First, I want to thank everyone for your support and patience!
The second part was finally finished, though toward the end, I really had to grit my teeth to get through it.
During the latter half, the number of readers keeping up with each new chapter fell well below where it had been at the end of the first part. When I noticed, I thought it was because no characters from the original story had appeared for a while, so I immediately arranged an adventure with Fors and pushed further into the original plot.
But I soon found that the numbers had only recovered a little. I figured the advancement might be too slow, so I hurriedly arranged the promotion to Sequence 5. Even then, the numbers barely rose.
That was when I noticed that the chapters featuring Bernadette had done especially well—even better than the Tarot Club chapters. Only then did I realize the problem: the female lead hadn't been getting enough page time!
So I wanted to give Bernadette more scenes. That was when I discovered a drawback to making Queen Mystic the female lead: whenever she appeared, any difficulties the protagonist faced became easy to resolve.
I could only grit my teeth and finish the dozen or so later chapters that would have been hard to cut.
At the same time, I was thinking about how to handle the interactions between Bernadette and the protagonist. If Bernadette took too much initiative, it wouldn't be very interesting, but with the protagonist only at Sequence 5, it was hard to have him take too much initiative either.
That was a large part of why Bernadette had appeared so rarely before. I didn't feel confident handling scenes with the two of them together. And because she appeared so little, my