Updated at Ch15/Ch20

Up front, I hate how the author lists chapters as holding the same number. I feel saying Chapter 14: Title Part A and then Chapter 15: Title Part B makes more sense and fits how this site lists the chapters out. So going by the authors convention, I'm reviewing on Chapter 15 and Chapter 20 by SH standards.

Right then, so I'm updating this since it seems Arc 1 "Rise of the Fake Demon Lord" appears to be coming to an end. Apparently there is a second arc dubbed "Fall of the Fake Demon Lord" so... I assume it will only have two arcs. Considering the description says it was planned out to 50 chapters and Arc 1 is slowly nudging against 25 chapters, the math seems to work out. I left my original review below for those who care and I'll only post what has changed.

The Good:

• I still love this book. If the guy puts it on amazon, I'll probably buy it since it itches my kink pretty well.
• Story picks up pace in the second half of the book. It starts off pretty slow and overly descriptive, so this is VERY good.
• I like how the author tries to input science into the magic effects. Descriptions are really cool and I can imagine it since it doesn't deviate dramatically from real life. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the final paragraph or two of Ch15/20 is a perfect example.
• The writing got WAY smoother. It reads like a bell curve, but later chapters read way smoother than the first few (even though I though the first read read pretty good anyhow).
• Author is reactive to reports of typos and is amazingly good at keeping them from appearing in the first place. One of the better grammar/spelling effort novels I've seen so far.

The Bad:

• Aria confuses me. Her persona seems all over the place with her being shy and feminine in some chapters, and then an icy cold commander in others. I feel like there was suppose to be more development, but it was cut somewhere and so we were left with a before and after without transition time.
• There are some gadgets that don't seem to have much use yet and appear like they were introduced as a gimmick. The methods to invoke magic are one example. I mentioned it before in my review, but it hasn't really changed yet... I admit though that the team FINALLY reached Lapis and the conversation might happen soon. It's just taken a while to get there, so I can't be sure.

Still! Things are good. Read it! Love it! Keep it up!

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Written at Ch9

First to be up front, I'm reviewing this at like... chapter 9... which is actually something like chapter 12 since there are a few a, b parts... Which is a freaking lie because the damn chapters are like 7k-15k words per so if you compare it to other web novels on this site, there's already like 30-50 chapters worth of content.

All that was to say, the story is f**king awesome! I only recently finished catching up to the story and I noticed the author is taking time to go back and edit earlier portions of their story and fix grammar issues, typos, and word choices. It's very noticeable as the chapters now read with the first being the most polished and with chapters 3-8 reading like a bell curve as the author slowly figured his sh*t out. That being said, there are still random splashes of words that stand out. 'slowly' catches my eye most as I see it used everywhere in other works on this site, but it seems the author is removing those as he goes since I can't even find it outside of dialog in the first chapter now. 

While reading, I've noticed a couple different styles of conversation which are pretty cool.

I noticed a 1 star rating attached to this story and I can only assume that person ignored the tags, or refused to read past the 

scenes. Although they exist, it's used as means to an end and not there for rape porn. I think the author tried to lace the scenes between light hearted scenes as well, but that only made them worse IMO (in a good way). Dunno if it was the authors intent, or what... but it sure made me feel for the girl...

There is magic, but it's handled differently than I've seen other books try to go about it. I'm not sure if the author made a mistake or if it's part of the story, but there seems to be 3 or 4 ways to cast magic, but those ways never seem to interact. Some hints about a particular groups next destination might reveal more in future chapters. Not a negative, just a weird thing I noticed.

The characters themselves have a form of depth. Hiiro and Lapis are rather thin at the moment, but over the course of 100k+ words, their history and personalities are slowly being revealed, which I found nice. I think Aria is somewhat forced into the scene and it feels like some characters are important, but there's literally nothing supporting that beside maybe two - three sentences that I had to read into.

The story is at 100ish thousand words currently and yet the bulk of the story has remained in a single city/forest. There were obvious hints at the world moving in response to Lapis entering the new world and yet we've heard nothing about them yet, but to be fair, sh*t went down in recent chapters (7-9) and they have to properly handle it.

Overall, the story isn't rushed. The author seems to have planned the chapters out and it shows. I'll probably come back in the future to re-read the chapters I've already read to get the full immersion after the author finishes his edits to the earlier chapters. As I said before, the quality of chapters is a bell curve since he is fixing earlier ones and those fixes are slowly being applied to each chapter while his newer chapters already have the fixes built in. It's somewhat awkward, but will read insanely smooth when he's done.

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