To new and old readers, hello. This is Aloha Zachou.
I’d like to give my biggest thanks to everyone who picked this book up, my editor I-san, Tetubuta-sama for the lovely illustrations he drew for the series, and everyone online who looked at my work before it was published as a book.
A manga adaptation of this series by Shin Haruhara-sama is currently streaming on Gangan ONLINE; Chise and Teto’s interactions are absolutely adorable, so I strongly recommend you go give it a try.
Did you enjoy this volume? I decided to focus the story mostly on the issues of the demons who have recently moved into the Witch of Creation’s Forest, and how Chise helped them overcome their problems. I also had a lot of fun coming up with roles for each of these new races.
Personally, I really like the insect demons and the plant demons—although they didn’t play that big of a part in this volume. Why do I like them, you ask? I just really like that they built their settlement in the trees. I took inspiration from the first chapter of the manga adaptation of this series and came up with the idea of having them live inside trees and using branches as bridges to travel from one tree to the other. I thought that it screamed “fantasy world,” and I really wanted to use it at some point in the series; this seemed like a great opportunity. I’ll do my best to come up with more fantastical landscapes for Chise and Teto to explore in the following volumes. At the same time, I also hope that the forest becomes a warm place you’ll all want to come back to at some point.
Please keep treating me—Aloha Zachou—well from now on too.
Lastly, I’d like to thank every reader who picked this book up once more.