Afterword

Hello to those who don’t know me, and hello to those who read the web novel version of this story. I’m Supana Onikage, a guy about to gleefully play a ukulele to express his joy over his web novel being officially printed for the first time. I won’t actually play one, though.

Okay. Let’s talk about this novel. A lot of people truly helped me along the path of turning my web novel into a printed novel. I have infinite gratitude for Youta-san, the illustrator. He went to great lengths to ensure that Niku’s ears were drawn exactly as I envisioned them. I’m thankful for the designer who made the book cover, and I’m thankful for the editor who pointed out a lot of typos and such in the story. This is a novel that only exists due to the combined efforts of many people, and I give them my sincere thanks. And of course, I need to thank the person who’s holding the book in their hands right now and reading this afterword. Thank you very much. Novels aren’t really novels until people read them, after all! Which means that you, the reader, are the final part that completed this novel.

To those of you who were attracted by Youta-san’s art and just wanted to skim the afterword before starting, I would be very grateful if you read the story. But... Now I’m afraid I need to begin my apologies. I only get two pages for this afterword, and I didn’t want to just turn the whole thing into a bunch of apologies, so here we are.

First of all... Let’s talk about the big changes between the printed novel and the web novel. If you’re familiar with the web novel, you’re probably feeling pretty weird about how the main heroine was handled here. Indeed. The novelization process demanded a big change from one character in particular: Rokuko. Her main form is no longer the loli form. She defaults to her more mature form. This has to do with... adult circumstances. The editor asked me to make the main heroine a girl about as old as the protagonist.

Was that really the right thing to do? Thinking about my existing fans, I spent eight entire hours doing nothing but thinking about this problem. While sleeping, like this novel’s protagonist.

The main heroine’s appearance is very important. And heroines as old as the protagonist are more popular among readers. Attracting new readers through the cover art is vital, and the size of the heroine’s chest makes all the difference there. It all comes down to boobs, huh? People prefer main heroines with big boobs, huh? Nothing I can do about that. People just love them, it’s the way of the world right now. I’m sorry. I couldn’t beat big boobs.

But I didn’t want to abandon my web-novel fans, so I made it so that Rokuko could alter her appearance as necessary. And I mean, Rokuko is a Dungeon Core of unknown age, so it makes sense that she can turn into a loli if she wants to. That’s the kind of main heroine we settled on. Basically, we got the best of both worlds here. And thanks to me acquiescing there, I got to keep Niku as a loli without changing her at all.

Huh? But that one part of the story turned into something else? You’re right, it did. That has to do with adult circumstances as well. If you’ve read the web novel, you probably know what I’m talking about here and why it was changed.

I hope that was a good enough afterword. Thanks for reading, and let’s meet again after Volume 2.

Supana Onikage