Afterword

Thank you so much for purchasing this book. This is the afterword. Thanks to all of you, here we are with volume 2 of Hell Mode. I really cannot thank you enough for all the support you’ve shown. Thank you.

What’s more, here you are reading this afterword despite this book being so much thicker and longer than normal light novel volumes. There are truly no words to describe the gratitude I feel.

Now, since this is an afterword, I’ll be writing about what I think about Hell Mode as its author.

To be honest, I feel like it’s only after you finish reading volume 2 that you get a general feel for the world within Hell Mode. It’s been a bit of a long prologue so far, but this is basically the story of a boy being reincarnated as a serf in a tiny village setting off to learn more about the world, all while finding his own purpose and making friends along the way. There was so much world-building to introduce, including the protagonist’s background and the overall problem threatening this world, that this word count simply could not be lowered any further.

Now that the series is being officially published, I do want to write more content that I haven’t been able to get to before. The web novel version of this work is extremely focused on the protagonist, Allen. There are very few cutaways to other characters’ points of view, and as of the more than three hundred chapters that had been uploaded so far, not once have I written a side story.

The razor focus does make the telling of the story go faster, but it’s also true that progressing the story simply based on Allen’s perspective does leave something to be desired. This is why I plan on writing more side and bonus stories spotlighting other characters. I hope this would shed some light on what some of Allen’s friends—such as Krena, Dogora, and Cecil—and their families are thinking and how they are experiencing everything that’s going on.

Considering how high my word count is for the afterword, I want to talk a bit about my experiences with gaming as well. As you can tell from the fact that I’m writing about a reincarnated gamer, I absolutely love gaming. The first game I picked up was the second iteration of a certain nationally popular role-playing game on the Famicom. It seemed to just show up in my house one day, machine and all, though my memory is somewhat fuzzy after so long. One of my family members must have bought it for me. Ever since then, the idea that “video game equals role-playing game” had become deeply impressed upon my young self.

At the time—and I think I was in my second year in elementary school?—I was fighting slimes around the starting castle but had failed to figure out that you had to actually put equipment on for it to take effect. This is why my very first memory was thinking, “Oh no, slimes are so strong. I’ll seriously die if I bump into a few of them at once!”

My second memory was “I wrote down the revival chant properly but it seems wrong.” I clearly remember having done so even more painstakingly than I took notes in class. Many games back then would probably be considered too difficult nowadays. There were far too few hints for how to progress, and I remember dropping several due to getting hopelessly stuck mid-game.

Due to the powerful influence from back then, I now tend to take a very analytical approach whenever I come across something I don’t know. If I don’t have the answer, then I would try every single possibility. That, or maybe I had been born with this from the start.

Despite my love for games, however, I unfortunately haven’t touched them for years now, ever since I first started reading novels on Shosetsuka ni Naro. To be more exact, it’s been around three years and counting. Part of it is because I really don’t have the time anymore juggling a full-time corporate job and writing on the side, but it’s also because I know my life would just fall apart if I pick up a game again. I can bet that I’d just completely dedicate myself to playing it, putting in the minimum amount of effort needed to coast along at work and abandoning all my other duties.

On a different note, this series got a manga adaptation! I had never even imagined that my work would get adapted so soon after I started writing. Tetta Enji-sensei is doing a wonderful job drawing it in the style of shonen manga magazines. There are so many amazing depictions of Allen, his friends, his Summons, the fights with monsters, and so much else. It’s being published by Comic Earth Star, so please go check it out! I’m really looking forward to the day I get to see volume 1 lined up on the shelves in bookstores.

I’d love to see you again for volume 3 of Hell Mode. I do hope to continue writing more stories in the future, so please continue supporting me! So long!