Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 4 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD 
Thank you for reading the fourth volume of Sword Art Online Progressive , “Scherzo of Deep Night.” 
Since I started the SAOP series by calling the first-floor story “Aria of a Starless Night,” I have named the various subtitles after the names of musical pieces. The “Scherzo” of the fifth floor means “joke” or “jest,” and refers to a piece of music that is fast and playful. There is a very famous scherzo called “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” You might have heard it in the Disney animated film Fantasia , but I personally feel that this song is well suited to the PK gang Laughing Coffin…The “Deep Night” descriptor was an attempt to represent the general mood of the fifth floor, but looking at it now, it comes across as rather juvenile ( laughs ). 

Anyways. In each volume of SAOP , I try to operate on a general theme. The theme of Volume 4 would be “the squirming of Laughing Coffin,” while the hidden theme would be “Kirito and Asuna’s relationship.” I intended to depict the plotting of Laughing Coffin (their name has not yet appeared in the story, of course), who will emerge from obscurity to lead a long, long fight against Kirito—while on the other hand, attempting to show the current relationship status of Asuna and Kirito, who have been temporary partners up through the fifth floor now. That was how the first half of this volume ended up being from Asuna’s viewpoint. As a matter of fact, I have a difficult time writing Kirito from the eyes of other characters (he tends to end up looking cooler than necessary), but I feel like Asuna provides the most natural view of him. Of course, he does inevitably end up preening here and there. 
In Kirito’s half of the story, I really delved into the boss fight for the first time since the second floor. I tried depicting not just a bunch of attack patterns, but the boss chamber’s tricks itself, and just coming up with the ideas really took it out of me ( laughs ). The designers who come up with real bosses in MMOs and the programmers who implement them into the game are something else, I tell you…Instead, you got the fifth-floor boss from the mind of an amateur; I hope you enjoyed it anyway. 
To my poor editor Mr. Miki and illustrator abec, who suffered through the most exquisitely terrible scheduling in Kawahara history, my deepest apologies! Mr. Miki’s own book comes out in Japan on December 10, the same day as this volume, and abec’s SAO art book will be released in January 2016! Please check them out if you get the chance!! 
Reki Kawahara—November 2015