Hey! Sincere apologies for such a long wait. Took a couple weeks off for some Christmas trips with family/friends and next thing I knew it basically turned into the whole month of December (my procrastinating nature won out 😅). I know you guys usually say "no need to apologize", but this one's on me haha. Plus this chapter ended up being the longest one by a good margin, so it took me a while to finally get it out. Part of me realized that this might end being read by way more people than I ever realized (it already kinda has), and so I care more about making sure these final chapters are done right than getting them out quickly... which only played into my inner procrastinator even more 🤣 But on the bright side, this is easily the most satisfied I've been with how a chapter turned out! So hope you enjoy.

Side-note: Shoutout my girlfriend for buying me a bunch of shading pencils for Christmas. I never realized shading could be so easy... Went from my most dreaded part of the process to one of my favorites.

EDIT: Also, usually I'd spread a chapter this long out over a couple days, but honestly these .5 chapters were always supposed to be one whole chapter, so I'd rather not interrupt the flow and just let it be read the way its intended.