"Wrenched away" is interesting wording. I've long suspected that Theresa didn't leave him voluntarily.

I assume 10 is the last chapter, that was a fun first volume. The anime was great bc of the yokai art but I do enjoy the genre smashup of "sage from old Japan in a vaguley Western fantasy RPG" 😅 that is well executed here. Looking forward to going beyond the anime plot.

@Alifanfaron - Yumiella's delusion is like Woof Woof Story where Routa is always trying to convince the world and himself that he's an adorable widdle puppy with button eyes and a cute face.

Reality: He's a Fenrir with an intense aura, razor sharp fangs and a terrifying face. Only his family is somehow oblivious.

Here’s where I realize we still haven’t seen the ultimate dungeon defense in the title

@Damon-Cavalchini Yeah, don't worry. I won't sue or cancel my subscription if they're late.

JNC is really finicky about date commitments, but all I'm usually interested in is a rough order of magnitude - 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, several years, etc. I agree that a quality job is more important than a quick release, but with the caveat that my interest will wane if they're too slow. Right now I'm particularly looking forward to Adorable Dungeon Master and Unruly Summon. But I'm not confident I will still be as invested 12+ months from now.

I guess I'd like the contest to be a success, but I'm not willing to commit to buying any more than the excerpts I "hearted" during the voting period (that said, I'm willing to make a hard commitment - if a preorder were available I'd do so today).

@Geezer-Weasalopes said in Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon Vol. 1 Discussion:

@Windsagio said in Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon Vol. 1 Discussion:

The characterization of the 'bad guys' is incredibly poor and unbelievable

Kinda sorta maybe... not?

If, and this is a major if, the occasional human shows up with a 'gift' that places them at the top of the hierarchy, something that makes them a 'master', wouldn't you want to make sure they don't hate your guts due to how they were treated before the value of their gift was confirmed?
Given that the social structure is such that humans are the reviled scum of creation, for a human to not have a severe negative attitude by the time their gift is identified is going to take careful handling.
Which is where groups such as the Concord of the Tribes come in.
Carefully selected by the rulers of each of their races, coached and trained such that they can more than repress the instinctive loathing they feel for human scum, they take in those pathetic dirt grubbers, befriend them, nurture them, make them believe that there are those of the other races who truly believe that humans too have value... and if it turns out that the human does have value, some of them, of the proper sex, are forced to mate with them [gag! retch! Bestiality?!] to bring their gift into the genome of their species.

And if the human turns out to be the usual trash?
Dispose of them.
Do it such that their cover isn't blown, so no witnesses; you don't want to force any more of the better species to behave in such a nauseating manner toward human scum than you have to, so no one can see them drop the act... except for the trash being disposed of.

And... hey, maybe they're onto something.

Because it turns out that Light did believe their feelings were real.
And if they'd figured out the true details of his 'gift', they'd have had him eating out of the palm of their hands.
But his 'gift' requires ambient mana, and he never had the opportunity to use it someplace with very much of that, so all that showed up was trash.
So the orders came down to eliminate him, and the Concord of the Tribes just couldn't resist the chance to rub his nose in how thoroughly they'd deceived him, rather than just kill him with no warning... resulting in his survival, and arrival someplace with the most ambient mana around.

So now Light is precisely what the Concord of the Tribes was supposed to have prevented occurring, an human with Power who has reason to want to take all of the races down.

So I'd say the characterization was actually spot on.
And that there was ample reason for the deception and reveal.
He's the first time gloating and rubbing the human's face in the ground backfired, in how many thousand years?
Because I'm going to say this has been going on for a very long time indeed.

Will the story live up to all the world-building that went into the initial premise?
We'll find out.

