May 10, 2025
Author's Commentary #304:
Time to talk about Chapter 304: Psychological gambit.
The cat's out of the bag now. Next round, Japan will be facing the Israeli Kingdom of Simien. This was the primary reason I decided to show off the games and prowess of the Simiens now, but before I go more in depth on this, let's do Checheyigen's bio.
チェチェイゲン・ハーン (Checheyigen Khan) is how Checheyigen's name would be spelled in katakana. Цэцэйхэн хаан (Checheyigen Khan) is how it would be spelled in Mongolian.
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
Her birthday is December 7th. Since there's no official birthday for the historical Checheyigen, I came up with this date instead. The significance behind it is that 1207 was the historical Checheyigen got married.
Her favorite piece is the queen.
Like Qojin, she is a human of the current era, that simply bears the same name as a historical figure. Though like the historical figure she's based off of, she's quite smart which translates well to chess.
Getting back to the main topic at hand, I felt that I needed to hype up some of Japan's future opponents, which is why I decided to focus on the Simien team. Originally, I was just going to have the Noa match serve as something similar to the Denmark vs Spain match back in round 2, but after deciding to have Simien be Japan's next round opponents, I felt I needed to highlight their prowess more, notably Orit's.
There hasn't really been a proper case in the story where an executive board member properly shows off how they make use of their chip implant. With Orit, I decided to fix that. Even though her chip is in a mechanical eye instead of her brain, it still functions similarly.
On that note, I will confirm that in Pewler's case, his chip was sneakily implemented into his DNA coding, making him sort of like an experimental human. If you recall back in Chapter 220: Agatha and Kana, there was a human being created in a laboratory that resembled Pewler. I'll flat out confirm that actually was Pewler, meaning he's actually more of a puppet than he thinks.
Getting back on topic, I made sure Orit only used her eye at parts where finding the right move would be difficult for a human to find. Showcasing Orit's prowess was also necessary as she will be the big looming threat next round. Though whether Iori will be the one to actually play her remains to be seen. She did get pretty soaked, so if she didn't get a change of clothes fast enough, she'll likely catch a cold.
As for Chaya, I originally planned to have her match featured, but decided not to. Though it is possible I secretly did showcase a Chaya match, which is why it would be redundant to do so again.
And with that, round 4 is officially over with the Israeli Kingdom of Simien prevailing over the New Empire of Mongolia. As previously mentioned, round 5 won't start for a while as I've got some late-night shenanigan chapters planned. I actually wasn't planning on having more than two or three chapters taking place in between the rounds, but a mini-arc suddenly sprung up before I knew it. Don't worry, said mini-arc will be hype and will also introduce a character that will likely be one of team Japan's future adversaries. I hope you're looking forward to it.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
