We sit down with Vine_Sunday to talk Eldritch flesh, romance, and why their Shoggoth MC is OP from page one.
Q: Your protagonist breaks the "weak-to-strong" container entirely. So tell us, why go immediately overpowered like that?
A: Thank you. I'm normally someone who hates following the crowd. But I want to make money from writing, so I have to "follow the crowd" to some degree, or risk alienating readers. Thus, I went the reincarnation route, classic.
But I totally refused to use a monster that's popular right now. Slimes are already done. And dragons are really overused. Elves and demons are quite common too. I could simply make them unique, but writing "just another slime novel" made me ashamed.
So I chose something completely unthinkable: an Eldritch, unstoppable being that functions a bit like Rimuru's slime, but overpowered from the start, with no real weak phase.
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Q: A Shoggoth is deeply Lovecraftian. What drew you to that specifically?
A: I love both Lovecraft and Fuse (author of Tensura). So when I first heard about shoggoths, they reminded me of what Rimuru turned into when he first fought Hinata Sakaguchi. I later learned Fuse himself likes Lovecraft—Cthulhu and all. So I wanted to write a great novel like Tensura, but not a carbon copy.
A shoggoth is basically an OP Eldritch flesh slime. So I decided to go wild.
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Q: Romance and a growing harem, you said... But how do you keep each monster girl distinct? What's going to happen concerning it?
A: I love romance. Stories like JJK and Sakamoto are great, but the romantic edges they hint at often go unused. That feels like wasted potential, to me. A little tension between Yuji and Nobara would have made certain moments more heartbreaking. That said, forcing romance can cause serious damage to a novel. As George R.R. Martin said, "Write what you know."
My MC is genderless, but he'll have many "enemies turned lovers."
Think of it this way: if Rimuru had romantic relationships with the women he crossed paths with, even if nothing physical happened, that energy would make readers feel it too.
The monster girls aren't cheap, I'll have you know. They have depth and character. That said, some I've mentioned might not appear, or might be replaced (e.g., a yandere vampire could become a tsundere undead based on plot needs). Not to mention, the novel isn't just about girls. But the MC is mostly surrounded by beautiful women or powerful figures.
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Q: Are there any scene you're dying to write?
A: A lot, actually. The MC is hilariously arrogant... like Cid Kagenou. He fakes death and defeat just to come back and get down to business.
One scene I'm itching to write: a giant wolf approaches from behind, but the MC ignores it, then starts talking to Gabriel (his skill) about pain.
He casually claws his own body, blood spraying. He pulls out his own heart, squeezes it, and says the pain feels weird, not painful. Then he bursts his hand into his skull and mashes his brain, asking if it's even a real brain (his whole body acts as one).
But the wolf is totally terrified of what's going on. And when the MC finally "notices" it, he asks if it wants to eat him.
But the wolf can't move. He is deathly afraid of the anomaly. The MC just laughs and leaves it alone.
He does stuff like that repeatedly. Once, he chewed off an arrogant human head... then spat it back when he was told the victim was a public figure. And the head reattached. But just uglier now.
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Q: Where can readers find the official, non-pirated version?
A: Only on the Webnovel platform. That's the real home. Everything else is a copy.