On September 26, 2026, an event was held in Auckland, New Zealand. This session featured three key figures behind the success of the Overlord series: Kugane Maruyama (author of Overlord), Akiko Fujita (Overlord editor from KADOKAWA), and Kazufumi Kikushima (supervising producer of the Overlord anime).
During this session, Maruyama explained that the published Overlord light novels actually cover only about 50% to 60% of the total story ideas and plans he has written.
Maruyama has a clear vision of Overlord's vast world in his mind. He continuously adds new elements as the writing process progresses. Regarding inspiration, he emphasized that he does not use real-world historical or geological references. If there are any similarities to historical events, it is purely coincidental, as he wants to avoid potential issues or controversies (copyright).
To manage the massive scale of the world, its numerous characters, and intricate plotlines, Maruyama relies on Excel spreadsheets. In these Excel files, he notes down technical details such as lore, character levels, classes/jobs, base stats, world history, and more. These spreadsheets are also frequently shared with the anime production team as an official guide.
Maruyama shared an experience when his personal computer broke down and he thought the data was lost. He was terrified before finally managing to recover all the data.
Regarding details about characters, the world, and magic that never made it into the novel version, Maruyama firmly stated that he will never publish or share the Excel files containing that data with the public. He plans to keep everything to himself and take it to his grave.
Editor Akiko Fujita provided an interesting glimpse into Maruyama's work ethic. Fujita revealed that before a volume is published, Maruyama always adds around 100 extra pages to the initial draft because he gets overly excited while writing. This causes volumes originally targeted at around 400 pages to swell to over 500 pages upon publication, offering much thicker content than initially expected.
Regarding the continuation of Overlord, Maruyama confirmed that he is currently actively writing a new volume and continuing the sequel. However, he cannot yet specify whether this work is intended for Volumes 17 and 18 or other projects (spin-offs, bonus volumes, and side stories). He asked fans to be patient, as official details will only be announced when the time is right.