?Nick took a deep breath and readied himself mentally.
The world hadn't felt real for the past day, but right now, Nick felt that the danger to his life was very real.
All the things that happened yesterday and today vanished from Nick's mind, allowing him to focus on the task at hand.
The hammer Nick had received was hanging from his toolbelt, and the two sacks were hanging from his back.
The first thing Nick did was to take one of the grips out of the sack, which wasn't as easy as he had thought.
The sack was hanging quite low, and Nick couldn't reach it just by moving his arm backward.
After a couple of seconds of fidgeting around, Nick noticed that the gap between the grips and the wall was wide enough for his ankle.
Nick put both his feet through the gap and let go of the grips.
The top of Nick's feet were pressing against the metal while his heels were pressing against the grips.
Keeping oneself straight in such a position would require incredible strength and put immense stress on one's body.
But that was exactly why the workers were level two Extractors.
While an Extractor's weight increased when they became more powerful, the increase wasn't really that big.
Nick was about 185 centimeters tall and quite muscular.
A normal person with his build would weigh around 100 kg, but Nick actually weighed around 160 kg.
That was extremely heavy for a normal person, but for someone with a body 50 times as powerful as the average male, this was barely anything.
After Nick let go of the grips, he "straightened" his posture and made sure that the sacks didn't slip off his body.
Then, he extended his right arm "upward" and took out one of the grips and nails.
At that moment, Nick noticed an issue.
He needed one hand for the grip, one for the nail, and one for the hammer.
If he just had to nail something to the ground, he could just position the grip, let go, and then hold the nail.
If he had to nail something to a wall, he could use gravity and hold the lowest point of the thing he was holding while also hammering in the nail at that point.
But here, things became difficult.
The grip was around 30 centimeters wide and could easily fall down.
Clink!
At that moment, Nick heard the sound of something metallic falling to the ground.
Someone must have dropped one of the grips.
Nick looked-
No!
"Hahahaha!"
Nick heard someone laughing from beside him, but he just kept focusing on the metallic "wall" in front of him.
BANG!
A gunshot rang through the atmosphere, and the sound of a body falling to the ground could be heard.
Nick didn't dare to look away from the metal in front of him.
"Never look away from the ceiling," the assistant said. "No matter what. Don't even look at where your tools are. If you drop a grip, ignore it and let it fall."
Nick took a deep breath.
This job was way more terrifying than working with Specters.
Some seconds later, Nick returned to solving the problem of how to attach the grips to the ceiling.
Nick held the grip to the spot where it was supposed to go and held the nail to its corner.
But when Nick tried to hold the grip to the wall with the hand holding the nail, it started to move and bend.
Nick experimented with holding the grip for over two minutes, and slowly, fear was giving way to frustration.
This was annoying.
'If I didn't need the hammer, this would-'
Nick's eyes widened.
Nick noticed that his ability had activated again, which gave him an idea.
He held the grip in the middle with his left arm.
Then, he held the nail on its wide back and moved it towards the hole.
EEEEeeeee!
The loud sound of metal pushing through metal appeared, but the sound became quite a bit quieter after half a second.
Half a second after pushing the nail into the metal, Nick's ability deactivated again.
The assistant was probably looking at Nick from below.
Nick had pushed the nail into the metal.
Something like this was impossible to do for normal people but not impossible for Zephyx Extractors.
Even though Nick's ability had deactivated, his power was still strong enough to finish pushing in the nail.
When Nick was done pushing the nail in, he noticed that the wide head wasn't perfectly aligned with the holes of the grip, which made sense since the nail hadn't been pushed into the ceiling at a 90° angle.
CRRR!
Nick put his thumb onto the head and bent it so that it looked like it was hammered in straight.
'This probably works,' Nick thought.
Then, he grabbed another nail and did the same thing on the other end of the grip.
The last two nails were easily pushed in, and Nick looked at the finished grip.
"Sir, is it okay like this?" Nick shouted without looking away.
"Test it," Nick heard from below him. "I don't care how you did it. In the end, it has to hold."
Nick grabbed the hold he had just fixed to the ceiling and let go of the other holds.
He was now hanging from the grip with one of his hands, his entire weight on the grip.
Then, Nick slowly did some one-handed pull-ups.
"Looks good," the assistant said from below Nick. "Fix all the others to the ceiling just like this, and you're golden."
Nick nodded and returned to his normal position on the ceiling.
After Nick had received his feedback from the assistant, more of the Extractors started to ask the same question.
Meanwhile, Nick grabbed the next grip and fixed it to the wall the same way.
The second one took only about a minute, but he became progressively faster and faster.
Whooom.
A green gleam appeared around Nick after he moved forward a bit.
His Barrier had activated, which could only mean one thing.
Nick had reached the end of the platform, and he was now entering the red world.