Spoilers for volumes 01 through 05!!

(Authors' diary chapters are not part of the main story and are not necessary to follow the overall reading experience. This is just the author talking to the readers.)

Hello, author of the book here. I thought it would be fun to share a bit about my experience writing this story, sort of like a diary or something.

So this is "Gambit of the living weapon". My attempt at writing an isekai story. I love isekais, i love the idea of going to a fantasy world with all your knowledge and becoming a superhero who just kicks ass all day and all. My first one was "Zero's familiar", which was all right, it was a fun story with a good premise but man, was the cast of characters forgettable... Didn't really leave a big impact.

The real big one for me was "Jobless reincarnation." That was a good story (although the way it treats its female characters is beyond questionable...), one of my first mangas, and my first time reading a Japanese novel. "Konosuba" was also a really good one too. These 2 are what I consider the pinnacle of isekais, because they knew what should have been the focus of the story. It wasn't about making an op invincible main character, it was about making the reader care about the cast.

Making the viewer care about the cast is always my priority in any story I see, hear, or watch. That's why when I made my main character I wanted to try and make people care about when good things happened to him and feel bad when bad things happened to him.

I wanted people to feel like they could hang out with Marceus and have a good time with him, to feel like he was just a fun guy in the middle of this whole mess. I also wanted him to have a partner to chat with. I love stories with partner dynamics. My favorite manga is Gash Bell, a story about a kid who can use electric magic and his genius human boy who trains him. I love their dynamic.

This is what made me create Daren, someone to balance it out Marceus comedic personality in case readers found him annoying.

The whole idea of the candidates was also something that I considered exploring further, maybe showing more of their missions and whatnot... But I really wanted to get on with the plot and reach the real story that I really wanted to tell...

I feel like I could have wrote 3 volumes on just Daren and Marceus going on adventures, and maybe I might one day as a flashback or something... But I really wanted to get to my original idea, which was, what would happen if the hero just got tired and wanted to quit? What if the hero just felt all his fighting was leading him nowhere? What if he just felt like he was stuck in time and just wanted to rest? What would happen to the people that he would leave behind? I wanted to tell this story.

And thus, we have Evlin, the actual main character of the novel who only appears near the end of volume 01 and has to deal with a bunch of baggage left behind by Marceus. Evlin is my favorite character. Marceus was a lot of fun to write because of his comical personality... But writing Evlin's story just feels so good for some reason. I just wanna put this kid in a bunch of different situations and imagine how she would react to it.

Sometimes she will cry, sometimes she will fight, others she will laugh... But what matters is that it feels genuine and that the reader wants to follow her to find out what she will do.

By the time I'm writing this text, volume 05 is already finished and set to upload automatically on a daily basis.

Writing these five volumes telling Evlin's story was so much fun. I miss Marceus a lot but I'm so glad I changed the main character position to her. I also really like my main cast a lot. I'm trying to make everyone feel relevant with each having a small moment to shine. I wonder if people would be mad that Daren kinda faded into the background a bit considering how much of big deal he was at the start.

If I had to pick my favorite characters so far it would be something like, Evlin, Marceus, Ashley (who wasn't even meant to be in the story but I just enjoyed writing her so much), Ria (I just enjoy writing happy characters), and Lilith (At first I had no idea what to do with her but she just gave me more and more ideas as I kept expanding her role).

I was surprised at how much I stopped wanting to write Daren as time went on... I feel like I didn't give him enough personality to stand on his own without Marceus... Gotta try and fix that later.

And since we are now at 50 chapters, let's count down my top 10-ish favorite chapters so far.

10 - small cheat but, any moment where the characters are just interacting from volume 4. Couldn't decide.

9 - Waking up - The chapter where we see the original cast returning and find out what they have been up to. Good times.

8 - Runaway bride - The official start of Evlin's story. I had no idea where I wanted to go with her at the time. The only thing in my head was "How do I connect this with the ending of volume 01?", but by the halfway mark it became "Where can I take this girl...?"

7 - Night visit - My first try at doing a comedic romantic scene. Volume 5 overall felt the most "anime" of all volumes so far and this one was the high point for me.

6 - The children we leave behind - The final chapter of volume 1 and our goodbye to Marceus. My first time writing a character dying. I wanted to emphasize that feeling of regret of knowing your life was ending despite there still being so much that could be done.

5 - Thank you for everything! - The turning point of the story. The one where I just placed the whole cast in a box and would not use it until the right time came. I love this title so much.

4 - Relieving some stress - Evlin's first time to shine. Her battle with the prince where she is just trolling him while showing off her new abilities.

