Chapter 190: Meeting With Her Highness Siesta (2)

"So the four of you are Irregulars?" one of the knights spoke up. Using appraisal, his name was Richard Vegsburg. A noble, probably.

"Ma.."

"In regard to our current situation, that would be what best describes our situation," Liliath said.

"It seems you used some magic. Though, the fact that the four of you are unnamed Irregulars is something I can't just easily believe. Your Highness Siesta, for the sake of your safety, I will assume them to be nothing but lowly scoundrels who are here to fool you. I will have gathered sufficient evidence to prove otherwise."

Siesta bowed to us apologetically, "Is that alright with you?"

Liliath looked at me for a moment. It's not like we can just reject huh?

"There seems to be no problem on our side."

"Good, then let's go."

"Your Highness, you should keep your distance," the knight, Richard said.

"I am in agreement," the maid added.

With Siesta taking the lead, we were surrounded by knights on all fronts as we followed along.

Oh well. This is really shit isn't it? Totally didn't expect this sort of development straight off the bat. Honestly, what did I expect? I guess I've gotten too full of myself, thinking that an Irregular would garner a lot of attention when in reality.. our identities are being doubted. That's great.. but it's also kinda sad.

'Noel, the maid, El, has an appraisal skill. She might also be an assassin.'

From the corner of my view, I saw Nine's message.

'That's so cliche...'

I've requested a few tweeks to the UI, things like making it appear on the retina and being able to operate the system mentally are among the few.

So: Operation Don't Get on Their Bad-side Start?

Honestly, I thought it would be more like a simple conversation over tea. Reality is harsh~

And then a message came in from Siesta:

'Pardon me but who is the fourth person in the group? He resembles Nine.'

Oh yeah, Siesta met Nine as a girl the last time.

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"Princess Siesta!"

"Siesta Onee-chan!!"

"Your Highness, good to see you are well."

The children of the orphanage all gathered around Siesta with beaming smiles. The building being a distance away from the church, closer to the inner part of the kingdom-- the noble's district. If anything, it looked like a mansion of sorts. There is a large field with a pond in the centre, and trees and hedges that were clothed with leaves the colour of winter surrounded the place.

"Hello! Prune-neesan, Liliath-neesan, Nine-niisan and Noel-niisan!"

"Eh, it's you!"

"It's been a while Gabriel-chan.."

To be honest, I totally forgot her name-- appraisal is conveniently scary. Anyways, Gabriel-chan here is one of Jennifer-chan's friends. We met her last time when she visited the florist.

The princess was busily greeting the sisters and nursery carers all the while attending to the incessant chattering of the children. Gabriel-chan herself came to greet us instead.

"Are you not going to greet Her Highness?" Prune asked.

"Her Highness is busy like this wherever she arrives, it's fine to wait until everything settles down. I could always greet her then," Gabriel-chan said.

"Of all places, I didn't think we'd come to an orphanage.. opps. Sorry, I didn't mean to say something sensitive there.." Nine covered his mouth.

"Ah, no. My parents are still well, I just came here for the day care services since..they're busy most of the time. It's a lot funner here too," Gabriel said with a toothy smile.

"So.. then.."

I was wondering what we should do in this kind of situation but..

"Then let me guide you around the place," Gabriel threw a lifeline.

"Much appreciated," Liliath said.

"Ehehe.."

With Gabriel leading the way, we were introduced to the other members of the orphanage, the likes of the children who had broken away from Siesta's group and the caretakers that run the place.

We left a message for Siesta saying that it's alright to attend to the kids for now, we can wait. Since Siesta already knows how to use the new retina display function to read chat and type chat, she should be alright.

The orphanage itself was managed very well, had 3 floors with the upper two floors being the bedroom and library-- of course it's not appropriate to visit those area-- there were around a hundred children living here, most of them came from families that either couldn't support them, abandoned them or were ex-slaves. Included in the bunch were demi-humans, but they were the minority.

The orphanage's first floor had a study room, play room, living room, kitchen, dining room and two bathrooms. It also had a large backyard where the children could play around. Some mock weapons and straw posts could be seen and..

I saw this girl who had only one arm swinging a sword out in the field. There was a small peanut gallery of children bobbing their heads as they traced the movement of the balde. The girl herself had brown hair held together by a clip and her most notable feature was that..

She was pregnant.

Heh? She looks around my age.. like seriously?

I don't mean to be impolite but I did not expect this. A girl with only a single arm pregnant, and she's about 16 years old. I'm I seeing things correctly?

She swung her sword.. and stopped.. then turned to us. Sweat running down her face as she took in deep breaths.

"Nataline-san, meet the new guests, Her Highness also came today," Gabriel called out.

"Thank you Gabriel. Well, good to see new faces around here, I'm Nataline, nice to meet you four. Thank you for visiting our orphanage," she said with a confident smile. You could tell she was an adventurer just from that alone.

"Nice to meet you, Nataline-san, I'm Noel."

"Nice to meet you, you can call me Prune."

"And I'm Nine."

