- #1
A story about an immortal teenager who has stayed away from civilization for thousands of years, missing all of the world-changing events that occurred during that time (this is important to know). One day he and his talking dog companion decides to go on an adventure, and through a combination of legit skill, ancient knowledge, dumb luck, and sticking their noses where they shouldn't be, they end being selected by various entities to play a key role in what seems to be a new set of world-changing events. The story also gives substantial focus to a handful of other key characters, who have their own goals and development arcs separate from the main duo.The text is written mostly in first-person, with a few sections shifting to third-person. The relatively simplistic level of linguistic depth feels alright for the story and tone it's going for, but can sometimes feel incomplete or abrupt with how fast it switches conversation topics. The comedy can feel inappropriately timed in some serious moments, but most of the time they can give me a good chuckle. The real meat of the story seems to start at around chapter 130, with the chapters before it being minor conflict with set-up for various key characters, world building, and build-up to the actual overarching conflict.I've read all chapters translated to English so far and compared some notable moments with the original Japanese web novel. I'd say the translation by group "Divine Dao Library" is well-done for the most part. Removal of honorifics is handled well, with characters' speech tones still feeling appropriate considering their relationships. Terminology is almost always consistent, it's mostly easy to distinguish who's talking at who during long dialogue strings, and emotional impact of key scenes seem to be retained (... which means the cringy scenes are as cringy as they were originally too).Don't bother with the older translation by group "Estelion's Secret Imouto" by the way. When comparing their translation to the newer one, it's clear that they barely even understood the text and their English was totally broken... that or they were using Google Translate. They also put the dialogue into the manga adaptation's panels for some reason, which makes it extremely jarring to read and wastes internet data to load their webpages.Speaking of which, the novel ('s published version) has a manga adaptation with excellent art and covers almost every detail and line of dialogue. It's pretty slow, being barely into the content of the second major story arc, but I recommend reading it as well.
