The Facility was uncannily spotless.
The lobby room that received all guests, visitors, and employees of ImpulseWorks hadn’t aged a day. The room was large enough to hold roughly a thousand people at once, usually for receiving a mass quantity of workers for the final floor when a Site reaches its maximum size.
Or it was used as a last stand against a Site-wide Corrupted breakout.
A Site’s lobby was as much of a reception as it was a graveyard.
At that point of irreversible damage, a Site might as well self-destruct and wipe itself off the face of Elysia; the name of her wide world where horizons were only limited by atmosphere and mountains.
The tiny Navigator glided through the vast space, her twintails bobbing like the fleece of a jacket.
She investigated orange leather furniture, tapping them like they were a ticking time bomb. Her boots grazed over fuzzy white carpets that ran over the polished floorboards. The lobby was well furnished, and to her surprise, there was no layer of dust to be found.
This meant the ventilation systems were in perfect condition.
Finally, she went to investigate the holographic screens mounted along the walls and pale fixtures scattered around the room. Written in transparent text were general information regarding the Site, such as the number of available floors, the designation of the Site, and most importantly – their Nex Quota.
< CURRENT FLOOR: Administrative >
< DAY: Minus One >
TODAY’S NEX QUOTA: 0
< DATE: [CORRUPTED] >
< TIME: [CORRUPTED] >
< DESIGNATION: (G) General Site >
< ALLOCATION: Z >
< RISK CLASSIFICATION: 7 >
< SEALS: 7 >
image [https://i.imgur.com/gEG1eaR.png]
Oddly enough, it was just the date and time that showed an error. The overall map of the facility showed just the Administrative Floor and the First Floor. Anything past the Administrative Floor was where the Corrupted were stored, and for this reason high-valued employees such as herself were forbidden from descending.
However, today was different.
A Minus day was colloquially an inspection day.
As the good Navigator she was, she planned to gather as much information of the Site as possible before the arrival of the Overseer and their first Corrupted shipment.
A thought suddenly sprouted as she moved towards the nearest table. Her footsteps were dull. Underneath the thin layer of wood was more than 50 meters of solid concrete, steel, and a list of classified materials that not even a Level 1 employee such as herself had access to.
“Where was it again?” Papilia plopped her paperwork onto a glass table, sifting through material until she found the ImpulseWorks Overseer Manual.
Papilia was not the brightest person out there, and frankly speaking, it was a miracle she had even managed to land herself in such a prestigious position. A forgetful girl like her was a terrible pair for a job that required her to know every minute detail, but she was at least proud to know that she was doing her best.
This was why she kept so many books and paperwork on hand, each labeled and infested with colored bookmarks.
“Why is it that level 1 is so high for us, but it’s rock bottom for a lot of other things?”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
She flickered through the pages of the thick manual, adjusting her giant, round glasses.
For reference, employees were graded from 1 – 7. 1 being the highest, and 7 the lowest. This applied to the Site itself. The ‘7’ in G-Z7 meant that it was only capable of holding the lowest risk-class Corrupted. This made the Site extremely safe for the time being.
But of course, as time would go on, the Site would become increasingly complex.
This was where the ‘G’ for General Site came into play.
“They really threw everything they had at me, hey.” She muttered to herself, flicking to the relevant page.
image [https://i.imgur.com/5fRm40r.png]
What Are the Site Designations?
There are 7 types of Sites, with 26 having been built as long as centuries ago. Only 18 remain. Dear Overseer, once again, I hope you are patting yourself on the back. One of 26 unique characters follows a primary designation. Take M-A1 for instance. The first letter is the designation and the second is simply one of those 26 allocated letters. The last digit refers to the total Risk Level of the site. Remember, 1 is the highest, 7 is the lowest, and 0 is Zeroed Horizon and is pending inevitable self-destruction.
image [https://i.imgur.com/5fRm40r.png]
G – General
The amalgamation of every Site Designation put into one. General Sites are notoriously difficult and were reintroduced shortly after the loss of Paradise. We have significantly less influence over General Sites and hope the Overseers adhere to all policies and protocols.
