Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!? Volume 7.5 afterword

Long time no see everyone, it's the author Takehaya. This time I have much more s.p.a.ce for the afterword than last time.

Only three months have pa.s.sed since the last volume, and I'm sure you can understand the reason why. That's right, the invaders don't appear in this volume. Because this is more of a side-story I and the publis.h.i.+ng department wanted to publish this volume as soon as possible.

This volume covers what Koutarou and Clan were doing when they disappeared in the previous volume. However I couldn't fit all of that into a single volume, so this side-story will get a sequel. What follows will be revealed in volume 8.5.

With some more room in this afterword, I wanted to cover some hards.h.i.+ps I had while writing this volume.

The first problem was the timing. I can only write about this now, but I was wondering when I should release the contents of this volume since the very first volume. If a story without most of the established characters is released before you can get used to the story and characters, there would be a lot of confusion. That said, there was no guarantee that this series would continue for long. In the end I decided to release this at a timing that felt more natural. Fortunately, thanks to the support of all you readers, this risky volume was able to be safely published. So while relieved, I am also grateful for all the support. I will continue working hard so please continue to support me in the future.

The second problem was how to treat the timeslip to the past. Is there only one true history, or does it branch off like a tournament board? If it branched off, what were the conditions for that? It was necessary to define that for the convenience of the story.

There was actually something that I had been wondering about for a while. That was that once you time slipped into the past, would you actually be able to come back to the same time and place?

The reason for that is that if a person was sent back in time in a timeslip, the moment that person appeared in the past the ma.s.s of the planet would increase by a single person. And the change in gravity from that would slightly alter the universe. So having slightly changed the history of the universe, returning from that, one would return to a slightly different world. Of course, that change might be so minute that the time traveler wouldn't notice it. Though minute, a change is a change, while everything might look the same all your friends and family would actually be different people. And if parallel universes existed it would become even more complicated, as the time traveler would still be absent from the world they came from. Because of that, story composition is quite problematic.

That's why I thought about it for a long time and decided that while parallel universes existed, they could also rejoin. So if there was a minor change, history would return to normal right away. As a result, history wouldn't look like a tournament board, but like knitting. In that structure, if a time traveler changed history, they could return to their own world if they tried hard enough. They would be able to meet their friends and family again.

I reached this conclusion just before my head was about to explode. Thanks to that, I was able to sort this story out, but I believe I'll come across similar philosophical problems in future works. I'm both scared and looking forward to it; creating a story is quite hard.

I've run out of room, I felt like I had more s.p.a.ce, but it ran out right away. It's time to bid farewell this time.

I'd like to thank everyone helping me at the editorial department, Poco-san, my ill.u.s.trator, my friends that give me advice and all the readers who bought this book.

I pray for all the people affected by the recent earthquake and tsunami.

March, 2011

Takehaya