I went to go check out the novel after reading this ch, and I have to say. This seems much better than the novel in a variety of ways. They gave him more agency, took out a few dumb plot points, did more setup and buffed up things that needed more screentime. I hope it continues to be good! But so far, I'm impressed by what they did. The novel unfortunately just has a few seeds of good ideas that get developed poorly and this seems to bring them out and polish them to what they should have been! At least, so far.