@topgnu this is because this is a character driven series that focus entirely on the characters' madness, depression, weak will, and broken minds. And wherher or not these characters can find happiness or not at the end of their path of self destruction.
You'll continue to find the characters stoop into new lows until they arrive at the destination of their lives.
The author also have pessimistic outlook on human nature. For example, the author believes it is just wishful thinking to expect human being to learn from their mistake by experiencing just one or two traumatic failures in their lives. The author believe only after making repeated mistake again and again and again that human being will begin to understand and start making slight progress on becoming a better person.
So yeah, expect Kanami to constantly take two steps back whenever he thought he made a step forward in his life.

In short, this series is more of a presentation of author's philosophy rather than an entertainment.
Author out right stated that this story is written because the author cannot find a story he or she likes 100%, as there is always something that he or she disagree with. So the author end up writing this story as the story that he or she can like 100% which reflects the author's belief system entirely.

I must be greedy, but I would have kept the money for myself instead of helping out complete strangers and another business in town that had nothing to do with me.

@Pieta said in Earl and Fairy Vol. 6 Discussion!:

As usual, I'm struck by how well every volume weaves together stories that are very supernatural and stories that are very down to earth, without either side feeling too overwhelming or dominant.

For a romantic heroine, it's notable how Lydia never gets sidelined. She always has something to do, something beyond just being the expert on the fey, and is perfectly capable of getting into trouble, and out of some of it, herself. She's a woman of action who's definitely not a woman of violence, a good if somewhat rare combination.

The thing that at the same time fascinates and worries me is the romance part. Edgar's upbringing has given him his tools - a superficial charm, a quick wit, and limitless audacity - but he seems utterly lost in situations where those do not suffice, such as honestly wooing a woman. It remains to be seen whether the books will see fit for Lydia to see through Edgar using completely wrong means to realize his actual feelings, or whether he will make the realization that to pursue Lydia, he has to abandon all he was taught to be. I'd very much prefer the latter, by the way, because Edgar successfully pursuing Lydia in the way he currently does feels more than a little wrong to me. There's just a bit too much of not taking no for an answer in his behaviour, and not listening when she says something he doesn't want to hear. He's trying his best but also failing badly, a victim and a victimizer, one who has both the potential and the motivation to do better, but still stumbles more than he walks.

What makes this different from the countless romances out there that have a dominant man walk into a woman's life and treat it like the most romantic thing ever no matter what she thinks of the idea, is that we get to see Edgar's side too, and who he is and what he does hurts him, too. He's not happy in his life, and just as he thinks of others as tools to use, he treats himself as a means to an end, too. We've seen some movement in a good direction in this volume, though.

Still, the romance part is not for everybody, for sure.

Finally, a shout-out to Kelpie and Ermine, who remain very entertaining side characters. I especially like that we've seen Ermine take on an active and more independent role lately.

What a wonderful way to sum up the romance! You've put into words a lot of thoughts I've had that I've struggled to explain myself.

I also find Ermine's part of the story very engaging too. Maybe we will see some development for Raven going forward too? :3

@grobinson2k1 said in [Peddler in Another World Vol. 8

I’ve read too many times in light novels that the antagonist manipulates monsters to attack.

Not only that. It takes a while to visit all villages, so it is highly suspect that after a few days the last village is attacked by ogres almost at the same time as Kilpa's village.

Sounds definately planned. 2nd hint, this is the end of the volume...

@kuali said in VTuber Legend Vol. 6 Discussion!:

I see, so she's a 336-month old baby.

So I googled the 336-month part and I actually got images of a woman who did it for real!? I was only checking to see how many years it would be but there was actually a woman who took pictures of herself wrapped in a blanket and posted it online!!! I'm shocked!

Now I'm wondering if that's what the commenter was referring to? There I was thinking that their mental maths was amazing that they converted years to months in their mind so quickly.

Edit: typo- the minds>> their mind

Of course the Japanese isekai takes his adopted daughter to a hot spring (bath)

And I guess Lily/Sapi relationship got clarified. And maybe a hint of why Acer left too

@Exkalamity so basically Phase Connect

@knightshade If you want to send those to support@j-novel.club we can take a look at them. However, I just searched the final ebook and the only instances of "fro" are from "to and fro" which is a phrase and should not be "from."

