Good day, good evening, good morning. I’m the author, Hinagi Asami. Thank you very much for picking up a copy of The Otherworlder, Exploring the Dungeon, Vol. 2. This second volume is where we start getting into the meat of the story. Even back when I serialized this online, I constantly urged people to “at least read through to the end of the second chronicle.”
As part of reediting the whole series, I had the chance to add new, never-before-seen sections. I had neither the ability as an author nor the time to properly include them when I first ran the story online, and I practically bawled as I cut them from the original text. However, I never stopped looking for the perfect timing to slip them in. Now I feel so incredibly happy to have finally found that moment in the midst of publishing the story in novel form.
Nowadays, an author has an overwhelming number of avenues through which to write and share their novels with the world. The fact that among all those possibilities, my work won an award and from there smoothly moved into publication seems to me simply an incredible stroke of good fortune.
If we consider the period before your first work gets published as the bottom rung for a writer, then I’d say I languished there longer than most. I couldn’t tell you how many awards I applied for and lost, but I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten rejection letters from essentially every light novel or mystery literary competition in Japan. Some friends left my life saying, “Wake up and smell the roses. This isn’t going to happen.”
But as I mentioned in the afterword to the first volume, I don’t like to give up easily, so I refused to throw in the towel. Actually, that’s a lie. Every time my work got rejected, I’d fall into a fatalistic depression, print out the story, burn it, roast sweet potatoes over that flame, and eat the tubers, tears streaming down my face. They added a nice touch of salt.
Over and over again I thought, I’m never writing again. There’s no point. And yet, as I engaged with movies or novels or anime or video games or music or plays or comedy (the full list is too long to include here, so I’ll leave that for another time), I’d kind of find myself picking up the pen once more. I can’t really explain it, but maybe that’s just what creative writing is like.
With this in my background, I know painfully well how unforgiving the world and reality can be. That’s why I believe and try to ensure there must always be an equal price to pay for the “miracles” that occur in this novel. And yet, would you not agree that adding a realistic dash of “hard truth” to a fictional fantasy makes it all the more delicious? Most of the currently popular series string one lucky miracle after another, but people soon lose interest in stories where everything always turns out okay.
With that in mind, after the precipitous rise in good fortune I’ve had this past half year, I am absolutely terrified to see what awaits me in the next six months and the year after that. I’ve taken to carefully walking step-by-step up and down stairs, and I also try to give construction sites a wide berth. I pay close attention to any trucks driving by and am particularly careful to watch my back on the way home from the convenience store.
One last thing (with the hope that this is not actually the last such note I’ll write)—I would like to express my deep gratitude to my new and previous editors and proofreaders, to Kureta-san for drawing the supremely wonderful illustrations found here, to the Dragon Novels editing department, to all the readers who purchased a copy of this book, and to everyone who has collaborated with me on this work.
What with this and that, this series has wound up straddling the border between the Heisei and Reiwa eras. If I’m lucky enough to have a third volume, I look forward to seeing you again there!