Chapitre 85: Important! Author's Update (Break Due to Graduation)

Hello! If you're reading this then you're caught up with the most recent release. Or just checking out how it turns out, some people are like that. I'm like that. Either way, I hope you stick around for a while and read this.

If you don't want to read the reason, just look down below for the announcement itself. It should be in bold if you're reading on a desktop, but mobile still has that bug where no Bold and Italics are shown. It should be pretty clear if you look for it down there.

Anyway, this is going to be a long story that would hopefully make you understand why I'll do what I'll do. I don't need you to be happy about my decision, I only hope that you understand. At the end of the day, there's no reason why you shouldn't be upset and no reason for me to force myself to do this when I really have no obligation to. But still, I care enough to let you know because I owe at least that to you.

So, where to begin?

Let's start with the inception of this novel. Why it came to be, where I got my inspiration from and what I want to make out of it.

I first encountered web novels with Coiling Dragon, around six years ago, when I was in my last year of high school. Absolutely loved it, the world, the characters, the interaction between fictional characters and how their lives turn into extraordinary pieces of storytelling that resonates with the readers.

Took me a long time to drop that book because of how good it was, and when I did, it was because I finished it. I took like, 2 weeks to finish it while having exams at the time. Didn't study shit, like I always do, because that's how I grew up. I just excel in my academics and no one gave me shit for not studying properly. That's because I was good enough, no, I was pretty good in most of what I do that no one bothered looking into how I do shit.

So, from there, I went on to binge every novel that was even remotely related to Coiling Dragon. You know, the beginner's novels, Battle Through the Heavens, Douluo Dalu, Ancient Strengthening Technique, MGA, ATG and the damn TDG. Went through these novels like an addict, using most of my time reading to alleviate myself from the fear of the future. And that future came knocking on my door with so much vigor that a fist-sized hole was present when I came up to open it.

After graduating high school, I end up having to choose a career out of the hundreds of paths written on a sheet of paper given out to me by a teacher. Lots of words that meant nothing to me, none that I cared enough about to even memorize. That's when it hit me, that I would have to do a job that I won't care about for the rest of my life and be just like everybody else. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not how I roll.

I ended up not giving a shit about what career I choose, as long as I can complete it. You know how Zel decided his career because that's what his father told him? Yeah, that's me. Remember how he had a talent in making money off the stock market? Yeah, that's me.

Basically, my plan was: Make enough money in my time at college that I'd never have to worry about money ever again.

Think about it, graduating one day and then you buy a house right afterwards just because you can. It's like having a life that you know won't fail because you've prepared beforehand. Just as I always did, I get shit done and got to work.

I couldn't start engaging in the stock market before I was 18, which was second year college. So, before that, I made all the research I could do. Reading graphs, watching professionals and writing my own analysis regarding the direction of the market without really having the chance to prove myself. But I didn't care, I was going to learn this shit and make money while studying in college.

Sure, studying civil engineering was going to be hard, but when you're stress-free because you know you can pay for your tuition when you fail, you don't really care anymore. But even then, I was still acing college just as I did everything before college. First year was a breeze, and I even got to court a girl that was SO my type. Like the girl of my dreams, and I can't believe that I'd meet someone like her while studying Civil Engineering of all things.

So, anyway, this is where you see more parallels with me and the character Zel. While not as successful as the guy, I think doubling my money in one month is pretty damn good. While it was only 15,000 php turning to 30,000, that was all me. Money that I saved, and money that I earned. So, I borrowed 30,000 more from my father to give me a boost and made my capital 60,000 php. For reference, the initial salary of a Civil Engineer was 20,000 a month at the most.

Like the idiot I am, I went to town with that money and didn't do what I did before. I didn't break off that money and place it into multiple sectors that would give me a much safer chance at earning money. No, instead, I went and placed the whole thing in one company because there was news going on related to it.

For the Filipinos reading this, it was the time when a candidate for the DENR secretary position. Gina Lopez said that she'd close down all the mining companies that were harming the Philippines' ecosystem if she was placed in that position. As her popularity at the time was soaring, the stocks for these mining companies were tanking. People were in a rush to let go of the money burning stocks so much that they were sold for dirt-cheap prices.

At that time, I was so sure of myself that this whole thing would be my chance.

"No way this woman will get that position, the government is losing money, they don't like losing money."

With that in my mind, I took all my money and placed it into one of the most affected stocks at the time. I think it was called Apex Mining, or something like that. There was no fear on my face when I clicked the button that basically said I'm using all my money to bet on a chance that was against my favor.

'Fuck it, life's too short.' was all I had in my head. Needless to say, I couldn't sleep that night and was watching the news for anything, ANYTHING that might be related to that mining stock.

