"Good," Wrath said as it looked with narrowed eyes at Nick. "You are mine now. Don't even think about escaping."
Then, the statue turned back into a round stone, and all the power vanished from the Major Relay.
Silence.
A moment later, the CZE from the Priesthood gestured for Nick to enter.
Nick walked forward.
BANG!
And the door slammed shut in his face.
Nick blinked a couple of times.
Then, he waited.
DING!
The door opened again, and the CZE gestured for Nick to enter again.
This time, the door didn't immediately close.
Nick successfully entered the room, and the door closed behind him.
As soon as he entered, he realized why there were no other rooms on this floor.
This entire floor was just the CZE's office.
It was ostentatious beyond belief.
The only office that was comparable to this one had been Markus Julius' office in Crimson City.
'Followers of gluttony, huh?' Nick thought as he looked around.
"You will be one of Lord Wrath's servants," the CZE spoke. "Your life finally has meaning."
"Save your bullshit for your followers," Nick answered without looking at her.
The CZE didn't show any strong reaction.
"I will now teach you how to create a Major Relay," she spoke evenly as she stepped forward.
Nick turned around and looked at her.
"First, conjure a hollow stone that feels like this."
Then, Nick felt some invisible waves emanating from the CZE.
This was the same thing that Nick had experienced when he had talked to the big rock snake.
This was the Specters' unique way of communicating with each other.
Back then, Nick hadn't been able to feel the true utility of this ability since the rock snake had had only limited intelligence.
But now, while he was talking to an intelligent Specter, Nick could see the ability's true potential.
It was like the CZE was conveying the purest form of concepts to Nick.
In almost an instant, Nick knew the dimensions of the stone, how it was supposed to feel to the touch, how it smelled, how it tasted, what it should contain, how hard it was, and all other kinds of things.
It was like the CZE had simply spoken the word "stone", and all related information of the stone was immediately conveyed.
Conveying that much information via speech would need thousands of words and would require significant amounts of interpretation work to get just right.
Nick knew exactly what this stone was supposed to be like.
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Nick asked.
Sure, Nick knew what the stone had to be like, but he couldn't just create it.
It was like asking a child to split a solid piece of metal in two. The child understood what it had to do, but how was it supposed to accomplish that?
"Just conjure it," the CZE answered.
"How?" Nick asked again.
The CZE narrowed her eyes as she inspected Nick.
She seemed like she felt suspicious of Nick.
"The same way you made your clothing and weapons," she said evenly.
"I didn't make either of those," Nick answered.
The CZE furrowed her brows.
When Nick saw that, he simply explained. "My weapons belonged to an Initial Specialist. The clothing belonged to a random Expert."
That didn't seem to resolve the CZE's doubts.
"Do you not know how to conjure materials?" she asked.
"Apparently, I don't," Nick said.
The next moment, more of these invisible waves entered Nick's mind, and he quickly learned how to conjure things.
Nick had to do his best not to look shocked or surprised.
He had never really thought about this!
What were Specter bodies?
What about Julian?
What was part of his body?
Was his blue hair part of his body?
Was his clothing part of his body?
Additionally, when a humanoid Specter got injured severely, how did their clothing repair itself?
Specters were not known for having closets filled with clothing.
Nick had seen many times how Specters had regained their damaged clothing, but he had never really thought about it.
After all, it was of no consequence.
No items or clothing conjured by a Specter had any impact on their powers.
But yes, it was true.
Specters could conjure matter out of seemingly nothing!
Of course, something didn't tend to come from nothing.
What the Specters used to conjure materials and items was their Zephyx.
Specters could use the Zephyx they created to create things that they could use.
However, it wasn't that easy.
In order to create something with nothing but Zephyx and one's mind, one needed to understand almost everything there was to understand about something.
Otherwise, the result would be basically useless.
At least in terms of use for combat.
If one didn't really know everything about something, they could still conjure a weak version of it.
For example, if one tried to conjure steel with Zephyx but didn't know a lot about steel, one could simply create something that had the form of the steel but lacked almost all of the useful attributes.
It would be akin to coloring a piece of paper grey.
And that was how Specters repaired their clothing.
They didn't need to know how fibers and cloth worked.
A Specter's clothing didn't need any fancy attributes.
It just needed to make it easier to convince humans that they were not Specters.
However, if a Specter actually wanted to conjure something useful, it would need to learn almost everything there was to know about the thing they wanted to conjure.
Zephyx was kind of a material for everything and could be transformed into any form imaginable.
Of course, humans could also do this, but not without advanced machinery and not without a good amount of stored Specter Zephyx.
This was what the entire field of Zephology was about.
Zephology was about using Specter Zephyx to create powerful materials.
Naturally, Nick knew quite a bit about Zephology by now.
The very basis of Zephology was translating a human's will into a form that could combine with the Specter Zephyx, after which the two of them would fuse and the Specter Zephyx would transform into the object the human's will imagined it to be.
Without advanced machinery, humans couldn't do that.
Their wills were not inherently compatible with Specter Zephyx.
They could digest it, but they couldn't manipulate it.
It was like the difference between one's arm and a piece of meat. The human could digest both, but they could only control their arm.
But this same restriction did not count for Specters.
Their wills were compatible with their Zephyx.
This made the use of advanced machinery unnecessary.
A Specter could just imagine what it wanted, and the Zephyx would assume the imagined form.
This was crazy!
Nick tried his best to keep his expression as disinterested as before.
"Never tried that," Nick commented as he held up his right hand.
Then, Nick imagined a red piece of cloth above his hand.
The next moment, Nick felt his Zephyx slowly leaving his body and gathering above his right hand.
Nick almost couldn't believe it when a tiny red dot appeared above his hand.
The red dot grew bigger and bigger, and eventually, it grew to the size Nick had imagined.
Finally, the red piece of cloth fell onto Nick's hand.
Crrrrk!
Then, the cloth tore apart and fell to the floor.
It was not hard enough to resist its own weight and crumbled.
However, this had just been Nick's first attempt.
After a maximum of ten attempts, Nick knew that he could create cloth that could be worn without immediately falling into pieces.
"Make the stone," the CZE commanded.
Nick didn't look at the CZE but thought back to the attributes of the stones the CZE had sent him earlier.
WHOOOOM!
A huge amount of Zephyx gathered above Nick's right arm.
The amount of Zephyx gathered was many, many times bigger than when he had conjured the piece of cloth.
This was due to the stone's complexity and other attributes.
The harder, more flexible, more tenacious, more anything the object was, the more Zephyx it required.
Of course, the more complex the object was, the more focus the Specter needed to invest since there were more things to keep track of.
Making something simple was like asking a normal person to remember a four-digit code while making something complex, which could be a ten-digit, hundred-digit, or thousand-digit code.
After around ten seconds, Nick stopped.
In his hand was a small, curved stone that was barely a centimeter wide.
Naturally, this wasn't nearly big enough for the Major Relay.
However, Nick was low on Zephyx and needed to recover first.
The CZE just kept watching Nick.
A couple of seconds later, Nick continued building the stone.
Based on his progress, he would probably need several minutes to finish one of the stones.
The CZE didn't show it, but she realized that Nick was becoming better at conjuring materials at a terrifying rate.
Either this Specter had some kind of inherent talent for conjuring things, or it had learned a terrifying amount of information over its lifetime, giving it a powerful ability to learn.
However, the CZE was only minorly curious.
The talent didn't matter.
In the end, this Specter was also just part of Wrath's army of servants.
This talent changed nothing.