The Survival Logs || Sword Art Online Fanfic

Skill Research Arc: Chapter 25 - Sakura Entrance

21 June 2023

Sakura Plains, 32nd Floor

I swore that gate wasn't around the last time I visited the Sakura Plains.

But Argo had told me that it would be there, waiting in the centre of the hunting field.

I stopped in front of the gate and looked up at its red arch, which was shaped like a wide 'U', sitting on top of a horizontal bar connected by two poles literally rooted to the ground with the width of the pathway separating them apart.

I'd seen this tall gate before, not in this world, but in the real world. Taking a look right in front of it was a first for me, though.

And if I'm not wrong about that.....

Argo crossed the gate, unamused at the sight of it. I followed, having a tugging feeling that the gate would disappear sooner or later.

Catching up beside Argo, I looked around at my surroundings, as I always would.

The sakura blossom trees lining up the pathway on either side appeared the same as what the hunting field would look like. But I wasn't in the Sakura Plains right now. At least, that was what Argo told me last night.

We were in an instance, which was an area created by the system separately from the main Floor area to accommodate a special quest, such as a campaign, that a player would be doing. Simply speaking, if instances didn't exist, I might run into other players while doing a campaign quest, which might contradict the story plotline in that particular quest.

That was how I understood the concept, as the campaign quests in SAO always had some dramatic story plotline that would only involve the player doing the campaign in question. Everything that the player did in that campaign was supposedly done either with his companion NPCs, or by himself.

It wasn't like I never encountered an instance before. The forest elf camp in the Elf War campaign way back in the 3rd Floor was the very first instance I visited, though I didn't know that I was in a separate area at that time.

We finally reached another gate that had exactly the same design as the first one, but had an abnormal difference. The space of the shape made from the borders of the gate was filled with flowing energy, twirling around its centre in an unstable manner.

I silently tried to guess what I was seeing to the best of my ability. That looked like......some teleport gate from another dimension. Is that some kind of entrance?

"It's magic, in case yer wondering." Argo said. "One of the remnants of magic that still exists in this world. Yer might still remember, if yer still been studyin' on the lore of Aincrad, especially the part when the Great Separation happened."

"Huh....." I said. Of course I still recalled the Great Separation, but reading up on the details obviously wasn't on my priority list now.

Argo went through the gate and disappeared, using her arm to wave at me from the other side a second later. I stepped in, albeit being a bit apprehensive, and was enveloped in the colours of the warp gate.

On the other side, was the inside of a tunnel that led to an exit. I could see the exit, but it was too blinded with light to see anything further on.

Argo was already at the exit and had just went into the blinding light, and so I jogged to reach the exit as well. What I saw now was breathtakingly magnificent.

I was literally on a path attached to the inner wall of a gigantic cylindrical structure. There was no "cover" on top of the structure, so to speak, so sunlight was pouring into the big circular area at the bottom.