Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!? - Volume 42 - Chapter Aft

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Afterword

Long time no see, everyone. I apparently wrote the last afterword in August, so it’s been roughly half a year since the previous volume. The reason this one was delayed, as before, is because I’m still working at a reduced pace thanks to my eye surgery. I can’t put these books out on my own, so there’s a lot of coordinating with various departments too. We ended up settling on March for the release date for this book—as I’m sure you’re now aware (lol).

Medically speaking, my eye is healing well, and I’m slowly adjusting to things. At first, my vision would blur when I wore a helmet, making it difficult to ride my bike, but lately that’s gone away and I can ride again. I think my brain’s getting used to it. I mean, my eyes suddenly changed after over forty years, so I’m grateful for that. My life is—slowly but surely—returning to normal. I’m very sorry for any worry the delay may have caused. I hope to get back to my usual pace soon, so thank you for your continued support. I appreciate all the encouragement I received from everyone.

But that’s enough about my eye! Let’s talk about this book. Since it’d be tricky to discuss this one without spoilers, those of you who go straight to the afterword first should stop here and come back once you’ve read the book.

This volume more or less sees the end of the battle against Ralgwin. Grevanas acquiring the spiritual energy waste and learning how to control it was the catalyst here. Ralgwin himself was fine with Grevanas learning to use the waste as a weapon, but he didn’t anticipate Grevanas’s designs on resurrection. That oversight forced him to act quickly, so you could say that the factory accident was a mortal blow to Ralgwin. His biggest loss wasn’t weapons or technology, but time. Fortunately, Fasta’s betrayal(?) spared him the worst possible outcome. This is where his fate differs from Vandarion’s. It’s also representative of the difference between them as leaders.

In the next volume, Grevanas will finally make his move. On the surface, his goal is to rescue Ralgwin, but he has ulterior motives. Meanwhile, Fasta plans to save him in the truest sense. It’s a troublesome situation for Koutarou and the girls to be in. Both plots need to be stopped, but now they feel for Fasta. That will be a point of contention in the next book.

To be honest, I struggled writing this volume. Technically I always do, but I’d like to talk about it this time. Specifically, I’d like to talk about having a genius in the story. Broadly speaking, there are three types of geniuses. There are geniuses in battle like Theia. Then there are inventor-types like Clan. And lastly, there are problem-solvers like Kiriha. The first two are easy to handle. They both produce results that you can see. Theia defeats enemies, and Clan creates things (like the PAF or a way to defeat an army of zombies with overwhelming firepower). That makes them simple to understand. It’s the political geniuses like Kiriha and Elfaria that are the tricky ones. The difficulty with characters like this is showing what they achieve and do. You can’t just write things like “The enemy came, but fell for my trap” or “A problem happened, so I solved it.” At some point, you actually have to break down their actions and thought processes. The real problem is that I’m not a genius. Something that would take Kiriha five seconds to come up with takes me days.

In this volume, she lures the enemy into a donut-shaped distortion field that would safely allow her allies to travel over it. This battle has to be won with minimal casualties out of consideration for Fasta, and the donut field idea took me several days to think out. Koutarou and Maki sometimes fight using defensive barriers as footholds, so maybe Kiriha got the idea from them, but I didn’t (lol). I’m sure other authors struggle with strategic and political geniuses too. You can use loopholes and abilities like clairvoyance, but when the size of your cast increases and the scale of the story gets bigger, relying on that just gets boring. Even if you try to skirt the issue, you’ll have to face it eventually, so lately I’ve resigned myself to doing it the proper way. I hope the end result was a tolerable book.

And just like that, I’m out of space. I’d like to wrap up with my usual acknowledgments. My deepest gratitude to HJ Bunko’s editorial department and related companies; to Poco-san, who ended up getting thrown around last volume and this one because of my eye; and to all of you for your continued support despite the worry I’ve caused.