Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka - Volume 11 - Chapter Aft

Afterword 

Andromeda did it in two nights. 

A natural Miss Andronage. 

Well, that’s to be expected of Andromeda. 

I believe she worked harder than anyone else in this volume. 

I used to do track-and-field. One day, my coach told a fellow teammate and me that we reminded him of Tom and Jerry. I think it was because we both ran long-distance events, and toward the end of the races we would break out from the pack and take turns chasing each other to the finish line (I was probably Tom). 

I still remember those last one hundred meters at the homestretch—his arms swinging powerfully in front of me, his long strides, the soles of his feet kicking up to his thighs, the sight of his back moving out in front of me. I would struggle with all my might, but still, he would leave me behind. The sight was truly nightmarish. I still dream about it sometimes and wake up drenched in sweat. I believe my teammate was my rival. 

The rest of the time we got along well and even ate together sometimes. But on the day of a race, I’d search the program for “Jerry’s” name, and as soon as I found an event we were both running, I would become acutely aware of a desire not to lose. 

Rivals are probably a good thing. 

Maybe the term “worthy opponents” is a little too cool for what they are, but thanks to their mere existence, new goals seem to spring up one after the next. It wouldn’t be quite accurate to say the minotaur—who is both a hero and a worthy opponent for Bell—was the only reason for the Xenos storyline that began in Volume 9…but I certainly wanted to create a rival for him. After I completed these three volumes, I made up my mind that there could be no other rival for my main character than the minotaur. I hope that he will agree to join Bell in this game of tag as the series proceeds. 

And with that, I will move on to acknowledgments. 

I would like to express my gratitude to my editor TK Otaki, to Editor in Chief TK Kitamura, who joined the manuscript team for this volume, and to Yasuda Suzuhito for drawing the beautiful illustrations. My deepest thanks, as well, to all the other people who helped produce this book. And to all the readers who have taken this book in their hands, thank you a thousand times over. 

I am also deeply grateful to the staff and cast who produced the limited-edition dramatized audiobook CD that was released for Volume 11. 

I had originally intended to continue the third section of the story even after the Xenos storyline ended, but after completing this volume, I decided that it would be best to make a clean break. And then there was the fact that the story of the Xenos took much longer to tell than I originally expected, continuing for three full volumes… 

In any case, the next volume begins a new chapter, in which I plan to return once again to exploration of the Dungeon. I hope you’ll join me for that tale. 

Thank you for reading this far. Farewell for now. 

Fujino Omori