Publisher’s Note

The book goes on sale on Friday, and on the first day after launch the update time will still be five in the afternoon. Since I have started a new volume, I also spent some time sorting out my thoughts, making a few revisions, and filling in the outline. In truth, I have no finished chapters in reserve.

I can only post as much as I can write. Tomorrow I will do my best to guarantee a ten-thousand-character update and try to put out five chapters.

After the book goes on sale, I will try to keep the update schedule regular, just as before.

As for extra chapters, to be honest, I am not the kind of author who can churn out words at great speed.

For now, let us set it at one bonus chapter per five hundred monthly votes. At present, there are about twenty-three hundred monthly votes, so aside from tomorrow’s burst of updates, I still owe four chapters.

If everyone is willing to subscribe and vote, I will be very happy.

As for the title change, for the time being I will keep the original name. When I change the category to fantasy next month, I will discuss the question of the title with everyone again.

In any case, I will keep writing at a steady pace. Based on the current outline, this story should amount to eight volumes.

I do not know whether it will end up longer or shorter than eight volumes, because I only have a detailed outline for the first four volumes; the latter four have only a skeleton.

The new-book promotion period for this novel has been full of disadvantages. It failed to win in the first and second rounds, and it also failed to win in the third and fourth rounds. After writing two hundred and twenty thousand words, it has only received three small recommendations, making it the book of mine with the fewest recommendations since I began publishing.

But I have still been quite happy writing it. I will do my best to finish the story. After all, I am still relatively young, not yet in love, not yet married, with no major expenses or pressure, so I can afford to be a little willful.

Before I started this book, I had already decided that I would focus more on the story.

I would not spend my energy trying to force a gimmick into every chapter, or, say, tell a joke, or dredge up some hook that absolutely had to make people click.

I want to stretch the plot out a little longer, and give priority to the completeness of the story and the characters.

I want this to be the kind of story that is best read straight through in one sitting, one whole volume at a time. The first volume is being written in that spirit, and if you read it in roughly ten-chapter stretches, it should give a fairly complete experience.

Colleagues and editors actually do not recommend dividing a book into volumes. To divide it is, in a sense, to tell readers to put the book on the back burner and let it simmer; and once it simmers too long, they forget it altogether.

I understand that truth. Still, in my heart, I do hope the book can achieve better results. On the title and summary, I also want to see whether there is any way to draw more people in to take a look.

But it seems I have still failed to balance the two. I am probably the kind of author who is very bad at writing openings. I cannot seize the reader’s attention from the very beginning, and I have no confidence about whether I can keep them afterward.

All I can do is write the story and bring out the story I carry in my heart.

If it is not written well, there is no need for anyone to doubt it: the author simply lacks the skill.

All I can promise is that I am taking this story extremely seriously, with more preparation than I have ever made for any work in my career.

The inspiration for this book probably began in middle school.

Back then, I was obsessed with otherworld novels, and I often fantasized about being transported to another world. Yet strangely enough, I did not want to become a warrior or a mage; I only wanted to bake bread.

I imagined making money with my own two hands, baking bread so delicious that customers would praise it to the skies. Perhaps I would take in a few homeless children as apprentices, teach them to bake, and tell them stories.

When snow fell from the sky, we would all drink warm milk together, slice sausage and bread into pieces, and bring stewed beef and potatoes to the table.

Even great figures would quietly come to my shop and drink with me. Sometimes a single sentence from me would inspire them, because a transmigrator stands on the shoulders of giants, and many things taken for granted by us are, to them, rules and theories never before imagined.

That was the ancestor of this story.

The reason I chose to begin after the protagonist’s death is that, as I have grown older, I have come to feel an inexplicable fear toward death, something every person must one day face.

Three years ago, my grandfather, who had always been lively and cheerful, suffered a sudden cerebral thrombosis brought on by high blood pressure. He was rescued, but after that he could no longer control his bodily functions, could not stand up on his own, spoke incoherently, and his mind became like that of a child.

In the past, every morning my grandfather would go out for exercise. At noon he would come home to cook. In the afternoon he would nap on the sofa until two, then ride his bicycle to the teahouse, and in the evening he would tie on his pink apron and make dinner.

But after that, the figure I had always taken for granted disappeared. Every day my grandfather lay stiffly in bed, holding the television remote and endlessly changing channels, endlessly like a child taking the batteries out of the remote and putting them back in again.

I am often afraid of death. Sometimes I think that one day even my mother will leave, and the room will never again be filled with her voice. I will sit alone in an empty room, lost in thought, able only to remember when my mother was still here.