3 - Moving Foward - The one where Evlin had to say goodbye to Dalla. Marceus's death was meant to show that feeling of regret, this one was meant to show the feeling of emptiness. The one who dies and feels like wasted the chance to live more, and the one who saw someone else die and feels like part of you is just gone forever.

2 - Reconstruction Magician vs Tempest magician - I love this fight so much. I loved trying to build up the rivalry with Evlin and Xadi and showing that feeling of "I'll have to face someone who is better than me". Part of me wanted to stick with my nature and just give it a silly title, maybe something like "Target practice" or something... But I just wanted to have my silly cool anime-like fight, and also my silly cool anime title.

1 - Fragile heart - I love this chapter so much. I don't think I'll ever top it, to be honest. This is the one where Evlin and Gustav just talk and Evlin just goes on a rant about how nobody seems to be taking seriously just how hard had been so far. Even her own sister just acted like she was being childish. Rants are my favorite part of any story, the moment where the character just snaps and puts on the table with no-nonsense what he/she is truly feeling and why. I love these moments of pure honesty when one just decides to stop pretending everything is ok when it's clearly not and it feels like no one is doing anything about it. I love this chapter and am very proud of it.

I feel like things started to get a tad more serious once the two groups merged. It lost that feeling of "What's going on?" and got more a vibe of "Where are we going now?". I guess I kinda miss the early volumes' more light atmosphere when it wasn't so plot-heavy guided. I honestly forget Evlin's story starts with her fighting a giant beaver sometimes considering where she is now... Man they grow up so fast...

Guess it's time to start working on the demon kingdom saga now... I have... So many ideas of what I want to do with this plotline... And I want to share it so bad but also don't want to ruin the surprise.

My one true hope is that you, the reader, end up enjoying it by the end, cause I know I'm enjoying writing it a lot and I want others to feel that joy as well!

Before I leave, here is some fun trivia!

1 - I wanted to change Marceus into Marcus because I was sick of auto-correct always giving me warnings to the name "Marceus". Also in regards to names, "Gambit of the living weapon" was titled like that because I wanted an easy name for people to find. I can count on my hand the number of stories that use the word "Gambit". As for "Living weapon", it's from iron fist. I'm not a huge iron fist fan, but I always loved this nickname, "the living weapon".

2 - Evlin was initially meant to be Marcus's sister. She was going to be Marceus's memories while Marcus was Marceus's body. Get it? She was the missing "e" that would combine with "Marcus" and make Marceus! This idea was discarded after I realized that it felt too much like the kind of stupidity you would find in a kingdom hearts game.

3 - Evlin is a combination of two characters I love from the novel Jobless reincarnation. Her combat style being earth-based is a reference to Rudeus Greyrat, while the idea of her being a lost girl in a fantasy world trying to return is based on his companion Nanahoshi.

4 - Auren was going to die at the end of volume 5 because I felt like he was turning into a character with very little relevance. He was going to sacrifice himself by overusing his power so much that he would die so Ria could live. I thought about it and felt it was kinda cowardly of me to get rid of a character just because I didn't know what to do with him. I decided to try harder and just boost his relevance by giving him and Ria a new power.

5 - Marcus was meant to be a secondary protagonist of the novel, and we were supposed to be alternating between his life and Evlin's life, but writing Evlin is just so much fun that I kinda sorta forgot about Marcus... Ops...

6 - I hade no idea what Ashley was supposed to look like for the longest time... One day I just gave up and gave her a red bob hair.

7 - Ria's wind-scar ability is named from an old show I used to watch called Inuyasha.

8 - Lilith's future sight skill is based on the fox girl from the novel "The wrong way of using healing magic" where she uses this ability to dodge attacks from a vampire that is part of her group that always picks fights with her. This is a very underrated isekai btw...

9 - In case this matters to anyone, yes, Evlin is catholic, and I always wanted to see a normal catholic person in manga since they always treat this kind of character as if they were obsessed with their religion to the point where they are crazy or something. I got inspired by nightcrawler from X-Men, who's the only time I ever saw a cool catholic character in a kid's show.

10 - The final trivia fact, and probably the biggest one. I don't know how the series will end. I have many ideas in mind but, heck, I was planning to end this on volume 1 and look how that turned out... The original plot was going to be about the cast going around looking for Marcus and the challenges they would face on the way. But again.. I just got too addicted to Evlin and totally forgot about Marcus... I forgot my own premise!!! So I'm just letting the story write itself at this point.

Before I'm done, in case people are curious about the demon kingdom saga, here's a tiny spoiler for future volumes... The characters will plan a Halloween party. And yes! I am dead serious!