Readers who have finished the volume, as well as those who have just read the afterword and are about to start digging in, I thank you. EternalSunset is once again here for another Afterword.

Time sure flies, and after quite some time, the second volume of Fractal Plane is finished. It has been a pretty fun ride for me, and I have you and my friends to thank for that.

A good part of the volume was spent on slice-of-life moments. I figured that after I got much of the introductions of the plot-important parts of Fractal Plane's world (the magic system, the enemies, the dungeons) out of the way in the first volume, it is time to add some life to the world and its inhabitants. 

As a watcher of anime or a reader of novels, I always found downtime segments (often presented in anime or manga as filler arcs or omake in chibi format) really enjoyable because you get to see the characters interact without the pressure of a major plot driving the narrative or the flow of their conversations. Such segments allow an author to add some minor flairs and lowkey nuances to otherwise archetypical characters, and that is what I tried to do with the formal reception and the first part of the school trip in this volume. That, and the recap at the very beginning.

On the other hand, I always visualized my story being set in a world that is very alive, a world where so many characters and plot points move on, independent from the main characters. I hoped that the plethora of side character introductions helped drive that point home or at least get it started.

Onto the actual plot on hand, the main theme that I wanted to tackle this volume is the subject of empathy and indecisiveness. It is actually a plot point that I came up with after some self-reflection. In real life, I have the tendency to just be compromising and not take much of a stand. It's always the safest decision that I take, the one that I think would hurt the least people or put me away from trouble, and I decided to tackle the possible consequences of such thinking in this volume.

In the end, I hope that you guys enjoyed seeing that play out through Kazuki's character arc and development this volume.

This volume's shout outs go to my friends for having the patience to bear with me making them read my drafts (lol) and giving me some helpful perspectives. Given that the subject matter of the volume's core climax-setting drama is not something that I have any experience on, they have been really helpful in getting to see the scenario from various perspectives. Otherwise, my only frames of reference for that romantic drama would be anime that I watched.

Next up are my artist friends who have been putting in more than a hundred percent in helping me. You all continue to rock, and I humbly thank you for your hard work.

Finally, I thank the most important people, you readers. Thank you for accompanying Kazuki and the rest on their journey. I hope that you will continue to do so for the third volume, which I have already sown the seeds of conflict for in the epilogue.

Also, now that you have caught up to the actual story in Wattpad, you can expect the next volume to take quite a while to start publishing now (just like the regular release schedule). Needless to say, whatever I upload on Wattpad, I will port over to Scribblehub, and I plan to have around 8 or so volumes.

On another note, someone DM'd me and noticed that the story seemed to be developing more like a love triangle instead of a full harem as the tags indicated. Personally, I tagged it like that because I will eventually be throwing more girls at you guys per volume. Think of it like the actual LNs that I am drawing inspiration from.

Date a Live had a new girl every volume or two (season 1 ended with just four "candidates" then the next season, which ended at around the 7th or 8th volume if I'm not wrong, added three). Strike the Blood kinda did it that way, too (for the first 8 or so volumes, the harem members are just at 4 or 5 iirc, but come the mid-10s or so in terms of volume count, that number has almost doubled).

I felt that I could have done it the Asterisk War or Testament of Sister New Devil way of having the core harem all part of the story as early as 2 or 3 volumes in, with only one or two additions over the course of the series, but I wanted each harem member in Fractal Plane to more organically flow into the cast since they're gonna have different backgrounds. 

Anyway, to wrap up, here's a look of the primary characters this arc in their formal wear, which you could probably recognize from the Glossary in either this volume or the previous one. Although Amagi and Fujiwara did not get to wear theirs in-story, you can see them in their full glory now thanks to this excellent piece by leizilie (she also did more art, but it's NSFW so I'd rather not run afoul of the rules here in SH). Make sure to follow her on Twitter or Pixiv if you are interested in seeing more of her art.

See you next volume. Stay strong and stay cool, everyone.