Sword Art Online - Volume 23 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

Thank you for reading Sword Art Online 23: Unital Ring II.

First off, I’d like to apologize for the strange publishing structure, that after Volume 21, Unital Ring I, Volume 22 was Kiss and Fly, only to continue with Unital Ring II here. We considered making Kiss and Fly a standalone short story collection so that this book could be Volume 22, but since Volumes 2 and 8 are also collections, I couldn’t help but want to preserve that consistency with the series. Sorry about the interruption!

Anyway…it’s taken a year, but here is the continuation of the Unital Ring arc. The last one ended with the production of iron, so I wanted our goal at the end of this book to be getting the whole group back together, but to my surprise, we shot past that right into creating a town. But only in the sense of clearing the land and putting down buildings. How Kirito and friends will function as a town and what that will mean for getting ahead in the game is something I’d like to elaborate upon in the next volume.

I wrote this volume in August and September 2019, for the most part, but at the time in the anime, the latter half of the Alicization season, the War of the Underworld, was just getting started. In that part of the story, Alice was tucked away in the distant Rulid Village, taking care of Kirito in his comatose state, working as a lumberjack to make a living, and chasing off Eldrie. I couldn’t help but be aware of the huge gap between Alice there and in the Unital Ring arc! However, on the inside, she’s just the same as she was in the Underworld: always giving everything she’s got. That mental strength will make her a pillar of Kirito’s team going forward, I’m sure.

And with the introduction of that bespectacled fellow at the very end, it sure feels like the Underworld is going to get involved in the story again! What’s going on in the human realm and the dark realm? I’m curious to find out, too, so I’m hoping to be able to depict that next time. But the world of Unital Ring demands constant attention, so we’ll just have to see if that happens. I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t take an entire year for the next book!

On the personal side, for the first time in about five years, I’m back on my bicycle. The first time I tried to climb the side of a riverbed, my legs screamed bloody murder at me, but after a few months, I can make it up without losing much speed at all. The human body is a wonder. I’d like to keep up with that habit. Also, my schedule getting crunched to the last minute had nothing to do with my bicycle; it was simply the laws of the universe at work. I’m sorry, editor and abec!

Reki Kawahara—October 2019