Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume Short Story - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Hello again, it’s Miya Kazuki. Thank you very much for reading Royal Academy Stories: First Year, the first published collection of Ascendance of a Bookworm short stories.

This volume covered a variety of events from Rozemyne’s first year at the Royal Academy that she didn’t witness for herself. The inspiration struck me partway through March, as I was putting together Part 4 Volume 3. I really wanted to include the Hannelore short story from my Narou page, but it was much too long for print. And then it occurred to me—if putting it in the main series isn’t an option, why don’t I just put together a side volume? Thus, Royal Academy Stories: First Year was born!

Of course, the hard part was actually making the volume; I ended up having to write a ton of original content, which was pretty rough. I decided to choose requests for Part 4 Volume 1, Part 4 Volume 2, and Part 4 Volume 3 short stories that I hadn’t ended up going with for the main series.

Out of the eighteen short stories featured in this book, ten were original content. I also added quite a lot to some of the stories from my Narou page. It certainly was a challenge; many of the characters had never received their own chapters before, and one of my Hannelore stories had to be expanded into two for the sake of pacing. Dare I say I worked pretty hard. Go me!

That said, it was surely Shiina You-sama who worked the hardest of all. She designed six whole characters for this volume who hadn’t yet received illustrations in the main series. These were Roderick, Rauffen, Clarissa, Cordula, Ortwin, and Adolphine. Cordula didn’t actually show up in any of the pictures in the end, but she received a sketch nonetheless.

Then there’s the cover art, which shows four first-year archduke candidates. This cover seems to be the fanciest and most colorful one yet, with the pinks and purples matching Hannelore’s and Ortwin’s hair colors. The color art is equally amazing and overflowing with narrators not featured on the cover. Don’t miss the four-panel manga either, which are super cute as always. Shiina You-sama, thank you.

And finally, I offer up my heartfelt thanks to everyone who read this book. May we meet again in Part 4 Volume 5 and in the third fanbook.

August 2018, Miya Kazuki