Chapter 37: Chapter Thirty Seven

My palms were sweaty as we made our final approach. I hadn't been super nervous on the way over, honestly, but now that we were here I was poleaxed. The sheer SCALE of the city was so alien to me I could barely process it. Not just the hundred BILLION people in it either. This was the oldest city on the planet, the first city settled by the Conglomerate on Callus, which meant it had the most time to grow, to evolve.

The first thing I noticed was the architecture. I'd expected it to be stable and uniform. One style of building just slapped across the skyline. And there was some of that, a kind of base style, but interspersed throughout the city were skyscrapers of different styles. Odd twisting buildings, strange edifices of warped glass styled like misshapen sculptures in ways I was pretty sure required some kind of enchanting as a cheat.

It was strange really. Looking at them individually you would have expected them to look unusual mashed together like that. But somehow the individuality of those strange disparate elements blended together to make the city something exotic and beautiful. A mosaic in the form of a city, with little chips of different cultures and architecture styles mixed together into a whole greater than that sum of it's parts. I got so wrapped up in watching the buildings go by that I didn't even notice the descent until we were at ground level and Shadowthorn was stepping out of the air shuttle.

Hopping down myself I took in the city a second time, except now my point of view was at ground level. It was...less overwhelming, but still a lot to take in. The number of random pedestrians was staggering, and as I'd seen from the shuttle there were a LOT of Skyrides. Which made sense because normal streets would have gotten clogged quickly with the sheer volume of traffic here. The weirdest part was that the city was so big that despite being in the presence of more people than I'd ever seen it didn't feel crowded.

Callie and Jessie were both almost as in awe as Benny and I. Callie gave a low whistle. "Damn. I forgot how overwhelming this place can be. I admit I thought some of it was just bias from being here as a kid, but nope, this is a truly ridiculous sight." She pointed ahead of us. "Especially that." I turned to look at the building she was point to, and then I looked up. And up. And up. Because holy shit was it tall. A massive tower of stone and metal.

I had trouble processing the thing. It looked like someone had taken pieces of a white marble castle with golden veins and suspended them in the air with gaps between them. The white stone was held up within a frame of what looked like literal gold, and between the gaps there were sections of glass and gold that looked like normal skyscraper segments. The whole building gave the appearance of some kind of weird tower of mismatched blocks made of the most expensive possible materials.

It kind of worked somehow though, the style of the castle segments changed subtly from the bottom up, starting more rustic and old fashioned before shifting slowly into a futuristic edifice of white stone and glass at the top that blended the types of segments perfectly into one harmonic gestalt. I blinked. The gold supports along that building were almost definitely not normal gold. The stuff wasn't strong enough to build a structure like that from. It had to be either Ascendant gold or enchanted, probably both.

Callie smirked at my shock. "That's the Callus headquarters for the Unity. It's a literal building from the main branch. It's pretty much a city made of buildings like that from what I know, and when they open a new branch they transport one of the skyscrapers to the new planet. I don't actually know why, but a lot of people theorize it has to do with the nature of the Unity, and the nature of Unity himself."

Unity was...kind of a mystery. Everyone in the Conglomerate knew him, it was hard not to with the organization named after him so prevalent everywhere, but actual details about the Strongest Hero, were few and far between. Whatever the deal with him was, he was strong enough that his organization gave the Conglomerate the right to be considered a member of the five faction alliance. Getting answers about him was weirdly hard though, because everyone acted like the man and the guild were basically the same thing.

Shadowthorn was gazing fondly up at the staggering mass of metal and stone. "It never gets less beautiful, I must admit. Its nice to be home." She turned to regard us all seriously, her smile stiffening as she saw Callie's glare, but still holding. "Well, welcome to the Callus main headquarters. We offer temporary housing until you can find a place to live, or in the event of a rank up to a sufficient level, even permanently. After we get you settled in we'll take you to visit the Academy, but given the size of that undertaking it probably won't happen until tomorrow."

She gestured for us to follow her into the towering edifice, and all of us trekked behind her into the massive tower. As we entered, I was flabbergasted by the sheer scale of the inside. The entryway is a sort of atrium that seems to be one long hollow in the middle of the tower all the way to the top. Literal waterfalls pour from some of the floors into small pools jutting out into the atrium that pour the water back into the walls even as it fills them. Some floors have trees you can see hanging over the edge or dangling vines and the floor itself is a series of literally golden cobblestones on the bottom floor.

