By the Grace of the Gods Non-JNC Bonus Short Stories

[jpwong]

So I've discovered that there's a pile of bonus short story content coming out from different media sources that are licensed to other content publishers.

I'm listing these by source, where they fit into the novel and a brief description of the short story. If you'd like to read the stories in full, please purchase the listed product. Feel free to discuss these stories and how they tie back to the main novel.

These are the official sites, users outside of Canada/United States may need to get them from other stores such as Amazon or RightStuff due to shipping restrictions.
Official Crunchyroll Store: Season 1 Limited Edition Anime Blu-Ray
Official Square Enix Site: All Manga Volumes (from what I can tell, the short stories are available in the ebook editions of the manga as well as the print versions)

By the Grace of the Gods - Season 1 - Limited Edition (Anime Blu-Ray)

• The Duke's Request
  Takes place immediately after Vol 1 Chapter 1: Episode 3 at the Duke's mansion.
  Reinhart returns home and has a family meeting to discuss Ryoma's situation and ultimately plans a visit to his cave on their way to Gimul.

• Before They Met
  Takes place prior to Vol 1 Chapter 1: Episode 4 at Gimul.
  A cave in at the northern mines in Gimul during an inspection on whether to close them down for good causes chaos. The three guilds of Gimul take charge to rescue 5 people trapped in the mine including a man named Fei.

• Elia's Passion and Her Family's Support
  Takes place after Vol 3 Chapter 2: Episode 29 slight after the laundromat opens at the inn the ducal family is staying at in Gimul.
  Elia, inspired by Ryoma's endeavours and hard work wants to broaden her knowledge. This leads to a discussion on Tamers, taming magic and how summoners differ from tamers.

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 1 - Manga

• Struggle for Survival
  Takes place after Vol 1 Prologue 2 (this story contains an illustration)
  Covers Ryoma's 2nd week through 6th month after reincarnating. Ryoma discovers that fighting in close combat against goblins is a bad idea when you only have one set of clothes. A wave of goblins starts to take over the forest and Ryoma executes an extermination of hundreds of goblins to keep his livelihood in the forest safe. There's a brief mention at the end about Ryoma's first slime Tabuchi transforming that kicks off his absorption into slime research, but that's a story for another day.

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 2 - Manga

• The First Camp
  Takes place after Vol 1 Chapter 1: Episode 10 (this story contains an illustration)
  While camping out waiting for a landslide to be cleared away Ryoma and the Duke's family have a discussion about cleaner slimes, slime nourishment and slime evolution. Ryoma unveils a plan to help speed along Elia's slime's evolution using his secret weapon: Magic Recovery Medicine, Economy Size. Suddenly a popup hot bath, slime laundromat and slime toilet appear in the camp.

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 3 - Manga

• While You Were Cleaning
  Takes place after/during Vol 1 Chapter 1: Episode 18/19 (this story contains an illustration)
  The Duke hits up Gimul's top administrative official and lays into him for corruption and allowing an epidemic disease to spawn in town. Meanwhile His Grace, the previous Duke does battle at the local baron's estate leaving flames of destruction in his wake. Elia and her mother prepare sandwiches for Ryoma.

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 4 - Manga

• The Parlor of the Morgan Trading Company
  Takes place during Vol 2 Chapter 2: Episode 7 (this story contains an illustration)
  After demonstrating true alchemy to Serge, the topic of conversion moves on to what fake alchemy in the world is. The conversation shifts to the premise of alchemy and Ryoma starts a science demonstration of how pure oxygen can enhance a flame and how super-cooled water can freeze in an instant. Everyone present is... strained by the reasons behind why Ryoma developed these advanced magic techniques.

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 5 - Manga

• A Chat Between Magicians
  Takes place around Vol 2 Chapter 2: Episode 19 (this story contains an illustration)
  Ryoma and Leipin have a discussion on how magic works as well as the history of how modern magic came to be from ancient times. It covers how magic originally was used in the form of rituals highly controlled by religious organizations, how it eventually evolved to be a symbol of the aristocracy and how even commoners eventually came to be able to use beginner magic. This takes place on a carriage ride back from the monster subjugation quest after the goblin village (subjugation day 2) and likely occurs during the return on day 3 as the main story covers the return on day 2 and the manga itself only covers through to Episode 20 in this volume.

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 6 - Manga

• The Twins Idle Chatter
  Takes place before Vol 3 Chapter 2: Episode 26 (this story contains an illustration)
  The two twins Karula an Karum (they're Carla and Carme in the JNC TL) are talking about their aspirations of the future. They've just recently been promoted and will be moving to the Morgan company's main branch in Gimul

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 7 - Manga

• Sickum's Warf's Grand Adventure
  Takes place before Vol 3 Chapter 2: Episode 34 (this story contains an illustration)
  A story about the adventuring party Sickum's Warf [note: the JNC TL calls this group Sickum's Pier] (the ones with the bloody slime). It's the story of how they found an unusual slime and decide to try to head off to the Tamer's Guild in the Jamil Domain to sell it.

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 8 - Manga

• The Researchers' Welcome Party
  Takes place around Vol 3 Chapter 2: Episode 41 (this story contains an illustration)
  It's the welcome party for the new employees Calkin, Lobelia, and Tony [note: the JNC TL uses Caulkin], backstory discussions, research discussion and a pie extravaganza break out at the Bamboo Forest.

By the Grace of the Gods - Volume 9 - Manga

• Behind the scenes of selling the new product
  Takes place around Vol 4 Chapter 3: Episode 21 (this story contains an illustration)
  The team operating the Bamboo Forest sets up a production line for the new deodorant solution that's going on sale and discuss how many bottles they should be producing for the opening day.

By the Grace of the Gods Manga volumes 9 and 10 are slated to release in August 2023 and April 2024 and will likely continue the trend of containing a bonus short story and illustration related to the part of the story the manga covers.
By the Grace of the Gods Anime Season 2 has been announced (coming out Jan 2023) and finished airing I wouldn't be surprised if there's an English Limited Edition Blu-Ray set that contains additional bonus stories in the future. Looks like there's no special edition release this time, so the blu-ray only contains the anime this time.

[jpwong]

So just wanted to say that with the exception of the Morgan Trading Company story, all of the short side stories out so far fit in nicely to the existing novel. They provide a nice supplement for anyone who's been collecting all of this. The trading company story is the only one so far that doesn't slot in nicely, and that's mostly because that particular episode ends with them leaving in the main novel, so unlike all the other stories where there's a clear cut gap in the main story where they slot in, this one tries to slot itself into the end of the chapter.

The bonus stories from the first two volumes of the manga are my favorites ones out so far, I'm hoping that we'll either get a side story or a main story that goes into more detail about slime Tabuchi's tale since it sounds like it greatly impacted Ryoma.