Nick watched the city for a couple of hours.
He needed to learn as much about the city as he could to find Gluttony's servant.
During these hours, he had confirmed that the guards didn't seem to experience any of the negative effects normal people were experiencing.
The only surprising thing was that they ate a lot of chocolate.
They all seemed to eat between 300 and 700 grams per day.
Yet, there were also people who only ate chocolate occasionally.
And those also didn't seem to feel any negative side effects.
'This chocolate is definitely related to Gluttony's servant,' Nick thought. 'I didn't see anything like this in any other city.'
Naturally, different Corruptors affected cities differently.
The majority of cities Nick had been to were part of Pride's territory, and after thinking about it a little bit, Nick could also see a trend there.
Nick remembered a surprising number of arrogant and dismissive people in the cities.
Their partially baseless arrogance was often the reason why Nick's team was even called in the first place.
"We thought we could catch the Specter, but it was stronger than expected."
"We thought we could deal with this Extractor, but they were surprisingly strong."
"We thought we could bully them out of the economy, but they played unfairly."
Stuff like that.
Their arrogance made them overconfident, which made them careless, which resulted in a lot of unnecessary conflicts with plenty of casualties.
And since Pride was a follower of War, this made a lot of sense.
War was conflict, and Pride caused a lot of conflict.
Just like Wrath.
Nick had only been in a single city controlled by Wrath, and he had seen how it operated.
The people entered their own little groups and became extremely aggressive to anyone outside their group.
Naturally, this resulted in more conflict and needless death.
However, while Pride and Wrath were also Corruptors, Nick would prefer their influence over Gluttony's influence.
With Pride, only the elite suffered. The majority of victims of Pride were Extractors and high-level executives.
With Wrath, the victims were groups. Yet, inside of each group, the people could still live relatively normal lives.
Essentially, they lived normal lives until they suddenly got jumped by several people belonging to a different group.
Yet, with Gluttony, one had an entire life of suffering ahead of oneself.
One side kept consuming without ever stilling their hunger, while the other side was also always hungry but couldn't consume.
The powerful could consume without end, but just like the poor, they were still hungry.
'Gluttony and Famine,' Nick thought.
'Famine through gluttony.'
Nick looked at the city for a bit longer.
'This is the worst city I've ever seen, and I refuse to believe that it will become worse with Wrath's involvement. At least, with Wrath, people don't have to suffer like this.'
This thought made it easier for Nick to come to terms with the fact that he was going to conquer a city for one of the Corruptors.
'I'm going to deal with Gluttony's servant.'
A moment later, Nick floated away from the building he had been perched on and moved towards the side of the gigantic cave.
The closer he got to the side, the more guards there were.
Then, Nick floated around a couple of big gates leading to caves.
From now on, the actual work would start.
For the next couple of days, Nick just kept watch over the gates and the city.
He remembered who lived where, what they did, what their status was, what their power was, and so on.
The more Nick knew about the city, the easier it was to change it.
Over the days, Nick had also learned a couple of interesting things.
For one, the poor people received a delivery of food every day.
Every citizen received a small ball of something that was fluffy and brown.
'Wait, that's Allfood!' Nick realized with surprise. 'Why would they grow Allfood here?'
Nick had learned about Allfood from several of the history books he had read at Aegis' headquarters.
Allfood was a plant created by the Ancient Ones.
It could grow almost everywhere and barely needed any water or sunlight.
Essentially, it could be grown in a dry cave.
However, it required a brutal amount of fertilizer to grow.
All the energy the plant would gain from light and water was usually replaced by fertilizer.
An additional attribute of the plant was that it was extremely calory-dense.
100 grams of it was around 900 calories, and the fatty acids in it were also of an optimal ratio.
The Ancient Ones grew Allfood inside many high-rise buildings, severely reducing the space farms took up.
Then, the Ancient Ones fed the Allfood to their livestock while also using it as biomass for other plants.
