in even then. Which she did not do which lead to eli death mc running away and eventually resurfacing with the white fangs.
So yeah lots that could be said and cause and effects and the like lol but still looking forward to learning more.
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Yeah. That’s what stumps me. In Mireil’s flashbacks before her death, I’m fairly certain that Thalia had contact with Mireil as far back as the days stuck in the lab for all three kids. In that case, Eli and MC were still young and naive enough to bring into the Arcadian circle. Three tightly knit, powerful children instead of one. I could be wrong, though.
Another thing I can’t wait to see is the aftermath of the war on Salantira’s side. I’m not sure if it’s made clear on the fate of the grand duchy, but I’m 50/50 on whether they’re still alive or not. And even then, what is left after Sister’s takeover? How are they gonna pay for the damages done to Param?
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The first issue I had while reading book 2 was that MC can’t call Thalia on her BS at the beginning. From Sister’s flashback, we know that she met Thalia while the kids were still experimented on. It’s not clear (or I just missed it) how much time passed since then to their rescue and how big Thalia’s part was in it if any, actually. I wouldn’t put it past her to allow the experiments to continue if it meant good recruits for her later, especially considering that it was not Arcadia that rescued MC and C.O. but the Duke. The potential benefits were just too good to pass on for Tahlia
.
I think from that first contact with Thalia, Sister became her informant and later on an agent, and given Thalia’s criminal disregard for other people’s privacy of their own minds there is no way she didn’t know what Sister was planning or at the very least she would find out real quick afterward considering that if MC tries to conceal their plan to escape she says the more you try to hide your thought the easier it is for her. And I mean the initial betrayal here because there is no way she had no idea about Sister’s plan to attack Param and even less way she didn’t find out during the 2-year war anything about her final plan for the Mage.
So from MC’s perspective (even before they learn she is a compulsive and immoral mindreader), Thalia knew about everything Sister was up to and did nothing to stop her. She let Mireil destroy MC’s life twice over and even got them killed. I also wonder what kind of relationship MC has with the Duke. He seems like he wanted to fill a somewhat fatherly role for the trio, so it’s the second family that got deleted from MC. Arcadia employed this murderous mind-washing maniac who got thousands killed in a war that essentially didn’t benefit anyone (as far as we know, at least for now), and later they have the audacity to say that the MC was less trustworthy than her. “Long leash” my ass! I wanted to tell her off sooo badly but the MC was too drained postexecution to do so I guess.
It’s another matter if the whole getting Eli killed business and the war later were both Thalia’s plans to get MC killed and get a leash on them as well. And again I wouldn’t put it past her to sacrifice few thousand ercei lives to get a couple of first-class “allies” (pawns/slaves).
Also, I wonder how Thalia explained to Eli after resurrecting her that the one who destroyed her life (both figuratively and literally) was working for them all along, AND still is actually. That must’ve gone well I bet.
And another thing while I’m at it. What’s up with that mana exhaustion? Every time MC does magic it’s exhaustion, every encounter. Remember the duel with Leon? The one that lasted 20 MINUTES? And MC walked around fine, good as rain, no problemo (and that was before the war when everyone was supposed to get even stronger) but when we need 3 spells in a fight they get a one-way ticket to boneless-chicken town. Seriously, MC is an archmage (supposedly) but it doesn’t translate into their endurance whatsoever. We need some more rules as to how magic works in this universe. On one hand, you can fight for 20 min no sweat, take a nap and you’re fine but on the other use 3 spells, and you almost dead, but you can cast multiple spirit gates for 6 people and don’t exhaust yourself? What? You need to prepare magic circles and gather mana before casting a spirit gate but you can make a collar spell that would take years to break( for an archmage? huh?) in half a second with no prep, just a touch. You make contracts with phantasmas but we don’t know of any specific conditions, until book 2 Arcadians didn’t start talking about contracts specifically I didn’t even know that was the case. The guy with Earthsworn was talking with him all the time but none of MC’s phantasma talks with them outside of that first use we see.
Establishing rules as to what characters can and can’t do and consistently abiding by those rules is required for a story to have any proper stakes and here I feel they are either inconsistent or unclear. I just don’t understand when characters are in serious danger, when are their lives threatened, or what would pose a challenge to them. Everyone gets to exhaustion super fast but then, they can still keep going anyway.
