Afterword

“Excuse me, Supana-sensei... You have three books left.”

I didn’t even have it in me to ask three books of what. My editor I-san gave me time, and I found myself staring at the sky with a distant look in my eyes. The countdown to the end of Lazy Dungeon Master had begun. The countdown to its final volumes.

“So the time has finally come, huh?” I asked.

“Yes. At best, we can keep it until Volume 17.”

I mean, naturally, I never thought it would keep going forever. From day one, I asked them to tell me ahead of time what the last volume would be so I could prepare ahead of time instead of just having a sudden ending. I knew it would happen eventually.

Five and a half years have passed since I started posting the web novel. The first volume of LDM was published a year after that, which was four and a half years ago. It lasted this long thanks to all of you reading and providing your support, of course. My dream of becoming a light novelist finally came true, and the fact my series continued for over ten volumes is even better than I could have ever hoped for. All that’s left for me to do is write up to the final volume, and live up to my readers’ expectations.

I mean, thinking about it, having three whole volumes of leeway is incredible. I feel like I might be getting special treatment thanks to how much support you guys all show me? They say most light novels die after their third volume, but I’ve got three whole volumes just to finish things. I mean, wow, they’re letting me write all the way up to Volume 17? Wowee! Seriously, I owe a lot to I-san for wrestling out three volumes worth of leeway for me. So, with that said, I’m gonna start cashing out on all the foreshadowing and seeds I’ve spread in past volumes. Thanks, everyone, and I hope you stick with it to the end.

Incidentally, I would also like your support for my next series, and it’s pretty common for Narou adaptations to get an anime after being completed, so work your magic there too. I’m open to any anime adaptation offers.

In any case, I have a lot of pages for the afterword. There’s honestly enough space for an entire short story here. Actually, I’ve been addicted to making ASCII art lately, so maybe I could post some AA of Rokuko? No? The deadline is too soon? Sorry.

Incidentally, Volume 4 of the manga is going on sale at the same time as this volume. There’s a lot of good stuff there, like a short story written just for it, and some parts that got fixed up from the web novel. They say that works that sell a lot get anime adaptations... Oh, I see, you already purchased five copies! Thank you. It’s due to all of your support that I can keep writing.

So, this is basically entirely irrelevant, but I went to a restaurant lately that thanked me for regularly using hand sanitizer when I walked in. That’s a pretty clever psychological trick. The people who don’t use hand sanitizer will feel pressured to live up to the expectations of the person who thanked them. Let’s keep our hands clean, everyone.

Okay! Time to talk about Volume 14, spoilers and all. I’m going to talk about past volumes as well, so any strange individuals who decided to start the series with the newest volume should be warned.

The plot of Volume 14 was pretty much set in stone since Volume 13 ended with Aidy coming to the town. In the web novel she dropped by Goren before Keima and Rokuko ever went on their field trip, but just like Beddhism stuff, got moved around. Oh, and did I talk about how Volume 12 led to them arriving at the tournament at a different time in Volume 13? Yeah, matching that stuff together led to Aidy’s trip being put off as well.

I also followed up on some dangling threads left after Keima’s visit to that town in Volume 10... Wait, hold on a second. I wrote that part of the volume since I-san told me it would be a good idea. Did he know the series was about to end? Just how long ago did he know the final volume was incoming...? Well, it’s something I wanted to write anyway, so okay.

Incidentally, Aidy was really excited to visit the empire since she thought her visit would inspire dangerous hijinks just like Keima’s visit had caused such a stir in the Demon Realm, but in the end it was so boring that she ended up exploding. Her efforts to blow off stress led to them taking down an organization plotting some devious things, and thankfully they solved it before it grew into something unstoppable.

Which was, of course, the Holy Kingdom’s influence. An artificial dungeon showed up in Volume 12, and here an Artificial Core enslaved an actual Core. Aidy going on a rampage after getting taken over drew from Core 564 in Volume 11 and the Dungeon Eaters that threatened their dungeon in Volume 8. There was also a recreation of a battle that occurred during their Dungeon Battle with Aidy in Volume 5... So yeah, this volume used a lot of elements that had been building up in previous volumes.

Incidentally, about the red urchins that were used to make the poison... I mentioned them in this volume’s original short story, but they first appeared in original content I wrote for Volume 4. At the time Niku didn’t like them due to the poison, but they really do taste good when cooked. The urchins we Japanese people eat have poisonous spines too. Naturally, the nature of the poison is different, but they taste great when cooked. The only problem is that fishermen hate them due to the poison. They’re considered pretty cheap, and you can buy one for about 100 yen.

Let me abruptly change the subject to the auto-translator. You can skip literally all of this and be okay.

In the world of LDM, there is almost no food that’s exactly the same as what you can get in Japan. Any exceptions would be something brought by a Japanese person like Keima. So, how is it that the urchins are called urchins, just like Keima is familiar with? Because all the Heroes before him had looked at them and thought “Yep, these are urchins.”

The auto-translator used by Heroes in LDM is, in fact, a database built up by all the Heroes to ever live. The first time a Hero looks at something and considers it an apple, it’ll be called an apple unless majority rule collectively changes it to something else.

This means that if a bunch of Heroes decided “Listen, you can’t EVER do that!” actually meant “Do it now,” then their words would be interpreted by the isekai residents as “Do it now.”

However, there is an exception to this, which is when a Hero’s individual perception overrides the database. For example, let’s say a Hero taught isekai residents that “apples” were actually called “oranges,” and the isekai people would interpret “orange” as being a word which indicates “apple.” The Hero at the time would think of it as “oranges = oranges,” and when asked about an apple he would hear it as “This is an orange.” However, if the Hero forgot about oranges entirely and got asked again, then he would hear it as “This is an apple.” Something which reminded him it was oranges would turn the sentence into “This is an orange” again, so nobody would ever notice what happened.

The only time it becomes possible to notice this is when other Heroes get involved.

A: “There sure are a lot of apples here.”

B: “Actually, those are called oranges here.”

A: “Huh? That’s what I said. Apples.”

B: “Huh? I’m saying oranges... Wait.”

So yeah, it’s only when Heroes talk to each other that the auto-translator finally starts to break down a bit. Does that mean anything? No, not really.

Thus concludes an explanation of an aspect of the auto-translator that will probably never be mentioned in the actual series.

Keima tried to test something like this with Rokuko in Volume 1, but in the end it wasn’t Rokuko that was misunderstanding but Keima’s auto-translator that was mixing things up. Oh, that’s all the space I have for this afterword. See you next volume.

Supana Onikage