Update

Hello, to anyone reading for the first time or has followed this story.

This story has not been abandoned. However, after completing the last uploaded chapter, the following chapter started going in a route I wasn't expecting with Bell's character and as I tried to flesh out the new idea I had it became more and more necessary to flesh out the events that happened with Bell and Haruhime before Orario, as I had the idea for a certain major event to have taken place.

This event was too major for me to keep using my idea of flashbacks (which I had initially decided to use because I hadn't thought up enough content to flesh out their time pre-Orario) and so I have spent this past year thinking up ideas for their life in Bell's home village. By this point I have enough ideas to fill that time period out and so I am doing away with the rather strange chronology the story has sort of been having so far.

Since I change my mind on things so often, I have decided not to upload any further chapters until I have at least written out my first draft of their time before arriving in Orario.

This segment of the story is currently outlined to have 11-15 chapters (the extra four are potential smut chapters that I might stick into a second story because I don't think it'll fit as well with the pacing).

I also plan to delay Bell and Haruhime's arrival about 1.5-2 years from canon to age the characters up to a more comfortable age for potential poly ships later. I refuse to write a Bell harem story, but this past year has made me more open to the concept of poly ships and also a potential Haruhime harem or something of the sort (I generally like writing and interpreting most female anime characters as bi anyhow). There is also one girl in particular who, like Haruhime, I feel has been very neglected by the fandom and I really want to include her as she'd work really well here.

Many things are still in flux right now, and the current outline for these chapters is written across maybe 10 pages in a physical notebook of mine I add to in my free time while I'm on my University campus or when I'm at home in the evenings, and I still haven't written up an outline for the last 3-4 of the 11 main chapters yet.

Once I do finish this, I may choose to upload it as a new story as I'm getting tired of replacing chapters. I'm not sure if that would be for the best though as this story has 100+ followers already. I also will use Ao3 when the time comes in addition to this site as it is my preferred platform thanks to the presence of relationship tags to help me explain the kind of complicated poly but not harem relationship network I want to lead into down the line.

I have also come up with some ideas for a number of major AU elements for the dungeon as I had a lot of difficulty coming up with anything compelling to happen within it. I would prefer to just kind of make the dungeon my own thing in terms of floor type/layout/theme. I also found it's concept had a HUGE compatibility with many of the ideas I had developed in high school for my own original story that I scrapped due to it not really having any actual plot and just being a bunch of character concepts.

I plan to continue outlining these chapters over the coming weeks and hopefully will start actually writing up drafts of these chapters by winter break in just over a month. While I don't trust my ADHD self much, I really do want to bring these ideas I've had in my head this past year to life and share it with others. I need validation for all the time I've spent thinking about it.

Anyhow, that's the current state of things. I highly doubt I'll ever leave this story without at least getting a fair ways as I have already created ideas for Bell and Haruhime's OC children that I really want to write.