The group separated from Natsumi found themselves in a smooth, white corridor with wide windows on each side every now and then, with doors that looked just as reinforced as the ones above, just also white and as smooth as the walls, ground and ceiling. The ceiling also had glass segments, from which light came through. But it did not appear as though a flame was burning behind them, rather Clara felt mana above them.
"What is this place…", Leo thought out loud, though everyone thought the same.
Clara got up from the ground, no longer sitting next to the teleportation circle, and having no idea where it was either.
"Hell if I know… Great job though, Leo. You too, Fred. Amazing assist."
"Okay, let's all calm down first and not point fingers. If I had known you were this close to achieving something with the circle, I wouldn't have even brought it up."
"It being your secret plan to assassinate a sleeping angel, huh?"
"Which would have worked wonders for discrediting a state built on divine eternity bullshit, wouldn't it? So could we please focus on where we are and how to get out of here now!?"
"Didn't seem like those where the thoughts you had back then, but fine…Anyone else wanna share their thoughts?"
Charlie had walked off to inspect the walls right away, being drawn to the smooth and white surface which was unlike anything she had ever seen before. Though she did recognize some of the equipment behind a window, since she had some items herself. These items included flasks of various sizes and shapes, thermometers, burners and sealed of and labeled chemicals, of which she could not the names from so far away. But she was dying to know what was stored in there.
"This place is perfection…"
"What do you mean?", Clara asked.
"To experiment in here… It must be amazing… The things I could do if I had a lab like this…"
Charlie pressed her face against the wall, completely mesmerized by the little friction exerted by the walls surface. Truly, the dream of any chemist. Clara on the other hand was much less fascinated, and would rather get back to where she was two minutes ago.
"Yeah, that's great and all, but how do we get out of your personal heaven…?"
"We need to find another teleportation circle. If one brought us here, there's a good chance it was connected to one near by. It just didn't make it all the way here, because I distracted Clara."
"Damn right you did. But another question… Where's snowflake? You were farther away from the circle than she was, but you are here and she is not."
"Well… The circle obviously didn't work as intended. I wish we could go look for her, but there is no way we can navigate to each other, while we don't even know where we are. I say we continue to try and move to the middle section trophy room, and hope she is already there, or at least finds her way there as well."
"Huh… I would have thought you would be more insistent on looking for her. Or did your little disagreement make you lose interest in her already?"
"Drop it, there is nothing we can do. And she is part of it now, just as we are. I told her about the risk beforehand, and shs did not seem scared then. I'm sure she will be fine now too."
"Hate to interrupt you guys, but Charlie already ran off down the hallway… We should probably go after her, and get moving in general, right?"
"Right… Thank you for noticing, Fred… Let's go guys."
Following Charlie, who seemed to have drifted off into her own world, the group moved along the corridors, with no idea what half of the things were that they passed by. But Cindy and Boyle also knew some of thr equipments used, and were able to explain them to Leo, Fred and Clara.
Meanwhile, Natsumi continued studying the area, which she now understood had something to do with the power supply of the Absolute Citadel, as best she could. The surrounding structural steelwork let her to believe her theory could not be that far off. The mana density around her was extremely high as well, to the point where too long exposure could be harmful for regular people. Too long being multiple days at least, but still.
Normally, she would be able to use the oxygen in the air and pressure levels to tell what her altitude was, and thus locate her position in the citadel. But, perfect as the architecture of the Absolute Citadel was, to avoid discomfort in the Sphere at around 1.8 kilometers, within the entire Citadel these factors were adjusted to match the conditions at the ground, thanks to a barrier surrounding the entire Citadel. The prevention of lost people locating their positions through these values never came to Yuki's mind during construction, but she did realize this later on herself, but chose not to do anything about it, since she figured the only person that she genuinely cared about finding their way through the Citadel was Yamato. And his location was on her radar at all times anyway. So if he were to get lost, in this section which he never goes to anyway, his majestic savior angel could come sweeping in and save the day.
