To be honest, I hadn't expected to finish the first volume before the book went premium.
Yue Hu wasn't exactly a newcomer anymore. Over the past few years, I'd written a handful of books here and there, and a few had flopped along the way (actually, every single one had flopped). Only my first Mystery fanfic had enjoyed a little success.
Thinking it over, maybe I really was a slow learner. Even now, I still hadn't figured out the pacing of webnovels. All I could do was keep working it out bit by bit and hope to improve with this book.
All right, that's enough complaining. Now let's look back on this volume.
"Fire Thief." "Hope is the foremost of all evils, for it continually prolongs human suffering." Those were this volume's title and epigraph. The epigraph was adapted from Nietzsche, while "Fire Thief" formed the core of the entire volume.
"Fire Thief" had two layers of meaning. First, Nimrod finished digesting all his Beyonder Characteristics and became a "Fire Thief."
Then there was the method of acting as a "Fire Thief" mentioned a few chapters ago: whether in the world of Circle of Inevitability or the world of Mystery, Nimrod stole hope from some people and brought hope to others. Nimrod chose to steal the hopes of the wicked, and that was the last kindness he could offer this world.
As for the epigraph, "Hope is the foremost of all evils, for it continually prolongs human suffering," I spent a long time choosing it from several quotes that had some connection to "Fire Thief." First, I genuinely liked the quote. Second, it fit the tone of Mystery's Lovecraftian world all too well.
Hope was temporary, but madness was eternal. In this world, the greatest power a civilization could attain