*A craft note on power creep, and the design choices I use to keep the numbers honest.*

There's a moment in a lot of progression fantasy where the air goes out of it.

The hero hits a new tier. The threat scales up to match. That happens a few more times, and somewhere in there you realize the numbers stopped meaning anything a hundred pages back. The fights are still loud. But you don't believe they can hurt anyone.

That's power creep, and every series in the genre is one bad habit away from it. Growth is what the reader showed up for. Growth left to run is what flattens the tension. Once a hero can answer any threat by being a bigger number, the danger loses its grip, and the book goes back on the shelf.