To new readers and old readers alike, 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 highly suggest you go give it a try.
In this volume, the focus was on the elves’ forest and its World Tree. I hope you found it enjoyable. This part was originally cut from the web novel when the series began serialization, but I rearranged it and decided to have it be the main plot of this volume.
One of my biggest challenges in writing this volume was crafting the manner of speech for the elven queen, Elnea. With the speech pattern I had come up with at first, no matter what I did, she ended up sounding like a self-important loli character in my head, despite supposedly being a beautiful, mature woman. I experimented with various speech patterns from different manga characters but couldn’t find one that suited her. It was only when I saw the character design created by Tetubuta-sama that Elnea’s image finally clicked in my mind. I adjusted her manner of speaking to match this new vision, and she emerged as a cool and pleasant character, if I daresay so myself.
Moving forward, my plan for Elnea is to keep her around and have her and the Great Elder serve as mentors to our immortal protagonist and her friends.
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.