By Fujino Omori and nilitsu. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka? Shohenshu” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

Oh goody, another short story collection, the first of two that have been given fancier names to disguise the fact that this is a collection of extra stories mostly written for bookstore exclusives, which means by definition that all of them, with one or two exceptions, not only cannot impact the ongoing narrative but cannot impact any of the character arcs. That said, I am always grateful that we get these anyway, as it’s nice to see the little content that Japanese readers got when they bought the volume at Toranoana, Animate, or Gamers. What’s more, fans of the harem aspect of this series, which usually takes a backseat in the main series to the ongoing “series of fights to the death” plot, will be eating well here. Everyone loves Bell and knows it (except Aiz), and Bell is clueless to everyone’s love but loves Aiz (who is clueless towards him). It’s in the title of the franchise!

Trying to summarize all of these would be impossible – most of them only run two pages or so. They take place over the course of Vol. 1-18 of the main series. Some of the ones that are longer than two pages include Eina and Bell’s first meeting, Hestia trying to be Bell’s supporter in the dungeon, a story taking place right after Bell first starts to become famous and shows off his growth as the smith who made his first knife asks if he can put it in his “hall of fame” section, after Vol. 6, Hestia tries another ball to try to dance with Bell, but it proves very difficult; Fels watches over Hestia Familia during the Xenos arc, and keeps a diary of what they are seeing – which quickly turns into a confessional of a sort, Cassandra makes another effort to get people to believe her right before the disaster that sends Bell and Lyu to the deep levels, Lyu and Bell are forced to drink slimes to survive in the dungeon, and three more that I’ll talk about below.

The three stories that work best here are the ones that actually *are* able to do something with character development. They all take place during the “Freya” arc of the series. Bell is going through enforced date training so he can go out with Syr, and as part of it rescues an Elf in Hermes Familia and tries to be suave as he was taught. It works far, far too well. In the second, we get the POV of Horn during the time when Bell is staying with Freya Familia and she’s manipulating everyone’s memories, which shows both Freya’s guilt and angst over her lot in love as well as her massive tsundere nature over Bell; and in the final, funniest story, Laurier does her own character poll of everyone in Orario, and runs into Horn, who is at loose ends after Freya’s fall. The cat fight they both get into, with Laurier praising Bell so much it makes you sick, and Horn tearing him down as much as possible, is simply fantastic.

That said, overall.. this is a short story collection. For fans only. Join us soon for Vol. 2, which has all the store giveaway stories for Sword Oratoria.