Afterword

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for reading, liking, commenting, every heart emoji, every shed tear of joy or maybe even sadness. You have been an amazing audience! A web novel prospers from the interaction between author and readers, and you opened up a few wholly new views onto my story.

I really hope you enjoyed this little journey (or the start of it). As you might have already guessed, the story of Isato and his friends is not fully finished here. Even though I tried to find a conclusion for this book, there are still so many topics I thought to touch upon to a later point in time. To name a few: data centers, organized hacking “companies”, hacking in video games, robotics, ethical aspects and the importance of data security and possibly many others. You see, there is material for a lot of new story arcs. Maybe you also have a few others in mind!

Nonetheless, I plan to shift the focus a bit away from battle after battle after battle from now on. It will still be a relevant aspect, but I also want to focus more on developing the characters that have been introduced by now and partly still lack a bit depth. The Kibansentous and other hacking activity should stay the high point of every arc and not just chained one after the other like it appeared in this first novel. But all to its time. This has been a three-month sprint for me. I am normally used to 2k words/week at max and had to increase my output to 4-6k words to finish this part of the story in time.

After I’ve updated the last edits tomorrow (more about that below) and finalized this novel, I will keep up with the novels I am reading and planned to read (you’ll see me in a few comment sections). When I’m done with that, you can expect a shorter project that will probably be a semi-short story with about 10-20k words that’s more on the comedic side to see a bit other stuff after this long time – stay tuned for that and maybe consider following me if you haven’t, to get notified once it drops. The updates will probably not be as frequent since my semester break just ended and I’ll have study related stuff and fulltime work at the same time again. But I’ll try to update weekly. Let’s see how good this works 😂 After that shorter story I will freshly start the work at Volume 2 of Root Access, and you can expect to see Isato and friends again.

And then there is the MAL x HF Writing Contest. Being honest here: There are way too many variables at play to make any predictions or assumptions. Just being good won’t be enough and your novel still has to appeal to the Judge(s), match the Judging Criteria AND work well with the given prompt board. All my stories for example end up having a plot with romance mixed in, so I cannot be sure if that’s a no-no for the School Board. I know my story surely needs another proper edit once it settled a bit in a few months, but I think for now it is the best I could make in that short time, and I am happy with how it turned out. There are a lot of strong contestants in all prompt boards, and I want to wish the best successes to every participant!

Please make sure to let me know about what you thought about this novel. From the comments I always received rather small and locally limited critiques. Now you have the opportunity to look back: Please tell me if you think there are any bigger, conceptual flaws. How do you feel looking back at the story? Did it feel mundane at times? Was the pacing off somewhere? Were the explanations too complex? Does the technical aspect overwhelm you at times? Is there anything else that bothered you? Would be great if you could share any advice and personal insight for me to improve upon. Be as open and critical as you can – I won’t take anything personal! I try to become better with every book, and this surely has not been my last one 😉

There already are a few changes that I will upload tomorrow before finally setting this story to finished. You might note one thing especially that might be relevant for the upcoming volumes: Hydra is named Yamata no Orochi now. Since I have not been deeply bewandered in Japanese Mythology, I took what I knew better from Greek Mythology. Tomo then pointed out that there is a snake with exactly eight heads (the number is relevant, since it correlates with the count of processing cores on a CPU) in Japanese Mythology. Therefore, and because it worked better with a Light Novel inspired, “Japanese” story, I invested the effort and researched more properly. Along with Hydra all the other of Ando-sensei’s programs have been renamed to creatures from Japanese Mythology now.

And lastly a few special thanks (in alphabetical order) to a few very special readers:

Bikergirlhacker: Thank you so much for your always cheerful and deeply enthusiastic attitude! You’ve brightened up my days and made me smile at your emotional words.

Katsuhito: Thank you so much for always tuning in and staying on the line with every update, the encouraging words and all your investment! You’ve reassured me that I stood on the right track.

swagmc: Thank you so much for your thorough and extensive feedback on how you experienced the story. At this point you still have a bit to read, but especially in the early stages you really helped me out to identify weak points I would have never noticed myself.

Tomoyuki: Thank you so much for all the kind words and the plentiful feedback! You’ve helped me improve quite a few of even the smallest things and made me see the story in a different light so I could make it even better.

Thank you all very much! Root Access Vol. 1 would have been different without you!

And now I am left with nothing else to say, so read you until the next story!

IceDonut