"I see," the governor said after a while. "A shame."
Nick evaluated the governor's answer but wasn't sure about why he had worded it like that.
Nick was quite sure that he had illustrated his point quite well, and the governor should have voiced his agreement if he were of the same opinion or voiced his disagreement in the opposite case.
Yet, he basically only brushed all of Nick's words off.
"I'm sorry," Nick said.
Silence.
Nick was just standing near the entrance of the room without moving.
He felt a bit awkward, but there wasn't anything he could really do about it.
If he ran back to the city on his own, he might come across someone from Anatomy again, and he might get killed.
The governor was the one who had brought Nick here, and Nick wouldn't return without him.
After all, he didn't want to die.
For the next ten minutes, the governor kept looking through the different monitors, sometimes pressing a couple of buttons.
Nick just waited in silence.
Eventually, the governor walked to the entrance of the room and motioned for Nick to follow him.
The two of them wordlessly walked to the entrance of the building.
The governor started to shine with light again and ran towards the hole.
The two of them climbed up the hole and exited, Nick making very sure that he didn't accidentally look towards the city.
But then, the governor stopped walking and just stood beside the hole.
"You think you and Dark Dream are different?" the governor asked.
Nick didn't immediately answer since the governor's tone made it obvious that it was a rhetorical question.
"Dark Dream is just like every other Manufacturer," the governor said calmly.
"You might have broken fewer laws than every single other Manufacturer, but that doesn't mean that you are different."
The governor looked at Nick, who couldn't look back since that might make him look at the Crimson Sea.
"In my experience, someone that forgoes an opportunity to amass personal profit only does so because they see an opportunity for even more personal profit in the future."
"The ones that act the most innocent are often the worst ones."
"And if you are genuinely only trying to help, prove it with your actions over the coming years."
"Until then, you are no different from all the other Manufacturers."
The next moment, Nick felt like he was levitating.
And then…
WHOOOOOOOM!
The entire world spun in Nick's eyes, and everything turned into chaos.
DING!
That was when Nick touched something hard with his back.
Nick still didn't dare to open his eyes and just touched the thing behind him.
Metal.
A long and solid sheet of metal.
That was when Nick heard a couple of people talking.
Nick opened his eyes and looked around.
He was in Crimson City!
In fact, he was lying on the street in front of Dark Dream's building!
Apparently, the governor had thrown Nick back into the city.
'I didn't even feel like I moved.'
Nick stood up and looked in the direction of the mountain.
Sadly, he couldn't see it due to the wall of red mist.
'The ones that act the most innocent are often the worst ones,' Nick repeated in his mind.
Nick cleaned a bit of the dust from the streets of his uniform.
'From his viewpoint, that might be true for Dark Dream. After all, our goal is to take over the city.'
'However, the only people not benefiting from that are the big Manufacturers and the governor himself. In short, everyone who currently has a hand in running the city.'
'Are we the worst ones because we want to stage a coup, even though the coup is for the good of the people?'
Nick just jumped back to Dark Dream and entered.
'Just another fat old man sitting on his hill of valuables who is deathly afraid of hands reaching for his hoard.'
When Nick entered Dark Dream, he noticed that the mouths were still absent.
Julian was probably still careful since the governor might return at any moment.
Nick went to Julian's office and told him how everything had gone.
"Why did you not accept his offer?" Julian asked.
Nick looked at Julian with a neutral expression.
"Things are going pretty well for me here," Nick said.
Julian chuckled.
He believed that Nick didn't accept the offer since he didn't want to die, like every other human.
After all, suddenly working for the city could be seen as a betrayal to Julian, and Nick didn't want to take that chance.
Of course, in truth, that was partially correct but didn't show the entire picture.
The bigger reason was that Nick hated the governor for the state of the city, and he hated the thought of working beneath someone like this.
He would much rather work for any of the Specters instead of the governor.
After all, the Specters were, at least, honest about their desire to consume all of humanity.
Naturally, this was a hyperbole, but it put into perspective what Nick's opinion of the governor was.
Nick talked with Julian for a while.
Eventually, a couple hours later, the governor returned.
Obviously, he didn't act any different from usual, and he asked Julian about that Specter he had been talking about.
Julian quickly showed the Spilling Bottle to the governor, and the two talked about it for a while.
Some minutes later, the governor left with the bottle.
He said that he would send it to some of his researchers, and they would check how effective it would be on the Forests and whether or not it would be effective on the Crimson Sea.
This would take a couple of days, and Dark Dream would only get to know how much they would be getting out of this trade after the researchers were done with the Spilling Bottle.
As for the ruin, Dark Dream wasn't told.
Most likely, some people from Aegis would arrive or had already arrived to check it out.
There wasn't much that Dark Dream could do but wait.
However, there was at least something interesting that Nick had to do.
He had to take a look at their other new Specter and figure out a way to work with it.
It had been over two years since Nick had needed to do that the last time.