I-Inflaaaatiiooonnnn?! Well, anyway, this is the last afterword, coming to you from the site of Inflation’s sudden death.
Thank you very much for purchasing volume 9 of A Wild Last Boss Appeared! I am the author, Firehead. With this volume, the story has finally ended. The fact that this ridiculous and freewheeling series has safely made it to its final volume is all thanks to you readers. Seriously, thank you all so much.
It feels to me as though 2016, when the first volume was published, was just a little while ago. It feels like we’ve reached this point in the blink of an eye.
The journey, which began with just Lufas and Dina at first, ended with a huge ensemble cast, and now, we’ve finally passed the goal. From now on, Lufas will also take a rest from journeying and take it easy on the moon.
In the end, the Conquering Thirteen Heavenly Stars became the Imperial Thirteen Heavenly Stars and blew up all the way to fifteen members. With that many characters, there’ll naturally be those who got the spotlight more than others, as well as those that I personally like more. I suppose my favorites would be the characters who’ve been propping up the story from the beginning: Dina, Aries, and Libra. Aigokeros and Karkinos didn’t end up very cool, but I did end up liking them in the end as well.
Outside of the Thirteen Stars, I’m a huge fan of Benetnasch. I also liked both the tiger Sword Saint and Sei quite a bit, though they ended up staying weak until the end. At first, Sei was just a victim-role character that I made because I figured there needed to be someone in the opposing hero role since the protagonist was the final boss. He ended up moving in a nice direction, though, and provided a different avenue of strength from Lufas. In my opinion, he was the one who displayed the most decent kind of strength by ignoring the Goddess’s Scenario throughout the story and moving on his own to look for the right answer. Thanks to that, he finally managed to get to home base with Virgo. Go explode forever after.
As for the true final boss, Alovenus—the story’s biggest problem child, who rampaged about and made a disaster of things during the last volume—she’ll most likely get mixed reviews. In fact, I think those who hate her will number in the majority. The concept of her character was “a selfish idiot who can do anything.” She was born out of my wondering what would happen if you gave a child who liked make-believe superpower fights invincibility and the power to fulfill any wish. Alovenus fulfilled her role as the strongest character in the series with no problems even after having been created like that, but at the same time, she became the series’s weakest fool as well.
Just as Lufas said during the book proper, Alovenus is so weak she couldn’t bring herself to fight on the same level as her opponent. When thought of like that, she certainly is a cowardly small-fry slug who can’t even fight under equal conditions. It’s like if one of the fighters in a boxing match won by shooting their opponent with a machine gun from a safe distance outside of the ring. There’s no way you would consider them strong. They’d just be a deplorable, pitiful coward.
Alovenus is a fool who didn’t even understand that. She had neither a hint of charisma nor the dignity of a final boss, but Afoolvenus definitely had the strength of one, so she managed to continuously cause problems for everyone in the story. Her mistakes would not stop until she was rejected by Sei and defeated by Lufas.
By the way, I’m willing to bet that everyone is wondering whether Alovenus could have been beaten by methods other than those Lufas had taken during the story, and since this is the final volume anyway, I’ll answer this straight-up. Yes, it’s possible. I’m sure everyone has a cool character they like and want to remain the strongest no matter what the setting, but what Alovenus likes is a protagonist who can walk on their own two feet and cut open a path for themselves. If you were to have Alovenus fight such an attractive protagonist, the childish side of her would wish that the protagonist would never lose, even if she was the opponent. This would infinitely power up said protagonist and make whoever it was stronger than her by default. She’s truly worthy of the name Afoolvenus.
In short, the easiest method to victory is to make her think, “I’d want to lose to this person.” Lufas didn’t fulfill those conditions, so she brute-forced her way through. On that front, she was a meathead, muscle-brained protagonist all the way to the end.
Now then, this is truly regrettable, as I actually would like to keep going, but I’m running out of character count here, so it’s about time to wrap things up.
To my editor S, who has supported me and this series up until now, YahaKo, who has drawn all the wonderful art for these books, the rest of the editing team, and all of you who have read this far: I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you all so much for everything up until now.
And with this, the light novel version is at an end. The comic version will continue though, so I will pray for the artist, Hadzuki Tsubasa, wishing them even greater success.
Well then, everyone, let us meet again someday, somewhere.
-Firehead