Volume Afterword

Long time no see, everyone. It’s Bamboo here.

I really didn’t expect the Lamter volume to drag on for this long. Like I said at the start, this was originally planned as a very, very short transition arc. I never thought it would end up becoming the longest one I’ve written so far, with a full 106 chapters—almost twice as long as Dawn of the Demon Dragons.

But in my very first outline, this whole volume actually didn’t exist.

This book never had a true “first draft” outline. Or rather, the so‑called first outline only came into being after I finished Dawn of the Demon Dragons and started getting ready for Gentle Is the Night. Back then, I’d only planned four volumes in total. The whole story was supposed to wrap up at around 500k characters. And the result… ahahaha.

Like I mentioned in the Gentle Is the Night afterword, Verdant Path was meant to be a more slice‑of‑life style volume, something for me to relax with and to flesh out the relationship routes. But I didn’t expect my weakness at planning long stories to get exposed so completely in this volume. For a long stretch in the middle, even I honestly didn’t know what I wanted to write. It was probably only a little better than around chapter 70 of Gentle Is the Night, when I truly had zero ideas for this book. If people in the group hadn’t been checking in every day, I really might’ve considered dropping it.

But there are still readers waiting to see where this story goes. The tale of Lilith and Nidhogg definitely shouldn’t end here. I still have so, so many stories that haven’t been told yet. The Little White Dragon’s journey absolutely won’t end in Lamter.

In the new volume, we’ll get back on the main storyline. Little White Dragon will head to the second stop on her search for the Grim Reaper, the Nameless One’s fragments: the ancient tomb‑fortress of the Undead.

What kind of scenery will she see there? What kind of people will she meet?

After an entire volume of laid‑back life in Lamter, Little White Dragon will be thrown into a much more dangerous new region. At that point, will she be able to handle the high‑pressure environment?

What kind of enemies will she run into in this new land, and how will she grow?

Unlike her time in Morris, how will Lilith perform in a new city now that she has Nidhogg’s help?

How will her relationship with the Black Dragon develop? Where will those two little ones go from here?

All of these are questions I’ve left for the next volume to answer.

Let’s meet again in the next volume—living deads rising. Don’t miss it!