Long time no see, it"s the author Takehaya. This time Volume 21 has been safely delivered. As the Golden Princess and the Blue Knight is written on the cover, this volume is centered around Theia. But while she is the center, the story is not only about her. As all fates are gathering, everyone should have their chance to shine. As a result, this story should be the largest scale one yet. I will do my best to not betray your hopes.
As for the contents of this volume, it is a story about leaving Earth and heading for Forthorthe"s solar system. As the stage is set in s.p.a.ce, the type of story is different from usual. As Forthorthe is over 10 million light-years away from Earth, just getting there is an adventure.
The highlight this time is Theia. I wanted to make Theia stand out this volume. This time around, Theia covers all the bases from comedic elements, to combat to serious politics, and two new sets for her combat dress, Guardian Yellow and Star Purple make their appearance. I hope the story is satisfying for the Theia fans out there.
When talking about Theia, this time it was determined that she can get married to an Earthling in the true sense of the word. The genetic makeup between Earthlings and Forthorthians are close enough for that. Like Clan and Kiriha say in the volume, this is something normally impossible. That"s why that feeling of impossibility most people probably felt during the first volume when a ghost, a magical girl, an underground person and two aliens appeared was correct. Something like that wouldn"t happen without reason. But for some reason many readers didn"t really push on this matter too much. The preconception that a lot of strange girls suddenly appearing is a common element in light novels might have gotten in the way of any deep thoughts. Depending on the circ.u.mstances, the story might never have progressed this far, so that part really helped. That"s right, pursuing that topic would have been pretty dangerous for me (lol).
Another highlight would be the appearances Lord Bandarion and Director-General Granado, who look just like Maxfern and Grevanas. As Elexis looks just like Dextro, many might have expected this development. These men staged a coup d"état in an attempt to acquire Forthorthe. The situation is developing into that of 2,000 years ago. Will Koutarou be able to truly settle the score from 2,000 years ago on Forthorthe. I hope you will enjoy reading more about that.
That"s right, as the story is set on the travel to Forthorthe I need to clear up how hypers.p.a.ce travel over extremely long distances is done. s.p.a.ce is bent to create a shortcut through s.p.a.ce-time distortion, it"s a so called warp navigation being used. However, that brings about a large technical problem.
There is about 10 million light-years between Earth and Forthorthe. That is a 1 followed by seven 0"s. And one light-year is about 10 trillion kilometers. A trillion is a 1 followed by 13 0"s. Therefore, 10 million light-years is a 1 followed by 20 0ä"s. In other words, it would look like this.
10 million light-years = 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers
As this would make it obvious, even a slight miscalculation would give way to a ma.s.sive error of margin. If we add up any inaccuracies with the observation equipment and warp drive, and we get an error of 0,01%, that error of margin is about 1000 light-years. Even if one were to aim from Earth to a certain solar system, they could end up in a completely unrelated solar system.
As a result, it"s unreasonable to a.s.sume that one could arrive after a single warp. It"s more natural to a.s.sume that warps would be used repeatedly. If one were to pick up from the last warp, that would leave an error of margin of 0,1 light-years. That is about 1 trillion. The next warp would then have an error of margin of about 10,000 kilometers, and from there, normal navigation wouldn"t be a problem. In other words, with an inaccuracy of 0.01% at least three warps are required.
However, that number completely disregards any safety measures. As you won"t know where you end up when exiting warp, some kind of countermeasure will be required. You wouldn"t want to end up inside of a star, or get sucked up in a black hole or end up flying through a swarm of comets. In order to counteract that one would need to end up in areas that are considered safe. In other words, a s.p.a.ce wider than the error of margin would allow for safe travels. Fortunately, there are countless such areas in s.p.a.ce. But even then one would need to take things in a roundabout way and warps would require a lot more than three jumps.
On top of that, one needs to take into consideration how much time it will take between warps. I imagine warp drives would be delicate machinery so it would require cooling, maintenance, energy recharging and more, and I believe it would take quite some time. A car is ready to go again after being refueled, but I believe a s.p.a.ceship would only be able to warp once or twice a day. Well, I suspect they would be used without care in the case of an emergency though.
With that in mind, I decided that it would take about ten days for Theia"s Blue Knight to get from Earth to Forthorthe. With that as my basis, I decided that a normal s.p.a.ce battleship would take about 15 days and a civilian ship would take about 30.
As the details were decided as such, most of the distance when warping is covered in the first warp. And from that, the speed of s.p.a.ce travel in Forthorthe isn"t expressed as distance but time. More specifically, how many warps it takes to reach the destination. As the Blue Knight heads to Forthorthe, it takes ten warps, meaning it"s a ten day long journey. When I think about that, I"m reminded that travelling through s.p.a.ce must be very problematic.
As it seems I"m allowed to go on with the afterword for a while longer, I"ll do just that. It seems like because of a technical problem, the total numbers in a pocket book increase by 16 pages, and this volume"s ma.n.u.script seems to have ended immediately after an increase. That"s why the remaining pages have be filled up with an afterword and advertis.e.m.e.nt (lol).
Now let"s talk about the next volume a little. Koutarou and the others have arrived at the Forthorthe solar system, but Koutarou, Theia and Yurika have fallen to the surface of the sixth planet from the sun, Alaia, and the place they"ve fallen to is bad, as it"s a region where the coup d"état army has a lot of influence. So the three, hoping to group up with the others, they aim for the Pardomshiha territory that should have a lot of supporters.
That"s right, it"s something that seems familiar but slightly different. From that point, the development will continue like that. And that"s why the past Forthorthe arc ended so quickly. It"s because I"ll do it properly here. For the time being, look forward to the next volume featuring the adventure of the Blue Knight, the princess and the horse"s rear.
That"s right, I forgot to report on something important. In this volume, there"s a drama CD added as a bonus in the book version, but not in the digital version. However, this time BOOK☆WALKER have extracted the sound data from the data CD and added it as a bonus to the digital version. For the time being, this volume comes with the first half of volume 7.5"s drama CD. As the drama CD is only offered for a limited time, those interested should hurry.
It is limited because this a very experimental attempt. It seems this is the first time BOOK☆WALKER attaches a drama CD"s sound data to a digital version. In fact this might be a first for e-books as a whole. As a result, unable to read the demand, and for various adult reasons, they"ve reached the conclusion that enabling downloads from the start would be hard. So instead, they would enable it for about a month and check the response.
So it will be decided how they will distribute the following drama CD"s based on the results. As I"m writing this afterword in the end of November, I can"t actually tell you what will happen. Based on the situation, the limited distribution might not last for one month exactly. By the time this book is published, more detailed information should be found on HJ Bunko"s and BOOK☆WALKER"s websites.
But still, I am greatly helped by BOOK☆WALKER"s backup. With not just the drama CD this time around, but the last time they tried selling Empress Alaia goods for the first time through the digital version. This kind of thing might happen again, so those interested please keep a look out.
Alright, this should cover enough pages (lol) so this time I will end my afterword here.
As always, I would like to give my thanks to editorial department for their help, to my ill.u.s.trator Poco-san who manages to make ill.u.s.trations even with my various designations, and finally the readers who are always cheering for me.
Then let us meet again in the afterword for volume 22.
November, 2015Takehaya