Heavy Object-Volume 17, Afterword

It has been a while, hasn’t it? This is Kamachi Kazuma.

The story this time crosses into a new year!! If you have read the book, you know exactly how far the story strays from a traditional White Christmas. But I think it is more exciting for Santa to be a sexy young woman in a miniskirt than some old man! Santa should be showing some midriff even in the winter!!

As usual, the Object was a bizarre one. I was curious a while back how bulletproof glass worked and looked into it, but the concept is surprisingly simple. However, it does have some downsides, like the windows not breaking and trapping you inside if your bulletproof car falls into the ocean. Similarly, installing bulletproof windows and doors in your house is not exactly safe. You don’t have to worry about them being destroyed from the outside, but you lose the peace of mind that comes from being able to destroy them from the inside to escape. I thought that could apply to Objects which always take things way too far into one field in particular. I introduced a paper Object before, but am I the only one who thinks of glass as even more fragile and fleeting? …If I had gone with a Cinderella motif, it could have become a heroine Object. This enemy did not really leave room for sympathy, but I do think I gave the 21st their own kind of justice. You never know, the Elite inside might have been a super-skilled cute girl hugging a large stuffed animal while she fought.

Researching lightning induction was fun. Controlling weather conditions – especially one as exciting as lightning – sounds like an incredible thing, so it’s kind of amazing they can’t find any immediately practical use for it like they can with AI and rare earths. From a safety perspective, existing lightning rods are good enough. It makes that research perfect for use in fiction.

Also, I decided to have Quenser and Heivia using vehicles and cannons more than just walking around the battlefield on foot. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get the chance to use a bridge layer, though. Anyway, this was a test to see if letting them move freely around the battlefield and use everything available to them would add to the usual sense of exhilaration, but what did you think? From a purely aesthetic perspective, my favorite is the maneuver combat vehicle with eight wheels and a gun turret attached, but I also can’t say no to how weird those support vehicles with the digging arms and drills are.

I made sure to have a large before-and-after difference with the new character Elise. M and S are two sides of the same coin. Surviving all that cruel treatment unharmed means she has to be very skilled indeed. And on that note, could you say the same about Major Frolaytia? I actually had two ideas for the ending. The other one had a smiling Elise-sensei punishing Frolaytia by soaking her in a metal drum ice bath. But of course I went with the naked apron!! Because I felt like it would be more fun for karma to be fundamentally broken in the Heavy Object world. Anyway, since Frolaytia felt the need to go to all that effort this time shows she knew just how much trouble she would have been in without that. It might be cute to imagine her sweating and panicking in front of the closet before Quenser and the others arrived.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagi Ryou-san and my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Mitera-san. This one might have been more difficult than usual with all the various tricks involved. I know I was a lot of trouble yet again, so thank you very much.

I also give my thanks to the readers. What did you think of this story that used pure white settings for each chapter? I am praying that you enjoyed this crazy world where normal good and evil do not apply and enjoyed seeing those two idiots tear apart that world’s rules.

And I will leave it at that.

A-all of a sudden, Myonri has turned into a veteran warrior…

-Kamachi Kazuma