Nick stood in front of a door on the third floor of Dark Dream and sighed.
He was not looking forward to this.
Nick's big, muscular hand pushed open the door to the locker room, and he entered.
It had been six months since Dark Dream had moved to this building, and Nick had just recently become 17 years old.
Over the last couple of months, not a lot had happened.
Nick had taught his three new colleagues and focused on day-to-day matters.
One of the matters had been the establishment of an Investigator team and the search for the next Specter.
The Investigation team had been fully formed about four months ago, and the profits of Dark Dream shrank a lot in consequence.
Dark Dream hired over 20 Investigators, and these 20 Investigators focused mostly on the Dregs.
Paying so many highly skilled people was not cheap.
But it had been worth it.
The Investigators had found the trace of a Specter, and the people of Dark Dream had captured it.
Surprisingly, capturing the Specter had been rather easy due to its nature, but it had still been incredibly painful.
Mainly for Nick.
And now, it was time for Nick to find out how to work with the Specter.
He already had a good idea about how to work with it, but he still needed to confirm it and check how much Zephyx it produced.
The good thing was that the Specter was already a Peak Hatchling since its identity had been a secret for a long time.
Many people knew and had met the Specter, but none had suspected that it actually was one.
The Investigators had only noticed that something might be wrong when they didn't know what to look for and just randomly started to combine information and clues.
One of these clues had been the abundance of feelings of weakness and sickness in the Dregs.
Naturally, due to the Dregs' dirty and unclean environment, getting sick wasn't anything unusual, and the blood tax made sure that nearly no one didn't feel weak.
Because of that, nobody had thought about cross-referencing the sick and weak people.
Nevertheless, the Investigators did that.
After a lot of information gathering, they found something.
While the sickness was evenly spread across the Dregs, the weak people mostly concentrated around one block of houses.
For several days, the Investigators kept a watch over the block of houses and kept interviewing people.
Yet, it was impossible to find the Specter.
And then, the Investigators who were stationed there started to feel weak.
At that point, the Investigators were certain that they were onto a Specter.
That was when Nick also got involved and looked for the Specter as well.
But nobody could find the Specter.
And then, Nick started to feel extremely weak.
But bizarrely enough, the Investigators regained their strength.
On top of that, the normal people also regained their strength.
And finally, they found out what had been going on.
Animals were common in the Dregs.
Rats, wild dogs, cats, raccoons, plenty of insects, and so on.
And this particular group of houses had one of these as a pet.
It was a dirty but cute puppy.
It didn't belong to anyone in particular and was just being taken care of by the community.
When the Investigators arrived, they also played with the puppy from time to time.
And when Nick appeared, the puppy immediately took a liking to him and begged him to hug it.
Nick did so and basically carried the puppy around while he was there.
When Nick finally got sick, many people realized that it was the puppy.
After all, it had been with Nick for several days by then.
Nick had quickly taken the puppy away with him after contacting the other Extractors.
Yet, when the puppy noticed that several strong people were surrounding it, its behavior changed.
It started to whine pitifully.
At that point, Nick immediately felt like chunks of his insides were being torn out.
The group put a Zephyx Suppressor on the puppy, but it still managed to hurt people through the Zephyx Suppressor, albeit with less intensity.
After dumping the puppy into the Containment Unit, Nick went home to recover.
It was bad.
Real bad.
Nick felt like his heart was beating without a rhythm, and he kept going in and out of consciousness.
He kept sweating bullets while feeling extremely cold and hot.
Even more, Nick had puked blood a couple of times.
It took almost two entire days for Nick to recover.
Of course, Nick wanted to go to the hospital, but he couldn't risk unveiling the nature of their newest Specter.
He was quite sure that he would survive due to his high level of regeneration.
And he did.
But now, it was time to work with the puppy.
Fittingly, Nick decided to call the Specter the Puppy.
'I'm pretty sure the Puppy gains power by converting the vitality of people into Zephyx, which is quite different from getting injured or exerting myself.'
'It is much more difficult to repair this kind of damage, and it is much more chaotic since the damage is all over my body.'
'I am also not sure whether or not there is a manipulative factor since nobody seems to be able to resist the Puppy's charm. Everyone there wanted to hug it and hold it.'
'Although, it could also just be that it is very cute.'
'But even if there is a manipulation aspect to the Puppy, I want to make sure and leave it here. If any of the employees start asking me or the other Extractors about the new Specter, I know for sure.'
Next, Nick thought about how to go about finding out how to work with the Puppy.
Should he just stay by its side or provoke the crying?
He didn't know, and it was his job to find out.
That was what a Chief Zephyx Extractor was supposed to do.
Nick took a deep breath and entered the Containment Unit.