I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level Max Level Witch - Volume 15 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

Hello, this is Kisetsu Morita.

It feels like it was yesterday that I wrote about Sandra joining the family, but it turns out it’s been an awfully long time, now that I look at it… It’s kind of incredible that this series has managed to carry on for so long in such a laid-back, low-stakes manner. I really appreciate that people recognize it as part of that slow-paced slice of life subgenre.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been some change in the house in the highlands lately! In this volume, a pet (well, sort of) joined the family in the form of a mimic. What sort of changes in the family’s dynamic will its newest member bring? The mimic will be making an appearance in the next volume, so you can look forward to finding out then!

Now then, this series has already reached its fifteenth volume, and coincidentally, the label it’s published under will also be hitting its fifteenth anniversary this year. Now, that’s a cause for celebration!

Fifteen years—that’s the same amount of time it took for Hideyoshi to go from inheriting Nobunaga’s domain after the Honnoji Incident to lying on his deathbed. Okay, maybe that’s a slightly dire comparison to make, but what I’m trying to say is that it’s a span of time in which the course of history can be turned on its head!

Apparently, a web event featuring works from both GA Bunko and GA Novels called GA FES 2021 will be happening toward the end of this month. I’m told that information about the I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years anime will be announced during their presentation, so please look forward to it!

Recently, I saw a picture of all the characters together, and it made me realize that Azusa’s hat takes up way too much space. The drawing I saw had the characters lined up in three rows, with her standing way in the back, and I couldn’t help but think of how the tallest people in a group always end up getting shuffled to the back automatically when the time comes to take a group photo (lol).

Next up: The special edition of the next volume, Volume 16, will include this series’ sixth drama CD! How do we already have six of those…? Preorders should already have begun, so if you’re interested, you can go ahead and place your order now! As for the CD’s story, it’s a real curveball featuring the inhabitants of the house in the highlands paying a visit to the real-world Azusa Aizawa! It’s due for release in April of this year!

Speaking of drama CDs, Volume 15 included scripts for the third and fourth drama CDs as bonus material. This seems like as good of an opportunity as any to discuss them a little, so I think I’ll do just that!

Drama CDs, by their nature, allow for a lot of audio-based gags that you just can’t pull off in a novel. Falfa’s weird detective impression, Laika and Flatorte’s dragon song, and Beelzebub buzzing around as a fly are all good examples of that. All of those aspects of the stories were originally intended to be presented through audio, and expressing them through writing can never quite convey the exact same effect… So when you read them, please do your best to imagine the sounds!

Also, drama CDs provide the opportunity to tell stories of a nature that can’t be told in the main volumes (or, to be precise, that I have no intention of ever telling in the main volumes). I’m referring specifically to the fact that unlike the main story, the drama CDs aren’t told exclusively from Azusa’s perspective.

It feels a little silly to come out and say this in the afterword of Volume 15, of all places, but bonus content aside, every novel in this series has been told from Azusa’s first-person perspective. We don’t get to see what the other characters are doing when she’s not around. To rephrase this slightly, we never get to jump into another character’s perspective—Azusa, the main character, is all we get. That’s why I decided to deliberately focus on other characters’ perspectives for the drama CDs.

Drama CDs are products, of course, so I can’t do something like write a story about Falfa and Shalsha playing together that doesn’t feature any of the other characters… But I still do my best to write these stories in a manner that distinguishes them from the main series. The sixth drama CD will tell a story that could never, ever occur in the main series. I hope you’ll buy the special edition and see for yourself… Wait, when did this section turn into an advertisement?!

Now then, it’s time for some announcements regarding the non-novel side of the series. First, Yusuke Shiba’s manga adaptation is due to have its eighth volume published this March! It feels like we’ve been getting one volume of the manga after another lately. This time around, Sandra will be making her first manga appearance! The house in the highlands family will keep doing their thing in their usual laid-back way, and I hope you enjoy it!

Now onto the anime. It’s scheduled to start in the spring of 2021, and all sorts of preparations are currently in progress! There isn’t much for the original series’ author to do (at the end of the day, I’m just the author—not an anime creator myself), but from the perspective of a viewer, I really hope it turns out well and eagerly await its broadcast. It’s in your hands, good people of the production committee!

Also, Kaede Hondo, who plays Laika, and Sayaka Senbongi, who plays Falfa, have a radio show called I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Minutes that broadcasts online for one minute every day! It’s called a radio show because it’s broadcast at a particular time every day, but those broadcasts are being uploaded to YouTube, so you can listen to any episodes that have already been released. If you’re interested, please check it out!

Finally, some thanks. Thank you to my illustrator, Benio, who still has to deal with new character designs a full fifteen volumes in! Thank you once again to Yusuke Shiba, who’s in charge of the manga adaptation, and thank you to everyone involved in the anime’s production! Finally, I give my greatest thanks to all the readers who have supported this series and kept it running for so long!

Killing Slimes has ended up being a pretty long series, but its run time is just a drop in the bucket compared to Azusa’s three hundred years killing slimes. I hope to keep it running for longer still, and I hope you’ll stick with me every step of the way!

Kisetsu Morita