Volume 3, Afterword

Volume 3, Afterword

That concludes Volume 3.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

The overall theme this time was necromancy. This is a difficult and risky genre to work with because messing with and resurrecting souls reduces the value of a life and can remove all the tension from a battle series. You should be able to see what I mean if you noticed Volume 2 would be ruined by reading Volume 3 first.

Souls have been mentioned here and there since Volume 1, so I dug deeper into that subject here.

I think my biggest success here was tearing down the assumption that the enemy could never wield the power of an Iberian Orc because Boo Boo was the sole survivor.

...If I was going to write an RPG-style fantasy, I felt I had to touch on the distortions created by the unique rescue methods of easily bringing people back from the dead with recovery potions or paying money at an institution. Then again, there are some hardcore games where once someone dies, they’re dead for good.

Unlike Boo Boo who goes for physical blows, I aimed for a stranger sort of romance with Disaster by having him cut things with a weapon that normally shouldn’t be able to cut. It’s from that genre of cutting open a beer bottle with a karate chop or splitting a stone with a newspaper. To differentiate him from Boo Boo, I had him slice like a helicopter rotor using a blunt weapon or fell trees with a water jet blade.

Armelina also played a larger role this volume. She has the extremely delicious position of a powerful and straightforward priest woman, but she’s also a somewhat unfortunate sub-heroine who can be overshadowed by even more powerful and straightforward Boo Boo. I wrote her as someone who refused to let him outdo her because there have to be things she can do that he can’t. I put a lot of that in this volume.

Armelina’s most unique aspect out of the three girls is the fact that she can go on a rampage in the real world just as well as in Ground’s Nir. I pictured that final raid scene in Chapter 2 just like the attack on the corrupt governor’s mansion in a jidaigeki. You might wonder why she wouldn’t have a sword if it was a jidaigeki, but since she’s a cop, I thought she would be the type to use a jutte instead.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Mahaya-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. With the necromancy stuff like Skull Wave and Disaster, I wanted them to make an impact while also showing some restraint on the grotesqueness (Um, maybe you could call it a casual version of the undead?), so I doubt this was an easy one. Thank you for sticking with me yet again.

And I give my thanks to the readers. What did you think of this Armelina!? How about that Armelina!!? She’s like a big sister we can all rely on in our time of need. I hope you could all accept her.

And I will end this here.

I think my favorite was the Ice Waterfall Princess relaxing in a liquid nitrogen bath.

-Kamachi Kazuma