I actually love Emille. She is the funniest character in this book imo. Her common sense is really something else. 😂😂

@Windsagio It's with the Professor. The Professor is the former leader of the Court Sorceress while Gardner is the new one.
(Partly the reason why Allen "failed" the exam)
The Professor and Gardner hate each other as far we know, the Headmaster as far we know doesn't have much interaction with Gardner.

Volume 4 (Premium Edition): 2 Bonus Short Stories With Sweet and Sour Jam The Things We Dislike

Volume 6 (Premium Edition): 3 Bonus short stories Indoor Strawberry Picking The Queen's Beloved Cat Cyril and Root

@Paul-Nebeling I believe we've already seen the cost. Rehzel was forcibly converted to Extra Mode, and it transformed him into a demonic deity. Beforehand, he was actually willing to pursue reconciliation with the elves, but afterwards he was singularly focused on claiming the world tree. His true goal was really just to have the right to die under its branches, but his transformation shut out his ability to consider any alternate methods of accomplishing that, or any of his other desires. It's like how when Krena was carried away by limit break and was hyperfocused on her goal of fighting a powerful opponent, without being able to think about whether or not she should.

Allen is in hell mode whilst remaining... passably sane, and the demons have talked about stepping through your extra gate, so I think there's a way to safely enter extra mode. The issue is that you can only do it yourself; having it activated for you results in your will being consumed by your own skills, which is why the Gods can't help. In a way, even though it was facilitated by the Gods, Allen entered hell mode under his own will and resolve, which is why he's able to control it. I believe Krena for example could enter Extra mode by learning to view limit break as just a normal part of her, and shattering the restrictions normal mode places on it through sheer force of will. In extra mode, limit break would probably just be a lv 7 skill that can be toggled on or off at will, just like how if Allen was in normal mode, his extra skill would probably be one of Quick Summoning (with limited duration), Deputize (one use per day), or maybe King Me.

One thing I find potentially interesting; the extra skills seem to be randomly chosen from a pool of potential lv 7/8 class skills, as not everyone with the same talent has the same extra skill, but they're always relevant to your class. However, Drops of God is likely a cleric/saint class skill and monk wouldn't get it; if he chose the monk promotion, would have have gotten a different extra skill? Similarly, Sophie's grand spirit summoning is clearly within the "spirit user" class line, and she was not actually originally a spirit user - the direct promotion of spirit wizardess is likely spirit arch-wizardess, but she chose an alternate branch. This would mean grand spirit summoning was a potential extra skill of a class she could potentially promote into, but if she had gone into extra mode as a spirit mage, she never would have gotten it.

This novel becomes harder to like with every next volume. I swallowed that everyone except the MC and a few marginal extras is a meathed and/or a bully. I can get over that every encounter is balanced and staged like a Hollywood blockbuster, where "our side" always wins after a meaningful battle, roughed a bit but without any permanent loss; when balance fails a little deus-ex-machina settles things. I can ignore that while genocide level violence happens off screen, the MCs use tactical level spells and weapons, splitting ships in half and vanquishing armies in a single swoop but never kill a single soul.

However I am drawing the line at the routine use of the technique of a conversation or inner thoughts getting to a major point just to - hey this a beautiful green griffin in the sky. And then cliffhangers left hanging for volumes. My only regret is I didn't drop this earlier, but this is a goodbye.

As promised in the previous topic, here is how the major characters call each others:

Jack calls Gwynt and Julianne by their names. Same for Yon in his mind, but he calls him Yon-kyou (which I translated to Ser, because I thought it sounded pretty nice for knights and Sir was already used for Kevin) However, he doesn't particularly speak politely to him (a knight is below him in status, after all)
Gwynt goes from Girard-sama to Jack-sama. (and by the end of the volume, goes from Lord Jack to Master Jack because he gets officially employed by Jack)
Julianne starts with Baron Girard, then Jack-sama, then Danna-sama (which is how one calls their husband politely, so I decided to use Dear)

And that should be it.

By the way, I talked about it on Discord, but the author recently wrote he had some health problems on Kakuyomu and that, while volume 3 would definitely be released, it might take some time.
Let's hope he gets better.

@piisfun said in Reincarnated Mage Vol. 4 Discussion!:

@GeorgeMTO The scary part is when the studio looks at it and says, "Given how short these volumes are, we should be able to shove ten into a single season!"

Unwanted Undead Adventurer is the only one where that might turn out well :)

Fina shook her head sadly at the butchering job done on Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear.

Not sure why the discussion link from volume 5 points here but oh well.

