Any creative writing teacher worth their salt will tell you that a writer needs to know eighty percent more about the story's world than the reader does. The reason is that the author knowing all the details about their world allows them to write a story where everything makes sense, even if readers aren't privy to all the little bits and pieces. In the case of Fujino Ōmori's megaseries Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, it also allows for him to go back and fill in some of the missing bits and pieces about the characters and events.

This is the second volume of the series. The first, covered here, collected short stories elucidating characters and plot points from the main series. This second volume does the same for the Sword Oratoria series through volume twelve, as well as two volumes of the Familia Chronicle series, volume one of Episode Lyu and the Episode Freya book. While still interesting, there's more of a tight character focus, so liking Aiz, Lefiya, Loki, and Finn is a must–or at least a recommendation, because they get the bulk of the text.

Although I'm not all that keen on Lefiya (or Aiz or Loki, for that matter), it's still hard to deny that getting a bit more insight into her feelings about her self-proclaimed rivalry with Bell is a good thing. While Bell serves as an inspiration for many of the characters, it's rarely because someone despises him with the passion that Lefiya does, so there's a clear difference between her stories and everyone else's. Most importantly, these tales paint her as conflicted – she knows that Bell doesn't deserve her hate and that she's not viewing him fairly. But her feelings for Aiz are so strong that she really can't help herself, and that goes a long way to making her more understandable as a character.

Similarly, Aiz's conflicted feelings about Hestia Familia's captain do a lot to get underneath her unemotive façade. While I wouldn't say that Aiz is a cipher, she is a little inscrutable, even to herself, and it's that last bit that benefits the most from these stories. Aiz doesn't understand herself, having shoved away most of her emotions in her drive to succeed, and now that they're pushing their way back to the surface, she's baffled by them. Aiz has trained herself to see the world in black and white, but Bell is bringing out the shades of grey, and she's struggling with that. There isn't one specific story that shows this progression in the book; rather, it's a character development that builds over all of them. In this way, this collection does an excellent job of filling in the missing details from the Sword Oratoria novels, and it would be interesting and probably worthwhile to go back and reread them, inserting these short stories at the end to see how it all adds up to a better realized Aiz.

Some of the strongest pieces in the book play with the Amazon sisters, Tione and Tiona. (And my one major gripe about this volume is that sometimes the twins' names are swapped in what appears to be an accident. That's on Omori for giving them such similar names.) Tione's burning…something for Finn (I hesitate to call it love, although passion might work) is a constant issue for him and the greater Loki Familia, to the point where some of these stories show him taking specific evasive maneuvers to avoid her. This contrasts well with Tiona's burgeoning feelings for Bell. While we hardly needed another girl crushing on him, Tiona is a little different because she doesn't fully grasp what her emotions are. There's a strong implication that this is because her emotions are different from the way most of the other Amazons experience them, with Lena, who has a thing for Bete, coming the closest. While there's a mild sexual element to Tiona's interactions with Bell (mostly shown in the volume seven GAMERS store bonus, “Love is Felt in the Breast(s)”), there's still an innocence to their interactions that feels lacking in most of the other aspirants for Bell's heart. Even more importantly, Tiona's stories show the same fascination with old hero stories that Bell has, which I think makes a nice argument for them being at least good friends.

Despite the books mentioned in the table of contents stopping well short of the events of the War Game with Freya Familia/events of season five of the anime, familiarity with them will help with the Familia Chronicle tales. Syr plays a decently sized role in the Episode Lyu storiettes, while understanding Freya's oðr obsession makes both that and Episode Freya a bit clearer. The longest Episode Freya story is very dependent on having read that book, so consider this my umpteenth urging to include it in your DanMachi reading.

Minor Myths and Legends' second volume may not be quite as fascinating as the first, but it's still a very good read, and one that helps to fill out both Sword Oratoria and two of the Familia Chronicle books. It's an example of why those creative writing instructors are right when they tell you to know eighty percent more than your readers, because when you do, you have the space to provide little treats like these.