Don't ya worry man and let me cook. For as long as the webnovel gods give this novel even the slightest chance, then I can confidently say not a single element of it is unnecessary :3

Nice to know... >.>

Once again, I have no idea and wont make any binding statements. The harem/no-harem view is extremely polarizing and declaring for either often limits my ability to write stuff that has nothing to do with either just because people assume so. Its like, if I declare for harem, people wouldnt like MC being faithful while accepting political marriages. If I declare for non-harem, people will expect there only being one female of importance to the plot. Love is complicated and so is life. But its also an aspect that I allow to develop naturally, as a consequence of the story, rather than being imposed just because of some immature, tribal feud.

Yup, I will let grammarly take the fall for this one >.>

I did? o.0 I'm just doing my best, though? Or maybe it's because everything before this arc was merely prologue leading up to it? :D

Spoiler: (all three of them had a crush on her)

It's okay to have an opinion on a topic you know little about, but its not adviseable to share such opinion publicly as you are only making the rest of the world aware that not only you have no idea how vast your ignorance is, but you are also not actively aware of the fact. Your post brings up nothing more than a bunch of falsehoods or outright propaganda that's so infantile it's even hard to argue about (You can't argue with someone who just screetches at you and calls you evil with no reason behind it, that's how your comment here looks like to me, someone who's actually deeply into the topic). Again, it's fine to have an opinion. But please, do keep your agendas to yourself rather than trying to spam my novel with it. Find your own platform, stop trying to abuse one I created.

Do you think anyone cares? No one is here to hear your useless preaching, go to twitter and close yourself off in a circle of mutual and unchallenged adoration. You have no power here.

I could argue that I'm introducing complexity of the magic (even if only its fragment) early on to weed out those who just want to read simple "power up, now you are even more OP and get more one-dimensional girls with big booba" and are more interested in reading stuff with "If everyone is OP, then is anyone OP?" and "This is how it works, and if this happens, this will be the logical result". But the truth is, after going overboard with simplicity on my last novel and writing like 20 chapters of fluffy filer early on, I'm now swinging back to writing a story that has enough complexity to make writing it satisfying. (Keep in mind, whenever I explain magic in depth, I inherently put a frame on it, limit its initially endless potential and force the MC to find ways to exploit what he can to overcome things rather than just shrugging my shoulders and solving everything with omnipotent "magic".)

I know, man, I know... There's no one more aware of it than me. Sadly, this realization came way too late for me to be able to fix it.

That's why I made a huge point of his mind somewhat "softening" as he regresses back to his youthful form. Sure, he has nearly two hundred years of experience, but its not the amount of emotion, knowledge etc that his young brain can process. So while he's much more mature than people his age, he's still a man in his early twenties, thus the emotional leeway

Who knows? In all honesty, I don't know yet myself :3

Damn man, I have no idea how I've missed this... I had to be either tired beyond any recognition and mistake it for a comment, I guess? Either way, thanks a lot for the review! As for your comment, I'm not really sure. When writing stories, I leave some part of them to when I will write the chapters down. I have some parts of the story set more or less in stone (magic system, basic lore, the main premise or general climax points) but others I often leave to figure out as I go. In my belief and from my experiences, it makes for a far more engaging storytelling than just strictly following an idea that will soon become old and unfit the fine print I randomly end up including as the story evolves and changes. I don't intend for this novel to be some super tense thriller. Sure, there will be high points, befitting a relatively nice and chill read. All in all, there will surely be some romantic drama, the story's plot getting in the way and all sorts of other stuff, but I generally tend to go with more reasonable approach. Whatever happens, happens. People are flawed. Relationships often doesn't lasts forever. And there are all sorts of situationships. Squashing all of those minute details that I believe to be often more interesting than the clickbaity stuff, into just one "h*rem" wouldn't give justice to what I'm trying to create here :3

Yeah, ngl, wasn't quite sure how exactly to write this part. Will try to rewrite it at a better time

Bua-bye!

<Be careful what you wish for>

Those two are not kids, I made it a point to refer to them per "youths" rather than kids. Keep in mind that Leo is several hundred years old and is well within his right to call even world's elders as kids. The whole group consisted fully of adults. In theory it's an additional loredrop but those two are 22 and 20 respectively.

Correct.

Or this dissonance is a result of something that goes deeper into the story than what you are supposed to know at this stage :D

As I mentioned in several replies so far, I overcorected the simplicity early on, nothing I can do about it now but hope you will stick through and reach faster paced parts before losing all of your patience :)