Afterword

Hello everyone, Hyougetsu here. I’m starting to think I’m one of those overpowered isekai protagonists that masters whatever skill they have right after they get reincarnated. I started uploading this web novel onto Narou in late July, and not even a month later I got an offer for it to be published. It was honestly pretty surprising.

I’d been hoping this work would get published eventually, but even I didn’t think it would get picked up so soon. When I first got the offer, I thought someone was playing a prank on me. However, I recognized the name Earth Star Novels, so I decided to humor them with a reply. And seeing as you’re reading this afterword right now, clearly it wasn’t a prank. But for me at least, it still doesn’t feel real. I keep expecting someone to pop through my door and tell me I’ve been punk’d!

Leaving that aside for now, let’s talk about the novel itself. I ended up not editing very much of the web version for the published version, which was a bit of a shame, but I did at least get to add in an extra chapter. I decided to make it about Veight’s past since I’d gotten a lot of requests for that on Narou. What do you think guys, was it to your satisfaction?

By the way, I structured the start of the web novel the way I did because I wanted to make sure it wasn’t paced too quickly. I wanted it to be the kind of thing you could read a chapter of in your spare time during lunch or something. Basically, I want to write the kind of story you can pick up pretty much whenever. I don’t know about everyone else, but I always get tired reading really long paragraphs on my phone, so I made sure to keep the sentences short and snappy. It’s also why I had the story start up in the middle, where Veight’s already risen a good amount through the demon army’s ranks. Of course, there’s a lot to tell about his life before he became vice-commander as well, and I’d love it if I could keep writing these extra chapters about his past exploits.

Anyway, my biggest edits for the published novel were making the sentences and paragraphs beefier. After all, novels are the kinds of things you can read leisurely at home, and there are pictures to break things up if it gets too dense. I’ve got my editor-in-chief Itagaki-sama and my editor Saitou-sama to thank for helping me format everything better. I’d almost completely neglected the visual elements of a book, and their advice was extremely helpful in deciding how to structure things. I’d also like to thank my readers for giving me all that feedback on Narou. There’s nothing that makes authors happier than knowing people love their work.

Incidentally, my editor Saitou-sama is super reliable and extremely patient. Every time I went to him for advice, he’d sit me down and walk me through everything. Not only that, he was able to get the book through the publishing process surprisingly fast, and he always replied to my emails right away. Though, he also sometimes sends garbled walls of text that are hard to decipher, or puts little jokes in the subject line to mess with me. He’s a pretty interesting guy, so much so that I kind of want to put in a character based on him in the story. Regardless, it’s all thanks to him that I was able to put out a quality publication in such a short time. Thank you so very much, Saitou-sama. I’ll be relying on you for everything from here on out as well. When I think back to how much help it took to get this book published, I’m really grateful that it made it out the door at all.

Also, I’d like to thank my wonderful illustrator, Nishi(E)da-sama for his lively and impactful drawings. At first, I’d only had a very vague idea of what Veight was supposed to look like in his human form, but when I saw Nishi(E)da’s rough sketches I realized that must have been how I’d wanted him to look all along. All of Nishi(E)da’s other character sketches were amazing too. Me and Saitou-sama both agreed that Airia looked really cool, and that Jerrick looked really sexy. Thank you so much for bringing my book to life. I can say with confidence that his illustrations have influenced the way I’m writing my characters in the web novel, too.

Lastly, I’d like to thank my readers on Narou for supporting this series. Without you, it might have been buried forever. I look at each and every one of your comments, and treasure them all. I’ll continue updating the Narou version as well, where hopefully you can read the story in more bite-sized chunks (Though doing daily uploads now might be a bit tough.) I plan on exploring more of Veight’s past and the setting at large in the published novels, so I hope fans of the web novel check out this version too! There you go, there’s my shameless self-plug. Buy my books! They have Nishi(E)da-sama’s awesome art in them!

May we meet again in the second volume!