It's that time again~! Time to sign off with an afterword! Hello again, it's nice to be able to talk to you more personally like this. Then, to begin, I would say I am but 70% proud of this Volume, and I think I know exactly why.

In truth, the Volume was very much thoroughly planned to a point. I did everything I wanted to, but I'll be honest when I say I kind of messed up Meil's third of the story. It's not so much about ending his nightmares and money problems, so much as it's about that part of the story needlessly involving too many characters in such a short span of time, which made it difficult to make interesting and work. It all sort of jumbled into a fine mess, but I think I managed to bounce it back with the Nelly chapter.

Right, mirroring Volume 10's hybrid POV of all three protagonists at the time, this Volume had done all that and more with the newest (and cutest) addition, Nelly Grimheart! I knew I wanted Volume 20 to be a sort of benchmark to see how far everyone's come since 10 Volumes ago, so in my mind there was no other choice but to do the hybrid POV storytelling again. Don't worry though, I don't plan on doing more, since as you can see, it basically makes it so I have only 8 measly chapters to tell an entire mini-arc.

So, everyone gathered up at the University. We got to see Nelly's reaction to meeting her pop-pop again, we along with Ed found out about Issei, Othelia and Eleanor becoming a bundle, and Meil finally took the first step towards living a clean life again. A lot to unpack, so let's do a quick lighting round for each. Originally, I remember wanting to do a lot more for Lune and Nelly, but since they were the first mini-arc, they sadly heavily got put in the sidelines for the rest of the Volume. Well, I made it so they were still doing their regular stuff, just off-screen, so that's something at least.

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Next up is Ed's third. Well, I say Ed's, but in reality it's more these three's third. If you can recall, I kind of teased Eleanor joining Othelia in Issei's harem back in Volume 15(16?)'s afterword. Or was it a post chapter note? Eh, I'm sure someone will correct me in the comments. We find out through numerous snippets about how they managed to get together, but I wish to one day tell that story in full from their perspective. A lot happened in the months they were traveling together...

Then there's Meil. I'm gonna be 100% transparent with you, I could have done this one better. I used to think Meil's stories were incapable of being boring, bad or stale, but I guess that's what led to this one sucking so much ass. It also didn't help that I was having a major depressive episode for the entire week I was writing his third. Sigh, I guess it happens to the best of us - Though I really hope it doesn't happen again soon.

And finally, the chapter you just read. At first I wanted the Volume to end with Meil's POV, but then I thought "Hey, she's here, we've seen her internal monologues before, why not?" and managed to successfully end the story of this Volume through her Eyes. It was a refreshing change of pace, especially after the hell Meil put me through, and I think I made the right choice at least for that. One day, I'll come back and fix all these unpolished, boring or just outright bad parts of the story until they're up to code, but until then, see you in the next Volume!

Sincerely, Mikan Akai! :3