Volume 2, Afterword

Volume 2, Afterword

To those who have read through the books one at a time: welcome back.

To those who read through all of the books at once: welcome.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This is SS2!! I wrote these stories as events that weren’t in the main story but are nice to know. I wonder how well I did. I think this one displayed the world of the series from all sorts of angles with the Magic side, the Science side, and even the normal side.

The overall theme was the passing of the days and months, and the key word was Gemstone.

Surprisingly, this volume takes place over almost an entire year.

The story of the Gemstones was completed here in SS2, but those who have read to the end must be wondering about some things; for example, “Is the Gemstone story really complete?” or “Why wasn’t that person collected with the others?” You’re right to ask those things because, while the Gemstone storyline was solely in SS2, there are other storylines that haven’t been declared yet. It may be fun to speculate about various things.

Oh, right. About the two people with the highest rank who appeared in this volume. Those two are basically the kind of characters who are against the rules in this kind of battle story. As for why, well... they have no real battle procedure. I suppose there is the forceful approach of going with a great frontal attack of power that exceeds the total amount of unexplainable power, though.

Speaking of unusual people, there were two ninja in this volume. This world does have that area and that kind of angle in it. The ninja here ended up having a confusing talk about the ways in which ninja are not the same as samurai and what to do about it. It might be fun to look further into their story, but that might be difficult because they are characters with a subtle rule about staying side characters. In a way, they’re further below the surface than the magicians.

Personally, I feel that the strongest character this time was Misaka Papa, but what did you think? He is from yet another section that is separate from the main Index series, and he changes the world via means other than battles. That said, it isn’t that he doesn’t fight; he just has a different way of fighting. He isn’t the kind of good person who denies fighting itself. He rashly interferes with the foundations of society, so he might be even more dangerous than the children who merely clench their fists and punch each other.

Also, one person who could oppose Misaka Papa is Kamijou Touya. Those dandies have their own way of fighting. Well, one of them is a corporate warrior who's never promoted and is even used by his own subordinates, and the other leaves the finances to his wife, so they’re rather difficult dandies.

...Come to think of it, if you follow SS Volume 1 to Volume 2, you will be astonished to see how little they are connected. I suppose you can just barely make a connection with the destruction of Skill-Out. It makes me want to make fun of myself for saying the two SS volumes are a “series”, but I felt it would be more interesting to do away with that kind of definition and restraint in order to make it a stage where anything could happen. As such, if a third volume ever comes out, I’m betting the connections between SS volumes will fade even more.

Many thanks to my illustrator Haimura-san and my editor, Miki-san. The setting kept changing, which made this difficult, not to mention how many chapters there were, so thank you for sticking with it.

I would also like to thank all the readers. Thank you for reading this SS that I started solely on the idea of destroying the theory that each volume ends after a short period of time.

And now you will be closing the page.

I pray that you will be able to open the cover of the next volume.

And I will lay down my pen for now.

A lot is happening that Kamijou-chan doesn’t know about, you know?

-Kamachi Kazuma