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It was...a paradise. A crazy mixed up cacophony of beauty and life and noise and freedom. It was arguably even more jaw dropping than the outside, and the small glimpse into each floor as you gazed further up that massive empty space in the middle made me desperately want to visit every single floor of this crazy place. As we took it all in, hundreds of people in costumes walked past, heading to different floors via stairs or elevators around the edges of the atrium. Tall and short, fat and thin, every color I could imagine and some I couldn't it was like watching a parade.

A small group of people walked by and waved to Shadowthorn, who waved back excitedly. A small woman with black hair and hazel eyes dressed in all white, a redhead in blue with green eyes, a towering dark skinned man with brown eyes and gold clothes and a smaller man with olive skin whose eyes were literally ORANGE dressed in bright shades of red. They seemed excited to see our guide and the woman in white tapped her scan ring meaningfully at Shadowthorn who laughed and nodded back.

She turned to us, still chuckling. "Sorry about that, one of the teams I patrol with sometimes. We're heading for the seventy fifth floor so it's a good idea to take the elevator. We can grab the one over here. You'll be in VIP housing for the moment since it's just temporary." She escorted us over to the elevator, a glass cylinder with golden edges and a white marble floor. Once we stepped in she hit a button on the panel along one of the strips of gold holding the glass together and we started to rise.

The glass elevator carried us up into the atrium, letting us look out on the staggeringly large building. I was pretty sure there was some Fantasy and Creation runework on whatever that gold was, because this place seemed bigger than it was supposed to be based on how it looked from outside, which was already absolutely massive. If the air shuttle trip had been too surreal to scare us with heights, this one definitely wasn't and watching the cobbled floor of the entrance hall fall away as we rose up through the atrium was as dizzying as it was electrifying.

Shadowthorn cleared her throat as we rose. "Calliope. I was...wondering if you could do something for me?" Callie shot the woman an incredulous look that drew a visible wince from her. "Well, not me specifically. Eric and I live in the VIP housing, since Paul is the guild master, he likes to keep us close so he knows we're safe." She paused a moment, as if unsure whether to keep going. "I...can you please try to be nice to Eric? I know you haven't seen him since he was a baby and you have a lot of...anger, aimed at us, but that isn't his fault."

I expected Callie to snap, and she definitely tensed up, but after a minute she relaxed. She sighed. "I'm not an asshole Annie. I know none if this is on him. He's two. I'm not going to verbally abuse a toddler, even if I can understand why you would worry about it. Dear old dad was never very patient with kids, was he?" That got a bigger wince, and it made me even more predisposed to hate Callie's dad. I didn't think he was actually abusive, or the dynamic would be much different here. Callie wasn't the kind of person to ignore something like that. But he was pretty obviously a giant dick.

Once again I hoped that he tried to mess with me personally. Zeke could and would curb stomp the bastard if he interfered with me directly, since being E ranked made him more than two ranks above me. He'd still be two up once I hit G rank, and I was pretty sure I'd still be protected. I hadn't noticed before but Zeke had purposefully skipped over mentioning F ranked threats despite them being two ranks up, which I suspected was a way to add some urgency to my training.

We made the rest of the trip in silence, with Jessie shifting uncomfortably at being stuck in a glass tube with two people who hated each other. Our botanist wasn't really built for emotional conflict, and preferred to keep things light. A sentiment I understood but sadly not one I had any impact over, so I just went back to staring at the absolutely staggering view out the side of the elevator as we shot up into the upper reaches of the building. It really was dizzying to see all those floors race by, and this thing definitely didn't move slowly.

Finally we pulled to a stop and turned around to exit the elevator. The walls of the floor around the elevator were clear from the outside but were normal white marble after we got off and looked back. One way stone. Yet another insane twist to this building that I kind of loved. This was hands down the most amazing place I'd ever been, and I really hoped they let us explore it once we were checked in. It also made me even more curious about the local WCP and the Academy. I couldn't imagine the Palace letting the Unity outdo them. They certainly hadn't back in Velan.

Shadowthorn led us out of the hallway near the elevator and into a large spacious lounge area about the size of an opera hall. The walls were lined with individual doors but the center area was a communal living space with a scan box and a series of couches. Shadowthorn fished out a few keys from her pockets and passed them to us. "Your room numbers are on the keys, feel free to look around the floor as long as you don't try to get through any locked doors." She slumped slightly when she finished talking, as if finally putting down a burden. "Now if you'll excuse me. I'm going to go see my son."

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