"You can call me Liliath. It is a pleasure to be acquainted with you."

"So.. Her Highness is here?" Nataline, asked in a dubious voice.

"Yes, she's out in front," Gabriel said, pointing with her finger.

Nataline then turned to the peanut gallery of children sitting at the porch.

"Okay, okay, children, have you greeted the Princess?" in a cheerful voice she asked.

"Not yet?"

"No."

"Is the princess here?!"

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"Those who have not, shall we go greet her together?"

"""Hai!!"""

What a heartwarming scene. Together with the kids in tow, Nataline entered the mansion. She gave us a short glance before disappearing to the other side.

"Nice to meet you!"

"Um, onee-san, nice to meet you?"

Children started pouring in from nowhere and surrounded us. The beast-kin children looked rather interested in Prune so they approached her first.

We had to greet the children one by one. Rather cute how they tried using their fingers to remember our names-- they're not doing arithmetic so I don't know how that works.. oh wait, Nine is a number isn't he?

'My apologies, everything should be settled now. I'm currently in the study room so if you may meet me here, pardon the request.'

"Noel," Liliath called out, carrying one of the children in her arms as she flailed about like some superhero.

"Yeah, we better go."

"Yea.. yea. yea.. wait.. don't pull there, don't pull," Prune who squatted on her knees to meet the height of the children was being harassed by the tail and fluffy ears. But she looked like she thoroughly enjoyed being around them though...

As for Nine..

"Have you met Princess Frog?" one kid asked.

"Princess Frog? That would be a no.."

"You should go meet him, he's a nice frog!" another kid said.

"Oh no.." Gabriel held her head.

"Ahahaha.. maybe a little later, we have something we need to attend to.." Nine tried to laugh it off.

-- he was having a serious conversation with the kids.

"NO, I DON'T WANT TO GO DOWN!!"

"Now, we have something we must do, it's no good to be spoiled you know?" Liliath said to the child who desperately tried to cling to her.

"WAAAWAWA!!"

"Lucia-chan, you're troubling the guests," one of the caretakers came to take the child, Lucia away from Liliath.

"Uwu.." she tried to reach out her hand to Liliath but being held by the caretaker, she stood no chance. Tears formed at the edges of her eyes.

"Apologies for the trouble," the caretaker said.

"It's alright."

"Help.." Prune cried.. buried under a group of three kids while the others frolicked about with her body parts.

Owh darn.. I never knew an orphanage could be so dangerous..

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Author's Notes:

I thought I needed to share this to everyone so here's the excerpt of the Author's notes from my Patreon side (chapter 206 up on patreon at the time of writing):

[Start]

Dotturndot here. 

My gosh. It broke 200 chapters. 200 CHAPTERS!! WOOHOOO!!! I’VE NEVER ACHIEVED SUCH A FEAT BEFORE IT”S TIME TO CELE.. or not. 

Anyways, continuing with last time’s postscript.. It’s probably just me overthinking things. Bottom line is I just need to keep writing for a decade. How exactly I would find an opportunity to grow into my goals.. No idea. I just need to be patient and work, work, work. I guess it’s the same for any other goal out there.

So if you do have any wish/ goals/ aspirations you wish to achieve, just keep at it! I’m sure everyone struggles with it every now and then, achieving anything is more of a mental battle more than anything else. This feeling of ‘I won’t make it’, or ‘I’m doing it wrong’-- I feel it too. It’s like driving into a world of fog, or swimming upstream.

I don’t really have a conclusion to it all, I still get worried and confused at times. Then again.. It might really be just me. I’ve said it a lot of times but it’s basically the concept that the fact that ‘I don’t know if I’m doing things right’ exists is because my mind thinks of it. Honestly, who knows if I’m doing things right or wrong? More so.. Isn’t it normal that I’d be doing a lot of wrong things before I reach my end goal? Funky cognitive dissonance.

Another concern I actually want to confess (man.. This author is babbling a lot of nonsense) is the fact that I probably am just selfish. It’s confusing at times because I write because I love writing.. I write also because there are people who love my writing.. I write also because I want to earn money.. 

The third one. To earn money. A crucial aspect of earning money is providing value. In this case, my illustrations and writing. I feel that I’m being stingy requesting money because ‘I’ve provided value’, and I for some reason expect an equal compensation. Which is a little dumb. The volume-ly EX chapter concept feels like some money bag scheme, and I somehow have this feeling that I’m being selfish. My commitment to provide 6 chapters a week (publicly) feels like a joke, a selfish marketing scheme. At the same time, I want to figure out a way to generate revenue cuz if authors on Webnovel can gain millions of views even when their chapters are locked behind a paywall, why can’t I? 

I even had this idea to lock up chapters for my future novels. And to be honest, I’m losing sight that there’s someone here willing to support me on patreon, thanks @Parsatag. 

Listening to marketing talks by Seth Godin and Darren Hardy (Google them!) in this saturated economy, the only way to win is to please the smallest viable audience. Have your audience trust you and want your work enough they would go round the world just to buy your stuff. 

