Nick approached the door and looked at the console at the wall.
'No power,' Nick thought. 'Seems like the power source of this set of ruins isn't working anymore.'
Nick put his hands on the door and pushed forward.
The metal was creaking, but that was all it did.
'I thought I could break through this, but apparently, I can't. The material isn't very hard, but it seems to be extremely thick.'
'Well, there are more ways to get through this.'
Nick pulled his blades out and put them into the door.
Nick's blades went through the door like butter, and he started to cut pieces of the door away.
The material this door was made out of was about four times as hard as normal steel, but that didn't matter in front of an Expert.
With Nick's ability active, the power he could put out was equivalent to the power an animal with a weight of about 1,000 tons could put out.
It wasn't enough to push through the door, but it was more than enough to cut off pieces.
Nick kept cutting and throwing the pieces of the door away.
After about a minute, Nick had already created a tunnel that was about two meters deep.
For just a moment, he stopped digging and pressed onto the wall in front of him.
It creaked more than before, but that was the only difference.
'This thing has to be tens of meters thick,' Nick thought. 'I wonder why they would make such thick walls.'
For a couple of minutes, Nick kept cutting.
When he was about 15 meters deep, he felt a difference.
'I might be able to break through the door now,' Nick thought.
BANG! BANG!
Nick rammed his two blades into the slit between the two doors and pushed to the side.
CRRRRR! CRK!
The metal creaked and bent, and Nick's blades lost their grip.
'I can open it, but the metal isn't hard enough to deal with the leverage. It's just going to bend and break.'
Nick had already tried to push the two "walls" at his side to the side, but they just bent inwards until Nick's body wasn't wide enough to push both sides at the same time.
'I should just dig more.'
A couple of minutes later, Nick was at a depth of over 20 meters.
'This is a thick wall!' Nick thought as he kept digging.
A moment later, he pushed forward again, and this time, Nick could feel the metal bending in a way that suggested that Nick was close to the end.
CRK! CREEEAK!
Nick felt several cracks from before him, and he pushed more.
An instant later, a small but deep crack appeared in front of Nick, and an extremely bright beam of light shone through it.
As soon as Nick saw that, he became confused.
'Light? But the power source shouldn't be active. How can there be light?'
And then, something terrifying happened.
Nick's Barrier projected a crazy number of warnings while sounding an extremely loud alarm.
Nick's eyes widened in terror, and he immediately charged out of the hole.
BOOM!
The doors slammed shut again.
Luckily, the doors were designed to slam shut if there was no power available instead of the other way around.
Nick had already appeared outside the hole he had dug.
Everything had fallen back into darkness.
Sweat appeared all over Nick's body, and he looked at one of the displays of his Barrier.
20%.
That was how much Zephyx he had left.
This had been way too close!
Nick calmed down over the next couple of seconds, took a deep breath, and tapped on his Barrier a bit.
Several readings and displays appeared, and Nick read through them.
'Radiation?' he thought with furrowed brows. 'Radiation shouldn't be an issue for my body.'
Mortals feared radiation since it destroyed DNA, essentially turning one's entire body into one gigantic tumor.
Meanwhile, powerful Extractors didn't have that issue. Their DNA had remarkable capabilities of self-repair, which was also the reason why they could live for so much longer than normal people.
The only way to threaten an Extractor with radiation was to use so insanely much that it essentially turned into a laser.
And that was exactly what had happened just now, according to Nick's Barrier.
As soon as the small ray of light appeared, Nick's Barrier activated and warned him of the danger.
It had registered the light as a heat-based energy attack and blocked it.
Nick had only found out that it was actually radiation after checking through the different readings.
The radiation reading of his Barrier had essentially broken, and the increase in radiation on the graph was essentially a vertical line going from the bottom to the top of the graph.
Nick's Barrier came from Aegis, and it was more advanced than any Barrier inside Crimson City.
If it had been worse, Nick might have died.
'Is it some form of defensive mechanism? Probably not,' Nick thought.
'Then, what is it?'
'It doesn't seem to be alive since my ability never deactivated during this entire thing. The chances of it being a Specter are low.'
Nick tried to find an answer, but he couldn't think of any.
Whenever something with such destructive power appeared, it was almost always a Specter.
However, a Specter would have noticed Nick, which would have deactivated his ability.
Additionally, this entire area was isolated by insanely thick walls.
How could the Specter grow this powerful, to begin with?
Also, if it were a Specter, it would be powerful enough to just break out.
'Unless it's a Possession Specter,' Nick thought. 'But that would be ridiculous. The power of the radiation is so high that it would need to be a Demon, at least.'
'I should check.'
Nick looked at the wall again before ramming his blade into one side.
Then, he started to cut out a huge panel, which he then bent into the shape of a shield.
'This material seems to be able to isolate the rays. As long as I block all of them, it should be fine.'
Then, Nick pushed himself back into the hole he had dug while pointing his new shield forward.
When he reached the end, he carefully continued digging through the hole.
He wanted to make the last part as thin as possible so that he wouldn't need so much power to push the doors apart.
After a bit of digging, Nick felt the wall heating up tremendously.
'Is that why the walls are so thick?' Nick thought.
Nick continued digging, and then he found something interesting.
'The gap between the two doors is not straight. In fact, it doesn't look manmade at all,' he thought.
Nick turned back and looked at the hole he had dug.
'While digging, the gap between the doors always seemed straight, but now, not anymore.'
Naturally, Nick knew what this meant.
'That also explains why it was so hard to push them apart.'
'The metal inside the building is molten.'
'The doors were fused together, and I broke them apart earlier.'
The metal in front of Nick had reached a temperature that would melt normal steel.
However, since this material was strengthened with Zephyx, it still held together.
It was quite hot around Nick, but his body was powerful enough to resist the heat.
'I should be close to the end,' Nick thought.
Nick made sure that his shield blocked his entire body and pulled out one of his spears.
He leaned the spear onto the right side of the hole and grabbed a second one.
Nick held the spear horizontally and expanded it.
BANG! BANG!
The spear's butt hit the left side, while its tip hit the second spear to the right.
If Nick had just expanded his spear like that, it would have just made a hole in the wall.
That was why he used a second spear to distribute the forces.
Next, Nick used his own power to expand the spear more.
CRRR!
The walls were creaking.
BANG!
Nick saw light passing by his shield, and he felt his shield warming up quickly.
His Barrier was already active since part of the light reflected back onto Nick.
Luckily, this bit of reflection couldn't be compared to being hit by the thing directly.
Nick saw both ends of his spear turning red and warping.
His spears were not made to withstand that much heat.
The sheer power of the radiation was ridiculous!
Nick quickly started to do his tests.
First, he created a small opening in his Barrier and moved his arm out.
Next, he put the front of his left index finger into the light.
And pulled back immediately!
Nick gritted his teeth as he looked at his finger.
It had turned red and black!
'It's completely denatured!' Nick thought.
Nick quickly cut off his finger with one of his blades, and a new finger started to form.
Veterans already had the power to regrow limbs, and Experts were even faster at that.
Regrowing a limb only took a minute for an Expert.
Next, Nick changed the form of his Barrier and moved a small part of it into the light.
The Barrier flickered, but it still worked.
The Barrier was in a different mode.
Earlier, it had blocked the rays.
This time, it was allowing them to pass through so that it could analyze them.
A couple of seconds later, Nick pulled the arm of the Barrier back and looked at the readings.
When he saw them, he took a deep breath.
'High density of Zephyx, which was recently converted from Prephyx.'
'This is a fucking Specter!'