Woke up the next morning and looked at the news, then tears rolled down my eyes.

'Gina Lopez, not appointed as secretary of the DENR.'

I remembered going to my treadmill and running for an hour, just so I could get the excitement out of my system. But it never did. I just had a silly smile on my face that couldn't be taken down by anything, by anyone.

Ended up making my money reach 100,000 PHP at that point in time. Could have made more if I had the balls to keep my stocks a little longer, as I sold when I was around 40% in profits. The stock could have made me reach 130% or something like that, but even though I lost out, I was still happy just making money.

Guys, this was 100,000 PHP and I was 18. I felt like I was a fucking bread winner. I went to movie theaters and just watched any new movie that interested me. Went to town on mobile games because I felt like it, was even planning on buying a PS4 but held back because that would take too much money away from my capital.

As I've learned early on, the best way to make money in the stock market was to not spend any. This is the time where I made a vow to myself and kept the money in the account at a minimum of 100,000. That was my rule.

This is when the bad things happened, though. I ended up staying too long on a stock that lost value so quickly that if I pulled out right then and there, I would end up losing around 30,000. That's a lot of money to lose, so I held on and kept it there.

Because a good rule of thumb in the stock market is, as long as you don't sell the stocks, you haven't lost money. Wait for it to come back to what you want and sell it then, there's no need to rush unless you REALLY need the money. So, I left it there, wasn't planning on taking that out for months so I could focus on courting the girl I liked, anyway.

A few days later, I hear my mother knock on my door. She told me that she needed to borrow money from me to pay for my tuition fee. I was confused, because my father gave her the money a few weeks ago. The tuition fee should have been paid for weeks ago, and now she's telling me that there's a problem and it needs to be paid for, by me.

'Why not ask dad for help?'

'Your father would just yell at me. Please, son, help your mother. I'll pay you back next month, I promise.'

Yeah, well. I didn't have spare cash on me. And while I had stocks, there wasn't any money in that account. I told her that I needed my tuition fee paid for or else I won't be able to enroll for the next semester and getting money from my stock market account would make me lose a lot of money. And the process of getting that stock to liquid money needs some time to do, and I won't make it if I had to wait.

So, here's my mother's suggestion. Borrow some money from my father and pay him back with the money I get from the stock market later on. I was now pushed into a corner, as I really needed to get that enrollment done or I'd be delayed.

It was a dilemma between telling my father that my mother lost his money or making myself a saint by owing up to her mistake, borrowing money from my father and paying my own tuition fee then pay my father back when I get my money out of my account.

I know most of you would do the same as I did, not wanting your parents to fight when you have the power to make it not happen, you know. So as the good little son I was, I did it.

But when my father was asking me why I needed to borrow 40,000 PHP from him, I said it was for an investment that suddenly came up. I had to lie to my father because telling the truth would just ruin the whole reason I'm doing this in the first place.

I felt my heart break, lying to my old man like that. I've never lied to my father, because I wanted to grow old without having to be someone who failed his parents in any way. But now I was lying to my father, right on his face while my voice was shaking. He might have thought that I was just nervous, and that he was proud of me because he just smiled and took out the money from his wallet and told me.

'Don't worry about it, you'll pay me back, won't you?'

His damn tone made me feel heart broken, and when I felt that I've sunk to the lowest I could ever become, I look at my mother and she was giving me a thumbs up. Like I was doing great.

'Fuck you.' In all my life, I've never cursed my mother before then. But I did, not verbally, but in my mind. I started hating my mother, and her being a disappointment didn't stop there.

So, I paid for my tuition, got a huge loss of around 35,000 and got only 65,000 out of my account. That's a huge loss for me, and I felt my love for the stock market drop to half when that happened. It felt like my smooth road to fucking financial freedom was hijacked and I got out with an arm and a leg left. I paid 40,000 to my dad, which made a huge weight in my heart drop.

'At least I didn't rob my father.' That was my only consolation.

I only had 25,000 PHP to my name. The base of my whole life at that time was that I was the boy who had his future planned out, that I'd hopefully reach a million by the time I was 20 made me shake from excitement. Now that plan was going horribly awry, and I could do nothing to stop it.

Cut to next month and the money I was owed never came to me, in fact, I was borrowed 20,000 more for my sister's surgery. She had fucking kidney stones at, like 14. I said fine, just pay me back. I know I sound bad because of how I wrote this, but I swear, I was the best son my parents could ever ask for in these times. Never a problem, only a solution. But that's my problem, I was their solution.

At the time, my father probably thought that his son was making money. This mother of mine didn't bother correcting him and said, 'Yeah, he is.' because she saw me having left over money from when I first took out the money. MY stock market money that I promised myself I wouldn't touch, and this woman thinks it's not mine, but OURS.

