Takehaya here. Long time no see! This has been the forty-seventh volume of Invaders of the Rokujouma!? With the side stories, that’s forty-nine volumes, so we’re really close to fifty, although some may already have fifty books on the bookshelf. Like those who got the Four Seasons bonus that came with the anime’s DVD and Blu-ray. If someone does have a full fifty volumes, please take a picture and upload it to social media. I’ll look it up later (haha).
But that’s enough of the circumstances around the volume. I’d like to move on to the contents now. The Blue Knight battleship makes its reappearance, although, aside from the AI, it’s pretty much an entirely new ship. Moreover, its size is more than twice that of the original.
In my world, Forthorthe’s normal battleships have the best balance of technology and cost. They also need the ability to enter and exit the atmosphere, so they can’t be too big. If they are too large, mobility will suffer and the cost of construction will increase. Then why not go smaller, you might ask? Because then they would lack firepower or defense. As such, the Imperial Army makes battleships as big as possible while making sure that they are mobile and capable of atmospheric entry. In other words, the standard for battleships is that they’re the strongest and biggest within reason.
But if normal battleships are the strongest, what about Royalty-class battleships that are even stronger? Royalty-class ships are without a doubt vastly superior to normal battleships when it comes to capabilities. The reason is that cost is ignored, and they use a ton of custom parts. Normal battleships are made with mass production in mind, so they don’t use parts or weapons that cost too much. In contrast, Royalty-class battleships are made for specific royalty, and there’s no reason for parts to be interchangeable. Moreover, they tend to have more varied designs when compared to normal ships. For example, normal battleships have supply ports for fuel and propellant in a similar location. That makes it more convenient to supply at ports. It’s kind of like how the gas tank opening is typically in the same place for cars. But that doesn’t apply to the Royalty-class ships. The old Blue Knight had the fuel supply port in the torso, with propellant going into its legs, making it very inconvenient. However, the freer design allows Royalty-class ships to be made stronger.
Incidentally, the Blue Knight loses much of that strength in exchange for being humanoid in shape. All these circumstances create a gap that makes the Royalty-class battleships much stronger than normal ones. In short, if you want a strong team, you get a lot of normal battleships, while if you want the strongest individual unit, you get a Royalty-class space battleship.
That finally brings us to the new Blue Knight. If the Royalty-class is made without much consideration for cost or convenience, then the Chivalry-class completely ignores that and also has quite a strained construction. For example, it is extremely dangerous for it to enter the atmosphere as is. The moving limbs cause gaps in the armor, creating a weakness that doesn’t exist on normal space battleships. Because of that, the limbs need to be detached in order to enter the atmosphere. Once separated, the limbs can point their armored parts toward the atmosphere and safely descend.
The engineers took pains to make the new Blue Knight work. Thanks to that, not only is the ship bigger, but its performance is also better than the previous one.
To summarize it, the new Blue Knight ignores cost and convenience, while also pushing the limits of a battleship, creating a ship that includes many special designs but also has many weaknesses. Why would you make it bigger and humanoid shaped (haha)? That said, its primary mission will be to serve as a flagship, so being difficult to operate on its own won’t be a weakness. It has more than enough firepower and defensive power to satisfy the role of leading a fleet of ships, which is what the people wanted.
The special design is only allowed because of how special Koutarou is to Forthorthe. It would never have been allowed for anyone else. By granting Koutarou this power, they knew he would use it for good. The citizens are convinced of that. They are also concerned with his safety, which is why they would allow such a forced ship. You could call it the result of Koutarou walking the path of a hero. Perhaps that is why Elfaria is so insistent on getting Koutarou to take up permanent residence in Forthorthe (haha).
Moreover, Kenji finally realizes the Gray Knight’s identity. Considering the situation, it would have been impossible for anyone else to notice. With that, the Gray Knight’s story will begin to move, so please pay attention to him in the coming volume.
But that’s about all the space I have for an afterword. Most of it was about the new Blue Knight, so I’ll have to save the rest for when I have more room.
I would like to thank everyone at HJ Bunko’s editorial department for their help in publishing this book, Poco-san for making the new Blue Knight look so cool, and most of all, to you, the readers, for following this series for so long.
Let us meet again in the afterword for volume 48 (the fiftieth in the series!)
October, 2024
Takehaya