Last year, when I went to have my wisdom tooth removed, I saw the X-ray image and saw my skull. I thought: so this is me. This is what I will look like after I die. Beneath my flesh and skin, there really is only a skeleton.

Someone once said that when the dentist drills your tooth, the taste you notice is the taste of your own ashes.

Everyone will die. Afraid of death, I always want to express something between life and death, so I chose to tell Ved’s story from after death.

What I want to write is some of my understanding of death.

Life and death: that is the true theme I want to write about.

With a theme in mind, I began searching for inspiration.

I do not know whether readers have noticed, but most of the settings and inspiration in this book actually come from a famous pixel game.

The god of roguelikes: The Binding of Isaac.

In The Binding of Isaac, after defeating a special boss, the protagonist Isaac can obtain one of the game’s highest-tier level-four items, the D6, as his starting item.

The effect of the D6 is very simple: it randomly rerolls the pedestal item in the current room into another pedestal item.

In Isaac, items that have appeared will not appear again, so by using the D6, you can quickly find the necessary components and turn Isaac into an invincible character with endless money, limitless health, and the freedom to choose any item combination you want.

You can do anything you want. I once watched a strategy video in which someone cleared every final boss in a single run and obtained every red-marked completion except for Greed Mode.

"Reset your fate."

That is the power of the D6. In an instant, it can transform Isaac, an otherwise unremarkable character, into the undisputed king of the basement, ranked first among all characters.

Ved’s twenty-sided die was designed with the D6 as its inspiration.

In fact, the premise of traveling through the dice also comes from The Binding of Isaac.

Doesn’t it feel a lot like choosing a random character and beginning an unknown journey through the basement?

The sacred flame formed by the fusion of Brilliant Light and Starlight also comes from the strange effects produced when two items are combined in roguelike games.

It can be said that the framework of this entire book was designed on the basis of The Binding of Isaac.

I particularly like that feeling in Isaac of slowly uncovering what an item does. When an item appears before you, if you are not using a mod, it is not like other roguelikes, with detailed numerical values and effect descriptions. It has only a simple line, such as "Mom’s Knife," "Broken Glass," or "Broken Family Photograph."

You judge the effect of these items by their names. Combined together, they can sometimes turn the tide of battle in an instant; at other times, they can turn a good run into a bad one, so you have to choose carefully.

By chance, if you clear a floor without taking damage even once, you will discover that with a strange sound, a black door suddenly appears in the boss room, a door that had never appeared before.

What lies behind that door must be paid for with maximum health. Those are powerful Devil Room items, and once, when you refused the Devil Room, you found that on the boss floor of the next level, a white door opened.

Only those who reject the devil’s temptation can reach the Angel Room.

There are also hidden rooms concealed beyond the map, error rooms that cannot be reached by ordinary means, and the ultimate hidden room that can only be accessed with the Red Key.

This game has all kinds of hidden rules, and you need to explore them little by little.

In order to pursue that feeling, I discarded the system panel and cheat-code golden finger I had originally envisioned, and instead expressed it in the way it is now.

The setting of the world itself basically comes only from things I have seen in my heart, from things I have read and encountered.

My understanding of Dungeons and Dragons is extremely limited. I have never played a tabletop campaign or a board game. It is only because I read some D and D novels in the past that I have a superficial understanding of it.

By contrast, I have fully experienced The Witcher 3, played half of Elden Ring, watched Berserk, Vinland Saga, Frieren, Delicious in Dungeon, Zero no Tsukaima, and so on, as well as older fantasy novels and light novels such as The Judgement, Amber Sword, Demon Dad, and The Experimental Logs of the Crazy Lich...

This is a world I imagined through the influence of all sorts of works, combined with my own insights.

Many things are not that complicated or explicit, because I am not very good at worldbuilding.

After learning from the lessons of my previous book, and in order to make this story longer, I prepared three narrative lines.

One is the wasteland, one is the adventure through the gates, and the third is the story before death, which will no longer appear openly.

I set up powerful antagonists to block the protagonist’s path. In short, I found ways to establish all the necessary elements and the hidden rules.

The protagonist needs to explore those rules little by little, to test this world.

There is no such thing as level suppression here. In order to make the battles more strategic, I made every character who can reach the silver rank possess a unique skill, much like a Stand user in JoJo.

Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, its own rules.

I worked hard to make the story feel less formulaic.

To force the characters into the choices they must make.

Before I knew it, I had written so many messy things.

For the rest, please allow me to speak with readers through this book.

Let me keep writing, and write with patience.

I hope I can bring out the story that lives in my heart.