The Survival Logs: PK Pandemonia Arc: Chapter 79 - Skills and where (Not) to Find Them

Chapter 79 - Skills and where (Not) to Find Them

23 February 2024

Katalysis, 43rd Floor

I tried to step into Puma's bar as players flowed out its only door before I could even do so. I stepped aside without a choice instead, holding the door open as they strolled out without even a glance at the entrants beside them.

If this insignificant scene happened in a safe zone, I might have gotten some words of thanks. Either way, I would never give a shit about such redundant etiquette. Especially if I wanted to stay as just an ordinary face in the crowd.

That being said, trying not to stand out with Rakuno was simply a tall order. I mean, her pointed hat can do all the explaining for my claim.

As expected, the bar was only left with just Puma cleaning stuff up minutes before its closing time. Perfect timing.

"Well, if it isn't you lads," Puma never took her eyes off her chores even as we were practically in front of her. "Ain't a good time for a chat, eh?"

"Unless you still think you have customers to serve." I strolled to a seat at the corner of the bar.

"Servin' you lads' always been 24/7, lad." The bartender replied with a chuckle. "Though I do have many lads seekin' for my services, so it's fairly hard for you to book an appointment with yours truly."

"Do I dare to ask what services you have?" Rakuno asked with a slightly concerned expression.

"Depends on whatever yer thinking right now," Puma came over to our seats with a snigger. "I'm willin' to provide services of any kind, lad."

"Any kind, huh," I mumbled, bringing down my system menu as Rakuno instantly gave me a disgusted stare. Taking a tablet out from my inventory, I briefly returned a straight face stare at her before placing the object onto the long bar table.

"Somethin' about the Class Types, lad?" Puma eyed the contents of the tablet.

"Not really," I tapped the edge of the tablet lightly. "What I'm wondering is: Who makes these kinds of stuff?"

I gave her the very same question that I gave to anyone else for the whole afternoon. So far, I never had any answer. Not even a word.

The both of us stared at each other for a little while. Puma placed the glass that she had been cleaning with a cloth on the bar table.

"What a question you have there, lad."

"Is it weird enough? Or should I modify it to sound even weirder?"

I leaned a bit closer to her face. I had intended to use this kind of approach against Puma to get answers, especially since she knows me enough.

"Do you know anyone who possesses the Paper-making skill?"

Puma backed off from me a little, though she maintained her smile as she grabbed the glass and put it back onto the glasses shelf behind her.

"Yer getting more interesting every time you pay me a visit, lad."

I returned a smirk at her. "I'll do my best not to disappoint."

The only player that I knew of who could create 'Paper' in this world was the guild leader of the Gazette guild, as claimed by Jacelyn, a member who I was acquainted with as my Drifting client. The guild's participate in the publishing of the newspapers or magazines that they write, but none of them had the Paper-making skill.

"Well, yer given me a hard one right off the bat," Puma remarked. "The Paper-making skill--assuming it exists-- would definitely be a rare one to find in a player's skill slots. It's a non-combat skill, to say the least. Plus, yer talking as if yer believe that such a skill exists in the first place. Yers truly here's givin' you the benefit of the doubt."

"Please tell me that you think that it's sensible that this object is created by some method, at least." I tried to give her a logical point on the topic.

"I'll give yer that, lad," Puma replied. "But yer ain't got the proof that it's created by a player's skill."

It is natural that someone who doesn't know that something exists wouldn't know about how that thing in question is made. What baffled me was the lack of questioning about the origin of the 'Paper' that the players of Katalysis use every single day.

The lack of knowledge about the non-combat skills in the system had always been an issue with players. Since most of them contributed little to no help in combat, they would either be ignored or discarded by most mid to high levelled players, who were fighters who help in the cause of clearing the Floors.

"No luck with you as well, huh....." I gave a sigh. "I was hoping you'd know something more than just 'I didn't know it existed'....."

"If yer really need my take on this, I'd say that such a skill existing is possible to a certain extent," Puma reached for another glass to wipe. "Problem is, if you never saw the skill in action, you'd never believe that it exists."

I stood up gently from my seat as I pulled the hood of my coat to over my head. "Fair enough. Shouldn't bother you any further, I guess."

"No, not at all," The bartender waved. "Yer always welcome for another visit here."

I went to get the door, as the window showed a familiar but surprising group of players right outside. Holding Rakuno up for a while as she was leaving her seat, I waited for a while, staring at the door expectantly.

The leader of the Council, Tori, greeted herself in as she swung the door open into the bar. Well, her attitude already suggested that she would greet herself into any building she visits without any warning. I was simply lucky to notice that one coming.

"Ah, Tori! My finest lad! What brings yer here in this pretty humble-lookin' place?" Puma instantly slid along the bar table to greet her anyway.

Although Rakuno stood behind me at the time, I could hear her seat being knocked about, wobbling from the risk of toppling over.

