Afterword

How are you? I’m doing fine. It’s been a while. Blitz/Kiva here. I’m very happy I was able to bring Paying to Win in a VRMMO volume five to you all.

That was the Account Hacking Arc, a.k.a. the Fake Young Heir Arc.

Those who have read this far will probably know this already, but Paying to Win is a bit of an oddball series. There are lots of stories that deal with online games and VRMMOs, but my intent here was to deal head-on with more difficult topics. One of these topics was microtransactions, but account hacking is a major one!

If I may say so, I’m a fan of Kamen Rider. Starting with Ryuki, the Riders started using henshin devices, and you sometimes got a twist where someone other than the protagonist got their hands on the protagonist’s device and transformed into the protagonist Rider!

Of course, you don’t see it too much anymore. I was pretty shocked the first time I saw that, though, so I wanted to put some of the shock that I felt back then into this Account Hacking Arc. I guess I’m trying to say, in a system like that, it could really happen! Someone other than the protagonist could use the protagonist’s power, his form, his catchphrases for evil!

Think about it, everyone! Think of all the protagonists in all the online game stories around the world! What if their accounts were hacked by a villain? Wouldn’t that be exciting? Actually, I guess Summer Wars did that already!

My one regret about Paying to Win is that I couldn’t work in an intense segment in which the protagonist creates a temporary avatar and confronts the person who’s using his own avatar face-to-face. I bet that would have been really fun. I hope someone will do it. A story like Giant Killing, where a high-level avatar is taken over, and the protagonist thinks, “I’m the one who knows best what that avatar can do!” Please, go write it!

Okay, then. It’s time for the ROSTA. (That’s short for “running out of space, time for acknowledgments.”)

I’m sorry for causing everyone a lot of trouble this time around, too. To my editor, Mr. K: Let’s do even more together this year! Like eating dinner on your expense account!

And to Rein Kuwashima: Thank you for the lovely illustrations! The cover page this time was especially excellent! I love how evil Duplichiro looks!

To the sales people, the proofreaders, the printers, the agents, the booksellers: I can live another day thanks to you. Thank you very much.

And of course, a big thank you to all the readers.

By the way, Sera’s gender finally came to light this time, huh? This was the result of the survey I asked for back in volume one.

Incidentally, this is only for the published version. In the web version, Sera’s gender is the opposite.

I’m currently writing a stupid short story on Shosetsuka ni Naro where the fact that Sera’s gender is different on parallel worlds causes an error in the system. I only update it on April 1st every year, though...

I’ve also written quite a lot of other short stories, so please search for them.

I’m on Twitter, too. Search for me: @kiva_blitz.

Well, keep in touch, everyone!

See you!