The entire Ponzi scheme where you can upload novels online and expect the free novel to go boom, and then when you’ve reached the point of publishing the book sells well.. It’s a pipedream is it? Or it’s that we just don’t have the service/ culture built for that. Though I’ve never reached the stage of publishing, and know nothing about it, I don’t think it’s really as simple as putting your book up on amazon kindle. Most people, like me, read a good web novel and go, man this author is amazing and don’t go follow up on that author or spend money to support the author. Not to say this is wrong or inappropriate, but that’s just what it is. I’m guilty of this too.

Unlike in Japan, there’s no company doing marketing incentives for light novel authors/ web novel authors (lucky authors in Japan are given endorsement deals, get an anime and such; I’m sugar coating this cuz I don’t know the reality of it). Actually, the next closest thing for English writers is Webnovel. If not, it’s: put your well copy-edited manuscript online bookstore and then what?? Expect it to just sell? It’s hard to really make sense of who would want to buy your novel when your novel has already been read for free.

Unless you’re thinking that those buying the published version of the novel are newcomers, people that didn’t know about you before. What’s the point in building a fan base in the web novel world then when your revenue is driven from anonymous people?

That’s what’s driving me crazy. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Oh, remember why I said Ponzi scheme up above? It’s really the web novel site that’s really earning. Assuming 98 out of a hundred novels fail, the two successful novels would go on to generate the income for the site. As in Webnovel. Webnovel wins, the other 98 percent of authors, wiped out. (Of course, this is an extreme example but you get the point). Fair warning, it’s not Webnovel or any web novel hosting sites being unfair, it’s a fact.

Webnovel is not a bad site or service per say. It depends on what you’re looking for, Webnovel makes it convenient for authors to focus on their craft. Forums have a lot of weird info about Webnovel which.. I don’t know how to make sense. It’s as confusing as the world of Crypto. Anyways, Webnovel solves all the marketing and even provides monthly pay for a minimal amount of work (minimal cuz once you’ve reached it, it’s not hard to write 3k words a day, 5-7 pages with font size of 11, which equates to about 10 pages in a font of 14. Then again.. I remembered that 6 months ago, I struggled to write 7 pages a week). But there’s a price to pay, the thing is that: I don’t want to pay that price. My rights to own my story, in exchange for the marketing and income from writing.

So how exactly does one earn money from writing? I think I’m starting to piece together the puzzle, albeit slowly. There’s a lot of things I don't know, but I believe the answer is found in learning how to build a small scale business. It’s no longer just about being an author, we have to learn to create a community, build systems to drive traffic, market and sell our products.

It sounds incredibly stupid coming from a unkowledgable guy like me that has not a clue how this works. But I think it is the truth. There’s no nice service here to help market your products unless you're interested in losing your rights by publishing in Webnovel. And even if you get help from a generic publishing company.. Question is: will they entertain you? As for self-publishing.. That’s where you have to drive your own marketing and traffic. Creating a business. A small scale one. And it’s normal for a business to take years. And there’s a lot of skill, knowledge and effort involved in creating a successful one.

I don’t know. But this is my opinion, just sharing my thoughts. I maybe naive, maybe publishing a book is the way to go. Maybe people who read your web novel would be willing to support your work. I have no idea. 

I’ll admit. I’ve not been as cheerful as I was before, being all grateful and nice that I’m getting a lot of views. I’ve changed, I want to go back to before but I can’t. I’ve learnt more, I’ve come to realize more. Cutting away from the comments because I couldn’t face the others, scared that they wouldn’t accept this crude, blatant, no longer cheery and optimistic me. Of course, I am grateful that you follow my work (even though I’m such an asshole at times; you may or may not feel it in my work, but I assure you, in RL, I beat myself up about being selfish and being money oriented). 

Not that I’m pessimistic, but knowing that the views metric or comment metric don’t really matter all that much, knowing that simply writing isn’t the answer (but it’s very important to do so as it’s the base of everything I do)-- that there’s a long ass road to go to become successful as an author. It’s down right demoralizing.  

Well.. it’s demoralizing if you think it is.. Cuz the joy is in the journey and not the result..

Thank you for reading!!

[End]

Now. To add a little more to touch it up. Take it with a pinch of salt. Cuz this is just my honest feelings about the situation, and it doesn't mean I'm right, I'm pretty sure I'm just confused as heck. And I hope you don't go sub to my patreon just because you feel like you agree with this rant of mine. 

Unless you really feel like my work is worth something to you, just keep your money and enjoy the free chapters I'm putting out. 

Next is about a shift in my system.

ScribbleHub will now become my main posting site. Webnovel and Honeyfeed as the auxiliary-- or if I want to say blatantly, the traffic drivers. I don't see why I should drive traffic to WN. It makes it difficult for people to access certain things with the censorship and inability to access links. Not to mention, the ranking system drives me nuts. 

And last but not least. I'm grateful for your continued support. I will make sure that this series gets completed without fail!

 

 

 

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