Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka - Volume 14 - Chapter Aft

Afterword 

Before writing this manuscript, I went to Awamura Akamitsu at GA Bunko for advice on a number of points. 

“It’s always so hard to portray battles with giant monsters…Do you have any ideas for a nasty attack from an enemy boss?” I asked him. 

“In Mon**** Hun***, it’s rough when giant enemies fly around or come falling down from overhead.” 

Ooh, I can use that. 

I was already ignoring the cheerful explanation from my predecessor in this craft and jotting down ideas on the pages of my heart. 

This volume is the fourteenth in the series. First, let me apologize sincerely for the belated publication. The delay is entirely my fault. At the same time, I express my deep gratitude to everyone who picked this book up after such a long wait. 

This time I have a lot to say in the afterword. All of it involves spoilers, so consider yourself forewarned. 

First, about the battle in the first half. 

My favorite weapon in a certain classic manga is the armor magic sword that lets its user go “Amudo!” and my next favorite is probably the light wand of a certain demon king. When the strongest demon king possesses this, it quickly transforms into the strongest possible weapon, but I could never help wondering, what if a novice adventurer got ahold of it? 

I find weapons that become stronger in tandem with the amount of power the user can summon to be extremely fascinating and appealing. That is one reason why I gave the hero of this story the goddess knife. 

I also knew within myself that his partner, the creator of magic swords, would ultimately have to arrive at the same answer. 

I think the fact that he said, “Weapons become a part of their wielder” in the fourth volume of this series clinched it. What he meant was that if they’re part of your body, you’ve got to become stronger together. The solution the smith came up with in this volume was surely only one of many possibilities, which gives me great hope that in a future volume, he will go on to exceed the expectations of the hero as well as the author and invent many more incredible weapons. 

I’d also like to touch on the prophetess of tragedy. Many readers probably realized that her character is based on a famous queen in Greek mythology whose ill fate is to never be believed no matter what she does or says. I once had the honor of receiving the following praise from Ryohgo Narita, the author of Baccano! and Durarara!: 

“Cassandra and her friend Daphne are so great! I’m sure that at the very end Daphne will be the only one who believes her!” 

“Huh?” 

“Huh?” 

That was about how our conversation went. 

Of course, that was my intention from the start! And that’s why I was able to wait until the time was ripe in this volume to properly portray their friendship!! …But jokes aside, it was thanks to this so-called “encounter” that I decided to dig deeper into the prophetess of tragedy’s character. As this story and the one I told at the beginning of this afterword illustrate, the Is It Wrong series is the result of many people’s contributions. My sincere thanks go out to all the other authors who never hesitate to offer their casual opinions and advice. 

And now for the battle in the second half. 

There’s a certain firefighter manga that I like just as much as my favorite classic adventure manga. 

When I was a little boy, my father—who was a firefighter—would buy me comics, and I would get very excited about Daigo and Amakasu and Gomi-san. Oh, and Kanda-san, too. 

For the final section of this volume, I initially came up with a lot of crazy plots like having Bell and Lyu recapture the lambton and intentionally get swallowed by it in order to escape the deep levels, but as I was depicting their friends in the fight in the first half, I decided to do it like Megumi no Daigo, the comic about the Megumi fire brigade in old Edo. 

Rather than making the main character an out-of-this-world fighter who dominates everyone around him, I wanted to make this a story about the main character working so hard to overcome the challenges set before him that he nearly dies, as well as saving people who are important to him and being saved by them in turn. That, it seems to me, is what a Dungeon tale, or an adventurer’s tale, is all about. He pushed himself past his limits at least three times and got completely pounded in the process. Every time he thought he had become stronger I put him through another trial. Sorry about that, Bell. 

The reason I decided to model the episode on Megumi no Daigo, or at least one of the reasons, is that I had a friend who loved that manga and who used to talk about it with me all the time and get super excited. That person recently passed away due to heart failure. As I’m writing this afterword in 2018, I am not yet thirty, and this friend wouldn’t have reached that age yet, either. 

A lot of thoughts crossed my mind, like how could I call him a close friend when we hadn’t seen each other in over five years, and why had I waited until the fourteenth volume, and I guess this is what they mean by your mind going blank from an overly abrupt idea, but ultimately, I just cried a lot. Aside from this friend, I lost a lot of relatives this year, and I was kind of becoming a useless human being, having thoughts like Maybe Volume 13 cursed me and Geez, I don’t want to write about the elf’s past in Volume 14. I’m fine now, don’t worry. My personal feelings and words didn’t seep into the scenes between the elven heroine and her best friend. For this one volume, I simply wanted to try bringing out the themes of our favorite comic. That does have a bit to do with my personal feelings, and I apologize for that. 

As for where I’m going with all this, well dear readers, please take good care of yourselves. 

I’ve gotten off track, but finally, I’d like to talk about the elven heroine. 

Since this was her moment in the spotlight, I wanted to attempt a romantic comedy in a fight-to-the-death setting, but I genuinely almost failed. I’ve actually never played a dating sim, but this time I tried out all kinds of plots only for them to all crash and burn. The elven heroine refused to smile. She refused to cry. She refused to flirt. She showed no sign of sitting down beneath that tree from the famous legend. 

Where were the flags?! Where were the choices?! Couldn’t she be more likeable? In this state, I tried and failed with at least thirty plots. Finally, after great struggles, I reached a good ending. 

To tell the truth, I was tempted to end the whole series with this elven heroine’s story, but I held back. Our hero still has a lot of girls to rescue. My apologies to you, elven heroine. If the folks at GA Bunko let me, I’d like to write about you again some time. On the other hand, if this elf was such a struggle, I wonder how things will go with other characters who have been stuck in the shadows so far. For now, I’m doing my utmost to avoid thinking about that. 

And now, at long last, my acknowledgements. 

To my editor Matsumoto and head editor Kitamura, whom I once again put through a great deal of trouble, thank you. To Suzuhito Yasuda, the man behind the wonderful illustrations in this book, I apologize for writing a book this long…And to everyone else who played a role in producing this book, I express my deepest gratitude. 

Thank you, readers, for sticking with me this far. I went through some tough times while I was writing this book, but your fan letters kept me going. I am truly grateful. 

I intend for the next volume to deal with everyday life. I’ll do my best to get it to you as quickly as possible, so I do hope you’ll wait. 

Thank you, and good-bye for now. 

Fujino Omori