Nick ran past the mountain to the east of the city.
Since the Desert had been killed, there were no more powerful Extractors stationed near this place anymore.
Most of the Extractors were further to the north, near the Amalgamation.
Nick still remembered the first time he had left the city.
Back then, he had needed to be extremely careful.
No one had been allowed to see him or his team.
Otherwise, they would have been killed.
But now, nobody would dare attack Nick, and even if they did, there was only a single Manufacturer that would have any chance of succeeding.
Kugelblitz.
No other Manufacturer would have people powerful enough to kill Nick without him being able to flee.
One had to remember that while Nick was extremely deadly in battle, his true power was his ability to escape from battle.
With every ability advancement, his methods of escaping from battle became better and more numerous.
A couple of seconds later, Nick reached his destination.
In front of Nick was a huge area filled with holes, crevices, and caves.
Some of them were barely a couple of meters deep, while others seemed to be endless.
This area was around four kilometers wide and was littered with countless caves.
Occasionally, some Extractors walked around here to look for Specters, but they rarely found any.
Crimson City was certain that some Specters had to be there, but there just wasn't a way to reliably scout out the caves.
Yes, Kugelblitz had the Shadow Shrouds, which allowed their Extractors to travel through dark spaces, but there were a couple of issues with that.
First of all, keeping a Shadow Shroud running for a long time cost an insane amount of Zephyx.
Second, if the Shadow Shroud got damaged, it would stop working, and the Extractor would find themselves surrounded by darkness.
Third, the further away from light an Extractor got, the harder it was to resist the Nightmare's influence.
It was like the Nightmare was growing more powerful with less distance from the planet's core.
Or, as some people said, with more distance from the Sun.
The Sun and abilities imitating the Sun's power were the only things that could deal with the Nightmare's influence.
At some point, even abilities that replicated the Sun's power became useless.
This was also why nothing worked inside the Fiend of Darkness' domain.
All the light abilities in the world wouldn't help in there.
Naturally, the same problem occurred within the cave system, just not as extreme.
Keeping the Nightmare's influence at bay just became vastly more expensive.
Nevertheless, many Manufacturers had scouted out a couple of the caves and drew some maps.
Sadly, none of them were willing to share their secrets with others, and Nick couldn't just demand the maps.
Also, he didn't want to since that would tell them where he would be traveling to.
'With my immunity to darkness, I'm probably the most fitting person for this job,' Nick thought. 'I don't know if I'm going to find anything of note in there, but at the very least, I should be able to find a Specter. This place is too protected from humans for Specters not to live here.'
Places like these were like retreat places for Specters.
Oftentimes, a Specter silently left its hideout, killed a human, and went back to its hideout to wait for the alarm to die out.
Most of the Specters living outside of cities were Specters that required a human to die in order to feed.
Specters that didn't need to kill humans could survive much easier in a city.
Nick looked around for a while and saw a random Extractor jumping out from a cave.
When Nick saw the Extractor, he raised an eyebrow.
He was wearing Dark Dream's uniform.
No, this was not a mistake.
The Extractor was wearing DARK Dream's uniform.
He was not wearing Sky Dream's uniform.
'Interesting,' Nick thought as he turned into mist before following after the Extractor.
There was only one reason why an Extractor outside of the city would wear Dark Dream's uniform.
That reason was that they didn't know about Dark Dream's merger with Solace, which meant that they were not from Crimson City.
Most likely, this was an Extractor from a neighboring city who was masquerading as an Extractor from Crimson City.
For the next 30 minutes, Nick kept following the Extractor.
The Extractor very carefully moved around and constantly made sure that nobody was following him.
Then, he entered a cave, lit up a fancy candle, and explored the cave for a bit.
The deeper the Extractor walked into the cave, the stronger the candle burned.
At some point, the Extractor would run out again, and he would search through more caves.
'He's just searching for Specters,' Nick thought as he watched the Extractor.
The Extractor wasn't even very powerful.
Most likely, he was just an Extractor from another city that wasn't powerful enough to search through the immediate surroundings of the city for Specters, which was why he had traveled this far.
There was no more reason to follow the Extractor, but Nick didn't want to start looking through some caves while this guy was still running around.
In the past, Nick would have just killed him.
After all, he was from a different city, and these people were generally considered hostile.
However, since Nick had joined Aegis, his viewpoint had expanded.
All cities belonged to Aegis.
Killing someone from a city without a good reason would mean needlessly damaging Aegis.
So, Nick decided to watch the guy just a bit more.
In the next cave, the guy became surprisingly ballsy, and he didn't turn around for quite a while.
Eventually, the man came upon a mysterious gate.
It was made of reinforced wood, and it was almost four meters tall.
Nick looked at the gate with interest.
Wasn't something like this exactly why he was here?
The Extractor gritted his teeth, ran to the gate, and kicked it open in urgency.
When the Extractor saw a long staircase behind it, he cursed and looked at his brightly burning candle intensely.
Then, he took out a second candle and lit this one as well.
"80,000 credits," the man said with a sigh.
'80,000 credits?' Nick thought with surprise. 'That's insanely cheap for something that offers light for that long.'
Nick would have expected one of these candles to cost around 500,000 credits.
10:41
After lighting the next candle, the guy quickly ran down the stairs.
Naturally, Nick followed him.
After descending the stairs for over a kilometer, the Extractor became troubled.
His candle was burning away rapidly.
However, he seemed desperate to get some return for his investment and kept running forward.
The two of them were no longer in a cave but in straight hallways made of uniform stone.
There were several intersections of many more hallways, which led to different stairs.
Some hallways were perfectly horizontal, while some were angled.
The architecture was quite confusing, but Nick could easily keep a mental map of the area.
He wouldn't get lost in here.
After around a minute more of running through random places, the guy became agitated again.
He seemed quite lost.
'Shouldn't have gone this far,' Nick thought calmly.
Nick watched as the candle rapidly burned away.
And then…
The guy suddenly calmed down.
From one second to another, he just stopped panicking and looked with a dead expression down the hallway.
Then, he slowly turned around and looked behind him, seeing an empty hallway.
Naturally, Nick turned into black smoke and kept hovering behind the man.
The candle completely burned away, and everything fell into darkness.
The man calmly looked at the hallway for a couple more seconds.
Nick was no longer relaxed, but his ability was telling him that the "man" hadn't perceived him yet.
The next moment, the man calmly walked toward the wall…
And walked through it.
He vanished.
It was like he was a ghost.
Nick looked at the ground and saw that the burnt candle had also vanished.
Even the Zephyx the man and the candle had given off had gone through the walls.
Nick had a bad feeling.
'Is this a Specter?' Nick thought, looking at the hallway.
Then, he thought about all the hallways and staircases he had seen.
'Is all of this one Specter?'
Nick looked in the direction he had come from.
Then, he quickly flew down the hallway.
He followed his mental map to get back to the entrance.
Finally…
Nick saw another hallway where the entrance gate should be.
Nick continued down that hallway, went up some stairs, went down some stairs, traveled through several corridors…
Ten minutes later, he stopped.
The mental map he had created inside his head had become absolutely humongous.
And worst of all, it didn't make any sense.
New hallways appeared.
Old ones disappeared.
Stairs changed.
Nick remembered what he had thought when the "man's" candle was going out.
'Shouldn't have gone this far.'