Although the specific contents of Emergency Edict No. 12 remained unknown, another item mentioned in it had been briefly documented in Iax's database.
The Hyperspace Folding Device.
This technology had been created to conceal and protect important facilities, as well as to transport certain megastructures.
By overlapping and folding the space within a region, it physically concealed that region and rendered it immune to conventional forms of attack.
However, according to Iax's existing records, the technology should never have been fully completed.
After carefully analyzing the technological concept, Iax was certain that the transport vehicle from earlier had been equipped with this technology, further expanding its limited space.
This also explained the anomalous data from the earlier scan of the city.
The city was currently in a folded state.
The only problem was that flashing warning message.
Hyperspace Folding Device not operating normally.
Iax had already experienced a normally functioning Hyperspace Folding Device. The transport vehicle had six levels, but appeared to have only two from the outside.
The stacked, concealed spaces could be entered normally through spatial fold points that maintained internal continuity, without any sense that something was wrong.
But Iax had no idea what state a malfunctioning Hyperspace device would produce.
To avoid encountering more unknown circumstances, Iax decided to investigate the city's existing structure first.
The Nanomachines returned to the hall, then approached the wall from which the machine body had emerged earlier.
There was no trace of a seam anywhere on the wall, but that posed no problem for the Nanomachines.
Several small subunits quickly advanced, then flattened into a raised patch of silver-gray material, like a wet tissue slapped against the wall.
The nano-swarm rapidly consumed an opening in the wall, exposing its internal structure.
Various miniature sensors had been embedded inside