The first thing Nick noticed was that the hallway was dark, which was to be expected.
'The inner walls are made of the same material as the outer walls, which also isn't very surprising,' Nick thought as he looked around.
The walls around him seemed to be made of a single piece of metal, which had been formed into a hallway.
This was the typical architecture of the Enlightened Ones.
'There's a good amount of oxygen in here despite the fact that this place is completely isolated. Either there hasn't been anything alive in here ever since this place was closed up, or it isn't actually as isolated as I've thought.'
Nick touched the walls.
No dust.
Then, Nick punched the wall.
BANG!
However, the vibration of his attack traveled throughout the entire building.
'My ability didn't fluctuate, which means the vibration wasn't sensed by anyone,' Nick thought.
'There's no living thing in here.'
The next moment, Nick turned into mist again and traveled through the corridor.
The area immediately after the entrance was a big hall with several chairs on one side and a separate office on the other.
'Looks like a standard reception hall. People can wait over there while the receptionist sits here.'
'Judging by the number of chairs, this was a place that got quite a lot of visitors. The chairs are made of a material similar to the walls, and there are 15 of them.'
Nick looked a bit closer at one of the chairs.
'While the material it is made of is rather strong, it is not nearly as strong as the walls.'
Nick grabbed one of the chairs and squeezed.
Naturally, the chair exploded into pieces as soon as Nick squeezed.
'About as hard as a level two material, but also quite light. Even a normal person could move the chair. Although, it wouldn't be easy.'
'The chair is also very simple and doesn't have any fancy arches, design, or decorations.'
'The chairs are cheap and don't even try to impress the visitors.'
'This is almost certainly not a building that belonged to a Manufacturer.'
The reception halls of Manufacturers were always imposing to impress the competition and new employees.
A beautifully decorated workplace increased employee morale.
'This is obviously not some kind of cutting-edge company that owned this building.'
'Either this belonged to a private company that deals with a big number of normal people as customers, or it belonged to the government.'
Nick saw a couple of small tables and stands near the chairs.
Everything was perfectly clean.
Sadly, Nick couldn't look at any records.
The records of the Enlightened Ones were extremely difficult to get ahold of due to their insane security measures.
Aegis had found many devices of the Enlightened Ones, but while they had been able to find ways to infuse them with energy and to make them work, they hadn't found a way to send orders to them. 𝙍’
It was similar to finding a console from the current era while having no body and being blind. One wouldn't be able to interact with the console, and even if the console displayed something, one wouldn't be able to see it.
It was like the devices used by the Enlightened Ones needed some kind of interface to work.
When infused with energy, they basically just activated and started to use up energy, but they didn't do anything.
The Technician had tried many times to access these devices, but he just couldn't find out how.
Even when he destroyed the devices to look at their insides, he could only scratch his head.
The stuff in there seemingly made no sense.
Something was put in, and something else magically came out.
It truly looked like magic to the Technician.
However, the Technician knew that any technology sufficiently advanced would look like magic.
It was just that the Enlightened Ones had been so far ahead that the Technician couldn't even understand what was going on while looking at it.
Their technology was more advanced, and their Zephyx Manipulation was even more advanced.
By putting these two things together, the Enlightened Ones created machines that rivaled the complexity of the Ancient Ones.
Maybe the Enlightened Ones were actually even more advanced since they also had access to Zephyx.
Nick looked at a tiny metallic sphere behind the counter.
He knew what that was.
'One of the personal spheres of the Enlightened Ones,' Nick thought.
Just like with the Ancient Ones, the only things left of the Enlightened Ones' physical bodies were piles of ash and these personal spheres.
Apparently, every human from that era had one of these spheres.
The running theory was that these were implants.
Most likely, these implants could connect one to the machines of the Enlightened Ones.
Sadly, there was no way to activate them or interact with them.
The implants were probably attuned to someone's DNA or something similar, and in order to reprogram these implants, one needed a device that reprogrammed them.
However, how could one use such a device without having an implant that allowed them to interact with any device made by the Enlightened Ones?
It was impossible to do one thing without having access to the other.
Meanwhile, interacting with the technology of the Ancient Ones was relatively easy.
They just used fancy computers and displays.
Sure, their encryption was very good, but with Zephyx, one could crack these quite easily.
Also, all of the devices just worked with electricity.
Nick left the reception and looked through a couple of rooms.
Luckily, most furniture was made of metal that didn't rust, which meant that most of it still existed, even after thousands of years.
Nick saw a couple of standard offices.
Despite the Enlightened Ones' crazy advances, they still seemed to work in office spaces.
After the offices, Nick found some rooms with advanced machinery.
It was difficult for Nick to decipher what the machines were doing, but there was one thing that was always identical.
There was a glass pane on the floor in the middle of every room with machinery in them unless the room was an obvious storage room.
'Not sure what this is all about, but I can tell that these rooms are probably all for customers.'
'There's a big waiting hall for a good number of people and many accessible rooms with the same device in the middle. This means that this weird glass pane on the ground is essential to treating every customer.'
'The machines on the side are often the same ones, but some rooms have different ones.'
'Is this something optional?'
'Why would so many people want to interact with so many different machines?'
Nick kept looking at the machines.
'Difficult to say. They can all be used by a single person, but they don't seem to have any obvious usage.'
'It doesn't look like entertainment. If this were an entertainment place, these machines wouldn't look so boring and simple.'
After a while, Nick went a floor higher.
The rooms there were bigger, and sometimes, there were several panes of glass on the ground.
Additionally, there were also lines on the ground that connected the panes of glass.
Nick decided to approach one of the panes and grabbed it.
The pane was around twenty centimeters wide and circular. It was poking out of the ground for about five centimeters.
Then, Nick pushed it to the side.
It slid along the lines of the ground with relative ease.
Nick raised an eyebrow and pushed it along the ground.
Then, Nick lifted it.
'Heavier than it looks,' Nick thought.
It weighed about 50 kilos.
When Nick looked at its underside, he saw a couple more but smaller panes of glass.
Some of them aligned perfectly with the lines on the ground.
Nick put the thing back on the lines and kicked it a bit.
It moved along the lines very easily.
It didn't even make any sound despite weighing 50 kilos and sliding across a metal floor.
'I don't think the Enlightened Ones made these things so heavy without any reason.'
Nick looked into several more rooms.
Some of them had huge machines, while some of them just had a group of panes.
Slowly, Nick was realizing what this was.
'If that's true, I should find something.'
Nick started to go through all the furniture in every room.
He was especially looking through any cupboards and shelves.
After a couple of minutes, Nick searched through the entire building.
The building was about ten stories tall, and Nick saw meeting rooms and big offices near the top, which meant that was the place where the leaders had been.
Naturally, Nick had also found several implants in different rooms, accompanied by piles of dust.
'I'm sure that I'm right,' Nick thought with furrowed brows.
Then, he went to the different machines and looked for openings in them.
After almost a full hour, Nick actually found something.
There was a small thing that looked like a gun on one of the tables on the second floor.
When he opened the small hatch on the gun, he was greeted with what he had been searching for.
'An implant!' Nick thought as he looked at the tiny implant in the gun-like machine.
'I knew it!'
Nick looked at the movable panes of glass.
'These are machines that make beds, and the beds can easily be moved around!'
'The reason why they are so heavy is to make it harder for them to fall over if there's a curve or if the person on the bed struggles.'
'If someone struggles on the bed, the bed only moves back and forth but won't fall over.'
'This is a hospital!'