An update for you all, dealing with both Forged Heroics and Survival Tendency.

So, I realize my schedule with updating is ridiculously erratic, and that's honestly nobody's fault but my own. I want to upload more, but I tend to push out chapters when I don't have any after it that I can safely upload without losing focus or being at a loss for what to do. I have a horrible memory, so it's hard to remember certain plot details.

For Forged Heroics, I'm certain that those of you that are die-hard fans of the series have noticed a few things that are a bit off with the actual story. First off, the timeline is seriously wrong. The trial wasn't supposed to take place as soon as it had, things were revealed that weren't supposed to be early on in the story, and Naofumi wasn't supposed to go through everything on the first day. That being said, though I am fully aware of that oversight, I'm keeping it in for the sake of owning up to my mistakes. I rushed the chapters out before chapter three in my attempt to actually write something good, and I made a few oversights in ways of timeline and actual sequences of events. Hell, I only just recently figured out that it was due to Naofumi's natural abilities that he was immune to alcohol and motion sickness, and that it wasn't due to the Shield.

Another thing I messed up has to do with Naofumi's personality when it comes to having his name cleared. As shown in the spinoff series, Reprise of the Spear Hero, if Naofumi's name gets cleared from the start, then it causes some problems in various scenarios, including the fact that he doesn't quite grow to hate the world as much as he did before. I hadn't known this existed at the time, so I went down a different path. So, for those of you that are worried about that, allow me to use my reasoning for a moment. In this specific Fanfiction, he'd still grow to hate the Heroes for so blindly believing Bitch to be truthful in that scenario without even giving him the chance to defend himself. He hates Bitch for attempting to frame him (naturally). And he hates that the kingdom tried to persecute him just for being the Shield Hero. Though he trusts one or two more people than he did in the original story, he doesn't really trust anybody else in the kingdom. Especially not the royalty. His hate is still a thing, which will cause the same issues down the line as they did in the original series.

Next, for Survival Tendency. Not a lot of people have many problems with this one, surprisingly. Though I will say it deviates from the lore of the actual game a little bit in various ways. One is that with the Ark being faulty, not everyone gets the chance to revive if they die. The MC and his sister are one of the few examples where they'll revive in the Ark no matter what glitches there may be, as well as a few other people for plot purposes, but this Revival feature is one that I needed to address, as I'm sure one or two people were wondering about it. This feature will be rather important down the line, as it leads to a lot of plot details that I planned for in the later installments to Soulbound.

I apologize if any of this seems like rambling or it doesn't really seem to fit together in any meaningful way, but at this moment I'm running off of little to no sleep during Finals Week and it's hard to string together something concrete in a legitimate conversation or informative writing. I had to address these concerns and questions that I've been receiving in my off time, and the best way I could think of doing so was to just make a document that was explaining everything.

With that being said, I'll see you guys in the next chapters!

-Max