It was difficult for Nick to accept what had just happened.
He was just about to undergo his ability advancement, and now, he had been abducted by the Maw.
There were several things that were hard to accept.
First, Nick had been safe inside Aegis' headquarters for years by now, and now, he suddenly got taken away.
Second, this had happened right after the Technician had warned him. In a weird way, it would have been easier to come to terms with it if the Technician had simply said it.
Third, this was an Eternal!
Eternals were always very special, and interacting with any of them was something that happened extremely rarely.
People rarely interacted with the Nightmare since they avoided it constantly.
If people interacted with Nurse Alice, it was almost always only once in their lives.
Nobody interacted with the Null.
The Sun was ever present, but its presence was barely felt since it was almost like a law of nature. It was just always there.
And not many people interacted with the Maw.
After all, it was only interested in Extractors, and the vast majority of Extractors were never kidnapped by it.
In Crimson City, some of Nick's employees had vanished without any trace.
Naturally, this could have happened due to other Specters or Manufacturers, but there was also a possibility that they had been kidnapped by the Maw.
Nick had not met anyone in Crimson City who had been kidnapped by the Maw and had survived.
Back then, Nick had simply thought that being abducted by the Maw was very rare, but that was not the entire reason why he had never seen anyone who had survived.
In general, the Maw kidnapped a number of people with a multiple of eight.
8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and so on.
If some people in Crimson City had been kidnapped by the Maw, at least one of them should have been able to win and survive, right?
According to the odds, yes.
However, there was an issue.
Anyone below the level of Hero that managed to win would basically die anyway.
Why?
Because the Maw didn't care about where it released its winner.
The Maw didn't put the people back from where it had abducted them.
Newbies and Johns would very quickly die to any wild Specter.
Veterans and Experts might be able to reach the closest city, but they wouldn't have any way to get home.
Most of the time, they were just killed on sight or absorbed by one of the local Manufacturers.
There were some reports about surviving Specialists, but not that many. Naturally, that was for the same reason.
A powerful Specialist that a Manufacturer could kill without incurring any enmity from a powerful Manufacturer?
Great!
That was some good Specter fodder!
Heroes were the only ones that could return home with a high level of confidence.
First of all, they could fly and were very fast.
Second, fighting a Hero was always dangerous. Even for an entire city.
Luckily, Nick had a Barrier and a uniform from Aegis, making it much easier to survive.
As long as he found a city, he could just walk in, and nobody would dare to attack him.
But he had to survive first.
Nick was engulfed by an extending hole filled with teeth and eyes.
He could barely discern any flesh since everything was covered in teeth, eyes, teeth-filled eyes, eye-filled teeth, teeth growing out of teeth, eyes growing out of eyes, eyes growing out of teeth, and so on.
Nick felt watched by all of his surroundings, and obviously, his ability had already deactivated.
The Maw was watching him closely.
Nick didn't dare to attack his surroundings.
Angering the Maw might cause it to kill him.
The floor below Nick opened, and he began to fall into a long hole filled with teeth and eyes.
The teeth touched his Barrier, making it fuzz and spark.
Nick felt his Zephyx reducing and refilling rapidly.
The teeth definitely damaged his Barrier, but they did not do enough damage to use up Nick's Zephyx.
TZZZZ!
More and more sparks came out of Nick's Barrier, and it became extremely fuzzy.
As Nick continued to fall, his Barrier distorted.
BANG!
Then, the white Barrier surrounding him broke apart, and its white shell was immediately absorbed by the eyes.
At the same time, Nick felt something explode on his chest.
Nick's heart nearly stopped.
His Barrier had broken!
As in, it was ACTUALLY broken!
The device just exploded!
The entire device had become useless, and Nick was stuck without a Barrier until he could purchase a new one!
As soon as Nick's Barrier broke, the teeth and the eyes began to retreat as the hole widened significantly.
This change was so sudden that it couldn't be a coincidence.
These teeth and eyes were explicitly designed to destroy Barriers!
A moment later, Nick saw something approaching from the bottom.
BANG!
Nick was hit by a huge wall of moist flesh.
For a moment, he wasn't sure what this wall was, but then, it moved.
The wall moved upward in a rolling motion, and Nick fell behind the wall.
'That's a tongue!'
Yes, the big wall of flesh had been a huge tongue.
BANG!
An instant later, Nick was hit by another tongue.
But this time, he didn't fall past the tongue immediately.
Instead, countless smaller but very long tongues broke out of the big tongue and encased him.
The tongues went through his clothing, licking his entire body.
Nick felt a cold shudder going throughout his body.
He was helpless!
He couldn't do anything against this!
Surprisingly, Nick had stopped falling as the tongues tasted him.
He felt like this wasn't supposed to happen.
A moment later, Nick's heart nearly stopped, and he gritted his teeth.
One of the tongues was trying to get into his mouth, and he refused to let it in.
CRKSH!
But it didn't care.
It pushed Nick's teeth in, ignoring the shards and traveling down his esophagus and windpipe.
Nick had to heave uncontrollably, but that didn't help.
CRKSH!
Then, Nick felt a strong pain from inside his body.
The tongue had pierced past his stomach and lungs, stretching and exploring the insides of his other organs.
They were tasting all of him!
Nick tried to bite down on the tongues and tear at them, but they were indestructible!
At the same time, several other tongues made their way into his body through his other holes.
They were all digging through his body, searching for something.
And then, one of them touched his Specter Core, and immediately after, all the tongues went towards it.
A normal human would have long since died, but Nick was an Extractor.
He still had his Zephosis, and as long as he wasn't out of Zephyx, he could survive something like this.
When the tongues gathered around Nick's Specter Core, he realized what was happening.
'They are confused by my Specter Core!'
'They've never seen anything like this and don't know what to do with it!'
Nick's body was suspended in the air, over 20 long and thin tongues keeping him there.
He was bleeding profusely as his arms and legs helplessly flailed in the air.
The tongues wound around his Specter Core, and Nick felt immense pain.
They were compressing it!
Nick felt like he was a tiny insect in the hands of a curious toddler.
He was completely at its mercy.
If the toddler became bored, he would be killed.
Maybe the toddler would tear all of his limbs off just to watch what he would do first.
For several seconds, the tongues just tasted Nick's Specter Core as they increased their strength.
Nick's panic increased.
'I'm going to die!'
'It's going to kill me!'
Its grip strengthened.
CRK!
A crack appeared in Nick's Specter Core.
When the crack appeared, some of Nick's human Zephyx broke past the Specter Core for the first time and entered his body.
Nick's Zephyx Synchronizer was no longer perfectly isolated by the Specter Core.
The tongues let go of the Specter Core and focused on the crack.
They all gathered in front of it and consumed the Zephyx.
Two seconds later, they all pulled back, and finally, they left Nick's body.
Bang!
The big tongue Nick was lying on moved, and Nick fell past it.
Nick continued falling weakly, his body filled with blood and saliva.
Yet, at this moment, Nick could only feel relief.
'I'm not going to die!'
In this case, falling further represented entering the Maw's competition, which meant being viewed as human, which meant having a chance to survive.
If the Maw deemed him a Specter, he would have already been killed by the tongues.
Bang!
Nick landed on another tongue, but this one wasn't like the others.
It was filled with razors!
The tongue moved Nick around and tore his clothes off, as well as quite a bit of his skin.
After falling past several more tongues, Nick was left without any clothing.
He was only left with his two blades and about ten throwing spears that were stored as small cylinders.
BANG!
And then, Nick hit the ground.