Arslan Senki

Book 2: Afterword

Originally, I wasnt the kind of diligent person who writes afterwords once a books been completed, but as I realized I screwed up in the first volume, Ill 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 authors 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. Ill pay more attention from now on, so please forgive me this time.

Now then, the title of the second volume ended up as (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 shouldve 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 Ive already settled on a few titles too. Like (The Road of Sweat and Blood), or (The Capital Retaken), or (The Return of the Serpent King), etc. but who knows if Ill manage to get that far or not? Bad news for our protagonist, but it doesnt seem all that fun being the one writing his life story either. We can probably look forward to future titles like (Before the Deadline), or (Out of Ideas), or (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 its Arslan or the author recording his deeds, it seems weve 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 Tanakas titling scheme for this series