Progressive volume 7 afterword

Afterword

Thank you for reading Sword Art Online Progressive 7 『Rhapsody of a Red Blaze (1/2)』.

First, I apologise for choosing to do a two-parter arc after we already had one with the Floor Six Arc. When I began writing it, I had optimistic thoughts in mind: "Let's just write about casinos and beaches to bring this story to a smooth end in a single volume."; however, this was then followed by 'Ugh, we're taking quite a lot of time getting to that casino', then 'well, now we're here, but I smell a scheme in the air here', and then 'uh, I can't just leave the key that was stolen back in volume six unaddressed, now can I?', and so the book got very volume-y; by the time I realised this, I was already writing an email to my supervisor: "Two-parter arc please......".

The biggest reason why this story swelled up so much was, I guess, because I awfully enjoyed writing scenes about Kirito and Asuna travelling, fighting, and eating together, just the two of them... or so I feel. In the Unital Ring arc that's being released concurrently to Progressive, Kirito and Asuna have a ton of companions with them, and they do find themselves shoulering the leader roles for the attack squad and defence squad respectively, so there's practically no scene there with just the two of them working together, huh. Perhaps in reaction to this fact, I found myself unconsciously writing a ton of scenes with just the two of them in this volume...... but I do feel that it might be the true charm of the Progressive arc, thus I would be thrilled if my dear readers enjoyed it as well.

Now the story leads to finally delving into the depths of the scheme surrounding the casino...... at which point the "To be continued" tag rears its head, but I do, of course, plan to release the latter part of the arc as a consecutive release. I will do my best to get the volume out with as little of a gap as possible, thus I hope for just a little bit of patience till we get there. In the latter half of the arc, I believe all the characters will get their time to go wild, starting with Kizmel, of course, with whom the characters finally reunited, and also Argo, the other players, as well as the still-mystery-filled Nirunil-sama and the battle maid Kio, who didn't actually get to fight despite her position!



And speaking of Progressive! At the time of writing this afterword in January 2021, 『Sword Art Online Progresssitve the Movie: Aria of a Starless Night』 is going full throttle with its production. This book is coming out at a time where the release schedule for the movie may have already been announced, or it might not have been...... the rather precarious window for the book's release makes it hard to predict the outcome, but I can say that the story for the Floor One Clearing arc has been restructured to shine the spotlight on Asuna, thus I believe that neither those of you who have read the first SAOP novel, nor those who have only watched the first season of the TV anime will find it stale. I hope for your continued support on this front as well!



Lastly, to my illustrator abec-san, whom I forced into bad scheduling so early in the year, my supervisor Miki-san and Adachi-san, I am truly sorry! It seems that we'll continue to have tough days ahead of us this year as well, but let's overcome these troubles with our readers!

Kawahara Reki, on a certain day in January 2021