Please refer to Historical Emergencies for more information about General Sites and the first Zeroed Horizon Event.
image [https://i.imgur.com/5fRm40r.png]
Some Sites were for research. Others for the elimination of Corrupted, and few for the manufacturing of weapons and items from materials harvested from them. A General Site had no specialty as it possessed all these 7 primary functions.
For reference:
image [https://i.imgur.com/5fRm40r.png]
O – Obliteration
B – Battle
A – Accumulation
F – Facility
G – General
K – Killzone
M – Manufactory
image [https://i.imgur.com/5fRm40r.png]
Unfortunately, there was no explanation for the number discrepancy, which she’d have to learn how to adapt to in the future. That being said, she packed up her paperwork, hugging them like a child with a giant plush toy as she ventured into one of 3 different doors found deeper within the lobby.
Each door was made of reinforced, corrosive-resistant steel. They were more than 30cm thick and required appropriate credentials to access. In this case, her presence was more than enough to lift the door. It moved smoothly. Not a single groan came from the many tens of tons of lifted steel.
And this was because there were no winches, no gears, or pulleys to move it.
Rather, it was the manipulation of gravity that did.
Within each door was a mechanism created by an Atelier – Caldera Industries – whose products could manipulate gravity to their whims. The truth of their technology was behind closed curtains, as with all Ateliers. A secret only known to the Beholders – the bearers of such technologies – and a select few in the world.
They were considered Gods in Elysia.
And Papilia worked for one such deity who hungered for the extraction of Nex.
She ventured through the groaning throat of the facility, the ground turning from wood to solid iron as industrial pipes ran along the edges and corners of the corridors like veins. One thing to keep in mind when venturing through the facility was that sometimes it would take a minute to reach the intended destination, and others an hour, sometimes days.
This was because of the Site Core – an object located within the deepest recesses of the Site that not even she could reach. Its construction was an ambiguous meld of tech and magic, chained down to limit its spatial powers.
It was how the facility expanded. As the output of Nex grew, so would the demand from the Site Core, and the more it would manipulate space to expand the facility to accommodate its needs.
If the Nex Quota failed to be reached; then the Site itself was doomed.
Due to its spatial, anomalous powers, it could lengthen or shorten the travel especially within the Administrative Floor. It seemed to have a mind of its own, and it prevented her from moving elsewhere within the Administrative Floor aside from the Overseer’s Command Room.
This room was where the Overseer and herself would run the entire Site from on a daily basis. It was dim and clad in steel like everything else. Wide, and filled with an array of displays created with glass and crystals. Scrying Crystals and CogitO’s technology allowed her to see the entirety of the available Site.
image [https://i.imgur.com/Zp3DdEz.png]
“Unknown?” She questioned, wondering why that one specific room on the first floor had no name.
Usually, a Site would be completely named. Curious, and knowing that there was virtually zero threat underneath, she left her paperwork aside from the ImpulseWorks Overseer Manual and waddled through the industrial corridors and into the lobby.
Within resided another elevator that cut directly through the center of the Site. This was the Central Elevator. She walked into the giant, caged box and pulled a lever until it pointed to ‘1’. There were several precautions needed when using an elevator within the sites.
Thankfully, because this was only the first floor, there was little preparation needed.
But for reference, she turned to the relevant page and frowned before the elevator plunged like a brick, her stomach rising to her throat.
image [https://i.imgur.com/5TzMfxS.png]Decompression/Compression Time
Level 1
Nil.
Little to no effects
Level 2
15 Minutes
Slight discomfort. Ringing in ears
Level 3
15 Minutes
Mild discomfort
Mild impaired reasoning
A strange sense of euphoria
image [https://i.imgur.com/5TzMfxS.png]
The page became too hard to read. She was only an ordinary girl, so she struggled to keep herself from feeling faint.
And as the elevator dropped, her pocket watch steadily ticked on the exact same number.
It was stuck at exactly 15 minutes to midnight.