The next day, the Governor made a big announcement.
The Meat Cube had been exchanged.
Almost immediately, the entire city was thrown into an uproar.
Exchanged?!
How?!
Why?!
Naturally, the other two Heroes were also livid.
However, when the Governor explained some things to them, they calmed down… somewhat.
Working with the Meat Cube was risky. If Aegis sent even one person to investigate the city, they would all be punished.
While it had been going well with the Meat Cube so far, at some point, they would be found out.
It was far too risky to rely on the Meat Cube like this.
What if Aegis suddenly changed its policy?
What if they started to investigate cities that produced too much Zephyx to make sure that no atrocities were committed?
The Heroes didn't completely believe the Governor, but when the Governor showed them the database entry about the Liaison position, they believed him.
There seemed to be a big shift in Aegis.
Especially since a new Champion of Light had appeared.
Nevertheless, they were still angry that the Governor didn't ask them before taking their Specter and just exchanging it.
It was their Specter!
This Specter didn't belong to him!
In the end, the Governor just spun a tale about there not being enough time to ask them and that they wouldn't have agreed anyway.
For their own good, he needed to do this.
Obviously, the Heroes were furious and felt quite insulted, but it wasn't bad enough to fight to the death with the Governor.
They just hoped that the new Specter wasn't horrendous.
The Governor introduced the new Specter and showed them how it worked.
The new Specter was special.
Due to its size, it couldn't be properly contained inside a Containment Unit.
Outside of the city, below the wasteland sand, there was a huge hole, almost 50 meters wide and extremely deep.
The edge of the hole and its walls were made of old brick.
It looked like an old well.
If one looked into the well, one would realize that the walls of the well were oozing with blood.
The Governor made a big cut in his wrist and let his blood flow into the gigantic well.
A moment later, a big burst of Zephyx came out of the well's opening, and the two Heroes looked on in shock.
That was a lot of Zephyx!
But how would they capture the Zephyx?
Yet, that problem had already been taken care of.
The Heroes noticed that most of the Zephyx moved towards the metallic plate everyone stood on and was absorbed.
The Governor jumped to the side and showed them how to open the side of the plate and how to retrieve the Zephyx.
"A Mid Demon Possession Specter," the Governor said. "It's very similar to the Meat Cube, but since it doesn't eat meat but blood, we don't have to be careful about how to hide our true Zephyx production from Aegis."
The two Heroes were ecstatic and immediately started to create plans on how to work with the Specter.
While the two Heroes were planning, the Governor threw a glance beside the metallic plate.
Shockingly, in his eyes, there was no well.
While the other two Heroes saw a well, the Governor only saw a small red leech lying in front of the plate.
This was the Illusion Leech, and it had the power to create powerful illusions.
This was not a Possession Specter but a Physical Specter.
In truth, this thing was completely free and wasn't even suppressed.
It stood here voluntarily.
Naturally, this was Wrath's servant.
Nick had already come up with a plan on how to redesign the city, and this leech would be doing most of the work.
First, access to the leech would be made public, and people could come here to donate blood.
While the people were coming here to donate blood, the leech would influence them to split into two or more camps.
There were many ways one could create a permanent conflict.
For example, one group could have the belief that everyone needed to donate a certain amount of blood, which would then get gathered and centrally assigned to people in need.
Other groups might believe that everyone's donation was up to themselves and that they didn't need to share.
There could also be people who would make and raise lots of children to donate more blood, while others wouldn't want that.
In the end, it was up to the leech to decide on the groups.
Nick barely needed to get involved.
In the past couple of cities, Nick needed to create the conflict on his own, but this time, he didn't need to.
The leech would deal with everything.
Nick just remained for a couple more weeks before leaving.
He wasn't needed here anymore.
The next city Nick went to was a relatively normal one.
It was very similar to Crimson City since the biggest Specter barely affected the normal people.
It just grew more powerful by absorbing corpses.
Sure, that made the corpses worth a lot, but it didn't only eat human corpses.
The city was surrounded by huge fields of allfood, which was constantly being consumed by a specific type of domesticated animal.
It was some kind of big and armored slug that kept eating the allfood and growing rapidly.
Surprisingly, the slug was not a Specter or even the minion of a Specter.
It was an actual animal.
Yet, its origin was a Specter.
It was important to note that a minion of a Specter represented an extension of a Specter that it could control remotely.
These animals were created by a Specter, but they did not have any Specter characteristics.
By all intents and purposes, they were real animals.
The only two things that were different were that they couldn't procreate and that less than 5% of their body was edible.
The Specter grew more powerful by creating these animals, which would just consume food.
At least, that's what everyone believed.
In truth, the Specter grew powerful in a different way, and that was exactly how Lust controlled the city.
The slime of the slugs acted as a subtle aphrodisiac.
While it didn't have an immediate effect on people, after being exposed to it for a long time, it significantly enhanced one's libido.
The city was mostly normal, but the number of sex workers and sexual favors was significant.
Due to the big size of the city and the great libido, this was also one of the biggest cities Nick had ever seen.
This city had over 25,000 people.
It took Nick only 18 months to deal with this city.
He got rid of the Specter and imported cows from a different city.
This time, the Governor was not involved with Lust at all, and Nick also didn't interact with them.
Instead, Nick had simply dropped hints to the Governor by delivering interesting pieces of news.
Nick introduced conflict into this city via a Specter that demanded territory.
The city "just so happened" to find this Specter "by luck".
The next city Nick went to was just an absolute fest of depraved debauchery.
Lust's influence in that city was not even a little bit hidden.
The most powerful Specter became more powerful by non-consensual sex.
The less pleasurable, depraved, and horrible the sex was, the more Zephyx it produced.
People in the city were basically traumatized regularly.
This was probably one of Nurse Alice's busiest cities.
By now, Nick had gotten amazing at changing these cities.
He simply killed the strongest Specter, blackmailed the Governor, and introduced Wrath's servant.
Sadly, Nick had to micromanage this city for a while since Wrath's servant wasn't super smart this time.
It took Nick three years.
Near the end of those three years, Nick managed to become a Late Fanatic.
The next city also wasn't very difficult and barely took Nick a couple of months.
The next one was a bit more difficult, but it only took Nick a year.
The next one took Nick two years.
And then, Wrath asked Nick if he wanted to take on a really valuable city.
Wrath explicitly stated that Nick was allowed to refuse.
That was because this city was one of the biggest and most powerful ones in the western part of the Grand Continent.
This city did not belong to Wrath, Gluttony, or Lust.
This one belonged to Sloth and was its southwestern bulwark.
This city was the very thing that separated the contested area, where four of the Corruptors fought, from Sloth's actual territory.
Wrath's territory had expanded by a lot over the past decade, but the threat of this bulwark was gigantic.
Taking over this bulwark was incredibly difficult.
The reason was that it was ruled by a Specter that consumed ambition.
Everyone in the city just kept living on and on.
They just kept doing what they were doing.
The Extractors kept capturing Specters and working with them.
They were not interested in changing to another Manufacturer, going to another city, or joining Aegis.
They just kept remaining in their positions, being happy with what they already had.
They were complacent.
Over many decades, this led to a terrifying turtle of a city.
Over ten Heroes.
Over 80 Specialists.
Five Demons.
It just kept growing.
And growing.
And nobody was leaving.
It did not have a crazy number of people, but it had a crazy number of Extractors.
It could almost be considered an Extractor City.
Which was also where it had gotten its name from.
Grand Extractor City.