It was finally over. I guessed everyone breathed a sigh of relief too.
I should reflect on myself a little. The ending in the later stages was a bit rushed. If I had fully developed the Origin Land arc, I probably could have padded it out by another hundred thousand words. Covers face.
To be honest, I had considered wrapping it up during Grand Unification, after winning the Super Cup. That would have been a good ending point.
But I was still somewhat unwilling to leave it there. It wasn't about padding my royalties—everyone knew data-driven stories became difficult to write later on, especially when trying to give them a reasonable ending. If I had wanted to pad things out, I would have written the Super Cup arc in greater detail instead of brushing over it.
What Old Ya had been reluctant about was that the Evolver and transcendent storylines I had envisioned, along with the framework for the Star Alliance, extraterrestrial civilizations, and even the Astral Plane, had never been expanded upon. I always wanted to give it a try. So I quickly wrapped up the Super Cup and flew off Earth!
As everyone could see, the Star Alliance arc did take shape, but extraterrestrial civilizations barely appeared at all.
The truth was that Old Ya could not keep going. Changing settings and shifting genres was too big a step, and I pulled something in the process. I will not analyze exactly what got pulled; Old Ya actually knew his own limits.
Popularity slowly declined after the setting change. On top of that, once the word count passed four million, Old Ya's enthusiasm was steadily worn away. My mother's cancer surgery also took up a great deal of my energy. Updates became fewer and fewer afterward. Old Ya was