Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka - Volume 15 - Chapter Aft

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Afterword

Let me just get one thing out of the way: I swear I did not want to write a harem story this time around.

I wanted to write a slice-of-life arc.

But there are a lot of female characters, and as their feelings toward the protagonist naturally got mushier, it was inevitable.

That’s just how the fifteenth volume ended up.

First of all—the numbered chapters in this volume are revised versions of the seven exclusive bonus short stories that came with the special edition of the 2015 Blu-ray. With all the characters having just built up a lot of experience and grown a lot, I was allowed to use the moment to collect and record their backstories.

Incidentally, at first—or honestly, up until recently—I’d had no intention of letting my prum supporter level up. I’d planned to have her continue on as the representative of the weak and talentless, or at least the one in the setting with that perspective on things, but a certain editor kept putting a lot of pressure on me, saying, “You gotta let Lilly level up or it’s gonna be bad, maaan!” I wasn’t convinced, but I reread the story up through Volume 14, and with everything that happened it suddenly felt like it would be weird if she didn’t level up, and if she didn’t get her chance here, what kind of hell for the other characters would it take before she did. (That said, there’s a dwarf who went through hell in Volume 7 of the spin-off without leveling up, but for plot reasons it was unavoidable. I’m sorry, Jagen!)

Anyway, congratulations to everyone’s favorite supporter!

But maybe that’s the real thrill of storytelling—when you start getting scared of the characters who’ve totally smashed the plot you so carefully constructed. There’s your raw look at the creative process.

If I have to give a name to the theme of this volume, it’s the contrast between the inexperience of the past and the maturity of the present.

When I thought about it, I think I wanted to get across what our suddenly much stronger heroes were like when they were just starting out. When I try to explain it seriously it always sounds kind of embarrassing, but I personally really like that kind of “look how far they’ve come” stuff.

One of the great things I’ve learned from more experienced light novel authors is that getting to see how much the characters grow over the course of a single volume is just the best. If I’ve been able to remind people a bit of what the scale of what our heroes have gone through is, who they’ve met, and how they’ve suffered, then I’ll be very happy.

From that perspective, the epilogue stands out as heretical. I hope you don’t mind waiting a bit longer to see the past of our strongest heroine. I really agonized over whether to put “Hero’s Elegy” into this volume, but I really wanted to dig into that part of the world here, so in it went. I had to really ask myself things like “What are adventurers? What’s the labyrinth? What is a hero?” and it’s one of my favorite episodes.

I’m sorry that my afterwords have been getting long lately. Let me get into thanking people.

As always, I’m indebted to my editor, Matsumoto, the editor-in-chief, Kitamura, and everyone at GA Bunko. Thank you so much for hanging out in this particular joint with me. To the illustrator Suzuhito Yasuda, thank you so much again for your wonderful illustrations. I’m sorry for making you draw so many giant chapter title pages. I’m always terrified that there aren’t many titles that keep getting illustrations this far in. My deepest thanks to everyone involved with that process.

And to my readers, keeping up through this, the fifteenth volume, requires quite a few books ahead of it, so as always, thank you so much for reading. There’s no end in sight for this story, and I’ll be delighted if you continue to pick it up.

The fourth arc will be continuing here, and I believe the next volume will concern the lovely ladies of the tavern.

It’s a terribly trepidatious thing having come to this point, and I just hope I can somehow get through it. I just want to avoid it turning into a romantic comedy. Oh—no good, huh? I see. Well, I’ll try to put in plenty of sugar to spit out along with the blood. Nggh.