As Natsumi looked down beneath the catwalk she was on, she could not see the ground but it seemed to go down quite a bit. On her sides where metal plate covered walls, and while she was somewhat curious to see what was behind them, and how this was designed from the inside, that really was not the reason she was here. She needed to somehow get to the trophy room, which meant she first had to locate her own position. But since her usual approach to this was blocked by the architecture of the Citadel, she would have to perform a bit of a "secret memory trick", as she called it. The middle section of the Absolute Citadel had numerous floors, and the blueprints they had went barely into detail about individual floors. However, if she remembered correctly, the only floors which had no description at all where those at the very top, right below the Sphere. And she was sure she could identify any of the labeled floors after the amount of time she had been walking around. Which was approximately twenty minutes.
Leading her to conclude that she was in fact near the top and very high up. Now, the good news was, that her prayers seemed to have been answered, since if Yuki were in the tower, she would have gotten active by now, which Natsumi would have noticed. The bad news being that of course, she was still separated from the group with no way to locate or contact them. As well as the fact that they were now on a timer, since they only had until sunrise, when Carina woke up to prepare church for the day, at which their escape would complicate drastically. Of course, there was also no telling where Yuki was and when she would be back, so the less time spent in the tower the better. However knowing her clinginess, she would try to be back as soon as possible, assuming Yamato did not go with her. She got a headache from how much planning she now had to do, not liking how it felt more and more like a scheme, which, since this was a planned break in, definitely fell under that definition.
While she continued wandering, and worrying, the other group had finally caught up to Charlie, who despite her typically tired look, seemed excited and like someone strolling through a mall.
"Guys, quick, come take a look!"
Charlie's attention was drawn to a window, behind which encased thorned vines grew, and where under constant exposure of a light in pointed at it shining brighter than all the other lights in near by rooms.
"It's… A plant.", Boyle correctly stated.
"No, you idiot! It's a special plant!", Cindy stated more correctly. Though she had no idea what she was talking about.
"Oh yeah? What's so special about it?"
"Charlie will tell you!"
"Charlie, tell me!"
"This plant is indeed special, but it's not just about the plant itself… Tonicula Fragnica is extremely hard to grow, since it requires a ridiculous amount of constant sunlight. So it only grows in the hight of summer, where the days are longest, and it gets the most amount of sunlight possible!"
"That's great and all… But why do you know all that? Aren't you into chemistry and not botany?"
"I know because it produces one of the fastest neurotoxins in the world, the many thorns you see on it are all coated in a substance that can permanently paralyze you in less than 600 milliseconds afzer contact… It spreads through your body so rapidly, and no one knows how it does that! The formula to this could be revolutionary in medicine, and all kinds of chemical reactions! It's amazing to see such a healthy specimen in such a refined environment but… How did it grow here in the first place!? Oh, the mysteries to uncover in this place! They must have found a way to replace sunlight in here!"
"But why not just plant that thing outside, and then move it inside to study?", Leo asked skeptically.
"Well, there's another thing… Despite relying on so much sunlight, it also requires really moist soil. The combination is typically only possible when growing in a cave with the roots, and then reaching out into the sun. As you can imagine, the transition to the outside is the most difficult period for Tonicula Fragnica. Which is why it is such a pain to grow. It has that one growth stage where it just widely shoots in every direction until it finds light, at which point it lets all other vines die off except the one that came into contact with the light. That one vine then grows towards the light as much as possible. If there is no light, or not enough light, the whole plant just dies off. Honestly, the more controlled the environment the better with this thing… But still, a glass roof wouldn't hurt… That going for all the plants in rooms near by. Unless… We are underground?"
"Don't be ridiculous. This place is a bit to large and clean for it to be underground."
"What if it was in a cave? That's where the preferred soil of the Tonicula Fragnica is anyway."
"How do you even suggest this place was built underground?"
"Well, I also don't get how the structure above works. But it's there."
"Yeah, but building up and building down are completely different things."
"I'm no architect and still just a chemist, and I could be wrong… But wouldn't one explain the other though? As in, this basement could be like roots for the main building above. Like a tree!"
As Charlie slowly began showing everyone the endless opportunities this place held with her theories, they continued to spend their time with no new teleportation circle in sight.