Great chapter as usual, can't wait for more! Great to have you back!

yes! an update!

Very pleasant surprise to see this on the front page. Glad that the story is still alive, even if RL is a bit difficult right now.

It's been so long!

Great to have this story back.

Hello, was wondering if you were going to continue this or were you delayed due to covid?

Don’t just end the story here. It’s one of the better Three Houses fan fictions on the site. Please continue this.

Hey, was wondering if you were planning to continue this!

I enjoy the fluff. This is great. I find the interactions a lot more amusing than the plot, although it's pretty good in it's own right. Overall, excellent story, and I look forward to more!

...Which is not to say that a bit of fluff here and there is bad, of course. THIS chapter was really good and felt quite meaningful. Just keep in mind that not all fluff is created equal, I suppose.

I'm having a good time reading this story. I'm still not fond of the "blunt-force trauma" way that the nicknaming teasing was introduced, but it integrated better with the story than expected as it continued.

On the subject of your note at the end of Chapter 77, "Cinders," I wouldn't worry overmuch about using the entire content of Cindered Shadows in this story-you can probably play some "what-if" games with it quite handily, in fact, as in the main Three Houses campaign, if you talk to NPCs, it turns out that the main Azure Moon/Verdant Wind/Silver Snow/Crimson Flower campaigns happen on a different timeline than the DLC side-story. While everything revealed about the characters and about Fodlan is true and canon in its way, NPC dialogue makes it clear that Aelfric was deposed from his position in the Church much earlier on by "some scandal," which I suspect (I am only on Chapter 5 of my current playthrough) must have been Yuri ratting him out to Rhea in some form before things could escalate to the level they were at in Cindered Shadows.

So in the main game, the Ashen Wolves are recruitable and essentially the same characters but the actual events of the side-story never happen. It's a bit odd, but it may play well with your wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shananigans here.

On the subject of that: this has been a very engaging story, but also overly long. That it took close to 70 chapters to even reach the mock battle is a bit concerning and you may want to consider picking up the pace from here-or at least, pacing the story so that it is focused on a "major arc" at any given time, to at least keep the fluff under control.

I disagree with other reviewers: I think this story could do with LESS fluff and more focus. The fluff is entertaining, in its way, but considering how long it takes to update a story, I cannot help feeling frustration. You clearly have an interesting story to tell here, and I would very much like to get to it. While I'd be very surprised if this story actually DIES since you've committed to 78 full-length chapters so far, you yourself have noted that you have real-life obligations that prevent frequent updates. Bearing that in mind, it would be good to keep things focused and to meander less. We don't necessarily need to know every detail of Byleth's daily goings-on.

That said, the plot that has occurred so far is rather fascinating. This is one of the only stories I've read on this site with a concept similar to this that has really focused on changing the sequence of events and playing around with the circumstances, and while it goes overboard in some areas, I haven't been able to put it down since starting it earlier this week. So that deserves praise.

I look forward to further updates.

Yeah, see, this story is really engaging-I actually downloaded the MOBI file from the AO3 version and am reading it on my Kindle Oasis at the moment. But I had to take a moment to drop a review on this chapter in particular because it is this chapter, I feel, that jumps the shark rather terribly in 'Byleth's' interactions with characters. The nicknaming part, mainly. And I know that in later chapters you somewhat correct for this by having Hubert literally wanting to murder the shit out of Byleth before the game would have given him reason to. But it just kind of spotlights the problem: reasonable human beings do not behave the way 'Byleth' does in this chapter. The idea of a barbecue created from alchemy out of pure mana was pushing things as it was, but someone (especially someone who has access to the real Byleth's memories and knowledge of the world) blithely nicknaming people as if he's an overexaggerated pink-drilltailed anime waifu in a dating sim visual novel?

No. That bypasses conceptual shark-jumping and just becomes psychologically stupid. If I were the one writing this story, I would have gone back to these earlier chapters a long time ago and un-written the nicknaming nonsense, and tried to portray Byleth as looking for less of a blunt-force way to get Edelgard's trust going. Or, better yet, since you're flirting with the idea that characters have unconsciously carried on their support levels from a previous "game," do something with that which puts our esteemed professor a little bit on the back foot. All I know is that if someone did what Byleth is doing to a real living human, Edelgard wouldn't just "short-circuit," she would probably go complain to the faculty-and 'Byleth' would know that before even thinking to attempt it, so there's no reason for the thought to occur to him.

In short, it feels like the story abruptly changed in tone here and started channeling the spirit of a generic harem anime. Thankfully, the quality returns to previous levels of enjoyable pretty quickly. But I sincerely hope this "Delly," "Bert," and "Ferd" nonsense doesn't last much longer.

Well I just finished your latest chapter. I'm glad to see that last chapter you said you got into law school! Congratulations, that's amazing! Sad that it will probably eat up all your time for this but school is definitely more important. Hope you're staying well!

Seriously, not a chapter goes by where I don't laugh at some point. Favorite colors my ass... Love it

IT WAS WORTH IT! God I love Bernie, such a sweetheart. Wonder if/when Delly is going to turn into El?

This is so awesome. I'm gonna binge this for the rest of today until I finish it probably. I'm not gonna lie, this is shaping up to be exactly what I want out of a Three Houses head-canon. Being put in Byleth's shoes with all the knowledge of 4 playthroughs. I'm super excited to see how things play out!

Also, I am concerned that in roughly 5 months you belt out over 300k words and now there's a two month gap in updates. Maybe you address that in later chapters A/N, I'll have to find out I had to guess it's Corona related, but I do hope this story gets finished and I hope you're doing alright!