File:Ni r36.jpg

Summary
"''The rough for Volume 9 1C 4 aka Volume 9’s fourth monochrome illustration. I originally imagined the scene at dusk or sunset like a Western shootout, but I changed it to night because I’d overlooked the fact that the text said it was at night. All of Volume 9’s 1C illustrations were double-page spreads, but that was partially to reduce the number of illustrations due to lack of time (there are normally 8 and Volume 9 had 5). It’s also a remnant of a half-joking (although surprisingly serious) suggestion of mine to have four consecutive double-page spreads with the thrown Gungnir destroying the “world” over all eight pages. If that had actually been used, none of the other scenes in the novel would have gotten a single illustration and there would have been 8 consecutive pages of illustrations right after Gungnir was thrown at the end. Looking back, that would have been a bit much. Yeah."''―Kiyotaka Haimura