The Survival Logs || Sword Art Online Fanfic

PK Pandemonia Arc: Chapter 95 - Aftermath

28 February 2024

Katalysis, 43rd Floor

A full day was all it took for the city of Katalysis to be turned into a ghost town.

Never will there be a time when those streets be filled with players bustling through, nor those canyon-made buildings be inhabited by anyone anymore.

To me, the city was gradually becoming a place akin to a tourist site.

The KoB instantly took control of the city the moment the invasion became a success. The captured orange players were taken away one by one, with the help of players from a few other guilds involved in the invasion.

The punishment for these players was simple: to be thrown into the Black Iron Castle located all the way down at the 1st Floor, where they will never see the light of day (until SAO gets cleared, that is).

It was the only way to convict players without killing them, though if I were to choose between living in a cell in the Black Iron Castle and putting myself out of my misery, I would consider choosing the latter.

By the time Raku and I had seen Krieg off to what he would have called an 'indefinite period of investigation', it was already at an unholy timing of 3am. I definitely wasn't a fan of nocturnal timings, and neither was she.

Trudging out way back to the inn that we were staying in the city, which was entirely empty, we decided to sleep in the room Tekion and me were sharing. Raku entered my room without a second thought, and dropped her body onto the bed Tekion had been using.

She didn't even bother to change her clothes. My fatigue was consuming me as well, as my eyes drooped shut just as I was closing in onto the pillow of my own bed.

The next time I opened my eyes was sometime in the evening. Apparently, I had slept through the afternoon. And so did Raku, who was still lying on her bed. Maybe her fatigue was more severe than mine.

Trying to wake her up might be a waste of time (not to mention the possibility of the sexual harassment code triggering on me anyway). I decided to leave the inn for now to look at the aftermath of the city.

Oh, how empty the streets were now.

Except for a few KoB players roaming about, orange players were nowhere to be found. And though I didn't think that the KoB players would mistake me for an orange player, I deemed it best to steer clear of them for the time being.

It did feel great that nothing was happening in the city. Sometimes it takes literally nothing to make one happy that the fighting was finally over.

A message icon popped out, as I touched it in reflex, opening a message sent by Kira:

She's ready to talk. Be at the dungeons underneath the stadium in one hour. Don't be late.

Well, that's something to wake Raku up with.

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As expected, trying to wake Raku up using the right kind of motivation wasn't too hard at all.

Though that resulted in a slightly grumpy witch who looked like she could turn into a zombie at any second. As if the whole afternoon wasn't enough sleeping time for her.

Without the orange players who would've filled the streets to the brim at night, getting to the Gladiorium was looking to be faster than before.

"Hey." Raku had just snapped out of her drowsiness, as we were walking at a leisure pace towards the center of the city.

"Hmm?" I turned to her.

"What do you think of Tori?"

I pondered on that question for a while. Surely, if I had duelled Tori herself, I would've had a better answer to reply with.