Talk:Web Novel/@comment-46724165-20200902032849/@comment-35168958-20200902052912

The Webnovel (WN) is the original format published by the author in a web page (in this case syosetu.com), is only text published in chapters (short to long duration) whenever he want and only the author is involucred in his work, various other popular series started in this format (Like Tate, Slime tensei, overlord, Kono subarashi, Re zero....)

The light novel (LN) is published in a editorial, they publish the author WN in a book when they see that his work is interesting/popular and may sell, the LN is also text, but includes illustrations. Commonly the LN fix some gramatical issues, fill plotholes, add content (new side stories of some characters, expanding scenes that where short in the WN....) or cut/change content (cut redundant info, change how was developed some scenes....). sometimes the plot may greatly change between the WN/LN version (this is not the case of Mushoku tensei)

In few words, the WN and LN are the same, because is a text series the WN is the original work and may be considered as the draft of the LN, because the LN is more polished and complete. in the case of Mushoku, the LN mostly expand the content of the WN without having any major change of the plot, and you can read the WN without missing much