Hi there everyone, Alice here! I hope you enjoyed reading Mage in Heroes’ Guild! ^^)/

I can’t say how happy I am that I finished this novel! This must be like… My 4th attempt at writing something, and the first one that I actually went through until the end, it’s a pretty fulfilling feeling~

Does fulfilling feeling make sense? Uhn… I also wanna say it’s pretty nice to write an afterword without caring about rather or not something reads well or if I’m repeating words too much or repeating punctuation too much or… Well, caring about using emojis and what not! xD

In any case, I thought I’d use this space to answer some queries I believe some readers might have. And also use those as a way to show a bit more on the background of this novel.

Q: What about the heroes introduced back in chapter 5?

A: My original plan for this novel was to focus on the fact that Aria was an average mage in the middle of a bunch of crazy powerful heroes (Well, that’s why the synopsis is the way it is, sorry if you felt clickbaited, it was totally not my intention to diverge from that theme! >.<), chapter 5 was my way of introducing side characters that I could reuse later… Well, the story ended long before they had any chance to shine though.

If I were to redo this novel from scratch, I’d probably scratch that chapter entirely… Rather, I’d probably scratch the entire original premise of the novel and change its title to something more fitting. Of course some things would need to be altered if I did that, but I don’t think any of the changes would need to be big ones… Well, time will tell, I do intend to eventually publish this, so it would probably be a fixed version with those bad parts fixed.

Q: How much do you plan ahead when writing?

A: Almost nothing actually! I tried writing a well-planned novel in the past and I found out I hated it. Like… I hated everything I wrote and it never lived up to what was in my head, this pissed me off a lot so I stopped planning altogether~ *whistles*

That’s not to say I have 0 plans though, I had a few scenes planned out. I also had the original premise solidly in my head and I also had the ending of the novel planned, Aria was going to die in a volcano, reincarnate as a Fairy and live happily ever after with Iris.

… Oops, that’s not how the novel ended, is it? A fun fact is that I actually wrote this scene out back in chapter 17. But when I was about to rename the MS Word File (I usually only name the chapters as their number, only when the chapter is finished that I actually give it a name, and then rename the file), I accidentally clicked on exclude instead of rename (Who was the genius that put the exclude button right next to the rename one!? >.<)… And uhn… I happened to have the confirmation box for exclusion disabled, and I also had the Recycle Bin disabled… (After this issue, I immediately re-enabled both) So, after 3 different attempts at downloading recovery softwares and they all failing, I figured I’d just rewrite chapter 17 from scratch. And by the time I had finished it, things turned out way differently… Teehee?

And because she was no longer going to a volcano, (the original idea was that she’d be going kinda crazy and think that she might get Iris’ attention if she made a big summoning ritual in a place with lots of fire in it) but to Iris home plane instead, I actually changed my plans to kill Aria off in the Fire Realm after she made up with Iris… But as I was writing the last chapter, I was like… “Is there really a point at killing Aria now?” Because like… Originally the plan was that she’d never have an opportunity to make up with Iris, so she’d die and only get closer together after reincarnating (I was planning she’d lose memories of her past life btw, though I wasn’t fully certain I’d go that route), and Iris would take her in while filled with regret and what not… It would be a bittersweet “happily ever after”.

But now? Well… They were already in their happily ever after! Why would she need to die to achieve it!? xD

So I figured I’d just keep her alive instead, it felt a bit weird to change the ending that was planned since chapter 1, but I figured it was the best for the story~

On a side note, part of the reason I tried highlighting her pain in the last few chapters was because I wanted to start hinting at the idea she was dying. So when I suddenly changed my plans to keep her alive, I was like… “But won’t she die soon because of lack of life force and stuff? Uhn… Oh well, whatever, it’s not like I ever set the specifics of how life force functions in stone, so I can just say she’ll recover if she rests.” Which is actually one of the nice benefits of not giving many details of the setting’s specifics to the readers, I can change the specifics as I see fit~

Oh, and most of Aria’s background was decided pretty early on. It was not from the start, and some things were only decided later on, but the majority was settled upon since the early chapters. Iris not being Aria’s first love in particular was something I figured out by chapter 3 or something.

Q: How did the story diverge so much from its original plan?

A: Well, to answer that I need to explain what lead to this story being written. The premise of this story came to be because of a Forum Roleplay I played some time back. The creator of the Roleplay asked us to make average mage characters to join a Mages’ Association… But for some reason everyone that joined ended up with a pretty darn OP character! xD

And my character, Aria, was one of the few that felt average (most people actually called her super weak instead though… For my standards, she was the average one though~ *whistles*), and this kinda became an internal joke and what not… And from those interactions, I felt it could actually become an interesting novel premise. An average mage joining a guild filled with crazy strong heroes.

However, the main interesting part of Aria’s character were actually her interactions with her fairy companion (I think her name was Fyria, but I’ll call her Iris in this afterword), which she was totally in love with, but was unable to stay a long time together because Aria’s mana only lasted for 3ish days and then she needed 2ish days to fully recover her mana pool and summon Iris again… And well, I totally wanted to properly focus the novel on their relationship while using the setting as a background to have a place for their love to develop on…

Only issue was that their relationship totally took over the novel and the setting became basically unimportant to me, so I was like… “Why bother make her go through 2 or 3 quests while going back and forth between having Iris with her at times and at other times in the Fire Realm, to then kill Aria off, when I can instead just kill her now when most of the relevant parts of the relationship were already explored?” It really felt like I would just be prolonging the novel for no reason if I made it involve more side characters and other quests and stuff, so that’s why the setting was completely shoved away to give space to Iris and Aria’s relationship.

Uhn… I think those might be it? Can’t think of any other from the top of my head, but feel free to post any you have in the comments and I’ll gladly answer~

Once again, I really hope you enjoyed the novel. I had a lot of fun writing it myself… The dream sequences in particular were really fun, like… It was so hard to try giving tidbits of Aria’s past while making it feel like an actual dream and not a plot device! I mean, aren’t dreams usually quite nonsensical and not well connected to one another? I tried my hardest to make them feel like that, with things disappearing, growing, distorting and what not at a moment’s whim.

Oh, a fun fact that I can share is that Aria being constantly plagued by nightmares was something that took me a long time to decide, at first I just wanted to share some of her past by using the dreams… Then I figured it was actually a good plot point to make her always have nightmares, especially because I was also making the overall plot revolve more around dreams. (that was totally not in my original plans! I actually had a pretty hard time coming up with her first quest! xD)

That’s it from me I guess, I was planning on releasing the last chapter and the Afterword on the new year’s eve, but I was like… “I already finished this anyways, why not release now!?” And so there you have it! Happy late Christmas if you’re reading it by the time it’s released!

I’m gonna start a new novel in 2020, I have a few ideas in my head, but I have yet to figure out an ending to any of them, and it’s kinda hard to write without an ending in my head, so I’ll work on that first. But you can expect more from me soon… And uhn… I also made a patreon actually, it’s not publicly visible because I still need to work on the patreon rewards and what not, but I’ll solve that issue soon. So please consider supporting me if you like my next novel! (even if I still didn’t decide which one it’s going to be! xD)

Alright, I’ll be off now, for the last time, I really hope you enjoyed reading Mage in Heroes’ Guild, it really was a blast writing, and I had lots of fun interacting with everyone in the comments. Take care and a happy new year! ^^)/

- With lots of hopes for the future,
Alice.

PS: Sorry if the last titles all feel kinda repetitive and uninteresting, I just couldn’t figure anything that fit in without the word “love” in it, so I just went with it.