What's really unique is the MC is already in a loving relationship (including sleeping together) at the beginning of the story. Its odd to find that in a novel. She is with a great guy that seems to support and love her, though there might have been some subtle hints that she does not love him as much as he loves her (though she definitely still cares for him a lot).

I don't know how the author plans to move forward with the romance. I will be very upset if they end up killing off the current significant other. He is in every way equal to or better then the Admiral. I am hoping the author does not take an easy way out like that.

Edit (chapter 168) : The author is amazing and this is possibly the most realistic portrayal of romantic relationships I have ever read in a novel.

Cesar loves Lil in the story: affectionate and devoted, but self-righteous and toxic. He doesn't care what she wants and tries to control her in his own way. As an Asian in a Confucian cultural circle, I am deeply repulsed by this kind of "love." I cringe whenever I see East Asian novels trying to tout this kind of "love". The NxNW novel handles this in an extremely mature way, allowing Lil to finally break free of Cesar's love -

Ed and Cesar at their first meeting

both Liloa and Ed had their own romantic interests before they met each other.

the character of Ceasar, this guy, the initial male lead or love interest of our Lil. He was seemingly perfect (don't come for me, I have read too much chinese and korean novels where male leads like this are worshipped, even tho low-key I'm not a fan of them, but the reaction of the female lead is what decides who's a good match for her so unless he's an irredeemable pos I let it go) anyways, so a good chunk of the initial read I spent wondering how tf is he not the end game? He was good and he and lil had a apparently good relationship, so when the eventual male lead appears as Ed, I was low-key blaming him for coming into the picture, he was ngl creepy asf, tho that doesn't change till... the end? Lol. Nevertheless, I love Ed. He is the best best best match for Lil. Anyways, back to ceasar, his and Lil's relationship seemed so dramatic, and picturesque, but slowly cracks seemed to appear. Ed's appearance just showcased the already existing cracks and he was the catalyst which just sped up the process that would've taken Lil years if not her entire life to realise. Ceasar's pov and his thought process, they are so well written, he'sa man of his times who was unable to understand the very core beliefs of the woman he claimed to love. He surely did love Lil in his own way, or maybe he was just obsessed with the saviors mentality. He was a beautiful free spirit in Lil and he decided to set her free when he saw her trapped, or did he set her free? He chucked her into his beautifulcage of freedom and the boundary that closed her off to explore the outside world was his idea of settling down, getting married and having children. Lil from the beginning of her life was treated like a mere organ, her womb which will carry the future child with right of inheritance, she was ab*sed, mistreated, vilified, and reduced to merely her beauty and ability to give birth. And Ceasar, who claimes to love her and understand her, never could understand how he tied ger down to the same thing she was running away from. He gave her supposed freedom and in turn stifled her with his apparent generosity. I felt sad when they eventually broke things off and even felt bittersweet when he came to terms with it. He wasn't suited to the life Lil wanted and neither was Lil suited to the life he wanted. They wasted their love and time searching for a meeting point of where they could come to a compromise, never realizing, coming to a compromise meant stifling one of the two. Even with everything Ceasar eventually did, like with Ed or when Lil was stabbed, I felt immense anger and hatred but eventually couldn't hate him. That's how the author managed to portray such a complex character. (One thing that was constantly ln my mind was how Ceasar resembles some MLs from other novels, 2 novela came to my mind, The posession of my beloved and The imperial guard's revenge. In the former, Ceasar resembles the ML and the FL of that novel is also somewhat of a a pirate lol. And the latter, ceasar resembled the 2nd mL, who similar to him lost the one he loved because of their own ego and blindness.

-The theme of supernatural, how everything wasn't explained to the roots and most of them were left to our imagination, be it the artefacts, the mermaids, the unknown creatures, the myths. Everything was perfect, the lingering sense of mystery nd knowing we have our entire imagination to fill in as we want, magically was satisfying.

-After getting to know the character of Ed, I was dying to know why he acted like that in the prologue, it was like a difference of heaven and earth between the 2 Eds, and the eventual revelation, boy oh boy was I not disappointed, in fact, I was exhilarated, like thank you author, exactly how I need things to play out. Scene by scene, thought by thought, action by action, the author took thwir sweet time to play out everything, oh how I love ot when authors do no skim over stuff and go into details. The agony, the pain, the sense of mortification, the sexond hand embarassment, the love and the hate, everything intertwined together to create this perfect read. Anyways, every scene is worth thw wait (even tho as a binge reader I read everything together, if I had ro wait, I think I will go crazy)

-The imagery of Mortu. It was such a interesting concept. Lil suffering from hallucinations in thw form of mortu, who chopped and chopped her till she wasn't herself. Shackled her till she stopped thinking about running away or asserting herself. Or Ed showing her from the begining the way to escape from Mortu just by accepting her for who she is and not objectifying her, and Lil with the support of him and herself at the end, finally breaking free of mortu. Even though I would've liked a bit more fleshed out details of mortu and her eventually breaking free.

- I love how the ending wasn't conventional in the sense of happy ending of getting married and having kids even with her love of the life. Although personally I like that kind of ending, this was afresh air because this was a true happy ending for the main characters. Lil and Ed both explored the world they wanted to know about, excavating secrets unknown to others, Lil fighting for what she believed, and being together with each other. That's all that matters. The ending was realistic and bittersweet tbh but I loved it still.