Accel World - Volume 25 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

Thank you for reading Accel World 25: Deity of Demise. Again, I made you wait an entire year after the previous volume. My gratitude is boundless to those of you who continue to follow this story despite this. Again, I say to you: Thank you so much!

(From here, I do go deeply into the details of this book, so please be careful if you haven’t read it yet!)

With this volume, the long, ongoing White Legion arc ends for now, and the Seven Arcs storyline will begin in the next volume. Errr, the Incarnate System arc ended in Volume 16 and the White Legion story began in Volume 17, so it has taken nine volumes, then. I feel that Haruyuki and the others have really fought so hard! They fought hard, but in the very last moment, Big Sister was just a cut above and so it comes to this…But I do wonder if Cosmos will really be all right letting these two into her Legion! No matter where Haruyuki goes, he is still Haruyuki, after all.

I wrote this volume in the spring of 2020, and the writing environment—or rather all of society—was turned on its head, so I did have a fairly difficult time. To start with, I couldn’t go to my main place of work—the family restaurant! Naturally, I have worked at home, but for twenty years, I’ve been writing in local family restaurants, so if we say that my writing has five gears, then I was in third once I was in my home. Not to mention the frequent stalling of the engine. Left with no other options, I tried to set up a workplace outside my house, but in the end, there was the same lack of a sense of being far enough away! This was the conclusion…Currently, the plan is for me to borrow a desk at the office of a straight-edge punk who does management for me, but as to whether or not I’ll be able to write in a situation where my editor is within my field of view…(sweats)

Before the coronavirus situation, my writing environment was a bit of an issue, and there was talk of where the entertainment industry and thus society as a whole was going. I think that everyday life won’t be going back to pre-COVID times for the time being, or even ever, if we blunder too badly. In the sense of a measure to prevent infection, the full-dive technology does have a pleasant ring to it, so I’m simply praying that someone hurries to develop it. I’m sure that all of you are also currently living with a variety of stressors at the moment, so I’d be delighted if this book could be a momentary balm for your soul.

Given the situation, this volume made impressive progress to the Tezcatlipoca level. My sincerest thanks to my editors Miki and Adachi, and to HIMA, who continues to draw the illustrations with full Incarnate despite the leisurely pace of one book a year! All right, I’ll see you in the next volume!

Reki Kawahara

On a certain day in June 2020