Nick walked out of a Containment Unit.
The Containment Unit was located inside Sky Dream's new building.
Naturally, Nick wouldn't stop advancing, even though he was quite busy with his job as Liaison.
Ever since becoming the Liaison of Crimson City, he had worked with at least one Elder per day.
One of the Elders Sky Dream had purchased was perfect for Nick.
He only needed to work with it for about 30 minutes for a great amount of Zephyx.
Naturally, Sky Dream wasn't complaining.
They didn't have enough Extractors anyway, and Nick still gave them 50% of what he produced while working with it.
He had come here basically every day.
The hallways were rather empty since Sky Dream didn't have as many Extractors anymore.
They only had 32 Veterans and six Experts.
In such a big building, this number might as well be zero.
Nick basically never met anyone except for the guards in front of the building while going to or coming from the Elder.
But this time, it was different.
As soon as Nick entered the hallway, his ability deactivated.
Usually, someone wouldn't feel scared about meeting another person while inside such a secure building, but over years of avoiding assassinations as Dark Dream's Chief Zephyx Extractor, Nick's ability was intrinsically connected to his emotions.
Whenever his ability deactivated, even when Nick knew that he was safe, a spike of nervousness rose inside Nick.
He did not feel safe while his ability was not active.
So, as soon as Nick walked out of the locker room, his head quickly turned around the hallway to find the origin of whoever was looking at him.
In an instant, Nick saw something.
A sniper rifle.
It was aimed at him.
And the person holding the sniper rifle was a guard!
As soon as Nick saw the rifle, it fired.
BOOOOOM!
A bright light appeared.
A white Barrier appeared around Nick.
CRACK!
The Barrier broke into pieces, and the sniper round turned Nick's head into dust.
Nick's headless corpse fell to the ground.
The guard looked at Nick's corpse for less than a second.
A sniper rifle was extremely loud, and the bullet had shot through the building's walls.
Several people must have already noticed.
In a fluid motion, the guard turned around and ran towards the wall.
BOOOM!
The guard kicked the wall, and it exploded into pieces.
"STOP RIGHT THERE!" the guard shouted with all of his power, his voice reverberating throughout the floor on which Sky Dream was located.
In an instant, several people appeared outside the building.
"The Liaison was assassinated!" the guard shouted as he shot out of the hole he had just made.
"I'm in pursuit!"
Immediately, everyone's eyes shot open in horror.
The Liaison was assassinated?!
The next moment, everyone saw a black shadow jumping away from the building and entering the upper layer.
The guard was in hot pursuit.
The people around the building wanted to follow, but the guard and the assassin were simply too fast!
They had to be Peak Experts, at least!
The people quickly gave up.
Half of them ran in all directions, searching for guards, while the other half jumped into the building to look for Nick.
However, as soon as they entered the hallway, they were confused.
Where was the corpse?
"Maybe he was killed somewhere else! Search everything!" Taren shouted.
Everyone scattered to search all the locker rooms and Containment Units.
Yet, they couldn't find a corpse.
They saw the hole of the sniper rifle, but there was no corpse.
What was going on?!
A bit earlier, the guard ran up to the upper layer with all of his speed.
The two Veterans guarding the upper layer were shocked when they saw how quickly the guard moved.
Sadly, that was the last thing they saw in their lives as the guard threw two knives, which broke through their Barriers and killed them.
The guard didn't even touch the corpses and ran into the changing room.
In a fluid motion, he tore his uniform into pieces and stashed the pieces away, revealing a white robe of the upper layer beneath.
The guard's heart was racing.
He had planned out everything, and now, he just needed to pull it off and escape.
The guard also pulled off the wig he was wearing, and calmly stepped out of the door, into the upper layer.
Inside the upper layer, he covertly but quickly made his way to a house near the wall.
He looked around and quickly entered when he saw nobody following him.
In the house, he charged towards the back and opened a trap door.
The trap door led to a small basement, surrounded by earth.
Since no light could pass through the earth, there was only a single lamp hanging in the middle of the basement.
Naturally, this lamp used Sky Dream's network of lights to keep the Nightmare at bay.
"It's done!" the guard shouted with urgency.
In the middle of the room stood a woman who looked at the guard with furrowed brows.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"I'm certain," the guard said nervously. "I blew his head off. I saw his corpse with my own eyes! Quickly! We have to escape the city! We don't have any time!"
"Were you followed?" the woman asked.
"No! Hurry up!" the guard shouted with anxiety.
"Good," the woman said.
BANG!
Suddenly, she threw a spear at the guard, and his Barrier activated.
With widely opened eyes, the guard watched himself getting flung against the surprisingly durable wall behind him.
BANG!
Then, another spear hit his Barrier, but this one hadn't been thrown.
The woman unleashed two more strikes, and the guard's Barrier broke into pieces.
BANG!
The guard was turned into chunks of meat in an instant.
It was obvious what had happened.
The woman wasn't willing to take the risk of being exposed by the guard.
She was the one who had offered her help to the people of the upper layer.
She was a Specialist.
And who was she?
The old gate guardian!
The woman who had guarded the door to the upper layer for decades!
Over these many decades, she had made friends with basically everyone in the upper layer.
She watched children grow up into adults.
In her eyes, almost all the adults in the upper layer still looked like innocent children in her eyes.
And when she had heard that Nick had killed several, she had become furious.
When they had been convicted of crimes, she got annoyed, but she could still deal with it.
When Nick had gone after the people who had written the letter, she got quite furious.
But when Nick had randomly killed people who had peacefully protested, she couldn't take it anymore.
Death was normal in this world, but the Liaison was a monster!
He killed innocent people!
During her several decades of working for the city, she had never seen anything this atrocious!
After Nick had killed the innocent people, she talked to a couple of her colleagues to gauge their personalities.
The guard whom she had just killed was someone who wanted power and riches but felt stifled by the Specters he had been assigned to work with.
If he had more money, he could purchase working with Specters.
So, the gate guardian had talked with him and, eventually, shared her plan.
He would get half of what she got from the upper layer, and they would immediately escape from the city.
Their plan was to run to Metal Works City and join a Manufacturer together.
The guard had believed her and joined the plan.
However, the gate guardian had never intended to run away from Crimson City.
She had talked to the people of the upper layer anonymously.
The only thing she had done was to demonstrate her physical strength to prove to them that she had the power to kill the Liaison.
For the entire day, she had stayed at home, and she had walked around in her garden all day to show her face.
Her neighbors would confirm that she had never left her property that day.
Additionally, she hadn't been seen by anyone near the crime scene.
As long as she quietly got rid of the guard and his corpse, no one would suspect her.
And she would become filthy rich.
She calmly pulled a small vial out of her pocket and scattered its contents across the basement.
In a matter of seconds, all traces of the guard's corpse vanished.
'I should destroy this basement next,' she thought as she looked around.
'After that, I have to act normally for a couple of days and accept the remainder of the money.'
When she thought about the money, her eyes fell on a massive chest at the end of the basement.
'Might as well bury it with the basement for now. I can still dig it up later.'
What she didn't notice was that some black mist turned into a person behind her.
Nick looked at the back of the gate guardian with hate-filled eyes.
Then, he retrieved a small spear from his wrist…
BANG!
And threw it at the lamp, the only source of light in the basement!
The lamp was destroyed, and everything fell into darkness.