Ghosty, the Technician, and Nick kept experimenting on him for several days.
While they were doing that, thousands of people had their lives turned upside down.
BANG!
Five people landed in front of a thick gate inside a huge mountain.
The guards in front of the gate wanted to sound an alarm, but when they saw the uniforms of these people, they froze in shock.
Aegis!
Agents!
"Welcome, Age-"
"Shut up," a woman with short red hair spoke with authority as she glared at the guard.
Both guards froze and didn't dare to utter a sound.
"Move!" she commanded.
The two guards immediately jumped to the side.
Without saying anything, a younger man in the group stepped forward.
His Barrier activated, and many different windows popped up before closing.
Then, the Barrier in front of the gate deactivated, and the gate opened.
Naturally, while all the cities had their own inventions, the basics of how Barriers worked came from Aegis, and Aegis could crack every kind of Barrier.
After the door opened, the five people entered.
The guards controlling the gates and Barriers inside the mountain were shocked when the machinery stopped listening to them.
However, they didn't dare to protest or interfere as soon as they saw the uniforms.
This group was from Aegis!
The inner door also opened, and the group of Agents could finally see the city.
Black Mine City.
It looked pretty… normal.
People were living normal lives.
There were businesses.
There were families.
There was work.
Everything looked pretty normal.
The only thing of note was that there were fewer poor people than expected, but that was it.
This did not seem like a city under the control of a Corruptor.
This group of Agents was one that was responsible for investigating cities for corruption.
There were a couple of ways to get such a group to investigate a city.
A Governor could request an investigation.
A caravan could request an investigation.
Another group of Agents could request an investigation.
A superior who had heard from some random source something about the city could ask for an investigation.
Most of the time, there was nothing.
Such investigations were time-consuming and reserved resources for a while, which was why there were consequences for sending these teams to places that weren't corrupted.
Sadly, that didn't change that the majority of investigations went nowhere.
When four of the five people saw the city, they grew annoyed again.
This looked like another waste of time.
This city obviously wasn't corrupted.
Yet, their red-haired leader seemed very confident.
She saw the expressions of her teammates before taking out a huge folder filled with documents.
When the others saw the size of the folder, their eyes widened.
That was A LOT of information!
They were usually much smaller!
"Matt, isolate the city. Nobody leaves. Shouldn't be difficult here," she ordered.
"Yes!" a tall and thin man said before shooting into the air inside the big cave.
"Chelsey and Miranda, take control of Vertigo Box and Swirling Abyss. They are the two biggest Manufacturers. They are there and there. They have three Heroes each," the leader ordered.
"Yes!" the two of them shouted before vanishing.
"Urian, you-"
"As always?" the blonde guy asked with a casual smirk.
"No," the leader answered neutrally. "We immediately commence the execution."
Urian let out an impressed whistle. "Alrighty then."
Urian vanished, and the leader immediately turned her gaze to a seemingly random cave.
SHING!
In an instant, she appeared in front of the cave.
BANG!
The gate in front of the cave caved in as if some invisible giant had pushed it in.
BOOOOOM!
The entire mountain shook, and the cave almost collapsed.
The next moment, an almost invisible, gigantic hand pulled a figure out of the cave.
It was a tall woman with three heads and six arms, who was struggling in the grip of the gigantic hand.
At the same time, blinding lightning came out of a building on the other side of the city.
The red-haired lady was writing down everything that happened.
After some seconds, the gigantic hand moved the Specter closer to her, and she looked at it.
"Are you willing to tell us anything about Wrath in exchange for your life?" she asked.
The three heads seemed to argue with each other for a while.
"Yes," the middle-head said after a while.
The red-haired lady nodded as she pulled out a Space Bag.
A moment later, several Zephyx Suppressors floated out of the bag and bound themselves around the Specter.
"Job's done," Urian said as he reappeared behind his leader. "Nothing unusual. Went down like a sack."
The leader nodded.
That meant that the Governor was dead.
At that moment, the leader's Barrier changed, and Urian's Barrier activated on its own.
During the most-critical parts of a mission, these kinds of groups had communication between their Barriers disabled.
There were Specters that could feel the connections between Barriers.
They might not be able to decipher the connections, but they could feel their presence.
This could warn the Specters.
There was also a chance that the Cities could feel the connections, and if the city was sufficiently corrupted, that could also mean trouble for the Agents.
Sure, the Cities wouldn't be able to damage the Agents, but they could potentially hide evidence.
Since Wrath's servant and the Governor had been dealt with, the group had dismantled the two biggest dangers, and they didn't need to fear being unmasked anymore.
"Gather all the Heroes and Specialists of the city in one place," the leader ordered.
She got a confirmation from every other member of her team.
Within a couple of minutes, every Specialist and Hero was gathered in the middle of the city, and the leader ordered the Specter to fix the mental manipulation it had caused.
A couple of hours later, a new Hero entered the city.
This was an Early Hero who was ready to prove themselves as a Governor.
The new Governor had already been trained on how to rule a city.
The group of Agents simply forwarded all the relevant information about the city to the new Governor and ordered the Manufacturers to hand over all the information they had of the city.
Within two days, the group of Agents left again.
Despite giving the group of Agents a lot of info about Wrath, the Specter was thrown into the Crimson Sea anyway.
Left Arm's orders.
While all of this had been going on, several other cities underwent similar changes.
Every city Nick had conquered for Wrath was turned upside down by a team of Agents.
Even Grand Extractor City was hit.
There were also a couple of cities part of this raid that Nick hadn't been in contact with.
Naturally, Nick knew about a couple more cities due to all of his contact with Wrath.
Wrath's error had been that he had believed that Nick was a Specter.
Well, Nick was a Specter, but he didn't think and act like a Specter.
16 cities had been hit.
Nick had only been involved in about half of them.
About a quarter of the remaining ones had already belonged to Wrath without Nick's help, and the remaining ones belonged to other Corruptors.
Those had been options for Nick to go to instead of Grand Extractor City.
Around 200,000 people.
That was how many people had been impacted by this raid.
200,000 people had been freed of Specter influence.
Nick had given Wrath a proper foothold in the Grand Continent, but he had taken away even more.
Almost every single city Wrath had controlled in the Grand Continent had been liberated, pushing it all the way back into the War Continent.
Decades of progress were gone.
Naturally, Wrath knew exactly who had been responsible for this.
Nick!
Wrath was angry, but that was just because that was its base emotion.
It wasn't actually angry due to Nick.
After all, this meant that Aegis had captured Nick, and like any other Specter, he had talked.
This danger was exactly why Wrath only told its servants about the cities they were involved with.
Nick had been special since he had helped with so many cities.
Wrath had hoped that Nick would just be killed or still feared it enough to not tell everything to Aegis.
Nick should have known that, the more damage he did to humanity, the higher the likelihood was that Aegis would kill him.
Telling Aegis everything was stupid.
Wrath had thought that Nick would be smart enough to see that.
But he obviously didn't.
Sadly, things didn't turn out the way Wrath wanted them to.
Yet, all of that didn't matter in the end.
Wrath had been alive for over a thousand years.
Setbacks were normal.
At some point, it would have caused enough suffering to become an Adversary.
It just had to continue.
A week after all the cities had been liberated, the Left Arm contacted the Technician again.
She had come up with a plan about the future.