Arslan Senki

Originally, I wasn’t the kind of diligent person who writes afterwords once a book’s been completed, but as I realized I screwed up in the first volume, I’ll use this space to apologize for the errors and provide corrections.

First of all, regarding the place names on the map on page 6, “Turan” became “Duran”, and “Mount Bashur” became “Mount Basr.” These mistakes were introduced during the creation of the map.

The other matter is totally the author’s fault. The name of the god that the priestess Farangis serves turned into “Misr” when it should have been “Mithra.” “Misr” is a name for Egypt in our universe. (T/N: I fixed it when translating.)

Due to what you can call “stopgap” knowledge, I ended up making such pointless mistakes. I’ll pay more attention from now on, so please forgive me this time.

Now then, the title of the second volume ended up as 王子二人 (The Two Princes). Following the first volume, I created a pattern by using a phrase of four kanji, taken from one of the chapter titles besides, to form a title for the entire book. In order to keep doing it the same way, it should’ve been obvious that it would immediately turn into a pain, but I guess in this world it really is possible to have fun racking your brain too. (T/N: And what a pain these are to translate*!)

For the volumes after this I’ve already settled on a few titles too. Like 汗血公路 (The Road of Sweat and Blood), or 王都奪還 (The Capital Retaken), or 蛇王再臨 (The Return of the Serpent King), etc. — but who knows if I’ll manage to get that far or not? Bad news for our protagonist, but it doesn’t seem all that fun being the one writing his life story either. We can probably look forward to future titles like 締切直前 (Before the Deadline), or 発想涸渇 (Out of Ideas), or 作者困惑 (The Author Perplexed).

Setting aside the jokes (though I really wish I was joking about it), the first volume begins in the tenth month of the year 320 of Pars, and the second volume ends in the twelfth month of the same year. In two volumes, no more than two months have passed. Whether it’s Arslan or the author recording his deeds, it seems we’ve progressed no more than one small step along the lengthy journey ahead.

This is not an endless tale. Without fail, there will be a proper conclusion. As I plan to keep writing toward that final scene, please be patient with me if possible. For now, please look forward to the next volume.

Respectfully yours, the series compiler

* see this blog post for more discussion on Tanaka’s titling scheme for this series