Volume 2 is 90% done! Release incoming New Year’s Day, with a chapter every day until the end. I'll also be prepping a full recap of Vol. 1 and compiling all the released cards.

  Thanks for sticking around if you’re reading this, it’s been a life-changing year for me. I had my first kid in March and the days have flown by since then. My usual writing speed is about 250 words per day, but after I missed my summer deadline that I set for myself, I had to level up and reach 1000 words per day, which thankfully was enough for Hurek to reach the third bracket of the tournament (although he is not the same man that Cicero met in those palace barracks all those months ago). I was hoping to finish the second volume by the summer but I suppose that’s life. Writing can come easy when it’s easy, and near impossible when you feel it’s hard. I had to manage my mental approach as well as some discipline thrown here and there, but I suppose there is an element of desperation to keep things moving and discover where the characters are going to end up in their life. And I think I’m one of those characters.

  Cicero has grown with me a bit, but he’s still the same tart inside. It’s Hurek who is going through the final torture that Atia had planned since the beginning, and we see some of her religious/spiritual motivations and that perhaps the tournament is not just about sucking up to the Roman diaspora. In that vein, I had to dig deeper into the supernatural elements that are slowly surfacing. It’s all fun and games with sharp sticks and blades, but what if the arm that holds them has superhuman strength?

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  It sounds tame, though, doesn’t it? In a sea of isekai and colorful fantasy worlds, I chose to fall back to the sword and sorcery origins of our favourite genres, where the fantastic are just bubbling underneath the surface, and more often than not, harken cruelty and evil. I tried my characters to feel normal, like us, with anger, sadness, mundane challenges, like us, and then here comes the extra Atia with her sorcery. How does Cicero, an aging, lazy, mentally drained nerd deal with this cast of struggling people and then magic cults thrown into the mix? I suppose he deals with it by doing what he does best: writing biographies and analysing the fight game more than anyone else. It helped him gamble in the arena in his previous life, so maybe it could help him navigate Atia’s tournament as well. Lol, what a shitty plan. He should’ve just gone home and reached out to Lepidus, and I think he knows it. But he’s not going anywhere until I’m done with him. I guess my self-insert is Atia after all.

  See you soon,

  S

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  Flamma Fighter Card Sneak-peak: