there literally was almost no plot before the time warp, like, the one thing that really posed a serious conflict was the "system" (barf), and by the end it's either A: it blows up (like now) or B: we get a fairy tale-like deus ex machina and bam the story is done we're doing afterstory now. following A, we either go pretty dark "everybody is getting fucked over" like Death Flags (or worse) or time travel like now, more or less. Following B, we get an sol that dies or otherwise goes effectively stale after one volume.