@learn_japanese_ay Multiple spouses is not terribly unusual for nobility, heck look at how many the current Demon Lord has. That said, none of them being, you know, demons would certainly raise a lot of eyebrows.

@saidahgilbert said in My Magical Career at Court Vol. 4 Discussion!:

The Secret in the first part. That section felt familiar to me. Was it copied over from a previous volume? I kept feeling deja vu while I was reading so much so that I had to go back to the main page to check that I hadn't already read this volume.

There's a bit of dialogue near the beginning that has appeared a couple of times before! Otherwise the similarity is mainly because this section begins by retreading things we've heard about earlier.

The latter half of this volume caused me to postpone reading it for half a year. I was so bored with the extended flashbacks that I couldn’t even bother opening up the J-Novel app feeling like it was work and just let months of chapters of various followed novels pile up. The subscription was active so I just bought the volumes later to read.

Finally committing to finish up volume 4 with some fresh energy. I’d still rather the flashbacks have been maybe intermixed with the other chapters in a more organic manner instead of the format we got.

@Zeteni Yes, thank you. New to using these forums

Just read this one, still really liking this series, well worth the time investment. It's genuinely funny and I really like all the characters. Snow and Mary have great chemistry. They deserve each other.

Also that picture of Tutte smiling is adorable. I always wonder how you pronounce that name. "Tut-ey"? "Toot"? "Tootie"? "Tut"?

Hot take: The series would make more sense if Mary and Co were like... five years older than they're written to be. None of them look or act even remotely like 13 year olds. I mean christ, Magiluka has like G cups already. It would kinda make more sense if they were like, in college instead of high school, especially considering how little they actually do any school stuff.

As a side note, I really like the illustrations in this series. Same guy does this one as does another fantastic series, Novice Alchemist. Talented guy. I don't notice illustrators that often unless they do an excellent job and yeah, everyone's really good looking and expressive in these.

I still just love these silly stories. Where to begin. Random thoughts:

Phufun totally should get married to Yuigarde. She's always been there for him. I'm sure she could get him to beat her up for her!

That pic of Reslei, whew. She's maturing nicely. I mean yeah, there's the whole "lower half of a horse" thing, but you know, she seems like she can turn that off, no biggie. You go get her, Reptor, if anybody should understand the appeal of doing the dirty with a dramatically different species it's Byleri and Sleip.

I still don't know who this Charun person is and what she did with Tia. :^)

As a side note, the award for "least likely combination to produce viable offspring" goes to the skeleton and the doll, but you know. Life, uh, finds a way.

I really like Ben'ne a lot, my favorite of the massive smattering of new characters we get. Glad Garyl's followed in his dad's footsteps of having an extremely powerful and remarkably horny spectral spirit guide following him around. Runs in the family. Wonder how Ellie and her will get along. Probably nicely. She seems like a good sort. Garyl's hot spirit mama is even unambiguously a female, unlike Flio's, what a lucky guy.

HGH's story was heartwarming and very funny. I really do hope the author has Tsuya and HGH become an item one of these issues. It'd be the first time an unambiguous human would have married an unambiguous human in 15 issues. Someone's gotta keep the human race going.

I was thinking based on the hint a few issues ago where they just say "Eli-" that HGH's name would be "Elijah", not... this... Again, I highly doubt any of his harem would really care that bad. They're all pretty tight by now. Tsuya's pretty simple anyways, she might not even notice how odd of a name that is.

I think of the entire (massive) cast of this series, Dalc Horst is the only main character of importance to not have any sort of illustration of him. They're doin' my man Dalc dirty there.

Awwwww, Dalc and Grenyl are (kind of) (sort of) gonna get married. You'd better not gloss over this, author. I've been waiting to see this adorable couple since you first teased it like, eight issues ago, lol. Grenyl's a qt3.14.