Author Commentary - The Road Not Taken (Patreon)

**This is not a Chapter**

Recently we were aquainted by the fourth race on New Earth, the Ratmen (or perhaps more appropriately the Molemen.) What you don’t know though is that the fourth race was supposed to be introduced far earlier, and this is commentary is about the original idea I had for introducing them.

The idea was for the fourth race to be introduced already after the second Beast wave. It would start with Zac being in the mines to check in on his hidden room and the mining operations in general.

Suddenly he heard shouts in the distance, and ran over to discover the fleeing silhouette of a ratman. This would be the introduction to the fourth species, and the start of the ratmen arc.

Zac would catch the ratman, let’s call him Remy, and from there learn that he was actually a fourth race rather than an invader or a beast.

The ratmen had feared the surface for thousands of years, and actively avoided the tunnels that lead further up due to not wanting to be burned alive by their sun. This fear had stayed with them even after the integration, and no one wanted to look upward.

But their situation was desperate, and Remy knew of another world due to meeting the other species in the Tutorial (though his own burrow was only populated with ratmen even after the integration). 

Their town was getting overrun by rabid subterranean beasts, and they were on the brink of disaster. The vast tunnel systems that the ratmen had built during in their old world were ruined with the integration, making them unable to flee to a larger settlement. While the others tried to reopen the broken tunnels, Remy looked upwards for help. 

So he set out against the wishes of his family and traveled upwards until he ended up in Zac’s mining system. After hearing about the situation (and also the tunnels teeming with precious metals and crystals), Zac and Ogras decide to travel down to the underworld with Remy.

From there a short arc would take place where Zac saves the town, sets up an alliance, and from there gets his foot into the resource-rich underworld. After this Remy decides to move up to Port Atwood, and becomes a main explorer for Port Atwood since he got a taste of adventure, and he wanted to see the boundless above-world.

In the end I decided to scrap this arc altogether due to a few reasons, but I thought you might get a kick from reading about it now. 

So why was it bumped?

Essentially it was mainly a matter of pacing. Already at that point I had every arc (and a few upcoming ones) bulletpointed, and I felt that the sheer amount of arcs while Zac was still in F-Grade would make the pacing a bit too slow.

There was also the issue of what Remy would bring to the table. There was already Sap Trang who filled that minor role of exploring, robbing Remy of any unique aspect apart from his race. I also did not really have any plans for him for future arcs, meaing he wasn’t really integral, and would rather be a side-arc character.

There also wasn’t anything in the caverns that NEEDED to take place to set up the other arcs, making it essentially a filler arc. He would have gained additional wealth while down there, but it would not make a large distinction since Zac was already the richest person around.

So that’s the story of the rise and fall of Remy, the ratman that never came to be.

Please let me know if you find side-posts like this interesting, and I’ll see if I can write similar one’s in the future.