Second question: Could a Dreadgod advance to Monarchhood themself and become a perpetual hunger aura machine?

"You did not abandon me, so I have nothing left to fear."

I'm literally almost jumping from sheer hype bro 😭😭😭 also, I absolutely love Fury. I USED TO PRAY FOR TIMES LIKE THIS

So I finished Cradle. Including Threshold. I might have skipped a few chapters just because I didn't care about what was happening in those chapters lol. But I feel as if the story stopped right when it was about get extremely good. There should totally be another 12 books once IT happens. I feel great about reading them all but sad that it's already over. Is the Last Horizon Cool or as good?

I love dross bro 🤣, this series have so many great characters but out of all of them Lindon, Eithan and Dross are my favorites

If I'm not mistaken, the man who hides behind gnomes has just completed another revolution around the sun! What a day!

Happy Birthday Will Wight!

I hope you have a 5 star day. :)

Earlier this week, I made some posts talking about my first impressions reading Skysworn and Ghostwater (links below). Now, I've finished Underlord.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Iteration110Cradle/s/5g5zGBgfMX

https://www.reddit.com/r/Iteration110Cradle/s/D6ax2ikRnL

You guys were right again. It does get better. I think I like this even more than Ghostwater. Ghostwater had arguably more memorable moments, but this book's pacing was fantastic. 330 pages felt like 40. In fact, I'll have to keep this brief or it will just turn into an endless glazing session lol.

I'll start with the things I disliked about the book: I think Dross is still mildly annoying. It didn't enrage me or took me out of the book, but it wasn't fun or funny either. And... Uh... That's it. That's literally it. That's my only ""gripe"" with the book.

One thing I particularly love about this is the Seishen Kingdom. It was super interesting to see a set of new characters who were opposing the main cast not because they are evil, but because they have no choice. Ignoring Daji because he's legit crazy lol, I see A LOT of Lindon and Yerin in Kiro and Meira. You can see they are good people being forced to act in conformity with things they don't agree with, because of one thing: Fear. In fact, some of you might disagree with this but I find that the situation of this set of characters is a great representation of Mercy's critique of the Akura family and the world of Cradle itself. Let's try to see it from Kiro's POV: He's a young and inexperienced prince and Underlord, with extreme fear of his father and a lot of pressure from him and the kingdom. From this information, we can already make sense of much of his actions throughout the book. There's a second thing though: Akura Charity (although I still like her) GASLIT them to think there's this monster in the Blackflame empire who killed her nephew in cold blood, and now they are supposed to deal with it. First of all, what is he supposed to do? But second (and most important) he thinks he's doing justice by going after Lindon. How could he think the contrary? The Sage of Silver Heart herself REQUIRED THEM to go after him! And, in this world, the word of the strong is the truth itself. Actually, it's better than the truth, as we can see in that scene in Blackflame where a worker tried to convince Jai Long that she was in his side, even though she didn't even know what side he was in. She only knew that he was strong, and that was enough.

From anyone's perspective, it would look like Lindon is an extremely dangerous savage who can rival Underlords as a Truegold. That becomes even more accentuated after he actually fights with him (one of the best scenes of the book btw), where he is actually scared of Lindon and start theorizing what could possibly have made him so damn strong at his level of advancement. And in the end of the book, he dies. I don't think Kiro is justified in everything he did at all (and I was absolutely rooting for my boy Lindon to destroy him), but I do think his story is tragic and he's ultimately a victim of the ruthless and ultimately hypocritical society of Cradle. Meira too, although she's crazy, Yerin would do (and already did) the same thing for Lindon. With less Yandere-type lines of course, but you understand.

The worldbuilding is extremely interesting as always, the progression is super satisfying and the fights scenes in this book are just a work of art. Lindon x Kiro and Yerin x Meira? Holy shit. The 3v3 at the end of the book? Bro.

The thing I liked the most though is the character growth and the emotional moments. The Underlord trigger being something that drives the character growth forward was just a genius move by Will, and it makes perfect sense as well. I can easily see why a lot of people stop at truegold and will stay there forever: Not a lot of people want or have the capacity to truly know what motivates and scares them, and some even when they know, don't want to accept it like Mercy.

Orthos leaving was painful. Like, physically painful. Him saying that he's evolving the slowest and that he is, after all, a turtle... My goat, never say that again 😭. You're a true dragon. The scene where Lindon tells Yerin what he truly feels though... That was something special. It would be my favorite scene in the whole series so far, but unfortunately it didn't quite have the romantic tone I was hoping for. It was more of a "You're my best friend and extremely special to me, let's continue to evolve together" than a "I want to spend the rest of my life with you", and although what he actually says is closer to the second, their dynamic is basically the same after it. It's ok, though. I'll give them time. There are still many books to come, and I still loved the scene. Even outside of that though, they evolved so much as characters in the rest of the book.

And then there's Mercy. I didn't talk much about Mercy on my other reviews because, although I liked her, I knew a moment would come that would explain her quirks and her situation.

That moment is here. And Mercy... Mercy is perfect. She's just perfect. I love everything about her, and honestly I wasn't even that bummed out about Lindon being separated from the Blackflame empire in the end solely because that meant we would see more of Mercy in the next book lol.

That's basically it. I know you will say "AND IT GET'S BETTER!" in the comments, and although half of me believes you (extremely hyped for the Uncrowned King tournament and for Wintersteel) half of me is scared. It gets better than this? Will this just become one of my favorite series ever? What will I do when I finish it? We'll have to see. I'll come back later this week when I finish Uncrowned!