Nick looked at the unconscious woman in front of him with furrowed brows.
'To think that there's actually a powerful Extractor in a big Manufacturer that is actually this nice,' he thought.
The woman in front of Nick had literally never committed any crime whatsoever, which was crazy.
She had a bad past and entered a smaller Manufacturer.
When the smaller Manufacturer wanted her to do something unsavory, she left and joined a different Manufacturer.
Then, she just continued working, and whenever there were any kind of signs of illegal activity, she actively walked away.
She was doing that because she felt that it was stupid to do illegal things.
What's the point of earning a bunch of money when there was a realistic chance that one might lose all of it within a couple of years along with one's freedom or even life?
Additionally, the feeling of constantly being nervous that one got found out also seemed way too debilitating for her.
So, she just kept working normally.
And eventually, she became a Specialist.
The only person she had injured before was when one of her colleagues grabbed her ass, and she just slapped him into a wall.
That was the extent of the pain she had caused.
Nick felt a bit guilty about hitting her unconscious and forcing her to go through the Nightmare's torture.
'Well, it would be easier to kill her, but I can't justify that.'
The next moment, Nick conjured a message and put it on the table.
Then, he vanished from the room and unblocked the light.
Naturally, the Specialist would survive, and she would wake up within seconds.
She would be very confused for a bit before she realized that someone had attacked her.
Nick had left a message on the table that told her that he hadn't killed her because she was not part of the rotten core of the city.
He worded it deliberately like that to make him seem like a zealous human chasing a goal instead of a cold Specter.
The next moment, Nick arrived in front of his Containment Unit again and entered.
Then, he waited as he organized all the things he had learned.
He now knew where Sloth's servant was. He didn't exactly know its location, but he knew which building it should be in.
The servant was called the Rot, and it belonged to the biggest Manufacturer in the city, Glass Ceiling.
DING!
At that moment, the employee entrance opened, and the Initial Hero from Eternal Rest looked at Nick for a bit.
Nick didn't react.
DING!
The door closed again, and the Initial Hero left.
Naturally, Eternal Rest was in chaos since one of their Specialists had just been attacked, and they were searching for the attacker.
Nick was one of their newer Specters, and they wanted to make sure that he didn't have some kind of weird power that could attack someone from his Containment Unit.
When they saw Nick in the functioning Containment Unit, they threw that possibility out of the window.
Everything was fine here.
While Nick's Containment Unit was silent, the entire city was thrown into chaos.
All the Heroes and Specialists were searching the city.
Something like this hadn't happened before.
Nick waited until the next work session had passed and left his Containment Unit again.
After going through a big chunk of memories of the Specialist, Nick knew the entire layout of the city now.
He easily passed through a couple of small holes and left the building.
Finally, Nick was in the open inside the city.
It was surprisingly calm.
While there had been panic a couple of days ago, the lazy people of the city couldn't keep such an intense operation going for long.
They were very good at losing motivation.
Nick looked around and found the huge building that was Glass Ceiling's headquarters.
Just like all the other Manufacturers in the city, there was barely any security.
The city was very peaceful, and almost no Manufacturer even slightly annoyed another Manufacturer.
Conflict was too stressful.
So, there was no point in putting effort into guarding from other Manufacturers.
As for Specters, they wouldn't be able to enter the city in the first place.
Not even Nick had been able to do that without alarming the entire city.
If not even Nick could do that, what Specter could?
The magnetic field around the city was all they needed when it came to defending against Specters.
Nick floated through the building.
After a while, he found another Specialist inside an office.
Just like before, Nick quickly took care of the Specialist and used the Nightmare's influence to read through his memories.
When Nick was done, he raised his eyebrows again.
'What's up with this city?' Nick thought. 'Why is everyone so good?'
While this Extractor wasn't as pure as the previous one, the worst thing he had done was to sell some things from the Manufacturer's inventory that he wasn't allowed to sell.
