Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken (LN) - Volume 10 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD 

Good seeing you all again. This is Fuse. 

To tell the truth, I was actually planning on zero afterword this volume. This was thanks to the page count ballooning to its biggest yet, after a successful diet last time. I’ll never forget the resigned voice of Mr. I, my editor. 

But! 

Once we opened the lid, it turned out we had a few extra pages. They want me to fill around six of them in an afterword, they said. 

Like I’ve written before, when I pick up a novel at the bookstore, I read the summary blurb, then go straight to the afterword. I figure the afterword’s a good way to see whether a book is engaging or not. Even for a series like this one, I always read from the afterword first. I’ve got this habit of seeing if there’s any new info, or maybe a release date for the next volume, before I enjoy the book itself. 

That’s why I think “an afterword is really important,” but when I’m writing one myself, things change fast… 

I mean, really… If I write about my private life, a lot of people won’t care. If I write about the series, I’ll end up talking about spoilers. I’m sure a lot of readers would prefer more story to more afterword. 

If you have any requests on things to talk about in here, please write the editors at GC Novels! You may just see that reflected in future volumes. 

So for now, I’d like to talk a bit about the series. 

Here’s a little behind-the-scenes info on the gun that appears in this volume. 

I gave the full name of it in the text—the Walther P99, a real-life handgun. Glenda uses it in the story, but it’s a semi-automatic pistol produced by the Walther company in Germany. 

I was thinking about going with the Beretta M92 or Px4, but then people might confuse it with the character Beretta. After deliberating over my options, I picked the P99 in the end. 

The Walther P38 is pretty well-known. In Japan, it’s famous as the preferred pistol of that one master thief we all know and love. I thought I might follow that example but opted against it—I figured that, being a woman, Glenda would prefer a more compact firearm. 

So that was my motivation behind choosing the Walther P99. It only gets named once, but I still had to do some research for it, even picking up an airsoft version to handle myself. It reminded me of how much I wanted one as a kid. I guess I’m just buying stuff like this now that I’m grown up and can afford it, can’t I? Not that it matters. 

Anyway, I plan to continue bringing handguns like this into the story. They may go under the same name, but between mechanical and magical mechanisms, they could be totally different inside. 

The type Rimuru brought along on his adventure has completely original internals, although it looks the same from the outside. They even reproduced the blast charge, although making a lot of it is apparently a pain. They figured they could simplify things a bit, and so it has all the magic revisions described in the story. 

I also hint a little that the Empire has guns of their own, but those will be a completely different model. The idea is that they went through the same thought processes as Rimuru and friends but developed their magic-driven guns in different directions—that kind of thing. 

So those are the basics, but that’s only the beginning of my problems. 

I’m planning to introduce a family of demons named after classic super-cars, but at first, I was going to have a series of magic-born named after gunmakers, like Beretta. That was the plan, at least, but Beretta never did get any siblings in the web-novel version. 

So now what? With the name Walther getting a mention, hopefully that jogs Rimuru’s memory a little, but… 

I mean, think about it. Sig, Colt, Glock, Mauser, Walther, Mateba, Remington. The twin brothers Heckler & Koch. Those are just a few of Beretta’s buds, and perhaps we’ll see them floating around Tempest in the future. I can already hear someone shouting “Don’t do it! It’s hard enough to come up with character designs as it is!” but I won’t introduce them until they’re absolutely needed in the story. Promise. But I’d love to put ’em in action in a side story or something. 

To wrap up this volume, I’d like to express some of the gratitude I feel on a daily basis. 

Thanks to Mr. I, my editor, who’s always happy to speak with me. I troubled him with yet another page expansion this time, but he said this was all for the readers, and as the author, that’s a relief to me. Our phone conversations are always a nice mental break for me, so let’s keep this going! 

Thanks to Mitz Vah for all the wonderful illustrations every volume. 

As mentioned, Maribel’s design gave us a lot of trouble. Because of all that hard work, though, I think we’ve come up with a nice character. The cover and interior art’s being worked on right now as I write this afterword, and I can’t wait to see the results! 

And to the proofers, designers, and the other many people who helped bring this book to fruition: Thank you! 

Finally, to my readers. 

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime has finally ascended to Volume 10. This is all thanks to the support you guys give us, and I want to answer your call. I promise we’ll keep doing our best, right up to the conclusion! 

Thanks again for your continued support of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime!