BXBX NOVEL Chapter 50: Blue
Judging from the correct colors on the painting, Atlan judged this to be the real world. Thankfully, he wasn't in the Remedium.
He sat up and saw that he was in a small room with tall, vaulted ceilings. Off to the side, he saw sunshine gleaming down from stained glass windows with designs of a maidenly woman praying with both hands.
Unlike the modern architecture he saw in the City, this place seemed to be made from ancient Gothic materials and designs. The pillars on the corners were made out of stone and lime, with intricate carvings of men and women fighting monstrous creatures.
Where am I?
Just as he thought that, the door suddenly opened and in came a woman that Atlan immediately recognized. It was Lizzie.
Her eyes widened with relief once she saw Atlan awake. She immediately lunged towards him and gave him a big, warm hug.
Atlan was speechless. He didn't know what to do with his hands. He was going to put his hands and hug her back when she muttered something in his ears.
"Thank god you're alright."
Atlan didn't know what god had to do with it, but he didn't say anything else.
Then after a few moments, she immediately pulled away from the hug and grabbed his shoulders with a stern look. She seemed pissed, which left Atlan utterly confused. First, she hugged him very tightly and then she was angry. I didn't even do anything.
"Do you know what you've done?"
"Uh…"
"That was a very dangerous stunt you've pulled during your mission. If I was there, I would have knocked some sense into your head."
Ah. Lizzie was talking about the very heroic and very stupid action of Atlan going back to the Remedium and saving his teammates.
"I had to help. I didn't want them to suffer."
Lizzie put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath. She was ready to give him a big lecture on not risking his life in the Remedium, but how could she reprimand him for such an admirable reason? Even she was impressed with his valiant efforts.
Yet, it was still an unnecessary risk for him. There were other Saviors tasked with the retrieval of the survivors in the mission, and Atlan didn't have to put that burden on his shoulders. He shouldn't have.
"Even so. You broke protocol."
"I didn't know anything about that."
She massaged her head. "And that's my fault. I should have taught you better. Anyway, it's especially important for you to not risk your life."
"Why?"
"It's because you're the only low-class Porter we have. What if you get trapped in the Remedium and we can't find you?"
Atlan raised his eyebrows. "We can get trapped in the Remedium?"
She sighed. "Yes. It's rare, but it happens. The last time it happened was 300 hundred years ago, and the Savior was trapped for 5 years."
Judging from the way the tunnels in the Remedium changed without warning, Atlan guessed that being lost in the Remedium was possible. However, he didn't think that it had already happened.
He re-evaluated the risks of the Remedium in his mind. If things could change in the Remedium at the drop of a hat, then it was much more dangerous than he thought.
Their mission was only supposed to be a simple one. They only had to kill a Deiztruphia Canzer and go home. Yet, things happened so fast that none of them could react quickly enough.
"What about Neumann? What about my team?"
She gave him a terse smile. "They're fine. Neumann took a lot longer to recover, but he's already up and running. Your other teammates have recovered well too. The Scout is the only one still unconscious and stuck in his bed."
Atlan heaved a sigh of relief.
"You did a good job. If you hadn't acted so quickly, their condition would have been much more critical."
They all did their jobs. They killed the Canzer. But, who could have expected that things would go so wrong?
"What happened?" he asked her.
Lizzie sat beside him in the bed and shook her head. "Nobody knows. HeadQuarters have been working overtime to try and figure out how, what, and why things escalated to such difficulty. As of now, they've come up with nothing."
"This hasn't happened before?"
"No. In the entire history of Genesis City, a Canzer Report has never been so thoroughly wrong."
Even though no one knew what happened, Atlan had a guess.
It probably has something to do with the extinction of Angels. Weird things have been happening ever since they fell from the heavens, but nobody ever correlates it with the Angels. After all, they don't even believe it happened.
Atlan looked at Lizzie and saw that she had no idea about it at all. Even though she was there to witness them falling to the ground first-hand, she still believed the City's words over her own eyes.
"Have you heard what happened to them?" she asked him.
Atlan slightly nodded his head. When he rescued the Stun Wizard, she told him all the things they went through in the sewers. She told him about the two Deiztruphia Canzers as well as the dangerous Sapient Canzer. She warned him that it was coming for him.
"That was really dangerous. You're lucky that the Sapient Canzer didn't find you. I'm getting chills just thinking about it."
Of course, nobody knew that Atlan already felled that monster. Nobody thought he'd have the power to even hurt the Sapient Canzer, much less actually kill it without disabling its healing factors.
"What happened to you after you fell?" asked Lizzie.
But just as he was about to answer, the door suddenly opened.
A woman suddenly came in without warning. Atlan looked at her body and was surprised to see the color of her garment.
She was wearing a blue battle suit. She was an Operator!