My mindset's a little off. Let me take some time to adjust.
If I follow the completion plan I originally wrote, cut away the twigs and branches, and bulldoze straight through the main plot, I could probably push through to the end of Volume Three in twenty or thirty chapters—maybe even fewer.
I originally thought I could finish at one million words, but now it seems that might not necessarily happen.
Let me think it over.
The matter of ending the story has already been decided. I don't plan to change that.
After quickly wrapping up Volume Three, if it hasn't reached over a million words, I'll probably directly skip over some of the later timeline and write about events a few years afterward.
You could tentatively count that as side stories.
Then, some content I can't write in the side stories will go onto the little boat of friendship with you readers. At the very least, I'll give every female character a major role. You can treat them as endings from different parallel worlds.
PS: You should all know what the little boat of friendship is.