Prior warning and explanation.
Prior warning and explanation.
Hi everyone, here is Hikaru Genji.
*Beware ye who enter here. The starting chapters are an insane put-off full of smut. I dropped this at least 3 times out of annoyance. However, this novel picks up its pace quickly and actually develops a good story. Skip the earliest smut (they're not even good ones compared to after) and just get into the story. Solid writing and somewhat realistic characterization.*
This is one of the reviews I received and I believe this pretty much gives an idea of this story. I will be honest. I started this story Three years ago. More precisely it was first posted on Scribble on the 1st of September 2020. Time sure flies. I mainly was on Patreon/Webnovel/Scribble Hub. This story was contracted to Web Novel last year but I recently terminated the contract and decided to focus on RR and eventually Amazon in the future.
If you visit my Patreon you will see that SHK Is still ongoing and has around 600 chapters (normal chapters+Bonus and interlude) for a hefty 900K+ words count (still ongoing) and you will also see that I have quite several Patron.
So, why I am writing this?
If you didn't skip yet, I will explain.
I am not ashamed to say that SHK started in my mind as a pure smut. I was a student and I traveled to Paris for my law studies (my main language is French and I started studying English six years ago or so because I wanted to read scan translation fast since French translation was very slow back then haha).
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I needed cash and needed a way to not put too much weight on my mother. I wanted to be independent. So I started writing. This was the only thing I could do without affecting my studies. Firstly fanfic then my first true Original. SHK. I wrote smut because let's be honest. Smut sell. Because of this, the first part: The Witch is filled with a little too much horny energy.
But...I grew up and as I continued to write, I realized that while smut did sell, if you didn't write a good story it would never stay long. So I changed slowly. I reduced the explicit scenes and focused more on the plot. I believe this becomes apparent by ch 20+ and even more so in the incoming chapters.I know most Royal Road readers aren't exactly fans of such settings. My ratings are the proof haha. But I believe I am writing a very good story. If you are interested but find yourself dissatisfied by the smut. Skip it. You might like what I have to show.
Finally, Royal Road is a clear rule that forbids stories to have more than 10-15% content explicit scene, and thankfully, my story does not stray and the explicit content diminishes largely. As an example, after a while, I could go for more than hundreds of chapters without any such scenes. The story focuses on the Growth of Sol as a character and as a prince. As well as his power level. The Progression has some inspiration from Xianxia and so on.
SHK is an Isekai Fantasy story filled with references to Mythologies as I am a huge fan of such and If you like Myths as much as me, you will like SHK. My skills now as a writer are very different from those three years ago. I already edited some of the earlier chapters. But anyway, this was my message to you.
If you read until here. Thanks for doing so. Even if you skipped don't worry.
In Short: SHK has less than 10% explicit scenes. They may be numerous early on but the number and frequency shrink fast. Give it a try, ignore the smut if you don't like it. The story becomes better I think.
I know saying something like It Become Better at X chapter can be pretty lame but heh, I rather share my feelings here.