And with that, yet another Volume’s done and dusted! Thank you for reading this far, it really makes me happy. Now, you all know the drill. My afterwords are always divided into three distinct parts – the first being my personal thoughts on this chapter, then after that some trivia about how much the end product differs from the first draft, and finally the third and last part, which is what you can expect out of Volume 10!

Now to start, I’d honestly say that this is my best written Volume to date. Now I know I say this a lot, but I really think it’s the truth. The previous Volumes mostly focus on traveling and/or “events” to occur, leading to poor characterization, but I don’t quite feel that with this one. Since all of the events and characters are stuck in a single place, it helps with forcing me into writing in a way that emphasizes the characters’ growth and relationships over time instead of just “We went to place A, did this, then to place B, did that...”

I’m not quite sure if you understand what I’m trying to say, but I hope that even one person reading this can tell the difference between this and my previous Volumes. I’ll try and implement more and more “chitchat” chapters, as I call them, as by talking about the situation, I can clue the reader in on the happenings in a more natural way, I think.

Oh, speaking of differences, there’s been a ton of them from when I first thought up this Volume. In fact, this entire Volume was never meant to be a prison story at the start. In the end product, I seldom focused on the inmates being treated as slaves, as in working on digging out the Great Canal and such. I found it boring to just talk about them digging a huge flat canal, so I instead made it a prison break story. I think I made the right call, since there’s not much meaningful conversation they could hold while digging, although you can see a bit of that in the “Ball & chaiN” chapter.

Another thing I changed was the addition of Issei and Othelia into the story. I only wanted Lee to be here, but I later thought “Hey, Issei and Othelia should be in Abyssus Solis around this time, so why not have them join the party?” It was a spur of the moment decision that only showcased how much pairing up two seemingly unrelated characters (those being Lee and Issei) could make for so many fun interactions.

Silvia was also unplanned at the start, but seeing as she was important for Meil’s plotline ever since Volume 6, I figured she just had to chase after him all the way over here. I also made her a bit more likeable and approachable than before, since I rather like the ojou-sama type characters in mangas and light novels. Seeing that shell of pride slowly break away as they show just how frail and insecure they are is the perfect example of “moe gap”!

Finally, you can expect a lot of things in Volume 10. It’s a singularity point in some ways, given that most if not all of the main characters will come together to fight a common foe. I can’t spoil too much, but this is easily THE most important part of the story. That being said, I’m not sure how to deal with it, or rather – who should I have narrate this one? Originally, I wanted it to be Meil, so as to continue from his POV, but then I thought about how the later plot points would be best done if Lune narrated, but then I thought about how we haven’t heard from Ed in a long time. It’s all just a mess, trying to plan all this out, but I actually think I might try my hand at a hybrid style of narration. What I mean by this, you’ll just have to find out when you read the actual Volume, but until then, thank you so much for reading! Please message me about anything that you might have queries about, I’ll be waiting!

Until then, this is Akai Mikan signing out!