Hello! This is Stella Procella! ☆

Whether you've been following all the updates for a while, or read everything in one go, I'm glad to know you made it this far!

Unlike the first volume, I hope this one was a much different experience. While the first one focused more on introducing characters and the overall setting, I guess you could say it was a little all over the place. Although, if you were to go back to the first volume now, I'm sure the experience will be different, and the more the story progresses, the more it might change! That's the kind of experience that I was aiming for.

Anyway, let's talk about volume two! I wanted to focus on re-introducing some characters that were only briefly touched upon before, like Elizabelle and Estelle. This time, I went deeper into the fantasy elements and different powers that Scarlet Finale! has to offer. Since the very first power with a proper name displayed was that of Alchemy, I wonder if anyone thought that this would be a series that would focus exclusively on that. Instead, powers like Elizabelle's Alchemy and May's Technology are just different supernatural abilities that just happened to make their way into the city. While they aren't the main focus, I hope you look forward to seeing different kinds of powers like that appear. Since Noa is learning Alchemy from Elizabelle, I wonder what her actual powers are, huh?

I also wanted this volume to focus more on Wish and her side of the story. I can't deny that Mirage stole the spotlight quite a bit as well, and even though Wish and Faith are supposed to be the protagonists, Mirage can fit that role just as well, doesn't she? The "dual-protagonist" bit is starting to feel like false advertisement now haha, but that's just the kind of thing the existence of an irregular does, and maybe one day she can shine as a proper hero. Introducing Mirage was especially fun since there have been faint traces of her presence from the very start. In the end, however, Wish and Mirage's stories are deeply connected, so it felt better to do it this way. I hope you liked learning more about both of them.

I think it's easy to get the impression that Wish is a super strong person who can do anything, but she is far from perfect, and she really wouldn't have been able to make it this far on her own. From World End to Starlight Burst, a really important key element to Wish's character is connections, and I wanted that to be reflected in this volume as she built up connections with others or fought to save a breaking one.

With Mirage's introduction, I was also able to introduce the main ability that is the actual focus of this story, the Velvet Burst. At first, I was a little nervous and thought I was making all the mechanics behind Velvet Burst too complicated, and that's why I may have dropped quite a bit of exposition or explanation more than once. I hope you forgive me if the explanations felt too repetitive and oversaturated. Still, while I'm sure some people can get it fast, I wanted to make sure no one would get lost along the way. You can definitely look forward to seeing way more depth to this ability as well!

Ah, but you know? If Mirage's Phantasmagoria doesn't create illusions and instead reveals different aspects of the world, was everything we saw a real part of the world after all? I wonder what the world really is and how it looks through her eyes.

As for the events of the epilogue, while the Organization of Hope was a big threat, that's just the surface of the malevolence lurking in the city. After all, sins aren't the only impurities that corrupted humanity.