Accel World - Volume 3 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

It’s been a while, or maybe this is your first time. Reki Kawahara here. Thank you for reading Accel World 3: The Twilight Marauder .

Accel World postures itself as a series of VR fighting game novels, but you can’t say that these are game novels in the strictest sense of the term. I think there are likely a good number of people who felt this with the first volume, because ambiguous things like battle cries and miracles transcend the presented game system. These are the sorts of things you must not have in a game novel, and I wanted from the bottom of my heart to avoid this sort of development if at all possible, but (LOL) when I’m writing, it ends up being this way for some reason.

This is probably because the question of whether a win in conformance with the system is really a win at all took up residence within me quite some time ago. In rock-paper-scissors, one side offers scissors, the other side offers rock and wins. Is that okay? This is the kind of question I’m stuck with. Like if you’re the hero (or if you’re the rival), you should just win with paper already (LOL).

 No, I’m aware that what I’m saying is absurd! A test incorporating such systemic indivisibility is the Incarnate System in this volume. This is an extremely ridiculous thing, made to cover up the ridiculousness of making the power of imagination or will an element of victory or defeat in a concrete game. But whether this story will be able to continue in the future as a game novel with this element, or if it will be thrown further into chaos…Either way, I hope you will continue to watch over it as long as you have the patience capacity for it! I would like that!

 If you just think it over, the only energy source that seems like it could possibly surpass the various systems in the real world—that is, the framework of common sense—is simply the power of imagination, isn’t it? This is a world where no matter which way you look, there’s a wall and again a wall, and all you can do is let out a sigh, but at any time, it is possible to fly past these with imagination. So I write something good like this, throw up a smoke screen, and muddle along.
 
 Once again, I have been greatly aided by the illustrator HIMA, whom I seriously intrude upon with design work for both the real-world and avatar versions every time a new character appears; and my editor Miki, who, as always, gives me her total focus to make the pinnacle of pessimism Haruyuki into something more like a hero.
 
 And to you reading this far, you have as much gratitude as my will is able to manifest!
 
 Reki Kawahara
 July 23, 2009