"Just a break from work," Tori took her seat right in front of the bartender. "3 of the usual, please."

"Aye, lad." Puma's hands went nimble, sliding 3 glasses right in front of Tori and the seats that were beside hers.

The players who took those seats were Kira and another player who I never saw much, but could still , due to his pretty unique weapon.

He wasn't Shi the Reaper, but he's got a scythe for a weapon as well. The second player known to ever wield one, at least to my knowledge.

"Oh? You're that Vanguard I saw at that smithy. Such a coincidence." Tori turned to notice me. "You willing to the Council? We don't have anyone who's willing to start battles with a spear in their hands. Heck, none of us are spear s!"

"Forget it, Tori," Kira lifted the glass that Puma had just filled and took a considerable sip. "Considering your capabilities, we don't even need anyone else to become a Vanguard."

"But it makes the party feel more..... complete!" Tori took a gulp from hers. "By the way, I'm more of a Flanker than a Vanguard, strictly speaking."

"Then don't charge into anything that moves the next time we're out," Kira gave a little rant. "We're always trying to catch up to you, goddamnit."

Tori simply gave a chuckle, as she took another gulp. "That's the beauty of it."

For some reason, I didn't want to force myself into their conversation. Even though investigating the Council was my priority, investigating from this angle wasn't the best way to ultimately bring the Council down to its knees when the KoB's invasion starts.

Sometimes, opportunities aren't meant to be taken. They're meant to be considered worth taking. Besides, in this case, I did see this opportunity to talk to Tori as pretty risky in itself.

Apparently, Rakuno didn't quite think the same way.

The witch brushed past me and stood in front of Tori, holding out her hand.

"I'm Rakuno. The Katana Witch."

The Council Leader shook her hand almost immediately. "Tori. Just Tori. You look like you make a good DPS, but, ah, I guess we have too much of those in our party. Hahahahaha.....Hey, Acher, why don't you just chill a little and enjoy that? My treat, you know."

My eyes shifted to the scythe , who was completely ignoring his glass and eyeing on us, always with a face that's asking for a fight with anyone he looked at. His suspicion of me was clear, though I could assume that with the way I've seen him act so far, he's pretty suspicious of anyone outside of the Council.

In any case, this guy named Acher isn't a guy who looked like I could get along with.

"You left your 'Paper' over here, lad."

Puma was pointing at the object that I had forgotten to take on the bar table.

"Oh, um, thanks."

With a bit of awkwardness that I couldn't help having, I reached for the tablet, as Rakuno continued her conversation with Tori.

"So you guys run Katalysis, huh? It's my first time here."

"Indeed we do! This city is the haven for those who are just like us: rejected by the system for not following its rules. Don't you feel like a criminal with that orange cursor on you?"

"Um, yeah, sure, I guess....."

Is this woman lowkey preaching about the city? Maybe the more politically correct term would be 'advocating'. Though, she is the leader of the Council. Trying to justify the existence of Katalysis would naturally be part of her job.

"Doesn't it feel so frustrating? The fact that you could be simply BANNED for even inflicting a little stab onto a fellow player. You might as well live out in the dungeons instead of begging the system to let you into the safe zones."

"Oh, oh yeah! It's never fun trying to get in."

"The system discriminates, unfortunately. The more times you get orange cursors, the longer you're ostracised from safe zone communities. Frustrating, isn't it? This orange cursor sentence."

The orange cursor sentence. A phrase used by any player to refer to the time period in which a player stays orange for when they become orange. While the orange cursor sentence for a player who becomes orange for the first time is 3 days, subsequent times resets the time period of the sentence, and extends it by 2 days. PKs extend the sentence by a week each.

If you were simply an average player and wanted to stay alive in this world for as long as possible, not becoming orange ever would be top priority. The limitations of being an orange player were definitely far worse than not becoming one in the first place.

Of course, in the case of Tori, I wouldn't compare her to the average player. Though she might have weeks or even months in her orange cursor sentence, I didn't think that would affect her in any way.

Katalysis was the reason for that. Katalysis was pretty much the main reason why Tori looked so carefree about being orange.

The tension that I was feeling since Tori had walked into the bar was still growing. Wanting to get some fresh air outside, I tapped Raku's shoulder, not with my hand, but with the tablet that I was holding.

"Huh? What?" Raku turned to look at my tablet.

"This.....you can have it. I don't need it anymore." I nudged the tablet gently against her side.

"But don't you need it for the information on the class types?" She asked.

"Heh, well, I've memorized it to the last word. It's fine." I took her palm and placed it with a snarky smile.

Tori finished her glass and turned to me with an impressed look. "Damn! We have ourselves here a diligent guy! Maybe I should conduct a test on the class types for everyone!"

"Please, scrap that idea," Kira rebutted. "Can you stop being proud of your work already?"

