?278 Chapter 278 – Light Layer
Earlier, Nick had scouted the room through the light holes and had seen that there was another exit leading into another brightly lit hallway.
Just like the first exit, this one also had a glass door.
Apparently, glass doors were normal in this building.
After scouting out the area, Nick noticed that it was impossible to kill the two of them while they were inside the room.
However, Nick had to kill them.
Since he had moved so slowly earlier, nearly five minutes had already passed since the infiltration had begun.
The guard probably knew what was going on, and if more time passed without the supervisor coming out, the guard would probably become suspicious and check things out.
Because of that, Nick had to kill them.
He needed more time.
So, he devised a plan.
If something strange were going on in the stairwell, they would definitely call for reinforcements.
However, they wouldn't sound the alarm.
What if it was only something getting stuck in the light shaft?
This meant that one of them would have to run to get reinforcements, which meant that they would split up.
And since there was only one other exit, they had to leave through there.
So, Nick had decided to expand his body.
His lower body would expand and contract in the light shaft near the stairs, and his upper body would come out of a light hole in the hallway behind the other exit.
Then, when he heard the guy tell the woman to get reinforcements, Nick pulled his lower body towards himself and fully materialized.
Luckily, the hallway was higher than the door, which meant that there was a blind spot above the door.
Lastly, he killed the woman passing below him, pulled her body into the room, and killed the other guy.
'That was risky!' Nick thought as his heart rapidly beat in his ears.
Nick had used up over 50% of his Zephyx with this maneuver, and if he had messed anything up, he would need to abort the mission.
Even more, there were now two corpses in the room, and Nick needed to get rid of them before somebody decided to come into the hallway and look in this direction.
A moment later, Nick inspected the right hand of the guy.
Earlier, Nick had seen how the woman had paused in front of the door before doing something that Nick couldn't see, and only then had she opened the door.
This meant that the doors were secured in some way.
After a bit, Nick noticed the gloves.
Or, more precisely, the glove.
The guy was wearing one fingerless glove on his right hand, and on the band of the glove was some kind of small metal plate.
Nick grabbed the glove, put it on his right hand, and moved the back of his hand over the small sensor beside the door.
Click.
The quiet noise of something metallic moving came from the door, and Nick pushed on it.
Sure enough, the door opened.
Nick quickly grabbed the two corpses and ran into the hallway.
Then, he opened the door to the trading place and saw a rat.
When the rat saw Nick enter with two corpses, a bright smile appeared on its face.
"You eating that?" the rat asked.
Nick just wordlessly threw the two corpses towards the hole in the middle before running out of the room and closing the door.
When Nick looked down the corridor, he gritted his teeth.
He left a trail of blood behind by carrying the corpses down here.
Then, Nick took something out of the Shadow Shroud.
It was a small bottle with red powder.
Nick carefully opened it and dropped a bit of the red powder as he kept moving along the trail of blood.
The trail of blood vanished!
The contents of the bottle were spores from the Crimson Fungus, and if they touched blood, they converted the blood into Zephyx.
However, pure Zephyx wasn't stable in the normal atmosphere, which was why it was always stored either as crystals or in special containers.
If Zephyx wasn't stored in such a place, it turned back into Prephyx after a couple of seconds.
And Prephyx was everywhere.
This meant that, essentially, the trail of blood turned into nothing.
Nick opened the door with his new glove and left the guard room behind.
This place should have been some kind of small outpost, which meant that Nick was inside the actual office now.
A moment later, Nick turned into smoke again and entered the light shaft.
At the end of the corridor, the light shaft expanded dramatically.
Now, the light shaft was no longer a light shaft but a light layer.
It was like Nick had entered a very thin world of light.
Nick could see the light shafts that led to the edge of the megastructure.
The light from these light shafts entered this layer of reflective materials and bounced around until it found one of the exits.
Sadly, there was now an issue.
There were no more light holes.
There were only small windows.
Nick couldn't turn corporeal within such a thin layer, which meant that he couldn't damage or break the small windows leading out of the layer of light.
As Nick kept slithering through the light layer, he saw a couple of people passing beneath him, but they were mostly guards and some cleaning people.
It was nighttime currently, and most clerks worked during the day.
'I don't want to walk through the building in my corporeal form,' Nick thought. 'The hallways are too straight and well-lit.'
Because of that, Nick kept searching through the layer of light, going down different light shafts and coming back out again.
Sadly, no matter how much he searched, he couldn't find any light holes.
It seemed like the Spartans only had windows.
For minutes, Nick kept searching.
Finally, he found something interesting.
Nick found himself on top of a window, but this one was much bigger than the others.
And he wasn't sure what he should think about the thing he saw below him.