Can we not awaken magic or ignore it?
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You can ignore magic up until the very last action of Chapter 5’s battle. At that point, magic will always awaken and will be necessary for the MC’s survival.
Except for that part, you can simply not use it. Most of the time there is a stat or skill alternative. There may be some specific branches that require the use of magic (top of my head, I can think of one in Chapter 4), but they’re just different paths, not crucial to advance the story.
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eginning of it.
“She fought off an orc on his own,” Arlo says. “That’s more than any of the militia was capable of.”
Should be orc on her own.
I missed one possible Magic trick by this point, but Alchemy is ‘magic’ itself too. Was fun killing an orc, not being sure of it but just doing what I knew best for skillset.
Edit: maybe I should of did the combat arena after all?
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Thank you, fixed the gender detection! Gonna do some more rephrasings as well since I’ve noticed some small inconsistencies. I’ll wait for more changes to pile up and upload them all together sunday.
The tournament does give you a little boost to stats, though it’s not strictly necessary to pass the checks.
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Also ran into this.
Since the stubborn farmers didn’t reveal much of anything to you, you’re left without much of a clue of where to look in regards to goblin activity. There’s plenty of land and small details that could be missed in regards to goblin activity, but fortunately Agrien is good at finding details like that.
Went to talk to farmers but decided to follow Eleanor advice of not waking them.
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Fixed, will be uploaded on sunday along with the rest of the fixes! Created a new variable to keep track of whether the farmer’s been left to sleep.
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Found more. Not sure if he will be alive as only read first part. I let the Commander from village kill the goblin leader. We followed the escaping remnant of gobbos back to mines.
Summary
“Good,” Amara smiles at you, giving a gentle pat on your shoulder with her strangely long fingers. “In that case, we should move.”
“We need to find the dwarven miners and the goblin leader still,” Agrien says.
Though the memory of the draw lingers still, you get yourself ready to move. There’s still the last chamber to explore, where the dwarven miners likely are kept.
Following through the passage on the left, it’s a short path towards a wide room. There’s a stone arch preceding the actual room that has the runic characters that compose dwarven alphabet being inscribed onto the surface. The voices you’ve heard before are coming from here, now louder than before, discussing something by a wooden table with a map and other papers in it, illuminated by a glass lamp of flammable oil.
“…back from the raid in town,” a goblin speaks. She has short, layered haircut colored black, standing little contrast with the green of her skin. Her eyes are a lighter shade of green than her skin.
“Just keep them going.” The other speaking was much taller than the goblin. Taller than any Woodcutter. A mountain of muscle, the green skinned orc is bald and with pointy ears. Protruding tusks come out of his black lips, with scarring showing on his uncovered arms.
You didn’t know orcs could speak the imperial language. All nations in Atheryn are commonly bound by it, but none of the others you’ve met did.
“It’s getting risky,” the goblin argues, though you can hear a quiver on her voice. She’s afraid of him.
“It’s gonna get a lot riskier,” the orc says with finality. “Get comfortable with risky.” “We need a plan,” Alyssa says, hiding behind the arch that precedes the room. “As soon as we charge, the sound of fighting will draw all the other goblins upon us.”
“We’ll be surrounded,” William agrees. “So what’s the plan?”
“Two of us should be able to handle the orc,” Agrien says. “The rest needs to be here to contain the swarm of goblins.”
“I’ll hold off the goblins,” Elanor says with uncharacteristic determination. “We’ll need my magic for that.”
“Kayla should handle the orc,” Alyssa says. “You’re one of the best of us with a sword.”
“Goblin shouldn’t be a problem,” William says. “Kayla, who do you want with you?”
“Why do I have to choose?”
“Amara.”
“Alyssa.”
“Agrien.”
“William.”
Next
Beyond that one point. Leader in mines wasn’t the one labeled above. Which I defeated. Fun! I knew taking an elf against and orc would end badly, just wanted to see my theory there. Yep. My first choice and primary thought was the Tank, Alyssa. I was just curious if someone would die as I would of expected to happened.
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I assume you’re talking about the attack that happens in Concession if you don’t find the mines straight away during the investigation (correct me if I’m wrong)
I’ll rephrase that dialog on the mines to make it clearer. The one attacking Concession was a raid commander (a male goblin riding a wolf), whereas this one is the overall leader of the whole operation (a female goblin). I’ll add a line to differentiate them conditional on the attack happening
—
Amara as a choice (spoiler alert for different branches of the story):
She may be a good or a bad choice, it depends on how you got there. Without her magic, Amara can’t help much and ends up dying, as you’ve found. If she still has her magic reserves, she provides more support than your companions are able to, and survives.
