The Death Mage that doesn't want a fourth time

50 The battle against the Dragon Golem destroyed by the hero

Note from the translator:

There are two parts to this translator's note and I hope you can take the time to read both, even though it's a wall of text. The first is to do with the changes I made to the translation style last chapter, and the second is regarding sponsored chapters and donations.

Feedback to the changes introduced in the last chapter was mostly positive. I've seen some of the concerns that some readers have about the changes so I'll address them here.

Some seemed concerned that I'm basically adding certain words that are not there in the raw text. Yes, this is true, but I'm doing this all the time anyway. Why? Because it's necessary in English. In Japanese, subjects are often omitted, but they are crucial in English sentences. Here's a simple example.

Literal Japanese: Vandalieu stood up. Raised his hand.

Obviously, this makes no sense, so the simple correction is to add the pronoun "he":

Fixed English version: Vandalieu stood up. He raised his hand.

This is all well and good until you realize that in Japanese, there can be literally a dozen sentences or entire pages where a subject isn't mentioned. Using "He stood up. He raised his hand." does not work when Vandalieu's name was last mentioned a page ago. Thus, I insert "Vandalieu" or whatever name I need to every now and again to keep the subject clear. Technically, this isn't in the raw, but this information is implied.

In the same way, the character who is speaking is information implied in the raw that I am inserting into the text. In the vast majority of cases I'm simply replacing the (Vandalieu) that I used to use with "said/asked/replied Vandalieu." This makes sense in English and makes for smooth reading and this style lets me link narrative describing dialogue to the dialogue itself when it's present.

In both cases, I'm not changing the meaning of any sentences or adding any information that isn't known, so there shouldn't be any concern about that.

The real concern then is that I need to employ my own writing style to form the sentences. Some of you might think I suck at writing and prefer the Japanese square brackets and having the names in brackets following the dialogue lines. Some of you simply find it easier to read due to there being less text overall with the old way - I realize that these changes aren't friendly to those whose first language isn't English, and I apologize to those people. Some of you like the "light novel style". But as one of the other commenters said, the "light novel style" is nothing but an artifact of the translation process that doesn't need to be there.

I believe that the changes I made last chapter is a step forward to producing a higher-quality English translation. Overall, the strawpoll I posted in the previous chapter suggests that more people prefer the new way and my writing should improve over time as well.

As such, this new translation style will be permanent.

Now then, the second part of this long-ass translator's note: Sponsored chapters and donations. Thanks to the generous readers, there is a large number of sponsored chapters in the queue. I'm doing my best to do a chapter a day to get these chapters out for you guys to read!

I am increasing the donation box size for this series from $60 to $80 effective immediately. I'm sure this will disappoint some of you, but I'll put it simply: I've been considering doing this for a long time. Death Mage chapters are consistently 2-3 times the length of a Kuro no Maou chapter, which is $40 per sponsored chapter. Unfortunately, it's just not sustainable for me to translate Death Mage at $60 per sponsored chapter due to the length of the chapters themselves. I hope all readers and those of you who donated can understand this decision.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to give a HUGE thanks to all readers for your past and ongoing support. The translation of this series quite literally wouldn't happen without you.

Yoshi

Since Vandalieu's【Death-Attribute Mage】Job had reached level 100 after his sixth clearing of Borkus's Sub-Dragon Savannah, he headed for the Job-changing room in the Adventurers' Guild for the first time in over a year.