Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou (LN) - Volume SS - Chapter Aft

Afterword
 
Hey everyone, resident chuuni lover, Ryo Shirakome, here. Thank you very much for picking up this Arifureta short story compilation. 
How did you like it? It contains most of the short stories written from volume 1 to volume 5. To be honest with you guys, I wrote all of these as bonuses to go with in-store purchases, so I never thought they’d get published as a volume in their own right. As a result, the chronology and setting and contents are all over the place. I’ve basically been writing these with the same mindset that I’m writing the after stories on Narou. So I’m sorry if there are any inconsistencies with Arifureta canon. I realize some of you were probably wondering how some of these short stories fit within the timeline of Arifureta, but please don’t worry too much about it. All these events might have happened during some of the time skips in the main volumes, but if that doesn’t make sense, then I guess they might not have. Either way, I just wrote what I thought would make for interesting stories to fill the gaps in time within the main series. 
I won’t blame you guys for thinking I was having too much fun messing around with these stories, but I hope you at least enjoyed them. There might be some of you out there who’ve already read all of the short stories that came with each of these volumes, and if there are, I’m eternally grateful to you loyal readers. You guys are the best. 
Unfortunately, I’m sure if such readers do exist, you were probably pissed when you heard there’d be a compilation volume coming out and that you didn’t need to buy each volume half a dozen times. 
So, by way of apology, I’ve written one entirely new short story for this volume. Incidentally, I called it a short story, but it’s more than 40,000 characters long, so I’m not sure if it really qualifies as a “short” story anymore. It’s nearly a quarter of the whole book. 
I, uh, guess it’s more of a special story or a super story than a short story? Sorry guys, I really am just having way too much fun writing these things. I just hope you all had as much fun reading them as I did writing them. Nothing would make me happier. 
I tried making these short stories a lot sillier compared to the main series, which is meant to be serious. Anyway, since I seem to have a lot of empty afterword pages left, I decided I’d write down some commentary for a few choice short stories.

I’ll start with the new short story I wrote for this volume... 
—The Miraculous Meeting and the Phantasmagorical Adventure 
The truth is, I actually used an existing short story as the base for this one. Those of you who happened to be at the Overlap sixth-anniversary event might have picked up the short story I wrote for that, The Mysterious Daydream. That’s what I used as the base for this one. 
The Mysterious Daydream also has Miledi, Yue, Hajime, and Oscar all meeting each other, but I had to limit that one to just 3,000 characters, and I didn’t have much time. I really wanted to make it a longer, more fleshed-out story, so when I heard I was getting a short story compilation volume, I decided to expand on that short story. Of course, if everyone remembered their meeting it’d mess up a lot of things in both Zero and the main story, so as much as it pained me, I had to make it so they’d forget about what happened at the end of the adventure. However, I wanted to make sure that something concrete remained from their encounter, which is why things ended up the way they did. Also, those of you who are keeping up with the web version probably already know this, but Myu is someone who attracts all manner of strange things to her, so I decided to make her the centerpiece of this story. Those of you who read the “Afterword’s Afterword” for volume seven that’s on Overlap’s homepage (it’s a short story you can read by answering a survey) will know that a tiny piece of the Hell Eater actually survived and that Myu’s already made it her friend. Myu’s a pretty... scary girl in some ways. 
—The Holy Goddess’ Descent unto Paradise 
This one’s a short story about Kaori and Shizuku from back when they were on earth. I didn’t mention this in the short story itself, but in truth, Kaori tried doing the same thing in a bunch of other stores, and she and Shizuku got blacklisted from all of them. They also all happen to be stores Hajime frequent. Anyway, there are rumors among store owners that there are two girls who have an abnormally intense interest in porn games. Incidentally, Hajime’s dad, Shuu Nagumo, runs a video game company, while his mom, Sumire, is a popular shoujo manga artist. So it’s only expected that Hajime would grow up to be a dyed-in-the-wool otaku. Plus, with all the times he’s helped his mom ink backgrounds, he’s actually a pretty good artist himself. And thanks to all the times he’s had to help his dad, he’s become a decently skilled programmer. In fact, his mom’s assistants and his dad’s coworkers often come to him for help when one of his parents starts getting carried away. 
—Dreams of Family 

Whenever I think of isekai stories, I can’t help but think of the families of the people who’ve been transported away. Personally, I imagine it must be much more painful for them when the protagonist suddenly gets transported to another world, compared to when they die and get reincarnated. Because the family still holds out hope that the protagonist might return to them, it’s even more painful than if they’d just gotten the closure of knowing the protagonist is dead. That’s part of why I wanted to make the ultimate goal of Hajime’s journey to be returning home. And the reason I wrote this short story was because I wanted to both explore and maybe heal a little of the pain felt by those left behind when Hajime got summoned. If you asked me what the main theme of Arifureta was, I’d tell you it’s about Hajime’s journey to become the strongest and so on, but if you think about it, on some level, it’s also about never giving up on your family. 
—The Handsome Rabbit and The Iron Boy 
This one’s just one of those alternate timeline stories. As I’m sure you’ve all guessed, it’s based on Ironman. Honestly, if you think about the title of Arifureta, this would probably be a more fitting way for Hajime to get stronger than eating a bunch of monsters. (Whoops.) The rabbit’s kind of in a similar place too. I think you’ll see what I mean once the next mainline volume comes out. 
—A Store Owner Like This... Might Really Exist 
Since I was asked to write this short story for the Tsutaya store, I figured I may as well make it about them. Incidentally, I’m the kind of guy who rents all his movies. If I really like something I’ve rented, I’ll buy it for good when I go to return it. I feel like that’s the best way to buy movies. And so, thank you so much for letting me rent all your movies, Tsutaya! It’s actually one of my favorite stores, so I had a lot of fun writing this story. 
—A Certain Peaceful Hero Party 
I figured this would be a good place to talk about Ryutarou’s origins. The truth is, he’s based on the boss who shows up in the second Die Hard movie. That guy’s probably my favorite villain in the whole series. 
—Midnight Tag and The Most Beautiful Pervert Dragon 
Chronologically, The Most Beautiful Pervert Dragon comes before Midnight Tag. I just wanted to write a short story about why Hajime likes riding on Tio’s back so much. 
—A Falcon’s Daughter is Still a Falcon 
I literally just wanted to write a story about a badass child sniper. 
—The Arifureta Magic Academy and Arifureta Fairy Tales series 
These are the stories I turn to when I’m out of ideas. Which, as you can see, happens frequently enough that both of those have become mini-series of their own. Fortunately, the setting of both means I can pretty much do whatever I want, so they’re fun to write. 
And now I’m out of pages, so that’s enough for the commentary. 
Sorry for the blatant self-promotion, but I’d like to use a bit of the remaining space to remind everyone that volume four of Arifureta Zero will be releasing next month, so pick up a copy if you’re interested. The final ancient magic user will be making her debut. The plot’s going to be speeding up too, since we’re near the climax of the story. I hope you all follow Miledi and the others’ story to the very end. 
Lastly, but never least, it’s time for the acknowledgments. As always, thank you Takayaki-sensei for your wonderful illustrations. And congratulations on the release of the Arifureta artbook! I’d also like to thank RoGa-sensei for his godlike artwork on the Arifureta manga, as well as Mori Misaki-sensei and Kamichi Ataru-sensei for drawing the zero and everyday life spinoffs. I’d also like to thank my editor, my proofreaders, and everyone at Overlap who helps make the published version of Arifureta possible. And, of course, thank you, dear readers. Both those of you who picked up this volume, and those of you who support me on Narou. Let’s meet again in another Arifureta volume! 
Ryo Shirakome