Nick's Zephyx recovered, and he returned to his human form as he kept looking at the water-like substance.
After Nick had almost died, he had naturally dropped the scale with the substance on it.
Right now, the substance just lay on the ground, doing nothing.
It was just like water.
Nick furrowed his brows as he looked at it from a distance.
He would not touch that thing barehanded again.
'This is obviously the energy source of the membranes and the machine. This is the very thing that makes all of this work and move.'
Nick looked for a while at the membranes.
'It isn't being used up very quickly, but it also isn't being used up very slowly. Moving these plates with a certain amount of power naturally requires a certain amount of energy.'
'The little drop I had on the scale probably only equates to about a gram of Zephyx. My body has over ten kilos of Zephyx, making it over 10,000 times more energy-rich than the liquid.'
'Even if the liquid had some kind of extremely destructive potential, there just wouldn't be enough to damage my body to this extent.'
'And yet, I can't deny that is exactly what happened.'
'Even more, as far as I can tell, the liquid didn't even lose any of its energy. It has just as much energy as before it came into contact with me.'
'This means there is not some kind of equalization effect going on.'
Nick silently looked at the liquid.
'It's like the liquid has infected me.'
'It's like it's a little flame, and I am a long rope.'
'A little burning match obviously doesn't have as much stored energy as one kilometer of rope, but if the match manages to ignite the rope, that doesn't matter. The little match will be the reason why the rope burns to ashes.'
'Then, there's also the matter with the white dust. Whenever a Specter dies, they turn into black dust,which represents their Zephyx being converted back into Prephyx.'
'Yet, when this liquid touched me, my body turned into white dust.'
'Does that mean it didn't convert back to Prephyx but into something else?'
'But in that case, what did it turn into?'
'I only know of Prephyx and Zephyx. Sure, Zephyx can be categorized into a couple of different categories, but none of them seem to be applicable in this case.'
'So, did it turn into something that is neither of those?'
Nick furrowed his brows.
'I don't know. It's difficult to accept something like that.'
'One thing is certain. I should not touch the liquid barehanded again.'
Nick approached the liquid and retrieved his syringe again.
Then, he pulled the liquid into the syringe and looked at it.
It acted just like water.
Nick extended his arm and slowly turned into mist again.
As long as Nick wore things and had them under control, he could transform them into mist, too, which was an important aspect of this ability since he would otherwise become naked every time he turned into mist.
Nick wanted to see if he could turn the syringe with the liquid into mist together with his body or if that would destroy him again.
Eventually, the syringe turned into mist as well.
CRRR!
Nick immediately cut his body off as it started to turn into white mist again.
This time, he had been prepared, which meant that he only needed to cut off a tiny part.
The syringe fell to the ground.
CRACK!
And broke into pieces.
When Nick saw that, his eyes widened.
'This was made of the same material as my weapon!' Nick thought. 'It shouldn't break just by falling from 1.5 meters of height!'
Nick looked at the spilled liquid and noticed that nothing about it had changed.
'Wait! Not nothing!'
'Actually, I think it is not as luminescent as earlier.'
Nick furrowed his brows.
'It actually makes sense. Luminescence is also a form of energy dispersal. If something shines for long enough,it will eventually stop shining.'
'Most likely, the liquid is giving off its energy, which means that it's not completely stable.'
'Its behavior doesn't change in different environments, making it relatively stable. However, it is consistently giving off quite a bit of its energy, judging by how much it has dimmed over the last couple of minutes, which means that it is also quite unstable.'
'Its level of stability is stable, but its level is just not very high.'
Then, Nick looked at the broken syringe and inspected it.
Luckily, he knew everything about this kind of material. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to conjure it.
After experimenting with it a bit, Nick found the answer.
'All the Zephyx is gone.'
Naturally, powerful materials needed to be treated with Zephyx, which meant infusing the materials with Zephyx.
Infusing a material with Zephyx to create a Zephyx Material was like infusing iron with carbon to create steel.
Basic steel was just carbon and iron mixed together in a certain ratio. If something could tear the carbon out of the steel, it would just turn back into iron again, weakening it by quite a bit.
'In essence, the liquid turned the material into its base form again, which is not a very impressive material to begin with.'
Materials used as bases for Zephyx Materials were not very powerful. Carbon on its own also wasn't very hard unless it was arranged in very specific shapes.
'This means that I'm not even sure if I can take one of these out with me.'
'The material is only stable for a couple of minutes, and there are not many materials that are strong enough to contain a liquid while also fitting through a one-millimeter-wide hole.'
Nick shook his head.
'Sadly, I won't be able to bring Aegis a sample.'
Nick turned to look at the wall behind him.
'And I don't think any human can enter this place. Even if there were an entrance, the constructor of this machine probably has several safeguards in place.'
'Just the Force Specter trap in the filter is powerful enough to deal with Demons and maybe even Fallen.'
Nick looked back at the machine.
Everything was moving, and there was barely any space.
If this were a normal machine, one would only need to imagine a wall of moving gears, cables, and wires to get an accurate picture of the machine.
Yet, instead of gears, cables, and wires, this machine was made of chitin, clear membranes, clear vessels, and clear tubes.
Nick knew a lot about Physics and Zephology, but he still couldn't even begin to guess what any individual component of this machine did.
This did not follow any kind of standard principle of engineering and construction.
A moment later, Nick turned into mist again and approached the machine.
'I want to look through this area some more. I just have to be careful not to touch anything.'
While a human wouldn't be able to fit through any of the tiny holes here, a bit of mist had no issues passing through the gaps.
Nick entered a world of chaotic movement.
Everything around him was loud and in constant motion.
Luckily, the constructor of this machine was very efficient, which meant that none of the liquid spilled out of the machine.
So, even if parts of the machine touched Nick, he wasn't turned into white dust.
Nick flew through the machine for several minutes.
A normal human would have long since lost all orientation, but Nick's mind was powerful enough that he could create an accurate map in his head.
'It's quite big,' Nick thought as he looked at the map in his head.
By now, he had reached the other side of the machine, which was around 1.5 kilometers away.
Naturally, the other side also only had walls and tiny holes.
Eventually, Nick decided to travel along the walls of the machine.
'It's egg-shaped,' Nick realized.
'Based on the dimensions, I am at the thick bottom of the egg, which has a diameter of 1.5 kilometers.The height of the egg should be about three kilometers.'
'I've never seen such a gigantic machine. How difficult is it to conceptualize and construct such a dense machine with such insane dimensions? The Technician's machine is a toy compared to this thing.'
After a while, Nick decided to check the top of the machine.
He flew up for a bit but slowed down.
Something worrisome was occurring.
'The density of Prephyx is drastically going down. In fact, the density here is even lower than outside.'
At the same time, Nick also started to become nervous.
Yet, there was no real reason to become nervous.
He wouldn't immediately die without Prephyx, and he could go back to any area with Prephyx without any issues.
This was way less dangerous than the Force Specter trap.
And yet, for some reason, Nick felt more nervous here than when he had been trapped.
However, Nick had a lot of willpower and just forced himself to continue flying forward.
All the Prephyx vanished, and Nick could see a big gap in the machine.
Nick felt like he had to breathe deeply and quickly, even though he wasn't even breathing.
Nick felt that this feeling was familiar, but he only realized what this feeling was a couple of seconds later.
'It feels like I'm drowning,' Nick thought.
'It feels like I'm breathing in water.'
'It feels like I'm ingesting something that I can't use.'
Nick decided to glance past the big gap and return immediately.
He quickly approached the gap and looked through.
And then, his eyes widened in shock and horror.
'What?!'