Dec 31, 2025
Author's Commentary #45:
Time to talk about Chapter 45: Gothic chess gamble.
Turns out Okisato's still got one more match to play, and it's against the queen of the Fairies herself. But to add even more intensity to the match, it's actually a Gothic chess match, meaning the board is bigger and the empress and princess are in play.
Gothic chess is a chess variant that improves upon Capablanca chess by rearranging the starting pieces in order to make things more fair. The board is a 10x8 instead of an 8x8, and the princess, also known as the archbishop, and empress, also known as the chancellor, are in play. These pieces can move like a knight and bishop and knight and rook, respectively.
Considering the Fairy League is named after fairy chess pieces, I felt there had to be at least one game with fairy chess pieces fought against them. The reason it took so long to finally get a game like that in the series was simply because it took me a while to find out that you can play Gothic chess on Chess.com.
Speaking of which, the game was played between me and another player, which is why the game plays out as it did. I somehow won the game despite playing horribly, but it was my terrible moves that inspired me to have fatigue play a role in justifying why Okisato played so terribly. The man did play Red Reaper 3 times, Phantom once, and Xiao Lin and all 7 of her SPCMs. That's 12 total matches, not to mention some of them were chess variants like atomic chess, chess 960, fog of war chess, and chaturaji.
Luckily, Heather, much like my opponent in the game, didn't see the mate threat before it was too late. Now everyone except Numakawa is back in Japan, but there's still a bit more story to be told in London, mainly Scharlachrot's backstory. Plus, there's the batsu for Heather which will definitely be very steamy.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
