Afterword
THANK YOU FOR PICKING UP Volume 12 of Reborn as a Space Mercenary! We were only able to release a twelfth volume thanks to you, our readers. Thank you so much!
The northern area where I live is still quite cold at this time of the year. How have you all been doing? It’s been a wild year for me! Right at the start, I had to get my wisdom teeth out. Then, the moment I recovered, I finally caught that virus that’s been going around. Fortunately, I only experienced minor symptoms.
Since the last volume, I’ve tried out a lot of new games. For example, the console version of a certain famous tabletop RPG, and a game that lets you catch cute monsters and ride them or make them work for you. I also replayed a game that lets you explore the Milky Way while learning alien languages. Its contents had changed a lot, and there were a number of new features that really surprised me.
That’s enough about me. I want to touch lightly on this volume’s contents. The powerful psionic tanuki girl Konoha, who the previous volume introduced, made another appearance here. Her presence brought about slight changes to the events during their trip, and Hiro’s psionic abilities were unleashed to a far greater degree than in the web version of this story. Also, it had been a very long time since we last saw her, but that character made a return! What’s that you say? The cover spoiled her return? That’s true! But Dr. Shouko is back! Do you like older women who look good in glasses? I love them.
Before things get sidetracked in a weird direction, let’s move on to the world-building corner! I wanted to introduce portable weapons this time. The standard portable weapons in this story are directed-energy weapons like laser guns and laser rifles. They fire highly focused energy at a single point, vaporizing the target and blowing it up. The resulting wounds resemble primary blast injuries rather than burns. It’s like a small bomb detonated at the point of impact. Directed-energy weapons are powerful, destructive, and lethal.
In the story, however, those weapons are popular not because they’re destructive and lethal, but because using them in spaceships and colonies is relatively safe. In this story’s universe, the destructive properties of directed-energy weapons don’t encompass penetrative power. Compared to high-penetration projectile weapons, stray shots from directed-energy weapons are less likely to fatally damage a ship’s outer hull. Therefore, portable projectile weapons are very rare in the story’s universe at this point in time.
In addition, shields are extremely good at defending against projectile weapons, which is likely a major reason those weapons fell out of use. Shields were initially developed to protect spaceships from debris during FTL travel; that’s why, in the story, they can be considered practically impenetrable defenses when used against projectile weapons. Unless you modify a projectile’s tip in some way, you won’t be able to break through a shield, however many projectiles you riddle it with. Plus, the tips of ammunition for portable projectile weapons are very small, making them pretty expensive to modify. It’s much cheaper simply to shoot a shield ten times with a laser gun.
Time for me to take my leave once again.
Thanks to my manager, K; our illustrator, Tetsuhiro Nabeshima; and everyone involved in this book’s publication. Most of all, a huge thank-you to everyone who bought and read this book.
Next stop, Volume 13! Come on out, already!
RYUTO