The First Boss of Horror Tales Chapter 445 Discussion

It feels very early to make a review, but with how long this looks to be ongoing, I’ll leave something here first.

TL;DR: Fantastic story, consistent with what I love about the author’s storytelling and writing. However, given its length, there is patience needed to fully understand and appreciate what it’s about.

As the title of this novel implies, this story largely involves exposure of scary stories, old customs and beliefs in China with an unlimited flow game as the medium. However, rather than be the sole focus, they are background elements to a bigger overarching story, which was probably what was meant with the note from the author that this isn’t a typical UF.

In that vein, I feel it is pretty important to set some expectations: We aren’t going on a sight-seeing adventure. While the “games” largely take place in areas less explored in your typical historical period dramas and hence feel a bit “novel”, from what I gather, this story is ultimately about

Spoiler

Reclaiming people’s homeland, reclaiming people’s sense of a home. Rather than be a novel about gradually powering up and upgrading one's circumstances to a life of luxury, the end goal is to return a sense of security and a future for everyone, which was robbed by the onset of a dangerous game, propelled by the revival of the paranormal. Which, now mentioned, doesn't mean such characters don't exist in the world, but they are not the MC here. The motivations behind our MC’s actions too, are rooted in the goal of taking back his home, and recovering that which belongs in his home, including family.

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As a long novel though, there is a good amount of patience needed to fully enjoy its story and find the underlying themes to it. Consistent with other works from this author, the story takes time to reveal things at the appropriate moments, rather than dump inordinate amounts of information at once. Not only does it take its time, only once have the readers gotten the basics down, does the novel move onto the next part and build upon it.

For example, generally speaking, the first thirty (or forty if you are to include the epilogue bits to the first arc) chapters serves to give us a basic introduction to the world in general and our MC (plus a small peek of the ML). It feels very much like a solo quest, despite the fact there are other people around. His characterization is put right front and centre, but that doesn’t mean no one else or anything else from the first game mattered. Small hints foretelling events in the future, important recurring concepts are all interspersed throughout. While side characters don’t get much action yet, they do have their own dedicated time later on that properly fleshes them out, again when the time comes.

The next fifty or so, then will build upon that foundation from the start, and so we see more people being added to the spotlight, and also get a peek (finally) into what will be the trajectory to the relationship between ML and the MC. You will also see that sort of pattern with the later arc (s) as well- once we start establishing the general relationship between the main cast, we will slowly see focus shift onto other characters and slowly build upon them.

On the relationship:

Just to get this out of the way: We are here to watch the ML get stomped. Given how hostile the MC/ML are to each other at the start (and well justified), it’s probably a wonder how their relationship will turn out. I know this novel is tagged as “enemies to lovers”, but even I and many readers of the original novel have doubts if they will actually reach that endpoint. But we also have strong faith however it turns out will make sense, so I'm not particularly worried.

Given where the novel is right now though, it wouldn't be surprising if this goes beyond 1000 chapters. That's how slow the development is, but make no mistake, each step in the development has been an exciting read (and as another reviewer mentioned, s*xual tensions are through the roof between the two).

Outside of the slow romantic development, I do find their dynamic pretty fun though. Spoiler

Despite the mature character the MC holds on the surface, the ML unexpectedly brings a childish side out of him- granted, the ML acts pretty childish too. We see the two get grossed out from being touched like the other one has cooties at the beginning, trying to gross each other out instead like how there's always one kid chasing someone with a bug they found on the grass. Both of them do slowly learn and adapt tactics against each other though, in forms of unending new ways to degrade one another, so readers never know what to expect next.

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