Afterword
Good evening, everyone. It certainly has been a while. It is I, Takayama, and I bring you volume 18. The plan had originally been to settle a bunch of plot points in this volume, but I wasn’t even able to get through half of the planned plot here... Whoops...
This is the first time since volume 7 that I’ve so thoroughly misjudged the amount of work that it would take. Still, I’m pleased with the final product in terms of content. I hope that you, the reader, will enjoy it as well.
Now, I’m writing this afterword just as we’re entering a new era in the Japanese calendar. There’s something strange about knowing that the Heisei era was coming to an end. The era had changed from Showa to Heisei when I was just ten years old, and it’s been thirty years since then. A lot has happened in those thirty years. No, really, so many things have gone on in that time. If I told my twenty-ish-year-old self that I’d be a light novel author at this point, he probably wouldn’t have believed me. Even more so if I’d told him that I’d even have an anime adaptation to go along with it! You really never know what’ll happen in life. Oh, but I suppose I’d want to urge myself to hurry up and work on becoming a light novel author. I still feel that I’m not all that talented and that everything that has happened thus far is the result of a huge accumulation of my hard work. At the very least, though, I’d want to tell my younger self that this is something I can put all my heart and soul into.
Until I was twenty-nine or so, I believed that I had no talent at all and didn’t even put in the effort to write anything. When I was in my twenties, I had recently failed my college entrance exams and couldn’t even hold down a job. I was just going from one random gig to the next and felt like I had nothing to be proud of. If I’d only had the courage to write a bad novel at that age and stepped forward, maybe I would have gotten where I am ten years faster... No, maybe that’s going a little too far. Certainly, if not ten, then maybe I might have gotten to be a light novel author five years earlier than I did. It’s entirely possible that if I had been in that state, I would’ve been able to make Ragnarok a much better product. This series has been very kind to me, and with all that’s happened, I’m very attached to it.
It’s been six years since I started on this series. I’ve noticed a lot over the years I’ve been working on it, and I’ve grown a lot as a writer as a result. While I have always put all my effort into writing these books, if I had been able to start the series with my current skill... Well, I can’t help but daydream about that every once in a while. Of course, there was a certain charm given to the early volumes as a result of my sheer rawness as an author, which gave me a lot more momentum, so it’s hard to say things would have definitely been better.
Oh, c’mon, I’ve still got more pages to fill?
They gave me six pages for this afterword (I don’t need that many), so I’d like to touch a little bit on the actual story while avoiding spoilers. I actually run a creative writing class (while I still have much to learn myself, there are many things I can teach people), and from around volume 14 onward, I started modeling characters in my books after my students. One of those characters is Hildegard, actually. When the student read it, he got really mad at me and yelled that it was nothing like him, LOL. Given that I didn’t tell him he was the model for the character, seeing him figure it out through just reading her parts gave me a lot of satisfaction as an author. Oh, Kuuga’s also modeled on this student. The fact that the same person can be the model for two completely different characters says a lot of interesting things about human beings, I think. Meanwhile, Shiba is modeled both after my past self and another one of my students.
To go on a different tangent... Someone once said that I was like a bear. I guess they meant that if I tried to be nice to people and pet them, I’d end up mauling people because I was a bear. Heheh. Heh... I would like to think I’ve gotten better at being nice to people since then. As for my student, he’s gotten a lot more relaxed and playful. I’m a little jealous of him.
The two students previously mentioned are now professional authors themselves, and there’s not a shadow of the striplings they had once been left in them. They’re now valuable peers that I can bounce ideas and debate writing styles with. I was really happy when they came all the way out to Kanazawa to celebrate my birthday this year too. Thanks again! Oh, speaking of which, I took them to a revolving sushi shop at the time, but for some reason, they were absurdly moved at the specific place I took them to. I guess it’s hard for a local to understand, but sushi in Ishikawa Prefecture is evidently really good. I was shocked to hear one of them say that it was the first time they’d actually thought that squid was delicious. I mean, I’m pretty sure squid is always delicious, right?
Oh, wait, I’ve gotten completely off topic... Well, we’ll say that it’s the publisher’s fault for giving me six pages for this. That said, it looks like I’m pretty much done filling the pages, so I’d like to move on to acknowledgments.
To my editor, U-sama, I’m sorry for my manuscript being late like usual! I always try to get things done early as a writer, but, well... I really am sorry that you had to go to work even during Golden Week.
To Yukisan-sensei, our wonderful illustrator. Thank you for the beautiful illustrations once again! I’m extremely pleased to be able to see a grown-up Ephy, LOL.
My sincere thanks go out to everyone who was involved in getting this book finished.
And last, but certainly not least, I offer my sincerest gratitude to all the readers who picked up this book!
The story is now reaching its climax, and I’d like to dash through it at full strength, so please stay with me to the end. I hope that we’ll see each other in the next volume.
Seiichi Takayama
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