The only humans who ate Allfood directly were people in the military or on expeditions.
'Since Allfood doesn't use water or light, it needs an insane amount of biomass to grow,' Nick thought. 'They are essentially putting more food into the Allfood than they are harvesting.'
'It's a net loss!'
Every citizen received exactly 65 grams of Allfood.
600 calories was a good amount, but if it was the only thing one got to eat for an entire day, it wasn't nearly enough.
'And Allfood also doesn't have any protein whatsoever,' Nick thought.
So, where did the people get their protein from?
Some of the lucky ones who had a skill they could sell had the money to buy some protein.
Nick had also found where the city was getting the protein from.
Bats.
While most of the caves were the homes of powerful people, some of them housed gigantic bat farms.
The bats inside the caves ate the insects flying around the cave.
And where did the insects come from?
From a mountain of corpses piled up on the bottom of the bat caves.
Anyone that starved would be thrown into the bat caves.
The insects would put their eggs in the corpses.
The maggots would eat the corpses.
The maggots turned into insects.
The bats ate the insects.
The humans harvested the bats.
And the richer people of the city ate the bats.
Meanwhile, the poorer people in the city tried to scrape enough credits together to purchase some of the bats for protein.
But what about the Allfood?
Where did that come from?
Nick had also found out where that came from.
The caravan Nick had used to sneak into the city had handed over a huge pile of food in exchange for Zephyx.
Nick hadn't seen what had happened to the food, but he hadn't seen it again ever since he had arrived in the city.
Several tons of food just vanished.
Yet, while several tons of food vanished, several tons of chocolate and Allfood appeared.
The connection wasn't hard to make.
'The caravans bring food, which then gets converted into Allfood and chocolate. At least, that's what I suspect. It's also possible that the chocolate just gets made by a Specter.'
Nick looked at four people walking along one of the streets at the edge of the city.
Three of them wore the uniforms of Extractors, while one of them wore an expensive suit.
'The CEO, the CZE, and their two assistants of Happiness Through Taste ;),' Nick thought.
Happiness Through Taste ;) was the company that seemed to make all of the chocolate, and they were also a Manufacturer.
However, one thing was quite surprising.
The CZE was a Mid Expert, and the CEO was a Late Veteran.
Obviously, the entire city was heavily influenced by this chocolate.
The chocolate was at the center of all the misery.
Yet, the people who created the chocolate were this weak.
This was very surprising since any powerful human could see the obvious influence of a Specter.
While Wrath and Pride had a more subtle influence on their cities, Gluttony had an extremely noticeable influence.
Connecting a Manufacturer to a powerful Specter was an amazing way of getting rid of that Manufacturer and stealing all their Specters.
Some powerful person from another Manufacturer just needed to start an investigation and send proof to the Governor.
Within days, the Governor would give their okay to eliminate the elite of the Manufacturer before handing over the ownerless Specters to the other Manufacturer.
'If I can trust in one thing, it's the endless greed of humanity,' Nick thought as he looked at the four people.
'Any Hero can see the influence, and almost any Hero would salivate at the easy profits.'
'The fact that Happiness Through Taste ;) still exists can only mean one of two things.'
'One, everyone powerful enough to do something is already part of this conspiracy and is helping the Specter.'
'Two, everyone that tries will fail and die.'
'Either way, one thing is sure.'
'At least one powerful Hero is on the side of Gluttony.'
Nick looked at a certain gate near the edge of the city.
'It's even likely that the Governor herself is a Specter.'
'Sadly, I haven't seen her yet and couldn't confirm.'
'It's even likely that the Governor herself is a Specter.'
'Sadly, I haven't seen her yet and couldn't confirm.'
Nick furrowed his brows.
'Nevertheless, I have to kill at least one Hero or Demon.'
'This won't be easy.'
'But first, I have to find out who exactly supports Happiness Through Taste ;).'