Here’s the Q&A, feel free to ask more questions as well, but they might or might not be answered for a while, and of course following the same rules of no spoilers and such 🙂
Endern
Well I have a question: Did William reach perfection with his soul defense technique? Or can he only power it up further by using more qi?
William hasn’t perfected anything yet. He’s probably fallen a bit behind on that one (Soul Armor, I know, super inventive name isn’t it?). Though, now he has some reasons he might want to change that.
DwarvenRedshirt
- What’s the background on why that civilization is using base 12 numbering?
- Base 12 can be split up into more numbers (2, 3, 4, 6) so it is somewhat more useful than calculations. While base 10 can be split evenly into… 2 and 5. Base 10’s biggest merit is that people have 10 fingers, which is useful for counting. However, you can count to 12 using the joints of the non-thumb fingers on one hand, so it’s not the only sensible option because of that. Mostly, it’s just another relatively sensible number base to use.
- Average lifespan of the population (asides from Demon King outbreaks). Impression I have is that it’s roughly the same (wizards/ki warriors don’t necessarily have longer lifespans from their powers). Demons (ala the Demoness) seem to have a long lifespan.
- Wizards would generally only live longer the same way as people with better resources/money would live longer (which will generally be true)
- Warriors/Martial Artists would generally live slightly longer, mostly because of health reasons, but they still age about the same
- Demon lifespans are basically unlimited, however their birthrates are lower and they can still die in accidents, due to disease, or be killed, so they still don’t end up taking over everything. Or at least, they haven’t yet.
- Can souls reincarnate between Demon and Human bodies? This leads to whether or not humans from Earth are also reincarnating as Demons and whether or not the Demon King can reincarnate as a Human.
- It is possible, with some caveats that shall forever remain a mystery (until I say it). See two questions down, as well
- Will Human souls from Earth be bringing technological weapons, or are you going to limit technological advances? ie, “forgotten” memory?
- Most people who reincarnate forget everything, some remember some things, and only very few remember everything. It would require someone with the knowledge to create all of the “lesser” technology required to produce higher technology as well as the technology itself reincarnating with all of their memories. For example, people could probably already create simple guns and cannons, but there are various reasons why they generally don’t.
- Do you plan on having more than just the Earth and the current world in the multiverse, or can there potentially be more (so souls can come from other backgrounds).
- Most people/souls don’t retain any form of memories upon reincarnation, so being from a different world is generally irrelevant. Souls could reincarnate from more than just Earth, but William didn’t have any way to screen for that, so he didn’t find anyone.
- Liaoyang background. Did that culture develop naturally in that world, or did it originate from souls from Earth that brought the martial arts knowledge?
- All of the cultures developed (mostly) naturally, but over the course of time there have been various reincarnated souls influencing the world somewhat. Ostana also got Europeanish influence, and then continued to develop in that manner. The countries remain mostly culturally independent because of various terrain features separating them (mountains, desert, giant kind-of monster infested forest).
Quaesitor
- How can you write that much?
- For me it helped to have a schedule and set a goal for how much I have to write. Just don’t start with too high of a goal because you’ll just not be happy and also not be able to write as much as you want. However, I also wouldn’t start with restricting yourself to a specific story. Whatever you feel capable of writing at the moment is good enough. Then eventually you can work up to writing more and something specific. Maybe this won’t work for everyone though, because different people think differently.
- Many authors create a “hero” as the main character that is courageous, excels in something, and basically is kind of superior to most other characters in the story (or reality, to be honest). However, I’ve never seen you do that. Why?
- I would say that my characters often excel at certain things… However, I intentionally don’t make them better at literally everything than everyone else. The reason is simple: it gets boring. I think it’s better if there are some areas where they aren’t that great, or even truly abysmal. At the very least, there should be some people who are better at things than them, even possibly their best area. At least, for some time. After all, if they’re already the best at everything, then there isn’t really room for growth. Characters with flaws are more fun.
- Now I thought of a good analogy. Think of the main character like someone in a game (video game, tabletop rpg, whatever). If you’re playing a game where you start off the best at everything, not only is it boring, it’s just a bad game. Instead, it’s better when you can work for it, or when you can take flaws to add more good things.
- Another question~. I just remembered, but why was William that impulsive with the archmage? Except for that, he seemed to be a rather rational person.
- I think I’ve already answered this in the story, but I’m gonna put a summary here from out of character. In addition to seeing what had been done with the guild (only admitting nobles, excessive ornamentation), William also heard Cecil Lockridge admit to burning the records on the Demon King. These were things the archmages had been writing since the re-founding of the guild after it was destroyed by one of them (I don’t remember how many incarnations ago I said that one was, but 6+). That meant that not only was a lot of William’s previous life’s work just thrown out, so was more. That meant that Cecil Lockridge was extremely foolish, or malicious. Thus, having him leading the guild would only lead to ruin. Plus, William got really mad, and even normally calm dudes get mad. Especially during puberty, which was still happening. He did have a reason though. If he’d thought about it longer, he probably would have come to the decision rationally. Certainly, working with the wizard’s guild was ruined, but he didn’t want to work with that one anyway. But it was also partly just an impulsive decision that became easy to fully rationalize later.