Danmachi: Westward Cloud [Complete]

Hello! I am the author NotOriginal.

It has been a long or I guess rather short journey here given how I released the chapters. I surprised myself by how long this novel became.

Anyway.

I first began to write this series on April 12, 2021, and didn't publish until March 8th, 2022. By then I had a massive stockpile of chapters and still do but life and procrastination had slowed my writing. The Covid Pandemic really helped in making more chapters. Ultimately I wanted to finish Westward Cloud and not just leave it abandoned, so I rewrote a majority of the volume to adjust it and to this day I am still editing it. I did it as, like many of you reading it know the feeling of a story being dropped and never having a conclusion. (Look I know I left like a pretty big plot thread remaining!)

There will only be a single plot thread left in the series and I planned on having it be resolved in the sequel, but currently as of writing this it would probably not be completed, but much like Westward Cloud when I do publish it on this site, Scribble Hub, it will more or less will be complete, so when I publish it you guys will know it will be finished and not just never updated like several of series you all probably read and wish they would return.

Some stuff about the sequel is that it’s main character will be a shared one of Hakushika, Callisto, Auberon, and Alise. The sequel will also be rather long as I do not wanna just time skip so much as I did with this final volume so the kids will be growing up as the story progresses. It will also take place right after Quest 386.

Some other last thoughts:

Originally volume 4 was not the final volume, it would have at least gone up to 6 volumes. By the 5th volume I had grown tired of writing Westward Cloud, or more specially DanMachi. It’s like doing a project you were really interesting and excited to be doing but the more you do it the less fun until it becomes no longer becomes fun but a chore, a job.

But over time I have grown to really like Danmachi’s world, I have several ideas I wanna write about but when I began to write about them I thought of ideas for Westward Cloud and then I just begin editing and writing more for the story. Then the stories I was writing were kinda left dead in the water, ready to be revisited one day… probably never to see the light of day. Thus why I am ending it at the 4th volume as it was the end of Cirrus’ story, he was the Westward Cloud.

I kinda do wanna talk about some other stuff such as the last plot thread in the story, the Dungeon Spirits. But before that you have to know that this story is inspired from several other works, more predominantly Heracles and Orion, the Greek heroes, (Orion I guess is a hero from the Greek sense of things apparently?). I thought DanMachi is the prefect place to make a character that follows the story, more or less, of Heracles! Which leads me to something else, Cirrus.

To my surprise the stories of Heracles and Orion mesh pretty damn well. The other work was Jobless Reincarnation (Mushoku Tensei), I wanted the character to age as the story goes on and I found that to be something I enjoyed Jobless Reincarnation for. I don’t wanna get into it with that series, but it did have a influence in how Cirrus progress from a average guy who thought his experience from our modern world were enough to let him keep his moral superiority. I mean war and murder? We see that shit everywhere it’s not so scary! That was a surface thought I had but the more I thought on it no one but those who experienced it knows what it is like. I would see before and after pictures of solders and you can see a kind of innocence on their faces but when they came back it’s replaced with these like dark sunken eyes that have seen horrors that only those who fought by their sides will truly know and get.

I wanted Cirrus to be as much human as I can. From his early experiences and especially after the Kaios Desert he spoke with a lot more profanity, his way to cope a bit. As the story goes on he slowly tones down it as he slowly gets use to the things he’s done. As “justifiable” as one could see it they did not sit well with Cirrus’ modern sensibilities. He knew when he killed his first person it was justifiable to him, the guy was killing other people after all. My other point for him going through this is to separate him a bit more from every other Isekai Protag as his actions brings him closer to the world he is in but further away from who he was before. Like he has burned his bridge and now even if he could return back to his home world he would be out of place.

He also had the brain of a child so that also compounded the whole experience. (Fun fact, the guy who was Cirrus’ first kill, Briareus was named after one of the Hecatoncheires of Greek myth.)

So the Dungeon Spirits, I kinda always planned for them to be dealt with by Cirrus' kids as I planned to let Cirrus simply just... die. He doesn't become a god he just stays in heaven in peace. And as I said before I wanted Cirrus to be as human as I can and what's more human than having some last regrets? But yeah, the Dungeon Spirits will be handled in the sequel.

Sidenote: I wounder if any of you knew that the volumes all end at 99 chapters? I know the amount within a volume add up more than 99 but the main numbers chapters are set in the same way as the leveling in Danmachi, 0-99, 100-199, 200-299, then 300 to 386. I did wish to end the volume at 399 but I thought it fit that since Cirrus or well Elysium now, no longer has a Status and with some stuff that needs to be finished, that the volume doesn’t really reach the next rank.

Extra sidenote: I don't know where to put this but these are some notes I made for the Knights of Elysium.

But I uh… I guess that’s about all I kinda wanted to say.

All I have left to say is:

Thank you, everyone! Thank you for reading all the way up to the end of Cirrus’ story! Those who has favorited and commented or just in general stuck around for this long, thank you guys so much it makes me happy that I made something that so many people enjoyed!

Take care, everyone!! I mean it from the bottom of my heart! Keep safe and be healthy! I don’t know when or if the sequel will come out but if it gives you some hope for the future as if writing this I have about 101 chapters written, it is undergoing more editing and writing so that number will grow even more.

Okay but seriously see you guys! Farewell! I’m pretty sure we will meet again! If you guys have any questions I’ll try and answer them in the comments!