Volume 2, Afterword
To the readers who read the first volume, it's been a while.
To the brave souls who read from the second volume, nice to meet you.
I'm Kazuma Kamachi.
It's now time for the afterword. According to some readers, the first thing they read is the afterword. In other words, the afterword is the second synopsis. Anyway, please read the afterword, and if you like it, you may bring it to the counter to buy it.
However, please let me warn the readers who like to read the afterword first: the following content does include some plot spoilers, so, to the readers who haven't read the main content, it is best that you don’t read this first.
The following content of the afterword is written to those readers who read the afterword at the end and the brave souls who don't care about whether they know the content beforehand.
The main theme of this volume is “BAD END”.
To be blunt, Aureolus Izzard is a failed version of Kamijou Touma. When I was writing, I thought that if Kamijou Touma failed in the first volume, he would have become such a person. The reason I created Himegami was also to create a tragic girl who could never be the heroine.
As the story went on, the murderous atmosphere became extremely intense. However, what's different is that in the first volume, even if they were enemies, at least they would listen to the main character before fighting. However, in this volume, even the second heroine didn’t like to listen too much, let alone the Big Bad.
As for magic, the story revolves around the key term Ars Magna.
Even though in the story, I made it to be the real essence of an alchemist, it was actually made up by me. In fact, it was said that the Bosnian sect of Alchemy (who created the concept of turning lead into gold) appeared in the late Roman period, but Ars Magna was created in the 17th century, so the time difference between them was quite large. The 17th century was the time when alchemy was widespread, and was also the time when fake magicians used it to fool nobility out of their money. In other words, Ars Magna was like a new religion that rode the wave of alchemy.
In fact, the goal of Ars Magna wasn't to create gold or make an immortal elixir. The concept was "Humans are incomplete gods.” In other words, through training and becoming complete, humans could become gods. It really fit the mold of a new religion. From the term God that's used now, one can find that such alchemy was mixed into Christian culture.
In the story itself, the spell Aureolus used to turn his imagination into reality was closer to the Zurich alchemist sect. This sect mixed in some psychiatric views of Jung, and the goal was to “do alchemy in the mind”, which really sounded ambiguous.
Also, there's another alchemist sect called Vienna, but this sect included some sexual magic rituals that were quite erotic and shouldn't be included in Dengeki Bunko (laughs).
One reason why alchemist sects were so abundant was said to be because “the nature of alchemy” itself was a mystery. But in fact, perhaps the commonly accepted reason was that alchemists lied to the rich saying they could turn lead into gold, but failed and had to offer all sorts of excuses to appease their anger.
After writing so much, in the end, what did I want to say?
What I wanted to say was that after researching so much into alchemy, I really used very little information.
In order to increase Index's role, I even wanted to add a “kitchen alchemy trick plot”. But, I guess I decided against including such a minor subplot.
Finally, I want to thank the related personnel in this story.
Miki-san, who's in charge of editing, is someone really intimidating who forced me to write a story within 17 days. He still followed me through until the end of this story that has loopholes all over it, and I'm really grateful for him.
As for Haimura-san, the illustrator, actually, I’ve never met him. A comrade I’ve never met, though that sounds cool, I really want to meet him and thank him. Anyway, let me rehearse it on paper. Thank you, Haimura-san.
And to the readers who bought this book, thank you for your support. I hope that we can meet next time. At this point, let me put my pen down.
Misaka Mikoto didn't even have a chance to appear in this volume (tears).
~Kazuma Kamachi
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