Afterword
It’s good to see you all again. I’m Shigeru Sagazaki. Thank you very much for picking up From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman Volume Three. I’m honestly so happy that this story has continued—it’s been published without any problems for three volumes. Hip, hip, hooray!
Much like with volume two, it’s been five months since the last release. I wrote my last afterword in November, but it feels like time just flew by. I’ll be talking about the story for a bit, so if you haven’t read this volume yet, be careful of spoilers.
Now then, this volume’s general framework is the appearance of another pupil followed by a battle with said pupil. Having a serious fight with a pupil was something I really wanted to write about, so I’m glad I got to.
Beryl’s position means he should only have training matches with his pupils, so I really wanted to write about a serious clash. I hope that gets across in a satisfactory manner.
Rose is one of our new characters, and I personally like her quite a lot. Writing things in first person from Beryl’s perspective limits the depth somewhat, but I hope her personality expresses itself well, even if only a little.
I’ll keep it to myself whether Rose will show up again or not. I have designs for several bits of plot development, but whether they see the light of day will be something for you to look forward to, depending on how well volume three sells.
Mui, who moved in with Beryl during the last volume, shows up in this one pretty often. She’s less of a heroine and more of a daughter, but that makes her a little closer to Beryl than the heroine candidates.
As always, she treats Beryl as “the old guy” and isn’t honest with herself. Will the day come when she calls him something else? That may or may not come up in the future, so you’ll have to look forward to that too.
That sums up volume three. To tell the truth, I went through a loop of checking it over with my editor quite a few times. I find it pretty easy to write things from scratch, but I have a lot of problems making adjustments to what I’ve already finished. In that sense, it was a rough road.
The loop of “All done! But this part’s no good!” really wears down my spirit. During my days as a web novel author, I could just write whatever I wanted however I wanted, but that doesn’t fly when doing this as part of a business.
Still, it really makes me feel like everything is that much more polished, and this process has emphasized how important a third-party perspective is. It’s only obvious, but writing on my own and being content after one pass definitely limits quality.
Also, in the same month as this volume is being published, the first volume of the manga is going on sale. I wrote about it in volume two’s afterword as well, but I believe Satou did an amazing job adapting my work, so please give it a look. Beryl is cool, Allusia is cute, Selna is also cute, and Kewlny and Ficelle are cute too. They’re all so cute. Lucy stands out in both the novel and manga. She’s a character with a ton of pros and cons, but I rather like her. I want her to constantly come in and disturb everything as the troublesome friend character.
Incidentally, the major strokes of the story are the same, but the manga has quite a few differences in the details of events and how things flow. Things related to Lucy are especially different. Going over the completed manuscript really gave me a sense of how things are expressed differently when portrayed in a different medium. I offered my opinion every now and then, but Satou is very good at respecting the source material, so even as the author, I can look at its development with relief in my heart. It’s like having one meal and with twice the flavor, so please support the manga version’s first volume too.
Now then, I’ve torn through a bunch of pages for the afterword as I always do. It ended up with me just rambling about a bunch of things. I pray that we meet again here in five months.
Until next time.
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