Hello Readers, It’s good to be back. When I first started writing SSC as a way to introduce my setting I promised myself I wouldn’t do an update chapter like this. Unfortunately, due to situations somewhat outside my control, I have to break my promise to myself and do a bit of a “life/status update” post. You all deserve to know why I was gone for so long.

  Roughly a week after SSC Chapter 53 went live, my apartment got broken into and almost everything electronic I had was stolen. I’ve only recently been able to acquire a tablet and resume writing and being active online with Discord.

  I don’t say this to garner any pity or sympathy, I only say it so that you can understand where I’ve been the past few months, and why I haven’t been able to push more Savage Steel Company chapters.

  I have been reviewing what I’ve written thus far during the last 3~ days since I’ve been back online, and considering the best way to do things. Thus far the story hits the major plot points I want it to, and I am happy with the overall tone and character interactions, however, the quality isn’t where it should be. During the original first release weekend, I started pushing myself hard to get content out, and I let that become a habit. As a result, the story isn’t as polished as I know it deserves to be.

  That being said, we are getting close to the high point of the story, and you guys have been waiting for so long that it doesn’t feel right to delay things further and do the rewrite I want.

  My plan moving forward is to complete book 1 at roughly the same quality it has so far been, within the next 6 weeks or so, releasing two to three chapters a week. While that’s happening, I’m going to re-write the first 5 chapters of book 2 at a much higher quality, as well as 5 chapters of a new story in the same universe. Once SSC book 1 is finished, I will slow down and focus considerably more effort on producing quality content for book 2 and the new story. This will likely result in a release schedule of 1 to 2 chapters of each story per month.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I will likely keep that schedule and work on an intensive rewrite of SSC Book 1 to bring it to the same quality. When that is done, I may consider increasing my release rate, but I make no promises.

  I’m not 100% sure how I will release the rewrite yet. I want to make it available to everyone free of charge, but I don’t want to simply remove all of the original version, since I feel I owe a certain debt to the people who reviewed or shouted out that original version. When I get close to having it finished, I will let everyone know how I plan to handle things.

  Now that I have that out of the way, Here’s a bit of a teaser for chapter 54, which I’ll release on Monday 2/17/25.

  Chapter 54

  Specialist Justin Wallace marveled at how much punishment the druid’s Squirrel-Bear form was soaking up. The Lieutenant had delivered a blow that must have disconnected the creature’s ‘shoulder’. It hadn’t gone down to all fours since the titanic blow, but in spite of all the .50 rounds they’d pumped into it, it was still going. And who knew if the druid could simply return to elf form and reset the damage?

  Justin thought that was probably unlikely, but he wasn’t really ready to just accept that it couldn’t happen. If he could be sure that the druid couldn't just reset, he would have accepted the inevitable and blown his stamina and mana pools to eliminate the threat, but if that wasn’t a guarantee to remove the high-level elf commando, he wasn’t willing to take the risk. Instead, he’d followed XO Soto’s orders, peppering the beast with the occasional burst, doing his best to be aggravating and distracting.