Also, I feel like Eli’s phantasma is super nerfed and underused all the time. She is supposed to be a miracle worker, the most unique type of all phantasma. I thought she excelled at healing and protection but she’s barely any better than any random healer. Why not have her reattach the cut-off limbs and make cripples walk again? Fix those mana ducts right up? MC can kill dozens of people at once with their 4 ill-fitted ones, we should see Eli whose phantasma is perfect for her and had years to master its use, show great proficiency with it (without getting exhausted all the time). In the final fight of book 2, she didn’t do anything noticeable and still got almost mana exhaustion all the same and didn’t even use the super-sister-trapping cage from book 1. Even after her initial rescue, it is said that she would need days to heal the team. Days. Healing phantasma can’t heal any better than a second-rate theurge it seems. Even while fighting she could be intentionally tanking potentially lethal hits and shrugging them off to the surprise and later demise of her enemies. I feel like her potential isn’t realized at all.
Man, once I start going I’m really going, I better go sleep now.
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this is apropos of absolutely nothing, but i think about how leon hits mc if they tell him they’ll never forgive him in the dungeon literally every single day since i read that scene. closed fist and everything dog. what a viscerally painful and brilliant moment. one of my absolute favorite things in amr is getting to see leon’s anger go from a whisper to a scream over the course of book 1–i absolutely would not have guessed it reading his first couple of scenes, but the build-up was so smartly done from his rare moments of snapping at the mage (i.e. they can tell him they don’t want to abandon the plague village and he basically tells them to remember their place) to rage in battle (chasing after the salantir after killing the priestess to the point that saine has to snap him out of it) to him being so furious at the mage after they kill the saintess he can’t think clearly.
i dunno i guess it’s hard to imagine exactly how it feels to be burned alive by people you loved, but i can wrap my head around getting punched in the face by your boyfriend. it’s just brutal to read, but i think it was a really brave character choice that i found emotionally gripping. i think the atrocities enhance him, personally!
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I wouldn’t put that past Tahlia. The MC and Eli both are now pretty much at her mercy since their resurrected bodies are reliant on her nearly infinite supply of mana to keep them going. We saw what happens in the escape scene when Tahlia “releases” the MC from her mana supply and let the MC’s body bear the Song of the Dead on its own. Although I imagine the MC’s escaping Mireil’s capture or murder for nearly a decade probably wasn’t something she foresaw.
That’s because those Arcadian missions forced the MC to use their arcana(s), often more than once, when using arcana once is enough to render any mage exhausted to the brink of death. During their time as a member of the White Fangs and later as Leon’s retainer, before the war with Salantira, the MC only used “ercei” spells which don’t consume too much mana.
Otherwise, you make valid points. I’m also not happy that Tahlia allowed Mireil to do all the horrible things she did which eventually led to the MC’s death. Which is why I want to help my MC and Eli both to escape Arcadia, peacefully if possible. But if I have to kill Tahlia to escape, then I’ll do it.
PS: By the way, is it just me? Or does anyone else have not been able to edit their posts since several days ago?
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I haven’t had trouble editing my posts.
Is is possible you waited until you were out of your window of opportunity?
There’s a time limit, then your posts are set in stone for whatever reason.
Edit- Just checking, nope, no problem editing.
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I have that happen to me once. I had like 5 edits on one comment but I could not see them even after trying to restart/update the site. I don’t know if it was something on my end or was is the forum glitching so, unless you can’t edit your posts at all, I’ll assume its a connection problem.
Yeah, that must be it. Thanks for the info.
@Kungoru
It’s just the time limit thing, which I just learned is a thing here.
Every part of the unraveling of the relationship is amazing and also makes me want to scream, cry, and scream some more. Just the sheer tragedy of it. The way neither of them has a choice in it and yet are both hurting each other just 
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In all fairness you would be rendered unconscious via smoke inhalation before the worst of the ordeal
In Book 1 its says that the four phantasma are ill-fitting. Would it be possibe to get a perfect phantasma for our mage in the next book? I think it would be interesting. And I wish we had more interactions with them too! Like I get that its basically adding 4 news characters but it would be interesting.
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That’s Book 2, actually. But yeah, I’m hoping the MC will find their perfect phantasma soon. But that also begs the question: will the MC be able to release those four ill-fitting phantasmas? Because Tahlia did say having four phantasmas is really taxing on the MC’s mana duct. And now the MC has five with the newest addition; Earthsworn. I can’t imagine the price the MC will have to pay in the long run.
By the way, I’m wondering if it is possible for the MC to have their old injury healed if we so choose? While most people probably don’t care about a scarred face, I think most would want to have their MCs’ brain damage or broken knee healed.
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