I can never settle on an art style and I’m a little rusty, but it was a refreshing process. And like a typical artist, I’m noticing some things I regret after I finished 
Don’t take this as canon, even I don’t picture Caine quite like this lol. The outfit is something I just threw together for the general vibes, not actually what they’re wearing in story. Imagine them however you prefer, different hair length/color, height, whatever. Imagination is better than something concrete!
If you want to see Caine animated and smiling, check my kofi! And if you want to commission me for something similar, animated or not, my dms are open…
In other news, I’ve gotten to ~177k in word count! Happy I managed that, but unhappy because I don’t think I’m halfway through lol… I’m at a section where I flip-flop between enjoying what I’m writing and wishing I started with a small scope 
If you haven’t noticed, I’m doing 3 arcs of getting to know the ROs, and I’m on Rei’s part. Rest assured, no one’s story presence is stuck solely to their section—in fact, there’s a choice where you can dilute Rei’s story with Caine if you prefer. I wouldn’t say that branch would go into “the director’s cut”, but I like what’s there.
…But yeaahh, it’s a lot of writing for something most readers will only see a little of.
First time writers,
keep your branching and rejoins reserved. Think about your setting carefully and if you’ll like writing the scenes your story necessitates. Keep your MC’s journey doable (in a set period of time, not your writing skills lol); just have them working at a coffee shop or something and the craziest thing that happens is them glitching into The Backrooms for a day. Or join me where your story’ll take months, maybe years to finish 
To sum it all up: I cleaned up a lot of code! Yay, but now my word count isn’t as artificially bloated rip. ~27k is the next part of ch3. While I’d like to release a more full update, I’m thinking I’ll split ch3 into 2 more updates, 3 in total (1st part already in the demo). Shame cause I’d like the impact to be less staggered, but that would mean I wouldn’t update for far longer than it’s already taking. Or maybe I’ll have part of ch3 as ch4, idk.
I can’t believe IF writing takes so long and uses so much brain cells (I have to look under couches to scrounge them up). The Summoner just might end up 300k words in total someone send help.