Yes, he broke the law, but not even Nick could justify killing him for that.
Maybe the guy had also physically intimidated some people and beat up a couple of them, but that was really it.
This wasn't like the majority of Extractors who forced the poor to pay them tribute, sold tons of drugs to the desperate, killed people, stole blood from the innocent, and so on.
This guy was just a bit rough around the edges.
In the end, Nick shook his head and left another message.
Then, he quickly went back to his Containment Unit.
This time, nobody came to visit him.
Since the incident had happened in a different building, Eternal Rest probably didn't even suspect Nick anymore.
Nick waited another week to continue.
After reading the mind of the newest Specialist, Nick knew exactly where the Rot was located.
However, Nick didn't want to deal with the Rot yet.
Instead, Nick went to one of the Glass Ceiling's offices and waited in the empty room.
A couple hours later, a blue-haired woman entered with a sigh and sat down in her chair.
Nick readied himself.
BANG!
Then, he exploded forward.
First, he used his ability to make her believe someone was knocking on the door.
Her perception was on the door.
BANG!
Nick's blade hit her Barrier with all of its power.
Her face turned white, but her Barrier held.
This fact alone demonstrated how powerful she was.
She was the CZE of Glass Ceiling, and she was a Mid Hero.
A brutal shockwave extended from the impact, bending and ruining the walls and ceiling.
The ear-grating sound of metal bending under stress vibrated throughout the entire building.
Despite being surprised, the woman quickly reacted.
But then, the light in the room vanished, and her perception was scrambled.
BOOOOOM!
She summoned a sword and sliced through the place where Nick was supposed to be.
Half the building was cut in two, and rays of light shone through the huge cut.
BANG!
Nick hit her from behind again, and this time, her Barrier broke.
Nick was a Late Fanatic, and even with his ability, he needed two hits to break through the Barrier of a Mid Hero.
If it were a Late Hero, he would probably even need four.
As the CZE lost all of her Zephyx, black smoke surrounded her, blocking all of the light from reaching her body.
Within an instant, she was under the Nightmare's influence again.
A moment later, a maw opened up below her, and the black cloud surrounding her pulled her into it.
The maw closed and vanished.
BOOOOM!
The door was blown away, and two Heroes entered the room.
They looked at the destruction with shock.
What happened?!
Where was she?!
Several more Heroes stopped outside the building and looked into the office through the gigantic cut.
"Search the city!" one of them shouted.
Meanwhile, the black cloud came out of a maw inside one of the walls in Eternal Rest.
The black cloud moved rapidly and entered through the employee entrance of a Containment Unit.
The black cloud moved into a corner.
The CZE of Glass Ceiling was still suppressed inside the black cloud.
Nick used this time to learn more about the city.
He used the Nightmare's influence to read through the CZE's memories.
A couple of minutes later…
CRKSH!
The CZE's head imploded as the pressure around it intensified.
'I can justify killing her,' Nick thought.
She was the one who kept the doors to the Rot open so that it infected the entire city.
However, she didn't do that out of a nefarious reason.
In fact, she didn't even know that the Rot was related to Sloth.
When she had worked with the Rot, she had already become apathetic to ambition, and she didn't see a big deal with that mindset.
She also believed that the city would become more peaceful if people were a bit less greedy.
With less conflict, she wouldn't need to work as hard anymore.
Because of that, she kept the door of the Rot open, and it eventually infected the entire city.
While her intentions were not necessarily bad, she was responsible for the city's current state, and she had been the one who made the decision.
A moment later, Nick turned her body into pure Zephyx, just like her belongings.
The only things he couldn't turn into Zephyx were her weapons and her Barrier.
For those, he opened a maw portal and just dumped them inside.
The maw portal would spit the belongings out in a random part of the city.
And then, Nick went back to waiting.
While he was doing so, the city was going wild.
The CZE of Glass Ceiling had been killed without anyone noticing!
Had a Fallen entered the city?!