Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!? - Volume 8.5 - Chapter Aft

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Afterword

Long time no see everyone. It’s the author, Takehaya.

This time I have managed to safely deliver Invaders of the Rokujouma!? volume 8.5, “The Silver Princess and the Blue Knight, Part Two.” I am grateful to everyone for picking it up.

The contents of this volume are the direct continuation of volume 7.5. It’s the equivalent of the manuscript that Theia wrote in volume 7, and the second half of the legend of the Blue Knight. Perhaps it could be called the Koutarou arc.

There are several highlights in this volume, but one of the biggest might be the appearance of the dragon. The dragon is sort of a cliche in fantasy stories, but in a novel with some sci-fi elements, there couldn’t just randomly be a dragon for no reason. It had to make sense in context to some degree. As to how to write that in, that left me scratching my head for a while.

In terms of biology, a creature like a dragon has a rather peculiar anatomy. There are two classic elements of a dragon that are really hard to rationalize. One is that they can fly despite their size and weight, and the second is that they can breathe fire.

There have been examples of large flying creatures on Earth as well, such as the pterosaur. Specimens as large as ten meters have been found. So it might be easy to think that dragons of that size would be able to fly as well, but that’s not how it really works. The pterosaur was incredibly light, weighing only between twenty to thirty kilograms. Despite its large size, it was only about as heavy as a large dog. That’s what let them fly. But when thinking about a dragon, it’s hard to imagine them weighing anything less than a hundred kilograms. With such a powerful, gigantic figure, they would likely weigh in in the tons. And when looking at your standard dragon bosses in games, those would probably be more in the double-digit tonnage. So with that in mind, there’s really just no way that they’d be able to create enough lift with their wings to get off the ground.

As far as breathing fire is concerned, however, that’s where things really get into the realm of fantasy. There are creatures on Earth that can spew out chemicals at high temperatures, but that still caps out at around the 100 degrees Celsius mark. Since the creature has to withstand the heat themselves when spewing the chemicals, it makes sense that 100 degrees or so would be the limit. Something in the creature’s body would also have to be capable of producing such heat, and the rest of the body would have to be heat resistant. Then there’s the question if whether or not something like that could naturally evolve. If you can’t imagine it, believe me when I say the odds on that are really, really low. To complicate things more, there are also dragons that can spew all kinds of things from blizzards to poison gas to electricity. In fantasy works, an even larger variety of dragons appear. So assuming that each of those dragons naturally evolved from different paths and then that they all just coincidentally exist in the same time period seems a little too forced.

So that’s what was troubling me. In the end, I decided to make the entire species magical. Their bodies aren’t much different from a dinosaur’s, but they’re born with strong magical power. Using that power, they would be able to fly even if it was impossible otherwise and shoot magical attacks from their mouths. With that, I didn’t have to worry too much about the science of it, and it wasn’t an issue since magic already exists in this world. And from there, I reached the conclusion that intelligent specimens would be able to use magic just like anyone else.

In a normal fantasy, I think it’s perfectly fine for dragons to have flame sacs or electricity sacs. It makes sense if that’s how the gods of the world designed them. Once Rokujouma has concluded, maybe I’ll try my hand at a normal fantasy. I’m starting to feel like it would be a lot of fun to write. Of course, that will be much later. Probably.

I’ve just about run out of space now, so I think I’ll wrap this afterword up here. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to everyone at the editorial department; to Poco-san for always drawing such cute illustrations; to my friends for always going out with me for a drink when I get stuck on something; and to everyone who bought this book.