Hey everyone,
I'm surprised that I haven't written a foreword for this novel yet, despite how much I love writing these. I guess the life of this book has been rocky ever since the beginning, so I never really got around to it, but I'm finally coming back and writing this long-overdue author's note.
I'll preface this by saying, yes, this was inspired by Classroom of the Elite (you don't need to keep telling me). However, it's not just a carbon copy. You should be able to tell by reading it, so I don't need to go into detail here. And yes, this is MY novel, not a reupload of someone else's... sigh.
I don't have much to say regarding the content of this novel. It's meant to be surprising, so it's better if you just went through it blind than whatever plot outline I could give here.
***
I do want to talk about the nature of this novel, though.
Firstly, this style of this novel has never been prevalent on Webnovel. I've always been pretty unsure of how this would perform. I've written quite a few others with similar protagonists but in the fantasy/system genres. As such, when I began posting this, I didn't have high hopes.
However, it seemed that it was doing quite well despite my expectations, so that's good, I guess.
Whilst many of my most popular books have not been in this genre, writing stories about manipulation and utopian high schools has always been something I enjoyed. The first viable story I ever wrote was actually very similar to this (Apathy at Gifted Academy), although it was definitely lacking in terms of character depth and development.
In between, I've published My OP Minion System (which is a book I hate to this day) and two other system novels. Honestly, if you were to go and read My OP Minion System, you wouldn't even be able to tell that we were the same writer. The writing style for that novel was very different and lacked anything that is unique about my voice.
Still, to this day, it's my most popular novel, and I'm not proud of it. I'm hoping that this novel will one day overtake it~.
In terms of potential for this book, I'm hoping that the fact that it's so unique on Webnovel will be the deciding factor in helping it reach the top. I don't think there's another novel on here that's got the same setting and concept. Still, it's very hard to predict with these things, and it mostly just comes down to time and luck.
I've never been an avid enjoyer of Webnovels myself, usually since I can't get engaged by the fantasy plots and (sometimes) god-awful writing. I usually just read Japanese light novels and manga—hence the style of this book is much more resembling of them than the traditional Webnovel style.
In terms of web novels I've genuinely liked, I'd say that Supersession's 'Gifted Education Project' and 'Why I Write' are some of my only ones—on Honeyfeed. He engages similar themes to me but has a very very different voice (you'd understand if you took a look). It's a type of voice that I've seen a few times on Webnovel but never in the context of his settings, so it's pretty interesting. I find it hard to read at times (since it's so abstract...) but his stories are definitely fun.
***
Anyways, that's enough rambling from me.
This is the story of Mizuhara Ayato.