I gave a little sigh, and reached for the door. "After all, Raku....."

".....My inventory doesn't have space for 'Paper' anyway."

Stepping outside and closing the door shut, I turned a little back at the bar.

I hoped that my mention of the word 'Paper' would get Rakuno to do what I would expect her to do in the next few seconds.

Turning back into the bustling nightly streets, I was about to take a few steps, when I stopped myself again. Having to turn back to the bar again, I stared at the entrance of the bar with focused scrutiny.

The bar, which was a low-lying building sandwiched between a pair of taller ones, looked like any other building in Katalysis in of exterior colours. Those colours were the same ones present in the canyon walls: a faint shade of red as seen in the day, but turns into a more yellowish shade at night, due to the yellow lights all over the city.

The buildings seen in the day looked slightly off. I had assumed that I was just simply just seeing things that my eyes had placed in my vision, or worse yet, it might have been the system's fault in projecting my vision to see a very faint, horizontal line of colour contrast that separated the exterior wall of the buildings into a lower section of a slightly darker shade of red and a upper section of a slightly lighter shade.

At night, the colour contrast still wasn't obvious, but for some reason, I could confirm that there were 2 different shades of red on the building walls. The yellow lights had made the colours more distinguishable.

I walked up to the exterior wall of the bar and half-knelt to look at the colour contrast line closely. The line wasn't perfectly straight, but up close, the difference in the shades of red were more pronounced.

It was as if the lower section of the wall had been stacked and glued upon by the upper section.

Was this player-made? If so, is this the work of another non-combat skill? Was there even such a possibility that a non-combat skill capable of this could exist?

How was the city of Katalysis built in the first place?

That question had finally been reached by my mind. And as my mind had tried to think of a possible theory, it searched through my memories, a particular one, more specifically a rumour that was going around the whole of Aincrad a few months back:

"There are an infinite number of skills that can be found in SAO. All of them serves all kinds of purposes in Aincrad."

I couldn't help ing that. Assuming that rumour was true, skills that were related to constructing buildings for a city would exist. It was crazy to think that such skills, especially the non-combat ones, would be so hard to obtain and unlock, even after all this time, when the 55th Floor had just become the frontline. If this was a normal game, players would have dug through every single piece of information found in it and would make guides of everything to that was to be known in playing the game in the most efficient manner.

However, to discover all the secrets of SAO was basically impossible. As that rumour had suggested, there was really no point in trying to find out about anything and everything in Aincrad.

It was now simply a matter of finding out what information I don't know from other players who knew. Knowing what I needed to know was still considered playing SAO in an 'efficient' manner, especially for my survival.

The door to the bar swung open, and Rakuno left the bar with a slightly flustered look, holding the 'Paper' that I had ed to her. She was sweating pretty hard.

"Why did you leave me with them?! That was insane, dealing with the Council like that!" The witch panted as she looked back at the door. "Tori was scary as hell!"

"Aren't you a witch?" I remarked. "You're supposed to be the scary one."

"N-Not the point!" Rakuno clutched the flaps of her pointed hat sheepishly.

"Hmm, well....." I leaned towards the window of the bar. Tori and her 2 companions were still drinking and talking and a pretty jovial manner. Kira was frantically keeping Tori's ego in check, while Acher seemed like he talked when he needed to, especially when Tori turns to him.

"By the way, I got your hint," Rakuno handed the hologram tablet back to me. "Tori said she only knows of the players who provided her with the supply of 'Paper', which she would then distribute to the denizens of Katalysis. She doesn't know who makes it."

"I see....." I gave the tablet a glance for a while, before returning it to my inventory, which totally has no space for anything else. Well, I had to be fast to think of a way to get her to understand what I wanted her to do in front of Tori, without getting busted by the Council leader herself.

"Don't tell me....." Rakuno crossed her arms and shot me a skeptical look. "You're suspecting that she's lying, just like you did with Kira?"

I returned a look at her, and the both of us stood in brief silence. It wasn't like I could blame her for being willing to take a claim made by anyone by face value. Tori's response to being asked about the origins of 'Paper' might seem genuine to her, but I couldn't really help trying to analyze that claim as no less than suspicious.

"Well, let's put it this way," I swiped away the system window displaying my inventory, sighing as I did so. "At the very least, Tori's claim is far from reliable. However, she's still worth getting information from. That won't change, especially when she's the one who runs this whole city."

"Wait, wait....." Rakuno held both her hands in front of me in anticipation. "You mean....."

Shrugging, I walked away from the bar. "You're more suitable in getting along with Tori than I do. I'll deal with Kira."

"We're splitting up?"

"We're splitting up the workload. Considering the time constraint we have right now, we ain't got any choice."

Having said that, we headed straight back to the inn without much of a word, amid the ever bustling atmosphere of the yellowish-lit streets.

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