Hi everyone! I hope all of you are doing well and are healthy. January has been a crazy month for me, though I assure you all for good reasons, and I have been kept on my toes.

Now, I have contemplated a lot about this, and it took me a long time to publish this author's note because I wanted to be sure about this big decision. After nearly nine years of work put into this book, it is finally time for it to come to an end with the completion of the seventh arc.

I am sure some of you have noticed how slow the updates have become for a while now. To give you an idea, I only published two chapters last year. In 2021, I only published three chapters. It is a far cry from 2019, a year I published 19 chapters. I only discovered this recently and am still shocked by how slow it has been. For the past two years, time has just flown by. Some of you may have noticed that the updates have slowed down quite dramatically since the start of COVID, which makes sense now that I look back. Like the rest of the world, it was a scary time for us all, and it left many in a difficult position mentally and, of course, physically. I had never been through such an event, so I had some hard times there, and during those years, COVID wasn't the only thing I was dealing with, as it seems during those periods of nearly three years, I had unfortunate luck follow me.

It wasn't all that bad and gloomy, of course! I still had many fun and happy times, and your support was one of them. I was always grateful to see the comments and support each of the newest chapters would get; it has helped me through the tough times, no doubt. Honestly, your vocal support has kept this book going through COVID time. There have been multiple occasions where I was close to throwing my arms in the air and stopping entirely, but I did not wish to disappoint you all and leave the arc unfinished, especially when it was such an important arc like the last one. To leave it unwrapped seemed just wrong to me after building it up for so long.

To tell you the truth, the last arc was a brutal process for me, especially towards the end. It has left me with months of staring at a white sheet during my time with it. And during those times, it brought a realization to me that it is time I wrap up this book, as I am simply burnt out by it. I do not want to end up hating what I have so much enjoyed creating. This book has brought me a lot of happiness due to the support all of you gave it. It has helped open my eyes to the fact that I have some storytelling talent and has given me confidence. Some of you may know this, but this book was originally created simply as a way for me to test my writing skills and experience what it is like to publish a book online. The book was only supposed to go until around Kokabiel's arc, and then I was going to move on to other ideas. To witness how much it expanded and changed, with so many original stories and characters added to it, turning it into something special with its own identity. I am stunned and overjoyed, and I am eternally grateful that many of you stuck through it all and enjoyed the ride.

Now, I will be honest with you all. Burnout is not the only reason I have decided to end this story, though it is a major factor. The other reason is simply that I have other obligations now, so I don't exactly have as much free time as I did before. I started this story when I was young, and it's been nine years now, so a lot has changed, as I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Unfortunately, I don't have as much free time as I once did.

So with burnout and my time being more filled, I believe it is best to end it here. I would rather end on a high note than start another arc that will surely drop in quality as my passion for this story dies down. Your quality will always drop if you don't have passion behind it.

Even though I'm disappointed that I won't be able to finish this book completely, I believe it's better to end it on a high note rather than a low note. And if some of you are curious about how much longer this book can go on for if it were to continue, I can picture it having nearly 90 more chapters to fully wrap the story... A daunting thought for me at this moment. But yes, there is much more story to tell, and it does hurt me that I cannot explore some of these stories I have in mind. One thing I really wanted was for the tone of the book to shift after the time skip. It would become much more mature and daring in certain areas, with a spice of political intrigue added.

But I have made peace with it now. I have done enough work on this book and spent nine fun years with it. A crazy fact I learned not long ago is that this book contains more words than the entirety of the Harry Potter books. That fact still boggles my mind to this day.

I should stop my rambling now or this will go on forever! I am getting a bit emotional here.

Once again, I want to say thank you to all of you for sticking by me and this book for so long and supporting it through every new chapter. Even though I thought of giving up a handful of times during those last few challenging chapters, I stuck with it because of you all, as I didn't want the book to end in such an abrupt way when a lot of you have stuck with it for so long.

I do have one good news item to share with you all, though, and that is that I plan to write my own novel in the future. Even though I am ending The Adventures of Black Flash, it does not mean I will stop writing entirely. I do still enjoy it, even though I am planning on taking a break from it for a while to hit a hard reset and study more in this field. I consider writing a passion of mine. It would be crazy if it were not true when I spent nine years on this book!

The story in my novel is not all planned out yet, but I do have a fair idea of it. I know it'll lean more towards real life than fantasy, which is a genre I love, but I wanted to do something a bit different with this. It'll be action/adventure with a touch of maturity and tragedy. If any of you have ever watched Black Lagoon, that is the sort of vibe I am striving for with this novel. It'll be a standalone story. I'll have to stop myself from going crazy, or else I may end up creating a massive book like The Black Flash!

On another note, my father mentioned something that piqued my interest: if I wanted to, I could turn The Adventures of Black Flash into its own novel in the future. Of course, I'll have to make some major changes to the characters, the early arcs, and other things. Even though Black Flash eventually branched out to become its own thing, the early arcs and the characters are from the DxD source material.

I won't lie when I say that idea does pique my interest. But before I look into that, I want to at least get a standalone novel out. Because if I do this remake of The Black Flash story, it will have to be a series of books considering how much there is of it. And I would rather write a one-off novel as my first book.

Now, there is one person I wish to express my gratitude to, and it is Ryujomaru15. He has been a follower of my story since the very beginning, and over the years we have chatted numerous times and formed a friendship for which I am grateful to this day. Ryu, as I call him, has not only supported the story since the beginning but has also helped me many times with it. That could be brainstorming with me when I was stuck in certain parts or reminding me of a storyline that I had utterly forgotten that happened to be the missing piece for a chapter. There are many chapters that turned out better due to his assistance, and I'll never forget that. So, thank you, Ryu.

Also, Ryu has written some stories of his own that are great reads. I strongly advise you to go check them out.

For the last note, I am sure some of you may have noticed the cover for this book has changed! Although I don't know if it'll take effect immediately after I upload this, so you may still see the old one. But yes! I wanted to do something special with the book coming to an end, and I thought it would be great for it to finally have its own cover. I found a fantastic artist on Fiverr, and the final product she delivered was incredible! I could not be happier with the end product.

Here is the link for all of you to see it in its full resolution and detail: https://imgur.com/NeN3q6o

I believe that is all I have left to say. Once again, thank you so much, everyone, for your support over the nine long years. It has been an absolute blast writing this story for all of you. Again, I won't simply disappear! When I do have my first novel out, I will notify all of you here so you can check it out and support it if you wish to.

If you have any questions for me, please don't hesitate to reach out, and I'll do my best to respond to you. For Wattpad readers, you can simply comment, and I'll happily reply to all of you when I can.

See you soon, everyone. Please take care of yourselves and stay safe.