Afterword

A coworker of mine recommended a novel to me the other day. And indeed, that novel was Lazy Dungeon Master. I didn’t tell him that I was the writer. This is just my second job, so yeah, it’s kinda awkward. I’m thinking I’ll tell him if I ever become a full-time writer.

...Or wait, maybe he knew the whole time? Have I been found out? Okay, let’s not think about this. It’s not healthy to make too many assumptions without evidence. No doubt this was a pure, legendary-class coincidence. This is a popular series that made it all the way to Volume 11, after all! Nothing weird about someone recommending it. Yep.

Oh, right, this is Volume 11’s afterword. Thank you for reading once again. We held back its release a bit on purpose so it could be sold next to the manga edition in stores. Okay, that’s not true. I just couldn’t make it in time since I needed to basically write two volumes for what was planned to be just one... Hahaha, what a good joke by me. Ahaha. Hah...

Anyway, I would like to keep working hard for Lazy Dungeon Master’s sake. I hope you’ll support me by reading the manga version too. Youta-san, Nanaroku-san, thank you for your work. My editor I-san seems like he’s having a hard time. Good luck to you, my friend.

Oh, and this volume had a lot more pages than normal, but that’s just because I wrote too much. I couldn’t really cut any of the final parts here. And if I wasn’t willing to cut anything, I just had to be willing to write more pages than normal. But due to that extra content, the price is a bit higher than normal (in Japan). Though if you added this to Volume 7 and divided by two, the results probably wouldn’t be too out there. The page count and all that.

...And here I was, thinking that since most of this is in the web novel, I could just finish in no time with a bit of extra writing. Well, I’m no stranger to putting myself in a pickle due to writing more than expected. Even when I go out of my way to plan ahead. What’s the point of plans if they never work out, anyway...? Guuuh.

From this point on, there will be spoilers for Volume 11. People who skipped here before reading the volume itself should probably do a U-turn. Okay, everyone got that? I’ve warned you. I’m seriously gonna start spoiling, so leave now if you don’t want that. If you’re one of those people who complain about afterwords having spoilers, go try writing an afterword of your own and see how hard it is to come up with anything to say if you can’t even talk about the volume itself. I’ve got a mountain of lore here and I won’t ever be able to talk about it otherwise. Anyway, here we go.

This is basically the second half of the last volume and its journey to the imperial capital. That said, since there’s a clean delineation between the journey to the capital and what happens at the capital, they aren’t actually too connected. The main thing that changed was adding some foreshadowing in Volume 10 for a certain God of Chaos appearing here, and letting a certain imperial princess appear again after being oddly popular in her introductory volume.

...Yeah, this volume is an example of how changing stuff early will result in big changes later. The God of Chaos worked mostly behind the scenes in the web novel, so this is probably going to have a big influence in a lot of places moving forward.

There were also a lot of good scenes captured in the illustrations. I actually spent a lot of time debating over which scenes should get the illustrations this time. I’m really looking forward to the manga edition of this arc. Real deal hype. I have no idea when it’s going to reach this point, though.

Also, Rokuko called Keima over to a dream using her Divine Comforter again, but she seceded authority in the dream to let Keima do as he wished... which involved kissing feet and nothing more. In a way I have to say that Keima missed a big opportunity to go all the way here despite being so competent in the Dungeon Battle, but well, I would actually love for someone to turn this situation into a porn manga. And then I would love for them to give me a volume of it. I’d be overjoyed. I would treasure it.

Sure, the official word of god is that they didn’t go all the way, but you can just ignore that. Ignoring official lore is the beauty of derivative fan works. You can do whatever you want and treat it as just a parallel world, an alternate telling of what could have happened. Man, do I love derivative fan works. Maybe people will start making porn manga of LDM if it gets an anime? I hope it gets an anime. I-san, I believe in you making that happen. And the God of Chaos is begging for it too, I promise.

...Anyway, I got off track there, but it’s safe to say that Keima and Rokuko’s relationship is still pure. This is an all-ages work, after all. No matter what anyone says, no matter how Succuma looked in that one pre-order bonus poster, no matter how lewd the illustrations are—this is a work for people of all ages. Keima’s a guy, so the art can be a little more risque with him. I refuse to accept any argument here. Mainly because there would be problems if I did, but regardless, I refuse. Okay? Okay.

Oh right, I nearly forgot to mention this. The lyrics to the song “A Loving Rabbit’s Always Straightforward” were written by my friend, T-san. I appreciate him responding to my ridiculous request so quickly. I’m not too good at lyrics, so letting someone else take care of them is just efficient.

Also, I modeled Core 629 the orange rabbit off one I know in real life, but I guess nobody will really care about that. Yeah.

Okay. Next up is differences between this and the web novel. First is Leona. I planned on her showing up in the light novel adaptation all the way back when I first wrote the web novel without her. In fact, the plot of the LN has been diverging from the WN ever since Leona appeared in Volume 6. (Though if you go all the way back to the start of everything, the first major change was Rokuko ostentatiously welcoming Keima in her older form after summoning him.)

As for Wataru, he lost his place in this volume due to Leona’s chaos messing things up. If not for that, he could have lined up next to Emmymephy in a wondrous display of wotagei. Perhaps Wataru would have had some things to say about wotagei. Well, Keima would probably wiggle out by making some excuse about the auto-translator just happening to use that word.

One idea I had, then rejected, was Emmymephy forming an idol unit with Ichigo. That would have introduced the possibility of Emmymephy becoming Mikan’s master... Yeah, I feel like getting too far away from the web novel might cause a lot of big problems in more ways than one, so that just wouldn’t fly. That might introduce a future where an entire volume is original content, plot developments unique entirely to it... Just like Volume 8 pretty much was. Maybe the next volume might be the same way?

Oh, it looks like I’m out of lines. Guess that’ll be all from me this time. May we meet again next volume.

Supana Onikage