The part where the haremettes tie their ribbons to the MC's staff reminded me of that beautiful song, The drunk Scotsman, the one that ends on "Well, lad, I don't know where you've been / but I see you've won first prize!"

FYI. Vol 8 has been released.

I enjoyed this volume more than I was expecting, mostly because I loved seeing Zenjirou being able to are good use of his abilities and tools to outsmart the people around him. I'm still not too enthusiast about everyone getting what they wished for from this marriage instead of him and I'm not looking forward for a repeat of this situation with Lucretia, but at least he has positive feelings for Freya and might even fall in love with her given time.

@TheWickerMan said in DUNGEON DIVE Vol. 3 Discussion!:

As someone who just finished volume 3 and is starting volume 4, I more agree with you than everyone else here. It is an interesting and different story than many of the others in this genre. I do think it went off the rails a bit and the reset is a little worrying.

Insanity and despair is interesting to read and I think the author does a good job getting the awful mental states across in text.

I worry most because the bonus stories are uninteresting to me and it seems that is what we are going to do now lol.

Volume 6 (Premium Edition): A Bonus Short Story Untitled

Volume 5 (Premium Edition): 4 Bonus Short Stories & Bonus Cover Art A Day with Olivia and Evanson A Second Day with Olivia and Sara A Fifth Day with Olivia and Claudia A Third Day with Olivia and Blood

Volume 9 (Premium Edition): 3 Bonus Short Stories Elf Talk Delinquents in Droves

Reading the opening parts of the book, I was quickly reminded of how amazingly varied the community of the Sheol Island is, including an entire goblin tribe, a family of giant spiders, an intelligent slime, golems, a kobold baby, and more. Even just imagining scenes from their daily lives makes me giddy. And the author knows what they're doing, and all kinds of little interactions between them spring up everywhere in the book. It's perfectly in line with the series so far that the first new character we're introduced to is a fancy pirate captain orc lady. (She gets several illustrations to herself and looks great on all of them!)

By the end of the book, there's so many more different inhabitants it's hard to count.

This totally makes me want to start up Minecr_ft and Dw_rf Fortress and play both. Probably at the same time. (Pro-tip: Don't do that.)
(-:

@pcj said in My Friend's Little Sister Has It In for Me! Vol. 10 Discussion:

@Lisast said in My Friend's Little Sister Has It In for Me! Vol. 10 Discussion:

@pcj Weren't we told he was wandering a doujin convention where she was selling something, recognized her, and kind of blackmailed her into it?

I don't remember that, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen because I probably just forgot, and it makes plenty of sense.

Yep, it was first mentioned way back in volume 1 (the first half no less), so pretty easy to forget! I'm not sure much detail was added since then, though.

@HarmlessDave I doubt even that. I think the author's personal experience is just interacting with GMs as a player. There are no mechanics or terminology that would make me think "oh yeah, only a GM would know that" - all details about GMs in this novel are things that regular players would either know or assume about GMs.
But I do think that there is some novel balancing as you refer to it (see my answer to endoftheline).

@endoftheline Well, you're generally correct that you don't usually convert your regular player character to a GM. I don't think most companies would allow you, and even if they do, you probably wouldn't want to do that either, since keeping your regular character as-is would probably allow you to go back to playing after you quit your job as GM (which, as I said, is usually a part-time job so I doubt many people would turn that into a life career). In that hypothetical scenario where you convert your player character into a GM then once you quit your job it's completely gone.
Still I wouldn't call it an error - I'm pretty sure the author knows or at least assumes nobody converts their player char to GM but wrote that anyway because they wanted the protagonist to have access to all sorts of gear. If it were a new character, the protagonist would only have GM gear, which, depending on the game, is either completely "broken cheat gear" or purely cosmetic, nothing in between.

This was much better than the previous volumes in term of digressions, though I'm a bit disappointed thatvyhe war wasn't concluded. On the other hand the last part seemed to dispel my worries that Asuka might turn against Ryoma.
Author also reminded us that this series is technically an harem, despite him not writing any romance.

@cimmadif said in Miss Nicola the Exorcist Vol. 1 Discussion!:

Is this only one volume or are there more? I've done some digging online and can't find anything about additional volumes. Can't even find a web novel for it.

There's a webnovel here, but it's very short.
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n3469hm/

LN Vol 1 is basically a 1:1 adaptation of the original webnovel, at least until the very end.

In the WN,

spoiler

The author admitted in the WN's final chapter that they amended Vol 1's finale so they could continue with a LN Vol 2.