Chapter 661 – Grand Extractor City

Chapter 661 – Grand Extractor City

Grand Extractor City.

Nick wasn't sure what he should expect after arriving.

When he arrived for the first time and saw Grand Extractor City, he was quite surprised.

It was... big.

Not in terms of width but in terms of height.

The city only took up a fourth of Crimson City's area, which was crazy since a huge part of Crimson City's population was in the megastructure.

In terms of area, Crimson City belonged to the smaller cities, while its population was a bit above average.

But here...

In terms of area, this city was tiny!

However, to Nick, it looked like a big mountain of metallic cubes.

It was like the citizens just built cube-like buildings on top of other cube-like buildings.

The cubes all had different sizes, and because of that, they were stacked very unevenly, giving the city a very unsafe and asynchronous feeling.

The bottom-most cubes all had uniform sizes and were neatly and seamlessly stacked on top of each other, but starting at the fourth, fifth, or sixth cube, the sizes started to vary rapidly.

Smaller cubes barely took up half of the width or length of the cube below them, and a cube above them was built that was twice as big.

It was insanely chaotic.

The walls of the city were barely five meters high at the bottom.

Yet, something surprising was happening.

Around 50 meters above the top end of the walls... was another wall?

There was another wall that was about ten meters high, and it uniformly surrounded the city.

Then, another 50 meters higher was another wall, but this one was only five meters high.

All in all, the city was around 120 meters high, and there was an average of eleven cubes taking up these 120 meters.

Nick also saw scaffolding.

A LOT of scaffolding. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

There was SO MUCH scaffolding!

Naturally, the citizens needed to get around the city somehow, and since all the buildings were stacked on top of each other, there were no stairwells or elevators going through them.

Because of that, there was scaffolding everywhere that acted as makeshift connections between buildings.

Even more, the different pieces of scaffolding looked very different from each other.

Some of them had humongous fences surrounding them, while others didn't even have railings.

Some of them were in immaculate shape and incredibly stable, while others were filled with holes that an adult human could fit through.

After looking at the city for a while, Nick found out why that was.

'Everyone is responsible for their own scaffolding.'

Apparently, people had to keep their access to the city usable.

If they didn't... well...

Sucks to be them.

If they didn't have a lot of money, they would be stuck there.

If they had some money, they needed to shout at some passersby or neighbors with a very good offer.

The first impression Nick got of the city was that nobody gave a shit.

They didn't care about basic safety.

They didn't care about looks.

They didn't care about efficiency.

Everything just grew to look like this, and nobody could be arsed to change it.

However, there was one thing that was unique to this city.

It was something that Nick hadn't seen before.

Nick saw powerful Extractors and rich people coming out of house cubes that were just as horrible as all the other ones.

There were barely any luxurious or huge cubes that could be considered mansions.

It was like everyone was living in just enough space.

'Sloth truly controls this city,' Nick thought with furrowed brows.

Over the next couple of weeks, Nick only saw a single caravan arriving in the city, and they very quickly left with plenty of complaints.

They didn't even sell a million credits worth of goods.

The only things they sold were some basic things that the city needed to keep the rat and insect population alive at the bottom of the city.

Something else that was interesting was that Nick didn't even see a single Extractor leaving the city.

The Extractors just walked from their homes to their work and then back to their homes again.

They also only worked for six hours per day.

This was crazy!

How did they get all of these Specters and all of these powerful Extractors?

Even more, how did they actually manage to get through Zephosis and the Consumption?

One needed a lot of willpower to get through these things!

Sadly, Nick didn't find an answer while watching the city from the outside.

On top of that, gathering intel had never been this difficult before.

Usually, Nick gathered intel by listening in on conversations.

Yet, these people barely talked!

Friends just sat together, doing nothing.

Couples just lay in each other's embrace.

Employees didn't say more than the bare minimum.

There was almost no conversation in this city.

Nick only knew where the biggest Manufacturer was, but he had no idea about any of the Specters the Manufacturer had.

Nobody was talking about anything!

In the end, Nick took a deep breath and closed in on the city.

Nick arrived rather quickly at the small wall surrounding the city.

Next, Nick inspected the wall.

'The wall is using Zephyx, but I can't be sure what it does with the Zephyx.'

Nick looked around the wall for a while.

There were no guards.

This gave Nick time to analyze the wall's function.

And he found that...

'This makes no sense!' Nick thought in frustration. 'None of these logic patterns follow any kind of established standard!'

'All of this is completely wild and chaotic!'

The wall was just as chaotic as the city itself.

In the end, Nick had to sigh.

'I have no idea what the wall can do.'

Next, Nick turned into mist and floated to the other walls.

They were even more chaotic than the wall at the bottom.

For several hours, Nick just looked at the city from outside.

Everything was chaotic, but...

It worked.

It worked really, really well.

For the first time, Nick didn't know how he should enter the city.

He was amazing at getting into places, but that was because he always gathered intelligence before attempting to do something.

He couldn't gather any important information from this city.

After hours of planning, Nick came up with a plan.

But it was risky.

Finally, Nick readied himself and snuck into the city.

And a second later, his ability deactivated.