'Fine! Take it, just give it back to me when you can!' This was what I said for around five months. I made money in the stock market for around four months. I was out of the market for more time than I was on it. All my hard work, all my research was down the drain. My money never came to me. I was fucking broke.

Only thing I had left was my stinginess as I still got to save 80% of my allowance at the time, which in five months amounted to 24,000 PHP. But even those were borrowed when we literally had no food because she spent our budget for food on something, she never told us.

But the woman had another problem, she sold our family car. Yeah, the car we use to go around and live our lives. She sold it. No fucking talk with me or my father, but my younger sisters knew. She fucking robbed us, and when she saw me angry at her, she cried, and my little sisters berated me.

For all those who are asking why Zel shouted at his sisters, that's because those people who don't stop stupid shit from happening are monsters as well. Doesn't matter how you feel, that's just objectively right. I was made to feel guilty for making my mother cry because she sold our fucking car! Fucking women just turned this shit around on me like I couldn't fucking believe it. I didn't apologize, fuck that.

So, I call my older sister, I tell her the problem and she told me that it's going to be fine. I told her that our mother wasn't paying me back my money, I wanted her to make sense out of this whole problem that is, not was, my mother.

Here's a breakdown of the convo:

'It's been months since she asked me for money, and it's a lot of money, sis. All of my money is gone, and I don't know what to do with my life anymore.'

'It's just money, Zel. You can earn it back, what's a small amount of money anyway? You know, mother owes us (She and her husband) 100,000 PHP. That's a lot of money, right?'

'Yeah, she owes me that too!'

'... It's still just money, Zel.'

'You have a job, sis. Big brother has a job. That might seem to be just a piece of your bank account but not to me. You can lend her money, fine, but that money was what I use to make money. My job depends on it!'

'... Is the money worth more than your relationship with mother?'

'... Sigh. She sold the car.'

'What? Does daddy know?'

'No. She sold it for 350,000.'

'What? That's a bad price!'

'Yeah? Well, she never asked anyone about it. She just sold her husband's car without him knowing and you want me to love her? To forgive and forget?'

'Zel, you shouldn't talk like that.'

'Well, I've been the only one carrying the burden here. Hope you don't make me sound like the bad guy when I've been the only guy who's making this family stay together.'

'... Zel, it's ju-'

Then I hung up. I don't know what happened, but I just fucking hated everything now. My parents have been fighting for years, and everytime that they made up, it was because of me. When my sister left the house, I was forced to step up. But the fights between my parents were progressively getting more and more toxic. It might be because they found a fucking marriage counselor in me but god damn, those people are shitty parents. Most parents hide their problems from their children, mine wanted me to decide on who's right and who's wrong. Fuckers even wanted my little sisters to hear them fight, like some kid would know shit about relationship problems when they really don't. They're stupid and I still help them, because I am their son and I want them to stay together. That was my mistake. I should have sidestepped their issues and moved on with my life. I'd be a millionaire by now, and have much less hate in my system.

I hated my family, my school, myself. The girl I was courting was leaving the country, too. So I didn't bother with her anymore. Stopped going to the gym, stopped hanging out with friends. Stopped reading, too. My life was over. I was no one. I wanted to die. I still want to die.

For people who say 'get help', fuck off. That just leads you to telling yourself that things will get better. They really don't, not for everyone. And don't tell me how so and so got his shit together and got to live happily ever after. What about the guy who didn't get his shit together? No one talks about the majority of people who get fucked and never became someone they wanted to be.

Why?

Because no one likes a sob story, they say we're just complaining. So, none of those who fail speak up while the vocal minority who did, well, they scream as loud as they could. For those looking in, talking shit out of their asses, it's not helping. Talking about something you don't understand and making me feel like I failed when I was just screwed over, that's messed up.

I've spent three years now, living as a husk of my old self. From a healthy 70 kg to a disgusting 110 kg at the worst, yeah, that's how much I weighed at the lowest point in my life. I'm at 100 kg now and I feel like a damn pig. I started failing classes, too. As I never got my money, I started losing interest in even being competent at school and it hurt my grades a lot. My first failure in all my life, and I felt like the lowest piece of garbage in the world. I've never known how failure tasted like because I was always the excellent kid.

Now, I failed like, four subjects. Didn't feel a thing after the first one. Didn't love my family anymore, but gotta keep up appearances, right? I'm just that broken right now. I need something to go right in my life, and I think graduating is one of the possible chances for me to turn my life around.

I don't want people to say that I didn't give my family a chance to be better. I made my family feel loved, said 'I love you' everyday, gave them hugs and kisses, made time for them, all the things a good son/brother would do.

