Afterword

Hell yeah! Thanks to you guys, we made it to volume five! Thank you all. This really is thanks to you readers. By the way, doing the web polls and sending fan letters or thoughts to the address posted online both look really good to my publisher, so doing either of those are legitimate ways to support me. Okay, okay. That’s just a joke to start off this afterword.

I’m not actually given that much time to write an afterword, so I’m just gonna write what comes to mind on the spot. This time I have four pages, so I’m gonna go on for a while.

Okay. Let’s start with some sweet lore for volume five. This volume had tons of new characters, but they’re basically all Dungeon Cores. Leeet’s see, one, two... About eighteen of them were Dungeon Cores. I’d be rich if I were paid each time I introduced a character, but I’m not, and most of them are background mobs. Only Core 666, Aidy, was given a character design.

About Aidy. The truth is, she’s a character I thought up in the planning stages of Lazy Dungeon Master, before I started writing anything. I even thought of her before Rokuko. There was a big chance that this story would have starred her instead of Rokuko. But I eventually settled on Rokuko, since she was an easier character to write and the plot would have a more natural direction. Aidy would have been really frustrated if paired up with someone passive like Keima, since he avoids fighting when he can. Though that could have been fun to see.

Next, about Core 5. He wasn’t illustrated, but he’s a Black Dragon. He leads the faction which most reptile Cores belong to, including Ittetsu. Core 5 views Haku as his greatest enemy, but most of the Cores in the Dragon King Faction are mainly just exasperated with that and wish he would stop bothering. So yeah, it’s a pretty peaceful faction. Core 5 earns a lot of respect since he takes good care of his juniors.

His dungeon has Dragons as its main fighting force and is basically “might makes right” personified. The weakest monsters there are Wyverns, and you can’t walk two steps without seeing a Dragon. It’s incredibly dangerous. Traps? Who needs ’em! It’s an old-style dungeon in that way, and adventurers use it as a place to test their strength. Also, his dungeon is positioned on a leyline, so he gets tons of DP just from that. Anyway, that’s the kind of dungeon he has.

Core 6, being the Demon Emperor, owns human farms and when necessary picks fights with the Laverio Empire to acquire more livestock (humans). The Cores of his faction trade and make their own human farms. They exchange stronger humans, which give more DP, as practical breeding bulls. Weak humans are killed. Aidy’s master managed to survive amid all those horrors. Thinking about it, he’s in a pretty intense position.

Incidentally, the Demon King Cores hold a huge tournament where they fight to see who is the strongest. The winning Core receives the praise of the Demon Emperor and all the DP gathered by the participants. Their dungeons tend to be Demon King castles with the insides modified to be more dungeon-like. They have plenty of traps, but not many monsters. As the dungeons are castles, servants are always running around through them. To conquer them, you have to go through a boss rush of the dungeon’s Four Heavenly Kings to reach the Demon King’s throne. Yep. The dungeons were pretty much designed for Heroes to feel like they’re conquering a classic Demon King castle.

Well, that’s all from me this time. Let’s meet again in Volume 6.

Supana Onikage