Afterword

We’ve finally reached Volume 10. This is thanks to all of you, my well-cultured readers. It’s been three years since my debut. It feels like it’s been a long time, but also not. Don’t tell me I’m just going to wake up and this is all a dream like a bad movie plot. That would have to be one long dream, so I guess not. It’s said that light novel authors have an average life span of three years, so I’ll keep working hard while taking care to stay healthy and not run out of ideas.

I managed to just casually overcome the Third Volume Wall and the Fifth Volume Wall, so I’ll probably be fine, I think... I’ll try to live up to everyone’s expectations. Oh, and this year’s fortune for me was “moderately good fortune.” It feels kinda weird to get “moderately good fortune” instead of just plain “good fortune,” but well... Better than nothing?

In this volume, I initially intended to end at a point further away in the story. I was thinking like, nice, I have a huge stock of web novel content to go through! I won’t have to write much new content at all...! Well. There was just too much web novel content.

To be specific, the volume ended up so large it couldn’t be contained in a single volume. I consulted the editor, I-san, and his response was to make the volume a two-parter. Yeaaah.

So, for all intents and purposes, this journey to the imperial capital was just part one, with Volume 11 being part two. With that in mind, I had some room for writing some new content, but...

“Oh, since they won’t be a two-parter in practice, please make sure they stand independently as different volumes.”—I-san

Say... what? And thus, I ended up adding a lot of content that wasn’t in the web novel. I mean, I intended to write some new content no matter what, and there was a character in the web novel who wasn’t introduced in the light novel yet. I put the Imperial Princess in to replace her, and the developments naturally changed from there... Before I knew it, this volume had ended up over ninety-five percent original and edited content. My pen never had time to rest.

How? How did this happen? I thought for sure this volume would be easier for me, and yet...

Oh, and the names for cities in this volume were a variety of in-joke references. Some Nico livestream friends of mine suggested names, and the name of the driver came from the name of a wagon driver in a book one of my friends wrote.

Emmymephy’s name is a bit hard to type, and I got it from taking suggestions during a livestream. When asking for princess names, one person suggested Emmy and another Mephy, so I combined them. Important noble people tend to have long names, don’t they? I thought about changing it later, but I ended up rolling with it. That’s just how I am. I decided on the main heroine’s name, Rokuko, by rolling dice, after all.

Well, that’s it for this time. May we meet again in Volume 11.

Supana Onikage