Only Wisdom Awakened - Chapter 281

Chapter 281: Lift
Hans had just left the cafe, and he was making his way towards the central tower.

According to the girl working at the bar, the entrance of the library was supposed to be there.

He couldn’t sense any lies in her words, so either she didn’t know it, or the entrance was really there.

But even if the entrance wasn’t there, Hans didn’t dislike the idea of seeing the tower from the inside.

He slowly made his way toward the building as he tried to analyze the shape of the terrain beneath his feet.

He could tell that what the woman said was the truth, even if she might have not been certain about it because when he tried to analyze what was under him, Hans was faced with hundreds of different detection arrays and barriers.

He had to stop digging deeper with his mana because of those, otherwise, there was a high chance that the alarm might go off, and he would then become the prey of all the honorary leaders and high-ranking officials residing on that island.

‘Let’s take this slow, making an enemy out of the association doesn’t seem like something that’ll bring me any kind of benefit anytime soon.’

Hans walked until he found himself at the feet of the colossal tower, just standing beside it, he couldn’t fathom how much money they had invested in such a project.

He watched up in awe so much that his neck almost started hurting.

More than a tower, the building was a skyscraper.

The whole external surface of the building was covered in glass, making it look like a giant shining shard in the middle of the sky.

Its shape was incredibly grand, and it wasn’t the usual giant rectangle.

It looked like it was wrapped around itself, or more like… someone had grabbed it from the top and had twisted the whole building.

The skyscraper must’ve been at the very least two hundred and fifty meters, but that didn’t stop it from taking an incredible form.

Every couple of floors, the building was twisted ninety degrees to the right, making the whole tower look like a giant spiral when seen from afar.

As soon as he reached the entrance he was faced with another obstacle.

Well, he wasn’t exactly sure about how to describe it but…

It was empty… like… empty.

But… not empty in the sense that there weren’t any people… no those weren’t lacking, about a couple of dozen people passed by the entrance every minute, when Hans thought it was empty he meant…

Well empty of anything else.

The entrance room was nothing but a wide space that led all the way to five elevators, all of the lifts were continuously opening and closing, going back and forth all day and transporting thousands of people every hour.

But there wasn’t a front desk where he could ask for information, nor a few people who seemed as confused as him…

Every passing person looked like they knew exactly where they were going.

He looked like a salmon swimming against the current as he stood in the middle of the river of people rushing back and fro.

He remained frozen in place for a few seconds before deciding to follow the passing people.

He walked at the same pace as everyone else and entered the elevator.

It was pretty huge, it could hold at least twenty-five people at once, and it was spacious enough even for more.

It took less than a dozen seconds for it to fill up, and as soon as no other people entered, the metal door quickly closed.

There were only six buttons, all high on the wall, and every single one of them was already pressed.

Not knowing where to go, Hans, who was stuck in the furthest corner of the lift, waited for the doors to open to decide where to get off.

It took just a moment for the doors to open again, and Hans, who thought someone had pushed a button to get off or wait for anyone else, was surprised to find that they had already arrived on the first floor.

‘That was quick!

I didn’t even manage to sense the movement’

Hans couldn’t wrap his head around it and decided to analyze the lift…

The more he looked around, the more his eyes widened in surprise:

‘Gravity arrays, sense blocking arrays, acceleration arrays, electricity accumulating arrays…

Every single one of the listed above was applied evenly to the floor and the ceiling of the elevator.

‘Does everything here have a bit of array in it?’

Is this even an elevator at this point?

I mean even a box would be able to serve as an elevator with this many arrays.

Maybe the elevator was the arrays we made along the way…’

Hans was beginning to go crazy.

‘Why would they even apply arrays to the elevators?’

Hans was always left astonished when seeing how many arrays were spread all over the island, but he couldn’t understand the need for so many.

Soon, the door closed again, and not much time passed before they opened a third time.

Hans glanced outside, and just as he had observed the first time, it was something along the lines of a hub… almost like the one he had seen inside the vortex guild in Chicago.

But there were multiple of them…

He could spot many elevators in the distance, all distributed around the place, it seemed like the reason why only five elevators were needed in the middle of the building was because every floor had its own means of transport.

He didn’t feel like he would find anything on that floor, so instead of getting off the lift as a third of the remaining people did, Hans stood in his place.

He waited patiently a couple of seconds for the following floor to be revealed.

With a couple more people leaving the elevator, Hans had enough space to move around and place himself slightly closer to the entrance, allowing himself to see the entirety of the floor.

Even if it wasn’t exactly that much of an advantage to him, since the third floor was completely different, the elevator simply led to a corridor that seemed to span about thirty meters, with various turns along the way.

There weren’t any signs or indications, so Hans figured that if he were to get off that floor, then he would only be wandering around without a destination in mind.

As the doors closed, Hans turned around just to see the edge of the button with the number three written on it turn off.

Just the fourth, fifth, and sixth buttons were lit up now, and Hans had no idea whether what he was searching for was in any of them… he was pretty much an intruder, so it was kind of strange that he didn’t feel anxious in the least.

But more importantly…

‘There isn’t any underground floor in this building’s elevator’

Hans observed.

Due to the countless detection arrays spread around the place, Hans couldn’t simply scan the whole building, so he could only hypothesize…

‘Maybe, just like it was in Valhalla and in the association New York branch, the underground floors are only accessible through different smaller elevators, in that case, they might be situated on any of the lower floors, or even on the higher ones.

It’s quite a troublesome matter…

If I were to map every single elevator it would easily take me more than twenty-four hours, maybe even half a week, I don’t have that time to waste, and I don’t have the patience to do any of that…

If it came down to that, I might as well just scan the building with my mana even if it means alerting and possibly making an enemy out of everyone on this island.’

Before Hans could turn his head around, the doors to the fourth floor had already opened.

Four people left the elevator, leaving only two people in there other than Hans.

This time, the door of the elevator opened on the side of a corridor.

Since he didn’t want to look stupid or block the elevator, Hans didn’t peek, but just by standing inside the elevator, he couldn’t see anything but a blank white wall.

He waited for the doors to close and open yet another time, bringing him up to the fifth floor.

Everyone walked out of there as soon as the doors opened, and they glanced at Hans when they saw him stand inside the elevator.

‘What?’

Hans thought.

No one had looked at him wrong even if his clothes differed from everyone else’s.

So why?

Why did they look so shocked when they saw him remain in that elevator?

Regardless of the reason, Hans didn’t get off.

The fifth floor was almost identical to the third, and he had no business getting off there.

The doors closed, this time slightly slower than the other times.

But as Hans waited for them to open once again… he was surprised to find that they were still sealed tight.