The Survival Logs || Sword Art Online Fanfic

PK Pandemonia Arc: Chapter 86 - War Signal

27 February 2024

Katalysis, 43rd Floor

As large as one thought the canyon surrounding the city of Katalysis would be, it still only took up one-sixth of the entire area of the 43rd Floor.

In terms of area, the Floor was just like any other Floor from the 41st to the 50th Floor, though one could simply notice from the system maps that each Floor was a teeny bit larger than the next, but of course, that didn't matter at all.

Case in point, the city was originally just an open space scattered with building ruins, spanning around 10 kilometres in diameter, which was surprisingly larger than most cites designated as safe zones by the system.

That is, assuming my theory of the origin of Katalysis turned out to be true, but I wasn't going out of my way to desperately prove its credibility.

Saving Rakuno was the priority, along with investigating the city. Though, I'd felt that I'd have found out more than enough about this city already.

Aside from a few holes in the narrative that I still need to fill, the narrative about the city of Katalysis was adequate for me to take the next course of action into motion.

The night had just turned young.

With a simple torch in hand, I carried on up the stairs leading to the South Roofpost, the resounding sounds of my boots landing on every alternate step doing nothing to make the pitch black atmosphere any better.

When I'd noticed the moonlight and stepped out into the Roofpost, it was just as I had remembered it a couple of days ago.

I went to the barrier again, taking in the city view. I could become addicted to it. I wanted to, but it's definitely a bad time to do so.

At least there's that record crystal tucked away in my inventory. A pretty good souvenir, if I do say so myself.

I focused my vision onto the top of the canyon walls, which were the other Roofposts. The North, East and West Roofposts showed no signs of anyone at the moment, which was to be expected.

I turned my vision to scan the foot of the canyon walls, tracing the perimeter of the walls until I found the only gap breaking the wall into 2. Players were flowing through the gap in either direction, and the traffic had not subsided yet.

The gap was somewhere below the East Roofpost. Seeing that that was the case, I started off along the path on the walls to make a beeline to it.

When I could finally see that I was right above the gap, I stopped, and looked over the maze on the other side. There was nothing much to be seen from the angle above, but I clearly knew--or rather expected--that that wasn't the case at all.

I brought down my menu, accessed my inventory, and tapped on an icon with the shape of a bow. I then tapped the equipped slot that had the icon of a sword in it, and that icon was replaced with the bow.

The sheathe of the sword behind my back was replaced with a bow's, and I took it out of its sheathe carefully. It was bow with white and light golden decorations carved into it. Its weapon name: Arch Diviner.

A bow that was crafted using Dragon Slayer, the bow that I had previously, as one of its crafting ingredients. It was essentially a bow made from recycled weapons, much like I usually did with my spears.

After making sure that I was above the gap, I laid down at the spot I was standing on, facing the giant ceiling that was supporting the 44th Floor above.

Holding my bow up to aim at the ceiling, I stretched its string, which generated an arrow nocked readily.

I took a slow and deep breath, and let it out just as slowly. My hand pulling the arrow shivered a little.