Time passed, and Dark Dream became bigger.
With the amount of money Dark Dream was producing, they could afford to hire more people who had been scouted by Ghosty's Lab.
In the past, Nick had been surprised that Ghosty's Lab was selling so many new recruits, but now, they found themselves buying these recruits.
Even more, Dark Dream also purchased three special recruits from Gemini.
The ability of the Distortion was just too valuable.
An ability that could isolate Zephyx and even suppress Force Specters.
Even more, the strength of the ability increased when there were more people with the same ability.
However, that wasn't everything.
Nick also hired another three people but decided to give them the abilities of some of their Specters.
First, Nick wanted to see what kind of ability the Money Sink could grant people, and from what he could see, the Money Sink could give people the ability to absorb Zephyx.
Of course, this kind of absorption was different from the normal one that everyone had.
When someone used the ability, they could pull all the Zephyx from an area towards them at a steady stream.
Nick decided to try it out on the Screaming Coffin.
As soon as the new person used their ability, the Screaming Coffin started to stand up and run away.
Or, at least, it tried to run away.
This meant that the Screaming Coffin saw this as an attack.
A couple seconds later, the Screaming Coffin lost its power and became much slower.
Nick stopped the experiment at that point and left with the new hire.
Next, Nick tried the ability on one of the new recruits.
And that ended up in the new person almost dying!
The new hire was an Initial Newbie, just like the one that had used the ability.
This meant that they barely had any Zephyx inside their body.
In barely a second or two, all the Zephyx of the other person had been absorbed…
And then, the ability started to attack the body.
At that point, Nick had to intervene immediately.
Luckily, the other person had only lost quite some skin, but that would regrow with time.
The ability was obviously extremely strong.
Some days later, Nick tried the ability out on an Early Newbie that he had bought from Gemini.
This time, things were manageable.
It took the Newbie almost ten seconds to get through all the Zephyx of the Early Newbie.
That calmed Nick down.
When Nick had seen how the ability could drain someone on the same level dry within two seconds, he had been shocked.
That ability was too strong!
That ability would be even stronger than his own!
However, after more experimentation, Nick found out that it was special for Initial Newbies.
After all, Initial Newbies had just started to gather Zephyx.
This meant that an Initial Newbie had barely any Zephyx inside their body, while an Early Newbie already had quite a bit.
When he was done with all the experimentations for the new ability, Nick summarized that the ability could probably drain someone of the same level of all Zephyx within five to eight seconds.
That was still extremely strong and fast, but it allowed the enemy to counterattack.
In order to use the ability, one had to remain motionless.
While it had a range of over five meters, six seconds was still more than enough to close the distance and attack the user of the ability.
However, the ability was still extremely strong.
It was so strong that Nick gave the same ability to a second person.
The third person got the ability of the Fog.
Nick thought that the guy could probably help him during a fight.
After hiring these nine people, Nick decided to stop hiring new personnel for now.
Dark Dream now had 20 Zephyx Extractors, including Nick.
20 Extractors.
When Nick thought about it, it almost seemed unreal.
He felt like they had left the warehouse just last week.
As time passed, Dark Dream also gained five more Johns.
Jonathan, Kiara, Constanze, Marvila, and Larry managed to become Johns.
Together with Trevor, Jenny and Nick, Dark Dream now had eight Johns.
It had barely been six months since the meeting, and Dark Dream had already fulfilled the goal that the governor had for them.
Another two months later, the Lover became an Adolescent.
The Lover was working with Kiara, who had already become a John.
Apparently, it was benefiting quite a bit from working with her.
But the Lover wasn't the only Specter that became an Adolescent.
The Bleeding Lady also became one.
This was proving to be troublesome.
Sure, it was great that these two Specters produced more Zephyx now, but it was much more difficult for Newbies to work with them now.
The Lover's effect on the mentality of a Newbie had increased significantly. Sending a Newbie to work with it could result in the Newbie's sex life getting ruined permanently.
Luckily, Kiara was taking care of it.
Sadly, the Bleeding Lady was also now inaccessible to Newbies.
One small cut of hers had already nearly cut someone's arm off, and the sight of so much blood and bone seemed to distress the Bleeding Lady.
When Nick had brought one of the Peak Newbies to work with the Bleeding Lady, he ended up fighting her just two minutes later.
Fortunately, Nick was already a Mid John, and he was extremely skilled at fighting.
The Bleeding Lady shot several powerful cuts at Nick, but he just sidestepped and bisected her horizontally.
This weakened the Bleeding Lady significantly, and Nick could bring the new agent out of the Containment Unit.
The Bleeding Lady would need a couple of days to recover, during which nobody could work with her.
Dark Dream now had seven Adolescents and only two Hatchlings, and one of the Hatchlings couldn't even be properly worked with since it was a Possession Specter.
That made it difficult to increase the power of the recruits.
'Is that why so many Manufacturers have so few Newbies? Is it because their Specters turn that quickly into Adolescents?' Nick thought with furrowed brows.
In the end, Nick decided to focus on finding a Hatchling instead of an Adolescent.