Sorry that I haven’t been responsive here the past few days! As @resuri08 already posted, I’m working on a content update for TSS; I do whole-heartedly agree with a lot of the things people have said, and so I’m currently writing more to fix some of the issues that are present in the story. I’m trying to focus on getting it done as soon as possible (while also being thorough), so that’s why I haven’t responded much, but I want to thank everyone for your comments 
I finished writing the additional content for chapters 6 and 7 already, though they still need editing and testing. I will, however, update the game with all of the content at once rather than successively, because some of them tie into options happening in later chapters.
For those interested, the content update will:
1. Shed light on the importance of the MC’s family (as well as the MC themselves), and why they have ties to the Shadow world.
2. Explain the motivations for the rebels (in the Hideout) and the Shadowman; why they’re rebelling against him, and his view of them.
3. Give a more detailed explanation about what the shadow creatures are, and why their world is in the current state it’s in.
4. Have more mentions and explanation of the Sunworld-organization.
5. Give more insight on some of the characters thoughts and motivations and explain why the group is keeping things secret from the MC.
6. Give some insight into R’s backstory, and feature them + other characters a lot more in the last chapter.
7. Have some more instances where stats are used (mostly intuition and persuasion).
8. Potentially have another big (or several, but shorter) romance/friendship/rival scene, if it fits.
There might be other things as well, but this is currently what I’ve included/got planned!
To answer some questions here:
@EvilChani Yes, book 1 was intended to build up romance more than complete it. It will be developed and probably featured more in book 2, even if it’s not the main theme of the books. I know some have said it’s initiated a little too fast though, which I can understand, but since I’m also including a friendship-to-lovers romance for the characters in book 2 I aimed to make the one you can start in book 1 more of an instant attraction kind of thing 
Sadly, M has no smooch in book 1, but it’s only because they feel too guilty about having lied to the MC to go for something romantic.
@Alicia_kun I’ve seen the first bug and have yet to find it, but I’m going to do my best to squish it 
seems like it only appears in certain playthroughs, though. And I’m going to look into the second one too, thank you! I’m really happy you like it you don’t have to play an evil MC to romance the Shadowman, though!
@UnoriginalUserName Chani is right about that; R has their issues, but book 2 will focus a lot on their development, both as a character and in their relationship with the MC (:
@Samael_Blackblade Yes, if Q or Mdon’t die, they will be featured in the rest of the series and romancable
@Daedalucius First of all, I want to say thank you so much for the detailed review. You really don’t need to be an author or anything to be able to provide great critique, which you prove with this post . You made a lot of excellent points, and I agree with most all of them. Something I’d like to point out though is that there are no big time jumps in the story. It goes from day to day, so when a character is busy, it’d be during a bit of that day and not a week or so. But I still understand your point about the interactions feeling short.
As for the “mentioning of the MC and RO spending time together but not describing the event (or downtime, as you described it)”, that’s something I’ve never been a big fan of myself. If the MC is getting to know a character, I like to include all of their interactions with each other as the relationship grows, not tell the reader it happened without showing the interactions. I totally get why some people do that in their stories, but to me it tends to feel like the relationship stops during these times and only picks up when you get your next detailed scene with them. I guess what I can do is to add more character/MC scenes sprinkled out here and there? I’d love to add more character moments where they speak with the MC more openly, and I’ve already got one of those planned for chapter 13 
unless I misunderstood what you meant, in which case - sorry!
And I agree fully on the mystery part. I think I was worried about having too much exposition and too much explained that I missed explaining a lot of things. The pacing is awful in places because I lost some progress on the story when my computer broke down, on top of me feeling really burnt out. It’s not said as an excuse, just an explanation, and I’ve definitely learned my lesson. Hopefully the things I’ve brought up which will be added in the content update will help fix some of it, even if I can’t change the pacing completely without rewriting the whole story.
I did intentionally make it so that the Shadowman might appear as not-so-bad after all though, because I didn’t want the RO’s to seem like the good guy group. I didn’t want the reader to see the Shadowman as evil and the group as good. But it’s true that people might seem more or less bad depending on who is telling you their point of view (people are complex, after all), and this is something I’m trying to show a lot more in the update. I hope it’ll feel more genuine then!
@Kalpana and @Ninja1 There is no such ending; if M survives, they will be held capture by the Shadowman.
@resuri08 Thank you for posting that! I wanted to post it here too, but it completely slipped my mind
@Langre I really love the idea of mixing romance/friendship with options of suspicion, so I will see what I can do with that! I feel like it could add another layer to the relationships. Thank you so much for the suggestion!
The sequel can’t come fast enough.
