An had a smile on his face as he walked towards the Operator building. He garnered a lot of weird looks from the blue battle-suited Saviors, but he didn''t care. He just experienced the best day of his life.
The fact that he was merely an hour away from going on a mission that could destroy the entire City couldn''t bring him down. If he died today, he would be happy that he experienced that at least once.
"Excuse me, what are you doing here?"
A few overzealous Operators stopped An in his tracks just as he was about to enter the production building reserved for high-level Operators. Even lowly Saviors like them weren''t allowed inside, much less a young Vanguard like An.
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They didn''t recognize him because the world between Vanguards and Operators was extremely different. There was no ovep. So, the news about the current most talented Vanguard porter in the City did not reach the general public of Operators.n/?/vel/b//jn dot c//om
This was also true for the news inside the Operator circles. An never heard a peep about any of their current happenings.
"I was invited here," said An.
The two Operators looked at each other, then back at An''s epaulet with doubt painted on their faces.
"I think you''re in the wrong building. The Student-realm Operators are on the other side of the street. This is only reserved for Specialist Operators."
If the 3rd stage Student was here for a mission, then he surely wouldn''t be asking for any of the Specialist Operators.
They stopped An because they didn''t want him disturbing the whole production building. They''ll be the ones getting scolded for letting a Vanguard wander into there.
They even heard that Carmine was working on a very high-stakes production and must not be disturbed under any circumstances.
"No, I''m sure it''s here. Carmine told me so."
The Operators turned even more skeptical, to the point that they almostughed at An in his face.
But then, the door suddenly opened, letting the heat and banging noise from the inside leak out towards them.
Their jaws slowly dropped as they looked at the orange-haired man slowlying out of the door behind An. They immediately shut up and held their breaths.
They were definitely getting scolded. He looked annoyed. Even his usually neat and tidy slicked-back hair was now messy and full of ck grease.
Carmine red at the Operators blocking his door, then towards the young ck battle suited youth in front of him.
"Oh, Porter. You arrived just in time. Come in."
The Specialist Operator weed the unfamiliar Vanguard and ignored his fellow Operators. This left thempletely shocked to their core.
An waved at them goodbye, but they were still processing what they saw. So, he left them behind and entered the building with Carmine.
"Who is that kid? Why is he allowed inside their building?"
"How does he know Carmine?!"
###
An entered the production building and saw big moving structures of metal. They mped onto strangely shaped materials on a conveyor belt that slowly led to a fiery opening simr to a furnace.
And if saw them right, he saw giant objects madepletely out of chitin. They were stacked in a tower, with one of the forklifts slowly transferring them one by one to a giant vat filled with bubbling acid.
Are those Canzer corpses?!
He heard Carmine and the others talk about using Canzer materials to construct high-level equipment, but he didn''t think they meant materials straight out of their corpses!
But he didn''t have any time to assess the Canzer carcasses around him. Carmine kept on walking through the factory floor and left him behind. He had to follow closely so that he didn''t get trapped within the maze of tall boxes that littered the floor.
"I saw you getting blocked by those Operators. Don''t be surprised if that happens again in the future. They don''t like ''Knives'' intruding on their spaces. But don''t mind them. Come follow me, my office is this way."
And as he followed behind Carmine, he noticed the heat prickling his skin.
The air from the building itself was almost suffocating. He started to sweat! This meant that the temperature inside this building was almost the same as the Heat Wave back in the Masamune district!
But instead of getting third-degree burns, the Operators worked the giant cranes and forklifts normally without even skipping a beat.
"I hope you don''t mind how hot it is. It takes a lot of energy to melt down high-quality materials from Canzers. Don''t worry, my office is air-conditioned. Maybe you''ll be a lot morefortable there."
"I''m fine, but how are you and the others okay with the heat? I thought Operators weren''t that strong?"
Carmine looked back at An and chuckled. "You severely underestimate Specialists, kid. Yes,pared to our counterparts, we can be considered to be quite weak physically. Butpared to Students like you, our strengths are like the difference between heaven and earth.
And you forget that Operators like us use technology to our advantage. Our blue battle suits are equipped to withstand higher temperatures than this. Sometimes, we even have to get inside the very furnace itself."
This only showed An''spleteck of knowledge about Operators. But it wasn''t his fault. He had been living in the bubble of Vanguards with barely any interaction with the other faction of Saviors. The fact that they didn''t share information was a major reason why there had been so much hate between them. It all stemmed from ignorance.
"Is my new battle suit like that?" he asked Carmine.
To which, Carmineughed again. "It does more than that, kid. If you knew how much materials and resources we used on it, then you wouldn''t be asking that question. Instead, you would have asked: what can''t it do?"
An and Carmine went up a flight of stairs leading to his main office.
The moment he opened the door, An felt a cold breeze hit him in the face.
He looked around and couldn''t believe what he saw.