Chapter 19

AFTERWORD Hello, it’s nice to meet you. Or if you’ve read one of my works before, then hello again. I’m Rifujin na Magonote. I’d like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to you all for picking up this copy of Orc Eroica. Thank you all very much. I’d like to be able to write something cool like, “I dedicate this book to…,” but I unfortunately don’t have many friends, and I’m all about that bachelor life, so I don’t have anyone to dedicate this book to. Maybe someday… Incidentally, this is my first time writing an afterword, and I didn’t even know what to write at first. So I decided to ask Twitter. I was told I should write about what inspired me to tell this story, about the circumstances that led to it. So I’ll do just that. When it comes to the inspiration behind this book, I can’t explain that without telling you about how I first met Editor U. I actually can’t remember very well how we first met. I might have to make up a few details to fill the gaps, so please bear with me. It was the year 199X. The earth was enveloped in the fires of a nuclear holocaust. A guy with a Mohican haircut was riding his motorbike around and around my neighborhood. Yes, that part is all true. Always the shut-in, I was barricaded in my house as usual, opening up my author page on the Let’s Become a Novelist website. I was hoping I could finish reading all the comments on Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation before the Mohican managed to break his way in. Just then, a message popped up in red text. It said that I should respond if I was interested in working together with the sender. At the time, I had finished Mushoku Tensei and hadn’t even thought about starting on my next project yet. I didn’t really want to work with them, nor was I particularly interested, but I sent a response anyway. Then guess what they said? They said I should come to Nagoya at once, and they’d take me to dinner on the Editorial Department’s dime. I jumped at the chance. I had been barricaded inside for three days already, and supplies were running low. I made arrangements to meet Editor U, the sender of the messages, and ran out of the house. That’s when I realized I’d been tricked. The Mohican was lying in wait for me outside, holding a bat with a nail in it… So, that’s how I first met Editor U. After that, we infiltrated Southern Cross together, climbed the Cross Mausoleum together, attacked the village to get to the well together, blew up the village, yelling “Uwaraba!” together, and read the erotic light novel Dotei Orc no Boken Tan (The Virgin Orc’s Adventure Story) together. Somehow, this turned into me starting to write Orc Eroica, but I’ll save the details for another time… Well, now that I’ve hit my minimum word count, I’ll get serious. I have a feeling people are only going to get mad at me if I carry on this way. This title, Orc Eroica, is the story of an Orc Hero who sets out to get rid of his virginity and finds himself saving all kinds of different people, and saving whole countries and that sort of thing, in the meantime. Maybe he doesn’t go through a great deal of character growth in the story, but I hope readers can have a few chuckles along the way and feel a little inspired by his journey. That’s the kind of story I was aiming for. Everyone, I really hope you’ll come along with me on this journey. Thank you very much for being here. Okay, let’s try this again. To all in the Editorial Department, to Asanagi for the wonderful and suggestive artwork, to Editor K for putting up with me being distracted by Mushoku Tensei stuff and making their job a lot harder, to everyone else who was involved in the publishing of this book… And, of course, to everyone who enjoyed reading this book and who sent me encouragement along the way, thank you very much. Rifujin na Magonote