Nick looked at the machine for a long time.
The Prephyx inside the room was much denser than outside, which was crazy.
'Is this truly where Prephyx is coming from?' Nick thought.
Nick slowly approached the exit of the small hole and looked around.
He could only see a couple of meters of his surroundings despite having terrifyingly fine and accurate senses.
The reason was all the disturbance happening around him.
The biological machine was very compact, and there was almost no open space between all the moving parts, not allowing Nick to see very far.
The machine was also very loud, and its grating sound made echolocation difficult for Nick.
One had to remember that Nick's perception abilities were still based on his main senses.
Nick could build accurate three-dimensional models of a room based on soundwaves that bounced off the walls, but with everything being so loud, everything was just too chaotic.
He could also sense almost everything based on touching a surface, but everything in there was basically constantly vibrating.
Nick could also sense people and Specters that had moved through this place weeks or even months ago based on smell, but everything here smelled the same.
In short, this machine was loud in every sense.
It probably even tasted loud, but Nick wouldn't put that to the test.
Nick carefully left the tiny hole and saw many other tiny holes all around the hole he had just left.
As soon as Nick left the hole, he felt the density of the Prephyx increasing even more.
The Prephyx was probably over five times as dense in here than outside.
Compressing Prephyx to such a density probably required over 1,000 times its weight in Zephyx.
Just like everything else, Prephyx was subject to the concept of entropy, and messing with entropy always cost energy.
'The high pressure of Prephyx in here is pushing the Prephyx out through these tiny holes.'
'Most likely, the Prephyx is being produced here.'
'But how?'
'What is being used to make the Prephyx?'
'Energy can't be created or destroyed. Everything has to come from somewhere. Even if I conjure stuff, I am simply transforming Zephyx, which is energy, into matter, which is also just energy.'
'Prephyx is also a kind of energy, which means that it has to come from somewhere. Prephyx can't just appear without anything else being used to produce it.'
Nick knew that he had come into contact with something terrifying.
This involved one of the deepest secrets of Earth.
'I'm about 95% sure by now that this machine is the very thing producing the Prephyx in the area. Most likely, this isn't the only one. I don't think that one single machine produces all the Prephyx all
over the world.'
'There are most likely several more of these all over the world, and they all produce Prephyx and dump it in the atmosphere.'
'But why?'
'What's the point?'
'Well, if I just follow logic and use a bit of association, I can get to an answer easily, but that doesn't make any sense.'
'Specters want to cause suffering to humanity.'
'Prephyx creates Specters.'
'Therefore, Prephyx causes suffering to humanity.'
'But it can't be that easy, right? Usually, suffering is a side-product, not the main-product. When one city causes suffering to another city, it's because that city robs the other city of resources or tries to conquer them for some kind of gain. The suffering is not the main goal.'
'Generally, suffering is only the main goal in either sadism or revenge.'
'None of these things seem to fit here since this involves all of humanity across the world for thousands of years.'
'And the arguments from the skeptics are also still very relevant. If Prephyx is there to make humanity suffer, why can we use it to become so much stronger?'
Nick shook his misty head.
'I should look around first.'
Nick looked at the many moving parts of the machine and analyzed them more closely.
'Finally, learning about biology is going to pay off,' Nick thought as he looked at the transparent membranes that looked a bit like muscles.
'Biology is not my specialty, but I should know enough to make some rough guesses.'
Nick saw a couple of clear lines inside the membrane.
'These should be like blood vessels, but they are not delivering blood. Instead, they are delivering some kind of clear liquid or gas that gives the muscle the power to move.'
Due to the size of the machine, Nick only had a couple of meters of free space, but that was enough to transform.
For the first time in a while, Nick turned into his human form.
Nick tried to breathe.
'No air,' Nick realized before looking at the ground. 'But gravity returned. Seems like gravity was only deactivated in the holes.'
Nick furrowed his brows. 'That means that the holes most likely are not some kind of portal that leads away from Earth. Instead, something in the wall can isolate gravity or equalize it.'
Nick sighed. 'I can't even begin to imagine how that is supposed to work. Like, isn't gravity all permeating? Based on physics, gravity is just the bending of spacetime. In order to be isolated from gravity, you would need to be unaffected by the bending of spacetime, which kind of means not being part of spacetime.'
'And that doesn't make any sense. After all, I can move. You kind of need space to move.'
A moment later, Nick approached one of the clear membranes.
'This one makes the plates below it spin, which is crazy. Biology isn't known for having a lot of spinning things.'
Nick lightly touched the membrane.
'Just as expected. This one isn't under a lot of stress, making it perfect for experimenting.'
Naturally, Nick didn't want to alert whoever built this machine by destroying part of it.
Because of that, he wouldn't interfere with the machine's production.
Nick conjured a small syringe with some basic materials and touched the membrane with his left hand.
He squeezed a bit.
'Hmmmm.'
He squeezed a bit more.
'It's quite tough. This muscle can probably lift several tons of materials without tearing.'
'Yet, it's still quite squishy.'
Nick slowly moved the syringe to the muscle.
He used quite a bit of power but only managed to make a little cut before the tip of his syringe broke off under the stress.
'Alright,' Nick said as he got more of his Zephyx.
For the next few minutes, Nick focused on creating another syringe, but this one was made of the same materials as his weapon.
In order to create something this hard, Nick needed to empty and refill his Zephyx storage many times.
Luckily, the high density of Prephyx made it easier for him to recover his Zephyx.
'Round two,' Nick thought as he shoved his new syringe into the membrane.
This time, the syringe entered without issues.
Nick carefully pushed the syringe to one of the "blood" vessels and retrieved some of the stuff inside.
Then, he pulled the syringe out and looked at it.
There was a clear liquid inside.
It looked a bit like water, but it also looked a bit oily.
'Is it shining?' Nick thought as he narrowed his eyes.
After focusing his eyes, Nick could tell that the liquid gave off a bit of light.
A minute passed, in which Nick looked at the liquid through the syringe.
'Well, let's test a bit more.'
Nick conjured a small glass scale and dumped a bit of the liquid on it.
It looked very much like pure water or oil, except that it gave off a bit of light.
'It's about three times as dense as water,' Nick thought.
Nick kept looking at the liquid.
'It doesn't seem to evaporate in any way. Not sure if that's because of the lack of air- wait! Wouldn't that make it evaporate even more?'
'Interesting. Except for Prephyx, this is a vacuum, and Prephyx generally doesn't act like normal matter, which means that this is actually a vacuum.'
'The pressure inside the membrane and in the syringe is much higher than outside, but despite the brutal change in pressure, it's not acting differently.'
After a couple more tests, Nick decided to go to the next stage.
He moved his finger to the liquid.
And as soon as his finger touched the liquid…
CRRRR!
Nick's eyes widened as his body started to rapidly turn into white dust, starting from his finger!
BANG!
Nick immediately turned into mist and separated his body.
An instant later, the cut-off part of Nick's body completely turned into white dust before vanishing.
Nick's mind was gripped by panic.
'I nearly died!'
This bit of liquid had turned half of Nick's body into white dust within less than 0.1 seconds!
'White dust, not black dust.'
'Specters turn into black dust, not white dust.'
'Why is it white dust, and why did just this tiny bit of liquid almost kill me?!'
Nick looked at the machine and the liquid inside its muscles.
This place was much more dangerous than he had expected.