AFTERWORD
Hey! It’s been a while! About five months since the previous volume. Yes, it’s Volume 6 of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, and it’s time for the traditional afterword.
This volume is the result of yet another epic battle between my editor, Mr. I, and me over what to write and what to cut out.
Mr. I was a lot nicer to me back in Volume 1, you know. I remember one conversation:
“You know, if you really don’t like writing an afterword, it’s okay if you don’t!”
“Really? Thanks a lot! I don’t know what I should write in it. I’m just not very good at that kind of thing, so I really appreciate you saying that!”
HOWEVER!
Flash forward to this volume:
“I’m putting the pages together, and it looks like we’re gonna need about eight pages of afterword.”
“Huh? Eight? Isn’t that a lot?”
I mean, seriously, eight pages is a crazy amount of afterword. You can see why I was aghast.
“Well, there’s just no getting around it, I’m afraid. With the binding we’re using, if we cut out all the blank pages, we won’t have space for an afterword at all.”
“Oh, okay, let’s go with that—”
“No! What’re you talking about?! I really need an afterword from you!”
Once upon a time, he gently whispered to me that he didn’t need any afterword for Volume 1. Where did that kindly Mr. I go? Sure, I look forward to the afterwords of novel series I have a thing for, but once you’re the one writing them, you quickly defect to the “don’t need ’em” crowd. That’s one of my special (if distressingly awful) skills, the ability to freely change my mind based on my current perspective.
I tried using that superpower to have Mr. I see things my way, but:
“Whether it means more pages or not, I’ve got to have you write it! The ‘no afterword’ choice is not on the table!!”
With a single roar from the editorial office, the option of skipping the afterword was crushed to oblivion. So I gave up, and after several more rounds of negotiation, we successfully managed to cut a couple pages.
I tell you, though, it’s starting to become a regular exchange between us.
“I think the page count’s gonna go up a little this time, too…”
“That’s fine! Don’t worry about it! Just keep on writing!”
And then there’s the afterword on top of that. And here I was worried about the manuscript ballooning too much. This volume’s already thicker than normal, and now I had to cough up more afterword pages. Mr. I must be nuts.
By the way, when I submitted my first draft, Mr. I’s first piece of feedback was:
“The scene with [censored] isn’t there, but what’s up with that?”
“Ooh, well, the page count was going up too much, so I very reluctantly had to cut it out.”
“You can’t do that, can you? That’s a really vital scene!”
“Yeah, but there’s nothing else I can cut out…”
“Seriously, man, I don’t want you worrying about cutting your own content! Just write it! When it comes to Slime, we’ve decided to just let you write as much as you’ve got!”
Thanks to that, despite the first draft already being the longest manuscript in Slime history, it wound up being expanded a good several thousand words more.
In Japan, this series is published by GC Novels in the shinsho format, which features two separate columns of text per page instead of one so more can be crammed in. Thanks to that, I had already published the novel with the highest word count in GC history, but with this volume, I am now number-one in page count, too. “It’s a new record!” Mr. I crowed. I have no idea what he’s aiming for with that.
But anyway, the result of all that silly back-and-forth is Volume 6. It’s thicker than anything that came before it, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it for a lot more than just its size.
Now let’s cover a bit of the content. As I mentioned in Volume 2, I’m the kind of guy who peruses the afterword first, so I just want to warn you that I’m not gonna be shy with spoilers ahead. Proceed at your own risk!
I mentioned this topic in the afterword to Volume 5, but number six is full of original content not in the web version, too. It should be quite obvious from the table of contents, but this is the volume where Rimuru is recognized as a demon lord in name and deed and the term Octagram is coined for the whole gang.
Volumes 5 and 6 cover everything in Chapter 4 of the web series, the Birth of a Demon Lord arc, and given how Birth of a Demon Lord’s events wouldn’t even fill up all of Volume 5, you can see how almost everything in this book is new material. The exchanges Mr. I and I had about this were discussed in Volume 5, and I tried my best not to have the results read like a watered-down bottle of Calpis.
Speaking of that content… Well, as always, I’m running a large cast of characters. Perhaps readers of the web version have a head start, but if you’re following the printed novels alone, it might be pretty tough going. If you think about it, though, this book has over twice the word count of your typical paperback light novel, so maybe it’s not that bad, proportionally speaking.
I wanted to fill it in with some illustrations, of course, so Mitz Vah’s put in a hell of an effort for me this time, too! All ten demon lords (What? There’s eleven? Well, that’s weird.) show up in this volume, and I think they’re all looking really cool. There was another heated battle between Mitz Vah and Mr. I over how large to make the female characters’ breasts, but that wasn’t anything for me to get involved with. I’ll have to wait for the final illustrations to see how the results of that debate turned out.
Oops. Getting off track here. Thanks to those wonderful illustrations, though, I think they make it a lot easier to picture the cast in your mind.
Regarding conflicts between the web and print versions—well, I think we’re somehow managing to keep the overall story arc identical, you could say. Of course, you’ve got at least one character with completely different motivations, others whose backstory itself has changed, and if you examine the smaller details, there are differences all over the place. It might be harder to find unedited passages that’re exactly as they were written on the web, maybe.
Going forward, all these changes might pile up to the point that it turns into a completely different story. I’m intending to stick to the same general plotline, but really, I can’t truly know until I start writing. That’s the philosophy of Slime, I suppose, and I hope you’ll keep reading.
I’d like to close this afterword with a few words of thanks.
First, to Mitz Vah, who provides such excellent artwork. Seeing some of the rough drafts has made me completely rethink my image of certain characters. It’s great to receive this kind of stimulus! We’ve still got a bunch of new characters to introduce, so keep up the good work.
Next, Taiki Kawakami, author of the manga version, along with his editor, Mr. U. I can’t say enough about how they answer all my petty requests for each chapter. I asked him for a couple of bonus pages for this volume, too, and he very kindly accepted. Thanks so much! (Huh? You think I just wanted to reduce the number of afterword pages I had to write? I have no idea what you’re talking about.)
My editor, Mr. I, has always been there to discuss things with me. His opinions and feedback are truly a treasure. If an editor doesn’t understand your work, I doubt there’s any way you’ll ever convince a larger audience to like it. Keep that feedback coming. Don’t hold back!
Thanks also go out to everyone involved with proofreading, design, and production. I’m sure the proofreaders in particular had a hard time checking such a huge quantity of words. Thanks so much for your hard work!
Finally, I just want to tell the readers kind enough to purchase this book that I’ll continue to strive to make That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the most enjoyable read it can possibly be.
See you in the next volume!
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