"I hope she'll put that bracelet to good use. Or else it'd be useless."
Cail was now walking around like a tourist. When he looked back, he could see a strong clash of void energy in the distance.
"Nope." Cail shook his head. "I'm reckless, but not suicidal."
Throwing that thought away, he continued to look around. While there was a time limit to how long one could stay here before disappearing from people's memory, Cail was quite curious about this city.
Their advancement seemed skewed from Cail's world. In this city, void energy seemed to be used as a power source like electricity or solar energy. Lamps, doors, and other home appliances, all of them had faint traces of void energy.
"Shoot!" Cail looked blankly at the door that collapsed the moment he pushed it. Because of how clean this place looked, sometimes to Cail, it seemed like the city was just recently destroyed.
"But looking at this level of damage, it seemed like a strong blast turned this city into this state," Cail concluded based on the ruins.
He went inside the houses. He looked around. He was searching for something...
"I just realized... I haven't seen any pictures so far." And this was not the first house that Cail went searched.
Picking up a wall clock that had fallen onto the floor, he frowned. "Time stopped at 3:00 AM." Every clock in every house he went through seemed to be stuck in time.
"Is this a special property of the rift?" He had no idea. But still, he took note of it.
He walked back outside with a heavy heart. Looking at this ghost city, Cail couldn't help but remember what that woman said. Nyx City was slowly getting eaten.
Because of this city, Cail viewed void energy users as some kind of human evolution. Before eating the whole world, the void would first spread through cities. Cail didn't view entering the void as a bad thing, but the entity inside the void could wipe out humanity.
Cail was selfish but... "If I'm the only person left in this world, that would be boring. Who am I supposed to mess with?!"
"Exploring the ruins.. I need to discover how to get out of here, why this city got eaten by the void, and the reason why everyone got wiped out." Those were his agendas. Of course, he also considered how time passed inside the void rift and in the real world, but he might as well make his trip here useful.
He continued walking. Then, when he entered a white building, he saw something interesting.
It was a ripped photo. At first, Cail thought he was mistaken. After searching most houses, not even a portrait or drawing of a face could be seen. But this time, he saw a photograph.
The top part was ripped, but it seemed to be a picture of a man wearing a white coat. It resembled a researcher's coat. Cail could only see the lower jaw of the researcher because the part above the nose was ripped off.
Cail scanned the picture and didn't sense anything special. "What makes this picture an exception?"
He turned the photograph over. There was something written on it.
'Virehn'
"Is that the name of this man? This guy feels familiar." He had no idea where this familiarity came from, but for some reason, he had a feeling that he knew this guy.
He clutched his head. "I'm going crazy. I need to be really familiar with this guy to recognize him from just the lower half of his face. But if I'm that familiar with this guy, I probably wouldn't forget about him."
Still, this was an important clue. He kept the picture in his space.
"Virehn... Maybe I should find something that's related to that." But where would he look for it?!
He recalled the details on the picture. "A research coat... This place—maybe let's start searching here. This building looks like it was a government building based on the logo."
Most researchers are government workers, right?
He wanted to hum, but in this unfamiliar place, it was better to be cautious. There weren't any other pictures aside from this Virehn, but of course, this was still the first floor.
He took the stairs and was barred by a huge metal door.
The handle had human hand marks. It seemed to detect palm prints like fingerprints to open the door.
"Ugh... This probably doesn't work anymore, right?" Cail hoped so. Like, this door seemed to be void powered. After so many years of this place being a ghost town, it probably doesn't operate anymore.
This time, lady luck was smiling at him. The moment he twisted the knob, the door opened.
BUSHHH!
The temperature was a bit lower inside. Cail opened all the drawers and unexpectedly, they were empty.
"Did they already transfer all the files away?" Cail frowned. "This is bad."
He continued searching, but fortunately, he finally managed to find something... but it wasn't a file... it was a newspaper.
"Head Researcher Virehn has found a way to convert void energy into a more hyper-efficient and more stable power source—"
The rest was unreadable because of the dried blood. Cail felt something. All the information about this city was wiped out—except Head Researcher Virehn's. This guy... did he have something to do with why this world was swallowed by the void?
Cail kept the newspaper and continued searching.
This time, he found an old radio and a handwritten note from someone who knew Virehn. The old radio needed to be charged with void energy.
Cail poured a bit of his energy inside and the radio turned on.
"Project Coreline! The once-in-a-century zzznius zzzl Virehn created something zzzzzznary zzzzzzzzzzz—"
"The heck?" Cail smacked the radio on top, but all he could hear was white noise. He took a deep breath and tried to remain patient, but alas, his efforts were in vain. The radio died, and he couldn't turn it back on no matter what.
Cail wanted to toss the radio away but held himself back. He put the radio to the side and sat on the chair. He flipped the notebook.
"The Coreline is efficient. Maybe too efficient. Virehn said the readings were fine. But I had complaints that the safehouse where the Coreline was located had a bit of an issue when it came to void users using their void energy."
The rest of the notes were barren. Someone seemed to have ripped some pages out.
"After the issue with the Coreline, we all managed to survive. But we seemed to be stuck inside the void. Virehn was blamed by public opinion. He was pressured to fix the things that his Coreline caused. Things were not looking good, as some people even went as far as to assassinate Virehn.
Virehn promised to fix things. He said we might open the door to a new era.
As much of a genius as he was, I was a bit skeptical as to how he could do that. Our technological advancement had been stalled for many years now.
I hope what Virehn said was true."
Cail looked at the rest of the pages. They were empty. There were only five pages left with writing on them. Cail continued reading.
"Oh my god. He managed to really fix the issue. He helped human adapt to the void. No one knew how, but now we can connect to the outside world despite being eaten by the void! The world was surprised by our feat. I could see that some of the other cities were contemplating whether to adopt our current way of life to remove the fear of getting eaten by the void.
Somehow, I think that was a bad idea."
Then that was all. There wasn't any continuation. What happened after that was unknown.