Nick went towards the wall of the megastructure.
As he walked through the streets, many people looked at him, but he ignored them.
Nick was lost in nostalgia.
He remembered these streets and most of these houses.
Crimson City had been his home for the majority of his life.
It was strange to look at it after so long.
He felt a deep connection to Crimson City, but he also felt disconnected from it in a certain way.
This was no longer his home.
He was only a visitor.
Nick had been in this hole before, but it had looked very differently back then.
Back then, there had been crimson light coming out of the hole.
This was the place where Nick had roached for his first and only time.
That had probably been one of the darkest days of his life.
Back then, he had just caused an incredible tragedy, and he had been helpless in trying to rectify it.
But now, he had the power.
He had the power to influence the world.
As Nick waited for Herman, he thought about the past.
He thought about his struggles.
He had told himself again and again that he would not stand by in the future.
When he had the power, he would help people.
The image of the outer ring popped into Nick's mind.
'I want to help, but I can't,' Nick thought. 'Helping the outer ring might make things more difficult in the future. Crimson City is just one city. My goal is to help all of humanity.'
'Helping Crimson City will put me at an unnecessary risk.'
'Why should I risk everything just to help 2,000 people or so?'
Nick continued waiting for Herman.
'There's more to consider than just one part of one city. I have to focus on Aegis.'
Nick waited.
'Also, what am I even supposed to do?'
Nick waited.
'If something major happens while I am in the city, all eyes will fall on me. Eyes from Aegis will also fall onto me, and they will start to question my identity. I can't just help any city without thinking about the potential costs and risks.'
Nick started to pace back and forth.
He was reminded of his past self.
He had always sworn to himself that he would not just stand by and watch as others suffered if he had the power to change things.
'It's not that easy,' Nick thought. 'I have things to consider. I have risks to evaluate.'
'I can't just throw everything away and help people.'
When Nick thought about that sentence, Albert, the old Governor, and Vernon shot through his mind.
Hadn't they said the same thing?
It wasn't that easy?
They couldn't just do it?
And what had Nick thought of that?
'Excuses,' Nick thought. 'These are just excuses.'
Nick stopped pacing.
'They are just finding reasons not to do the right thing.'
Nick remained motionless and silent.
'Just like me right now.'
'Risking everything?'
'Jeopardizing everything?'
'What bullshit.'
'By that logic, a normal person is risking their life by crossing the street because an Extractor might accidentally run them over.'
'The risk is there, but the risk is almost nonexistent.'
'I've managed to get past many problems in my life. Why shouldn't I be able to get past this one as well?'
Nick's eye became determined again.
'It's actually not that difficult to help the people of the outer ring.'
Nick thought of Herman and his team of scientists.
Nick had been in contact with them back when he was a Liaison.
'Sacrifices have to be made for the good of mankind.'
Nick was reminded of his old philosophy.
'A Specialist's life is not worth more than an ordinary person's life.'
'Sacrifice 100 people to save 1,000.'
Within seconds of deciding to help the people of the outer ring, Nick had already come up with a plan.
It wasn't actually difficult.
He just had to stop making the current status quo profitable.
"Everything is prepared," Herman said as he arrived near the hole.
Nick was taken out of his thoughts as he heard Herman.
"Everyone has been evacuated from the underground?" Nick asked.
Herman nodded.
"Then, I will start," Nick said.
"Good luck," Herman said with a nod before turning around and leaving the room.
Naturally, he didn't want to accidentally be viewed as trying to sneak a peek.
After Herman left, Nick jumped into the hole and floated into the city's underground.
As soon as Nick entered the underground, he noticed that something substantial had changed.
'There's no more water,' Nick realized.
When Nick was young, the underground had been filled with disgusting dirt and excrement.
After that, it had been filled by the Crimson Sea, and when the Crimson Sea had been captured, only clear water remained.
But now, even the water was gone.
'Wonder what they did with all that water. There must've been millions if not billions of liters of water in here.'
Nick also noted that the underground wasn't completely dark anymore.
There were a couple of cables with lights, creating a couple of paths through the underground.
One of them led from one of the holes to a spiral staircase, which seemed to go through all the layers of the ruins.
Nick decided to follow that staircase for now.
He traveled down for over a kilometer before he reached the bottom.
The lowest layer had barely changed.
Nick saw the cable leading towards the north to a new opening.
The surroundings of the ruins were reinforced by powerful metal.
It was like Crimson City was on top of a huge cauldron of metal.
Back when Nick had still been living here, he hadn't known enough about humanity's past to realize the exact origin of these reinforcements.
But now, Nick could tell that these walls were made by the Enlightened Ones.
'Most likely, the buildings of the Enlightened Ones in this city used to be far taller. If the Nightmare truly hadn't existed during the era of the Enlightened Ones, it wouldn't be too far-fetched for the Enlightened Ones to create a huge underground complex below the actual city.'
'Most likely, the Enlightened Ones did some research in this place.'
But before Nick looked at the ruins of the Enlightened Ones, he focused on the ruins of the Ancient Ones.
Nick knew a lot more about the past, and he could tell a couple of interesting things.
'This is what the Ancient Ones used to call steel-reinforced concrete,' Nick thought as he touched one of the buildings.
'It's not as hard as Zephyx materials, but its resilience is amazing. The Ancient Ones used to build buildings that were over three kilometers tall without any Zephyx materials by using concrete in tandem with different metals.'
'Building a megastructure just with concrete and steel must have taken an unreasonable amount of math and planning.'
'Compared to them, we can just stack materials on top of each other since the tenacity of our materials is nowhere near the point of breaking under their own weight.'
'With the materials that were used to create Crimson City's megastructure, we could probably build a megastructure twice as big without needing to fear its collapse.'
For over half an hour, Nick looked through the bottom layer of the ruins.
'Just as expected,' Nick thought as the shape of the buildings and the placement of them popped into his mind.
'This used to be just a regular city.'
'In fact, for the Ancient Ones, this might not have even counted as a city.'
'This might only have counted as a local town.'
Nick could tell that this used to be a normal town due to the lack of strongly reinforced areas.
The concrete was also not super thick everywhere, which meant that the buildings hadn't been very big.
'The biggest building used to be less than a hundred meters tall in this place.'
'The density of the walls also shows that there were many individual buildings placed side by side along a wide street and a couple of smaller streets.'
'There's no reinforced wall for some kind of lab or high-security area, and there are not many empty spots that could have been used as fields for testing.'
Then, Nick was reminded of the ruins to the north.
'The entrance to the ruins of the north is at the level of the ruins of the Ancient Ones. Yet, Herman said that the ruins were from the Enlightened Ones.'
'Something doesn't make sense. Why would the Ancient Ones build a normal settlement within such a big hole?'
Nick looked at the walls of the hole.
'These are not natural walls. Why would you dig such a big hole just to create a couple of houses for people to live in?'
'There also hadn't been enough time for so much ground to rise. This would take millions upon millions of years and significant tectonic activity. Also, the town would rise together with the surroundings.'
Nick continued looking at the walls.
'Even more, if the Ancient Ones had built this settlement in this hole, wouldn't the walls also have been made by them? Instead, the walls were made by the Enlightened Ones.'
At that moment, an interesting thought appeared in Nick's mind.
'Did the Enlightened Ones sink this town?'
'Were they the ones that created this big hole?'