Heavy Object

Volume 18, Afterword

Volume 18, Afterword

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This one is about a battle over the Mother Lady space elevator that takes place on land and in space. Make sure to note that the enemy boss’s last name is Honeysuckle. She is the younger sister of that guy who waved around a thick mass driver in Vol. 2: Adoption War.

The latest technology might seem like a star player in entertainment, but it is actually something to be avoided at all costs. For example, having a character brag about the exact specs of their phone or computer requires an absurd amount of courage. (Yes, like talking about how many hertz their CPU has or how many bytes their hard disk has. I nearly carelessly said terabytes instead, but stopped myself at the last second. That was a close one.) As you can see by checking any electronics store’s website, the relationship between a hard disk’s specs and its price can change in no time at all. And then you go to space where everything is cutting-edge tech! No matter how much material I gather on the subject, I can never know how long the things I present as “cutting-edge” will still be perceived that way. I had been interested in doing this for a while, but it took a lot of courage to actually take this step.

This time, I included the World’s End as a space Object.

Path to the Third Generation included an Object that separated out its main cannon and fired that down from satellite orbit, but this one brought the actual Object and its Elite into space and was built as an “outward-facing weapon” meant to fight against space itself instead of the previous “inward-facing weapon” meant to fire down at the earth.

With an enemy at that scale, the protagonists have to shift up to that scale as well, so Quenser’s group used a few different largescale attacks this time. What they did with the elevator wire honestly seems to be asking whether building something like that is really a good idea. I got to have some fun I could only do with this special setting, so I’m satisfied.

This series was constructed so you could read any volume you wanted after Vol. 1, but I’m still happy I’ve managed to build up so much worldbuilding. For example, 7th Core, the seven giant corporations that control the Capitalist Corporations, was mentioned in The Outer Gods. Compare what is found in that volume with Wendigo Vehicles found in this one and you might be able to get a deeper look at those monstrous companies.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagi Ryou-san and my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. It’s outer space!! It’s far removed from our everyday lives, but still close enough that you can’t include as much original equipment as in a fantasy story. I imagine it was difficult gathering what little material there is for that. And it probably goes without saying, but if you just go with a real spacesuit, it won’t look cool or cute. To be honest, that must be an annoyingly round peg to fit into the square hole of entertainment. Anyway, thank you so much yet again!!

I also give my thanks to the readers. Quenser and Heivia’s battles have come so far! On that lonely battlefield void of oxygen, they can’t even hear their partner’s voice from right next to them and they can scream as loud as they want. I hope you enjoyed those two idiots. Thank you so much for reading this far!!

And I will leave it at that.

In the Heavy world, nothing is more dangerous than someone with a dream.

-Kamachi Kazuma