Afterword

Thank you very much for purchasing Black Summoner 1: The Bound Demon. I am Doufu Mayoi. For those who are reading my work for the first time, it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance. For those who have picked up this book from a shelf after picking it up as a web novel, I express heartfelt gratitude for your continued support.

Well, well, well, this book has finally gotten published. This is the official publication of the series of the same name on the web novel site Syosetsuka ni Narou. It was from October to December of 2014 when I wrote the web novel chapters that would become this book. Time truly flies, doesn’t it? When I first joined the site in 2013, I was nothing more than a passionate reader, not even dreaming that I myself would one day take up my own pen. What prompted me to start was...what was it? To be honest, I don’t really remember anything specific. One day, I just suddenly came to realize that writing had already become another hobby of mine. That’s right, it was just a hobby at the start. To think that my work would now actually hit shelves? I doubted the wisdom of this decision many, many times. Overlap, are you sure about this? I guess crazy things really do happen in this world.

Although the series is now titled Black Summoner (Kuro no Shoukanshi), it was actually Summoner of All Time and Place (Kokontouzai Shoukanshi) at the start. I had chosen that title while hoping to write about a Summoner protagonist who would be going on adventures to all sorts of places, perhaps even to the past and future. Sadly, though, that title was not well received, to say the least. Many readers at the time left feedback along the lines of “the title detracts from the work.” So I tried changing it, and what do you know? The next day — or was it the day after? — the name Black Summoner made it into the rankings of Syosetsuka ni Narou. This was when I had been writing for around half a year. I thought to myself, “Are these guys in their right minds?” many times. Guess I’m a doubtful person by nature. However, I slept on it, woke up, and discovered that it wasn’t just a dream. To my delight, it was real.

This Volume 1 perfectly covers all of Arc 1: Adventurer of the web novel. However, as of this moment, the web novel is plunging full steam ahead into Arc 7 already. That’s quite a gap, not to mention the latter half of Arc 7 is actually rather long. How did I even manage to write that much? In any case, I’ll be handling the novelization while continuing to upload web novel chapters going forward, doing my best not to let either one fall behind. I promise I’ll work just hard enough not to die! That’s as far as I’m willing to compromise!

Well, I also worked hard enough (without dying) on Volume 1, and thanks to that, I’ve finally gotten to see the day where I could enjoy the lively figures of the main party of Kelvin, Clotho, Gerard, Efil, and Sera. I don’t think I would have any regrets if I were to die now. Kelvin has an even more evil smile than I had imagined, Clotho is so jiggly, Gerard looks far too cool for a grandpa, and Efil and Sera are both super cute! I absolutely love how everyone is depicted! I can’t ever fully express how thankful I am to the illustrator, Kurogin-sama. I am but a mere author who wears his greed on his sleeve, but if possible, I would love to also see the faces of the other party members who have yet to make their appearances. To make this happen, I, too, will do my best to polish up a book worthy of such an honor.

This will not be a surprise to those who’ve already finished reading the book, but it is a work with a lot of really long depictions of battles. This is largely just the author (me) letting his fantasies run wild, but as the protagonist is a battle junkie, I guess it can’t be helped, right? “I’m not in the wrong at all” is what I’d like to say, but nah, that was a joke. It was all my doing. To be honest, I had started off with every intention of writing an orthodox otherworld transmigration story, but as I went along, I started to have doubts about what “orthodox” really meant. Well, I’m not all that bright, and there isn’t much point in a dumb person overthinking things, so I decided to just write what I wanted to write. As a result, the battles got really long. Yeah, there’s really no helping it. I mean, I don’t have the confidence to boldly declare, “This is my orthodox!”, but as long as readers enjoy my work, that’s enough for me. To those who even go so far as to read an Afterword like this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Lastly, I want to say one final word of thanks to Kurogin-sama for the amazing illustrations, to Sugimoto-sama for designing the book, to the proofreaders, and last but certainly not least, to all the wonderful readers.

While praying that I’ll have the honor of seeing another volume go out, I hereby leave Black Summoner in everyone’s warm hands.

Doufu Mayoi