You wouldn't believe the drama this family of mine has. There's a lot more material you guys haven't seen that would fuck up any kid who experienced them, and they all happened to me.

Your parents fighting and you have to make them compromise?

Having a repossession man come to your house to take your car and you're alone?

Having to find out that your mother, who sold the family car, didn't have the money from selling it merely two months after she sold the car?

Your father having problems communicating because he spent most of his life being a boss, or some kind of leader and therefore thinks his children are his peers, not simple children?

I did more than what most would, and I get nothing. There was no day where I was the one being consoled, no one asked me how I was, no one cared. When I told them I wanted to die, I was just reprimanded. Like they would be ashamed if I do that, not a single hug came from anyone of them. Not a single one. I stopped caring, and I just let go.

There are more sad stories of shame from this guy, folks. I just don't want to write ten thousand words of the shit my family put me through. So, I wrote a novel, might as well get that shit out of my system.

Yep, that's WHERE the story came from. My shitty life. It just happened to be at a time where there's a competition that I felt interested in, so I put it out there. It was never put into words until that time I started writing this. 100,000 words in a month, all because of my hate-fueled drive pushing me forward.

But now, looking back, there's just too much that blocks me from writing what I want. Look at Volume 1, look how consistent it is. That's because I wrote those as I pleased, and I didn't bother about what the critics said. Comments saying this and that, I did as they asked, and the story just turned to something different from what it was. There was no more love for a whole chunk of the story, and it is only recently that I found the right groove again. See the chapters Back to the past and later and compare it to the start of Volume 2.

So, fucking different, right?

Now I have to write 1500 words a day, five times a week, so I can push out content that I don't feel like writing. It's not that I lost love for the novel, but I felt like I could do much better if I didn't have to write like I do right now.

Then there's my graduation. I have my last semester this first half year, and I want to focus on that. One of the reasons I want to do this is because I'm graduating, and I need to focus on that without having a deadline every week that makes this work much worse than it could be.

If I fail, then I'd have to stay with my parents for a longer time. Fuck that, I'd rather write without having that threat breathing down my neck.

Which leads me to this announcement:

There will be no update for six months, no author's update from me and I'll probably be uninstalling WebNovel in that time period. I will be back on August, with 100 chapters for release.

All new, all written without having to pump out chapters like a factory. It's just not for me, at least not in this point in my life. I have to study to graduate, and I really don't need this pressure on me while doing it.

The remake would include an all new Volume 1 and Volume 2. Volume 3 would start afterwards, with daily chapters from then on. Just like how I started, I'd be doing it with myself in mind. I won't bother with the critics anymore because I only did so out of concern. I realize now that I was wrong to do that, and I'll be better next time.

In this break, I will be remaking the whole novel while studying. I will make it an actual web novel, not just a rant that turned too good for me to give up and make a shitty ending just so I don't have to bother with it anymore. That's not how I do things. No, as I've said before, I get shit done. This six months will be me working on myself, making research on all the topics I've wanted to put in this novel and making it the best possible novel that it could be.

Will there be backlash?

Of course, but who cares?

If I make a piece of shit Volume 2 that doesn't, in any way, make me feel satisfied at all, it is in my rights as the author to do it right. Even Volume 1 has some parts that could be done better, which I can only say after writing it.

This is my first novel guys, I hope you understand that it's really not easy making every single thread connect while trying to write a cohesive story. I really don't know how I lasted this long. But I promise, all the valid complaints will be addressed and necessary improvements will be made.

I don't know if this will be the same account I'll use for that remake, but it probably will be. But if it's not, then I'd post the link here. I won't remove the chapters here, so feel free to read.

I'll also be posting the previous Volume 2 and the Extra Chapters as an apology. Probably start posting them by Thursday, or maybe Friday. Sometime around that.

Thank you to Mrganja, xlntz, GegeSadewa, azizonk, Ventril, vioddragon and the others who voted for this novel in the last month.

You guys put a hand on my back when I feel like stopping, pushing me to write on. Sorry to you guys if I made this decision without consulting you, but I hope that you understand that I really don't like how this would go. I need to put priority on my personal life over this novel that I pursue for a habit.

There are too many holes to fill, and too wide a spread for a cohesive story. I'll make the focus on just Zel, this time. And making the pieces fall into place with a more grounded approach instead of the more vague and messy way it turned out to be.

Once again, thank you for your time. See you in half a year. If you leave, that's fine too. But I hope you look forward to seeing a work made out of love, and not hate for what could have been.

Much love,

ChuYang

This is the date for the novel's return: August 3, 2020

P.S. Probably won't read the comments, so I'll address the questions only when I return. If you feel betrayed, don't be. Check back when I said I'll come back and you'll see that I kept my promise.

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