Sword Art Online - Volume 1 - Aincrad (36 page)

But because of my weak personality, I couldn’t erase the whole manuscript and simply thought “why don’t I post this up on the internet then?”; I made a website that fall. Luckily I was able to receive good responses from a lot of people. With this as my motivation, I kept on going with the series; I wrote a sequel, a side-story, and then another sequel. I carried on like this and before I knew it, six years had already passed.

It was 2008 when I decided to try again. I wrote another story (which was once again far longer than the cutline, but I barely managed to trim it down to 120 pages) and then entered it to the Dengeki Light Novel Award. Thanks to some overwhelming good luck, I managed to receive the grand prize. But my luck didn’t just end there. I still can’t forget the happiness and excitement I felt when my editor read the that I kept stacking up thoughtlessly.

It was true that I felt a little anxious as well. That was because there were so many problems with this story that I can’t even begin to list them here. The biggest reason was my hesitation about “is it really alright to take everything I wrote up and just publish them?”

But the reason I managed to reach the decision to publish this was because the timing was so good: I had just finished writing, society had just started to become publicly aware of online games, and most of all thanks to Miki Kazuma-san (I was shocked by how he managed to get through my manuscript even with his busy schedule). I would never have been able to get this story published if it wasn’t for these reasons. But if I didn’t seize this lucky chain of events I would never be a gamer
…
I mean author! That was the conclusion I reached and I was finally able to get published on paper.

This story was the starting point for me, who kept writing with the theme “isn’t an online game also another reality?” I hope I would be able to reach the end of this road with all of you readers.

I offer my sincere thanks to Abec-san, who managed to color this story with countless great designs and draw the characters who fought here so vividly despite the difficult setting of ‘a near-future virtual reality fantasy game’, and also to my editor Miki-san, who thoroughly read my problem-ridden draft and managed to give a new life to this story.

Also, I would like to thank all the people who urged me on for so long while reading on my site. If it wasn’t for your encouragement, would never have been able to come out into this world, let alone this book.

And finally, I offer my greatest thanks to everyone who read this book until the end!

January 28th 2009, Kawahara Reki.