Nick returned to the city.
Many things had changed within the last couple of hours.
In a way, Crimson City had undergone a change more significant than Anatomy's destruction.
The Crimson Sea had vanished.
The Plague Vulture was suppressed.
It took a while to come to terms with these drastic changes.
The first thing Nick did after getting back to the city was to go towards the sewers.
He opened one of the entrances to the city's underground inside the megastructure and jumped onto a balcony.
This was the place where the Roachers had gathered in the past.
Compared to back then, things had become extremely different.
There was no more red mist.
There was no bright glow anymore.
Everything outside of the entrance was perfectly dark.
The sewers had changed once again.
In the beginning, they had been filled with disgusting liquid, while light had shone through many different holes.
Then, it had transformed into a red land of death.
And now, it was perfectly dark and mostly filled with beautiful and clean water.
As Nick looked at the city's underground, a mix of emotions rose from his chest.
Fear, wonder, calm.
Fear because he still felt like looking down would kill him.
Wonder because the ruins below the city were finally accessible again.
Calm because the silent and unmoving wonder created an atmosphere of tranquility.
For a while, Nick just looked at the darkness.
A normal Extractor would only see a black wall since there was no light source in the underground, except for the exit.
Yet, Nick could see everything as if it were illuminated by the Sun.
Nick saw a seemingly endless lake of clear water.
Inside the clear water, Nick saw an incredible number of ruins from different civilizations.
Back when the Crimson Sea had broken out for the first time, Markus had destroyed the majority of the floor beneath the sewers to make the Crimson Sea fall down one layer of ruins.
That destroyed many buildings, but not all of them.
On the highest layer of the ruins, Nick saw a couple of scattered buildings made of black metal.
These buildings all stood on top of different buildings from other civilizations.
'The Suffering Ones,' Nick thought as he looked at the buildings.
The buildings were made of relatively good quality steel, which had been treated with Zephyx.
Something like that could withstand the strength of an Initial John, but a Late John with a strong weapon could break through these materials.
Below them were smooth, chrome-plated buildings.
The metals used were so advanced that Nick couldn't even recognize them.
He wasn't sure if Aegis knew how to make these.
Nick felt no Zephyx coming off these buildings, but that didn't mean that they were not treated with Zephyx.
Quite the opposite.
The Zephyx treatment was so incredibly advanced that it perfectly integrated with the metals.
These materials were insanely advanced.
'The Enlightened Ones,' Nick thought.
Over 90% of that layer was still intact.
Markus had only created a couple of holes since this layer was not nearly as fragile as the layer from the Suffering Ones.
Splash!
Nick jumped into the water and moved downward.
Nick didn't need to breathe, and he also didn't need to swim to move underwater.
He already knew the principle of flight that Heroes used, and he was using exactly that to move around underwater.
He couldn't use it to fly since the density and recovery rate of his Zephyx weren't high enough, but he could use it in the water.
Nick went to the second layer and touched one of the chrome-plated walls of a building.
BANG!
Nick punched the wall with almost all of his power.
The wall began to vibrate, and the water around him shook.
Yet, that was all that happened.
'Even with my ability, I can't damage this wall easily,' Nick thought. 'If I were to go all out with my blade, I might be able to create a couple of cuts, but it would take minutes to make a small cut that goes through one of these walls.'
One had to remember that Nick's ability was active right now.
This meant that these walls could resist Specialists.
'The fact that an entire city is made of such advanced materials is insane to think about. Was it really so easy for the Enlightened Ones to create materials of this level? Was it so easy that they could just use this for any random place?'
Nick moved away from the wall and swam through one of the scattered holes.
He found himself in a completely new layer of the ruins.
The third layer.
This layer was different from the other ones since it contained structures from two different civilizations.
The buildings on this layer were made by the Recovering Ones, but there were also many chrome-plated pillars that supported the layer of the Enlightened Ones.
Naturally, they made these pillars to support their own buildings.
Meanwhile, the buildings on the third layer looked similar to the buildings of the first layer, but a bit worse.
The steel was of around the same quality as the steel from the Suffering Ones, but the Zephyx used to treat these metals was essentially only a layer on top of the metal.
An Initial John with a good weapon could break one of these walls with a couple of swings.
'This also explains why the Enlightened Ones created these pillars. This material can't withstand a lot of weight,' Nick thought as he pushed one of the walls a bit, bending it.
'The Recovering Ones have the same level of technology as the Suffering Ones but worse Zephyx Manipulation.'
Next, Nick looked at the floor.
Most of it was covered in chrome-plated metal, but the floor inside the buildings was made with materials created by the Recovering Ones.
'Crimson City has existed for over a century, and it was created by Aegis. I'm certain these ruins have already thoroughly been examined by Aegis. There's probably nothing of value left here.'
Nick entered one of the buildings.
'But I still wanted to see for myself.'
Nick broke through the floor of one of the buildings and found himself in a different building.
Surprisingly, there was already water in this place.
'Which means that there is a hole to this layer somewhere on the previous layer.'
Nick looked at the walls of this building, and his eyebrows rose in surprise.
'Not metal?' he thought.
He swam over and touched the walls.
'Stone?' he thought as his hand moved across the wall. 'It looks too uniform to be made of stone. It's almost like the stone was molded into this form.'
Nick pressed against it.
CRACK!
The wall caved in, and several pieces of stone fell away, revealing a thick pillar of steel beneath the wall.
'Steel surrounded by stone?' Nick thought. 'What a strange way of constructing a building.'
'Even more, this stone is not strong at all. Even a Newbie can break it.'
Nick knocked on the steel pillar and felt it ringing with vibrations.
'The quality of this steel is amazing. It's not treated with Zephyx, but its purity seems perfect.'
After looking at the wall for a bit, Nick swam down the stairs and left the building.
When he came out of the building, he looked around in surprise.
'No pillars?' Nick thought.
Nick had expected that he would find more pillars supporting the upper layers since the walls seemed very fragile.
And yet, there were no pillars.
'How are these walls supporting that much weight?' Nick thought as he looked at the buildings around him, which all supported the layer above this one.
'Once more, the Ancient Ones prove to be the most exotic civilization,' Nick thought.
Naturally, this layer was made by the Ancient Ones.
It was still so bizarre to think that a civilization without access to Zephyx could achieve such incredible power.
The materials were weak and brittle.
And yet, with these brittle materials, the Ancient Ones created weapons that could destroy continents.
It was unbelievable.
Nick swam around this layer and found a couple of interesting things.
First of all, the ground was made of stone, not metal.
Second, there were many spots filled with sand.
Nick believed that this had once been normal earth.
Maybe there had been plants there?
Nick also saw many rusted remains from different big machines.
He wasn't sure what these machines had been used for in the past.
After looking through many more buildings, Nick came out to the streets again.
'Just as expected, there's nothing of value left. Everything that's left is just junk.'
Nevertheless, Nick didn't believe it was a waste of time to come here.
Seeing the architecture of all five civilizations gathered in this place taught Nick a lot of things about the civilizations and their differences.
'We should change the way we deal with our waste,' Nick thought, looking around. 'The water is clean now, and turning this back into a disgusting sewer will cut off these ruins again.'
Nick looked at the ruins for a couple more minutes before leaving.