Chapter 1513: The Underground City
The hallway led Ning to another door at the end, one that didn’t need someone to man. He opened the door and walked out. As he did, he was stunned by what lay before him.
A sprawling city lay beyond the doors, a city that was hundreds of meters wide and hundreds of meters deep. Houses and pathways glowed all around, illuminating the city in darkness with a thousand different glowing orbs. Not just men operated in the city, but mechanical vehicles too.
The houses were not just built on the open space, but also on the side of the underground, into the walls themselves. And they were not just built horizontally at all, but vertically too.
Thousands of staircases and mechanical elevators littered the sides of the walls, which were constantly being used by thousands of people at any given moment.
Ning stood on a small metal platform that went down the stairs on the side. He walked to the front of the platform where he held the railing and looked down for hundreds of meters before he saw the bottom.
The entire thing was a surreal experience to Ning as he had never seen something underground that was this wide. That made him wonder just how one had created such a thing in the first place.
He began walking down the stairs to an elevator that was not far away from where he was.
Ning wondered where he was supposed to start with the whole thing. He wondered where he was supposed to go next. Given that he was a cadet, there would be a place for him to go to.
Where that was exactly, he had to search on his own.
Ning waited for the elevator door to open. When it did, he realized that there was someone on the inside operating it. He was about to give some respectful greeting to the man when he realized that the person in front of him was a cadet as well.
His markings on the side of his clothes were the same as Ning’s.
Ning entered the elevator. “How’s your day going, brother?” he asked.
The man shrugged. “It’s alright,” he said. He did not seem to care why Ning was here or if he should even be.
“Where to?” he asked, ready to push a button on the side of the elevator.
Ning paused. He had no idea where he was supposed to be going. He could find out, but searching for the information would take some time on the interface.
“I’m not sure,” Ning said. “I have some free time now. Do you know where I should go to?”
“You have free time?” the man asked. He seemed surprised. “With how much they’ve been working us, I never thought I would see a cadet with nothing to do.”
Ning gave a small smile.
“Are you Sparkless too?” the man asked.
“I haven’t tested yet,” Ning said.
“How is that possible? They should have tested you when you joined,” the man said.
“I had special circumstances at the time. I was allowed to join without testing,” Ning said. “But they said they would test me soon.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” the man said. “Anyway, you haven’t told me where we’re going to.”
“Where do you suggest I go?” Ning asked. “I should get some Spark and try to see if I can use it or not.”
“Then go to a Spark shop and see what comes of it,” the man said.
“Then let’s do that,” Ning said.
The man nodded. “I can do that,” he said and pushed a button.
The elevator went down rather quickly, almost reaching freefall. It also came to a stop just as quickly. The door opened and Ning walked out.
“See you, brother.”
Ning walked out of the elevator onto a side of the city on the wall where a platform had been created for people to walk on.
Ning quickly located the Spark shop and was surprised to see that it was a military issue, with the sellers in the shop working on behalf of the military as well.
Ning walked into the shop and quickly observed how things went down. Watching the people of this place operate, he came to understand that the crystal sphere he had gotten from the System right before the AI went into hibernation was the most important thing Ning could own.
It was not just an ID it seemed, but was also something that had his money as well. There was some sort of computer that could access the crystal, which made the small spherical crystal a memory device.
Ning walked to the front and pulled out his sphere. Judging by the people before him, one didn’t need a lot of Spark.
“5 grams,” Ning said.
The man on the counter took Ning’s sphere, placed it on the machine that could access it, and then proceeded to place exactly 5 grams of the Spark into a small glass vial.
Ning had no worries about being able to afford the spark. After all, his system had made his current identity quite average, so he would have an average amount of money as well.
Ning took the glass vial and his crystal sphere and left the shop to go to another place. He had to go to his place of residence next, which he had no idea about.
He wanted to just ask his System about it, but he couldn’t do that.
Instead, he had to access the Energy System interface and go into the knowledge section where he had to search around a bit until he found the right set of information.
Just to not fall into the same problem later, he bought complete information about his current identity and what he was supposed to do with it.
To Ning’s surprise, he was supposed to go to training every morning.
“Every morning?” Ning wondered. “How the hell is one supposed to tell when morning is?”
Ning had barely begun learning about the new place he had come to.
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