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The memory of the draw lingers still…
That part doesn’t seem to match that the goblins retreated because their raid leader died himself on his wolf. I am fine with it besides that specific wording not aligning with forced retreat.
And right. It may if I knew she didnt already use lots of magic. I got what I expected, a death, which means, taking things seriously as I was is right.
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Ah, I see it now. I’ll rephrase that for better clarity, ‘the draw’ is related to ‘drawing the Arcane’ as this scene happens right after touching the cylinder inside of the machine. Agrien’s dialog makes it unclear on what it’s referring to (and it doesn’t help that draw has two meanings and both fit)
I’ve changed it to Though the memory still lingers, euphoria and discomfort alike from the touching the Arcane, you get yourself ready to move
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Nevermind this one. See it now on what I wrote about to Alyssa/Agrien.
Granted Agrien should of knocked me over the way she pounced and put all her weight to me, that is definitely not physical like her.
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Summary
mean Alyssa," Agrien confirms. “or ((flirtAgrien = 1) and (dancePartner != “Agrien”)) We talked about this before. Just before the bea,r” she says with a casual tone. "What you may not know is that she’s making eyes for you too
Code not hidden or something up here?
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Oop, yeah, I fudged the parenthesis on this one so it took some of the conditions as literal text. Fixed it now (as well as the typo).
Thanks for all of the reports, by the way, I appreciate it a lot. That’s plenty of stuff that passed through the cracks without me noticing.
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Welcome! I loved it!
Definitely positive story elements. I missed some prior magic but was reliant on what I knew should work without stressing the magic itself. The mindscape was interesting.
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Thank you! Coding aside, the mindscape was one of the most difficult sections to write in the story, I’m glad it came across well.
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The intimacy scenes didn’t ignore being a woman with a woman. I definitely loved that being done right, without needing overly detailed either. 
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Thank you! I wanted the romance to feel reactive, whether it’s in regards to gender, or flirting with multiple ROs, or even infidelity (which may happen in Chapter 3).
It’s kinda biting me now in Chapter 4 with multiple branches/choices coming together in a manner that creates a cohesive storyline, but I’ll tough through them. It was one of my first decisions to make sure the romance felt reactive, not only in the intimate scenes and out of them as well, with minor narrative shifts of how certain characters treat you (e.g. Alyssa is far more caring and touchy if you express interest in her)
One of my worries was that the intimate scenes may have been too detailed, but fortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. 
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CHANGELOG 16/MAR/2025
Be wary of potential spoilers lurking on the changelog.
16/MAR/2025
Coding/Mechanics
Fixed a bug on Chapter 3 where you could raise Survival indefinitely.
Gender detection fixes throughout Chapters 2 and 3.
Fixed a bug in Chapter 3 where stat detection came prior to stat increase.
Added a variable to correctly detect whether you wake up the farmer in Chapter 3 or not.
Writing
Several rephrases for better clarity throughout Chapter 3.
Changed a leftover ‘Duke of Cadena’ reference to ‘Duke of Southland’ in Chapter 2.
New content warning: violence against children. This is for Chapter 5, I’m merely adding it beforehand, and it’s also optional.
Minor update with some of the fixes mentioned in this thread. Most of the work is currently on Chapter 4, where I’m tying branching/possibilities of the romantic variety together. As a frame of reference, these are the current romance variables to account for:
It’s simple (and already finished) to account for those who a) romance nobody, and b) romance one person, spend the night with the same person in Chapter 3. It’s the myriad of things inbetween, such as not spending the night with anyone in Chapter 3 despite romancing someone, that have to be accounted for and tied together.
Furthermore, the currently worked on romance scenes are tied with different scenes not tied to romance. It sort of extends the scene to bridge one into another. Some outcomes from the previous scene also have to be accounted for.
Small example of that.
So that’s why it’s taking a bit long.
It’s mostly finished. I’m only missing one tiny section on Alyssa’s end and another scene on William’s end. Then it’ll be writing the actual date which, although it’s more words written, takes less time.
From that, tie it up with the Duke of Southland’s court. The partial update cuts off just after the actual meeting.
Chapter 4 currently has 24,729 words without code.
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