Accel World - Volume 17 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

It’s been a while. Reki Kawahara here. Thank you so much for reading Accel World 17: Cradle of Stars.

To start, I sincerely apologize that it’s been eight months since Volume 16. I had other books come out, but the power of the universe was at work here…But given that this volume ends with a smart “to be continued,” I would like to bring the next volume to you as soon as possible! Yes!

And please allow me to explain one more point. In this Volume 17, in addition to the main story, there is the short story “Two Black Swords, Two Silver Wings.” This was something I wrote as a special bonus for the first Blu-ray and DVD of the TV anime Accel World, and since a lot of the details are the foundation for Volume 17, I thought it might be fun to read them at the same time, so I put it together like this. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in allowing me to do this. And once again, I thank all of you who bought the Blu-ray and DVD from the bottom of my heart! Thank you so much!

Just a little further to go in the main story. In this volume, the name Shibuya Ravine Square comes up as a large-scale commercial facility near Shibuya Station. This is as of 2014 a redevelopment plan that will go ahead with construction aiming to open in six years’ time, but as of the current moment, the name of the facility has not been decided. At present, the name of the main building is Shibuya Station Area East Wing, and I had the thought that at some point in the future, this will turn into Something-Something Hills or Something-Something Tower, so I simply went ahead on my own and named the building Ravine Tower and the entire facility Ravine Square in the Accel universe. If you are reading this book in 2020, you are likely thinking, The name of the building’s wrong! but this is the situation, so please forgive me!

As for the story itself, the incident with Chocolat Puppeter and her comrades, who first appeared in Volume 12, is fairly big. So that happened. They still haven’t met Haruyuki in the real, but I think at some point, they will, so I’m looking forward to writing Chocolat and her friends in the real world. Once again, I must thank Nagomi Ikuya for entering the avatar contest.

We are moving forward with giga-maximum danger, and I have caused only serious trouble for my editor Miki and illustrator HIMA. I’ll tera-fight next time!

Reki Kawahara

On a certain day in September 2014