Afterword

Hello dear reader,

now that you’ve made it this far, but likely there won’t be more than two of you, take a rest, take a sip of a drink of your liking and relax. You’ve just managed to get through one of the worst stories you have ever read. For Protocol: about 50.000 words (though 2000 words got lost somehow on the way because originally my word-file said there were 52.000 words) of something that would have been a giant word snake, if it wasn’t for my two best friends, who read over my text and gave me some grammatical assistance.

This afterword was written without their corrections. So, if something sounds off, be assured that this is just me and be glad that the rest of the book wasn’t written in this manner.

Being not a native speaker of the English language, I might have used some phrasings that felt maybe a little unnatural or linked sentences that should have been just divided by something different than a comma.

The core of this story is an idea I had while talking to a friend from my Kendo team, who stated that in the isekai genre, people actually don’t really change. Usually, they get thrown into an adventure or given magic or at least a harem or some other nonsense, but in the end, they never change at their core. If something changes, then only how they act towards the feelings and wishes they hold, sometimes with the help of some outside motivation, like monsters.

This thought is also the driving point of this story. Everybody holds the keys to ones own happiness. The question is just if you are able to make yourself use them. This might be a little simplified, but just regarding the anime and manga I consumed in this genre, it is a very true statement, I’d say.

So, I thought, what can I make of this idea? The problem, I wanted to participate in this page’s isekai competition and got to know about this page and the competition pretty much about the day it started, maybe a day or two earlier.

In the end I just started to write and took ideas as they came, trying to tie the loose ends in the end and then calling it a story. If you enjoyed it anyways, I am happy to have given you some entertainment and distraction in these times, if not, what are you even doing here reading the afterword??

Long story short: Thanks to everybody who endured my requests for correcting my newest chapters, thank you to everyone who motivated me to continue and last but not least: thank you dear reader.

As for myself, I will continue writing, though I might prefer to do so in my mother tongue. My english isn’t exactly bad, but I definitely lacked vocabulary to make this story as great as it might have deserved. But who knows. Never say never. Maybe I will return, because my stories suddenly become way too popular.

Until then! Take care!