Well then, hello everyone. This is Targar. Thank you all so much for liking Silver Dragon Princess, and thank you for the long‑time support that let this book actually make it into VIP. I’m bowing to you all right here.
To be honest, I barely read light novels anymore. At most I read some classic Western fantasy. But I really love clicking on the afterwords of those popular titles on the rankings, and sometimes I even feel the afterword is more fun than the novel itself (lol).
Still, I’ve always been pretty resistant to writing afterwords myself. Mainly because I feel people read novels to run away from reality for a bit, and then the author turns around and drags real‑life stuff into the afterword—that feels completely backwards to me.
But since this book has come this far, and I do have some things I want to say, I decided I’ll write this first afterword—and it’ll also be the last one.
To start from the beginning, this book began as a bet between me and my little sister.
After she read my previous book, she told me it was bad. She was a first‑year in high school, writing BL fanfics, so I didn’t really care about her opinion. But I did pour my heart into that previous book, and that Empire also entered a writing contest and got cut right in the first round. With all that piled together, I made a bet with my sister.
If I used the exact same worldbuilding from Empire, and wrote a new novel that hit 100,000 characters and got over 1,000 favorites by then, she’d wear a maid outfit and let me see.
And as for how many favorites it actually had when it reached 100,000… you all probably know already.
As you might expect, my dear little sister totally went back on her word. So I just made her buy me a meal during summer vacation and called the bet off. Maid outfits are the kind of thing you might wear for yourself, sure, but making her wear one just to show someone else… that really would’ve been pushing it.
Anyway, you probably know how casual this book was when it first started.
Honestly, I didn’t like this book at all at the beginning, because to me, it was a compromise. My dream—or my “life goal,” whatever you want to call it—is to write an epic fantasy that can stand shoulder to shoulder with A Song of Ice and Fire. If you’ve read my first book, you could probably sense that. But reality is weird. It somehow led to me reading The Wheel of Time while grinding away at Silver Dragon Princess.
The result is, this book is full of compromise.
Back in the comments, a reader once asked me: “Why does Oren sigh all the time?”
My answer was: “Because he’s a loser.”
That’s basically his mental state. And the event that was supposed to change his attitude—I also ended up trimming that down a bit.
That event was: Lia was supposed to die.
In my original draft, Lia is corrupted by Demon Blood and ends up as this disgusting lump of flesh with no mind left. Oren has no way out and finally takes responsibility, killing the monster his sister has become.
I planned it so that after that, Oren would become a completely different person. Serious, clear about what he should do. A few volumes later, I even designed a conversation around this. Dysaia would talk to Oren about Lia. And at that point, Oren would say:
“When I think of Lia now, all I can remember is that lump of flesh. I can’t recall her face anymore.”
But, like I promised everywhere: I don’t do little‑sister torture. So Lia survived. After this volume ends, her curse will probably be lifted. Oren will change a little, too. He’ll curse his own naïveté and childishness, and in the future he’ll take his responsibilities more seriously.
This ties into Dysaia’s name as well.
Originally, Princess Silver Dragon was called Fite, taken from the English word “fate.” But first, it would clash with Fate Testarossa from Nanoha, and second, it would be tied to the Fate anime. So I changed it to Dysaia. That name comes from the word Messiah in the Bible—“the anointed one”—with some syllables altered.
So in a way, Dysaia is also Oren’s savior.
But from the start of this book up until now, the writing process somehow made me start to like it. Now I’ve grown fond of Dysaia, and of Lia as well. And I’ve developed this strange affection for Oren, who was originally just a high‑tier background character in my first book. Once the SF artists started drawing my characters, I was honestly really happy. I’m also very grateful to those artists for putting up with my unreasonable requests. I’m bowing to you again here.
On SF, I count as a bit of an old‑timer, even though I only came for the Japanese light novels. When Gezi got kicked out for plagiarism, I’d already been hanging around SF for a while. I’ve seen all kinds of people here, read Light Palace reviews, and remember the days when 1,000 favorites for a Chinese light novel felt terrifyingly huge. All of that is part of my memory.
And now I’m standing here, with a novel that was born out of the dirty thought of wanting to see my sister in a maid outfit, and it’s carried me this far. Farther than I ever imagined.
Once this book finishes, I’ll probably keep writing. I’ve already decided that every book on this account will belong to the same shared universe. The next book’s stage will be the Duchy of Tadallas, and the main character will be a Holy Knight who carries a shield—in more ways than one. Oren will, of course, show up in the next book too. By then he’ll already be a mature middle‑aged uncle.
In the end, the characters from these two books will all head over to my first book, and I’ll finally complete the goal I had from the start: finish There Is No Empire Eternal. I’ll probably reset that book a bit, but the style won’t change. And no matter how low the popularity gets, I’ll grit my teeth and finish it.
Because that’s also a way of seeing one dream through.
I also want to offer a deep apology to the readers who read There Is No Empire Eternal and are still waiting for updates. I did write a few chapters for it now and then in my spare time. But the reason I didn’t update it is simple: after the end of volume two, Oren will join the story as a main character. Considering the spoiler problem, I had no choice but to pause Empire for now. After all, this book already spoiled quite a bit of Silver Dragon Princess right from the start.
That’s all for this launch comment.
Thank you very much for patiently reading all the way to the end. I bow once more for all your support.
