Nick walked towards the Dregs while three of the guards kept following him.
Two of the guards were rather tall and wore black uniforms, similar to the uniforms of the tax collectors, but without the gas masks.
The entire gas mask thing for the tax collectors mainly existed to keep their identities secret and so that they didn't need to smell the disgusting Dregs.
Normal guards didn't wear gas masks.
But right now, they wish they did.
As soon as they walked into the Dregs, the faces of the two guards behind Nick scrunched up while the third guard far behind them just sneered in disgust.
The Outer City had a solid wall of metal between itself and the sewers, but the Dregs were mostly built on rusty grates.
One could imagine how bad it smelled to walk over something like the sewers of Crimson Fungus City.
As soon as they entered, the eyes of the people opened widely in horror.
If there were simply a couple of guards with a Zephyx Extractor, they wouldn't care.
However, the hearse was what scared them.
The people immediately scattered, not even entering the houses but just running as far away as possible.
The guards just casually watched the people scatter.
The Zephyx Extractor had said that he would be the one creating the corpses.
"Want us to stop them?" one of the guards asked as a formality.
"No," Nick answered neutrally.
"As you wish," the guard answered before becoming quiet again.
As Nick walked through the Dregs, he felt strange.
At this moment, he no longer felt like a member of the Dregs.
In fact, he felt like one of the tax collectors.
For some reason, Nick felt like he was not looking at humans running from him but at animals.
This feeling scared him.
He felt like he was losing something important, and he quickly shook his head.
'Stop thinking about these things!' Nick thought with frustration. 'You're about to make this a better place! You're about to take care of some people from the Riker Strikers!'
'The people are running from you only because they don't trust you and don't know if you will kill them! If they knew what you were doing, they would look at you with thankful eyes.'
However, it wasn't easy to get rid of this strange feeling.
Even though Nick knew that what he was doing was for the good of the Dregs, he still felt like some kind of monster.
Eventually, the four of them reached the marketplace.
It was empty.
Naturally, everyone had already heard about the group of people coming, and they had already scattered like roaches.
It didn't matter what power one had in the Dregs.
Children, adults, merchants, rapists, murderers, gang members, or whatever.
Everyone was equally helpless when the guards or Zephyx Extractors came.
Nick led the three guards past the marketplace into a relatively small alleyway.
The alleyway was so small that the hearse didn't even fit into it.
"You can leave it here," Nick said, turning to the guy pulling the hearse.
The guard just nodded and waited at the entrance of the alleyway with his hearse.
A moment later, he took out a small azure bottle.
"Really, Johnny?" one of the guards asked with annoyance. "We're working right now!"
The guard gritted his teeth and put the bottle into his pockets again. "Sorry, boss."
"Johnny, you really need to keep this addiction under control. I don't want your performance to suffer."
"Don't worry, boss. I know. Sorry," the guard said.
The other guard sighed and turned to Nick. "Sorry for this."
"It's fine," Nick said as he led the two guards deeper into the alleyway.
When they were gone, Johnny took out the azure bottle again and unplugged it.
The next moment, he bit down on a part of his lower lip so hard that it started bleeding.
Then, he put one of his fingers into the bottle and carefully took out some blue dust, which he then placed on the bleeding part of his lip.
His body started to shake in place, and a pained expression appeared on Johnny's face.
Yet, there was also deep happiness visible on his face.
A minute later, he stopped shaking.
CRKSH!
He bit his lip again and put another bit of blue dust on it.
Meanwhile, Nick led the two guards behind him to an unnoticeable wall of a seemingly random building.
Nick pushed on it a bit, but it didn't move.
This was the entrance to the Riker Striker's headquarters.
Naturally, after gathering information in the Dregs for over six weeks, Nick had learned where the headquarters of all the different gangs were.
'Locked,' Nick thought emotionlessly.
"Step back," Nick said.
The two guards took a couple of steps back.
"Turn around. I don't want to show you my ability," Nick added.
The two guards looked at each other but turned around after.
There was no reason for Nick to kill them.
After staying silent for a couple of seconds, Nick felt his ability activate.
Since Nick was a Late Newbie, his body was about 3.4 times as powerful as the average human male, and with his ability active, it was around 17 times as powerful.
If he wanted, Nick could lift a stone that weighed over a ton over his head.
But instead, Nick grabbed the side of the plate and pulled with all his power.
CRRRRK!
The screws and nails exploded off the plate, and the plate was thrown to the side.
The sound was extremely violent and loud, and when the guards heard it, their entire bodies jerked in shock.
It sounded like something huge had just broken through a metallic wall!
The two of them quickly turned around, but they just saw Nick standing in front of an open corridor.
When the two of them saw the many small holes in the wall and the bent metallic plate on the side, they took deep breaths through their teeth.
They couldn't do something like that!
Even though they were guards, they were still just humans.
Once more, they were reminded of how scary Zephyx Extractors were.