Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka - Volume MM&L-1 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

The collection of short stories you hold in your hands contains articles published in Volumes 1–17 of the main story as well as those found across other media as of 2022. “Episode Miach,” “Plight of the Prophet,” and “Events of a Half Year” were newly written for this collection. They have been compiled in this anthology to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the series’ first printing.

I sometimes think it’s amazing that such a clueless author like me was able to work my way up and produce such a prolific volume of work.

Long-form writing comes with its own struggles, but the difficulty in writing short-form content is fitting the whole flow into such a short space. Looking back over them now, I can see, “Oh, here I had no plan and was just writing based on feel,” or “I already reached the punch line but didn’t manage to fill the page,” or “I’m just leaning on classic romcom tropes now!” Of course, I don’t find it easy nowadays by any means, but I can’t help but feel I was writing rather more by the seat of my pants in the earlier days. Maybe that’s partly because I now have the benefit of being able to reuse material I couldn’t fit into the main story or tearfully had to cut for other considerations…It’s not fair to compare, is it?

I think short stories will continue to be as much a part of my job description as longer ones, so perhaps I should take a leaf out of my old self’s book and try to approach them with a more devil-may-care attitude and try to come up with the best stories I can while following our main characters and seeing where they go.

Incidentally, my favorite story in this collection is “Blue Twilight.” I would love to hear which ones all of you readers found interesting if the fates ever permit it.

And now for the acknowledgments. To my editor, Usami. Thank you once again for all your hard work and effort in bringing this book to publication. The end of this series is not quite in sight, so let us be ready for the challenges ahead. To nilitsu, who also helped with the illustrations on Familia Chronicle. Thank you for once again adorning this work with your fabulous creations. I hope we have the chance someday to show everybody all the drafts that we weren’t able to include! I also extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in the publishing side and, of course, a big thank-you to all of my readers, too.

I understand there will be a part two in which short stories from Sword Oratoria, Familia Chronicle, and other assorted works will make an appearance. It would make me very happy if you considered picking that up as well.

Thank you very much for reading this far—and until next time.

Fujino Omori