"She knows that you worked with us for a long time and that you're on our side," the Technician said with some amusement. "She also knows that you have a powerful ability that allows you to sense someone based on their presence."
'So, in short, she knows nothing,' Nick thought.
"Who would have thought that there was a Specter with such a strange ability," the Knife said casually as she swayed back and forth on the back legs of her chair. "Sensing someone's presence is like the purest form of perception there is. You sensed me as soon as I was in your presence, but as soon as I snuck out of the room, you didn't sense me anymore."
"Crazy," she added.
"It's not perfect," Nick answered.
"It sure isn't," the Knife added.
Silence.
"So, I assume we are now allies," Nick said.
"Depends on which side you are," the Knife said. "Sorry if I'm not completely convinced that a Specter is interested in humanity's success."
"The same reason why it seems pointless that any human would want to help the Specters," the Knife said. "And yet, here we are."
The Technician narrowed his eyes as he glared at the Knife.
'Well, that confirms it,' Nick thought.
Neither the Technician nor the Left Arm had directly said that there was a human who was on the Specters' side, but the Knife had done just that.
"Whoops," the Knife said with a disingenuous voice. "Seems like I wasn't supposed to say that."
"It's not difficult to guess," Nick answered. "I came to that conclusion already."
The Technician sighed with a frown.
He was blaming himself.
He had been the one that kept dropping hints to Nick, even though he shouldn't have.
Nick wasn't powerful enough to lie in front of the Shields.
If Nick knew about the traitor, there was a possibility that the traitor would realize that they had been exposed.
Everyone knew how that would end.
There were several levels regarding one's understanding of the world.
Unknowing people would believe that humanity was helpless against the Specters.
Experienced people knew that humanity had Aegis, which could resist the Specters.
Yet, the most powerful people in the world knew the real truth.
Humanity was only alive because the Specters allowed them to survive.
Right now, 80% to 90% of Specters were solo actors who didn't systematically oppose humanity.
Why? Because they didn't need to.
Other Specters were keeping humanity from becoming powerful enough to properly resist the Specters.
As long as humanity had a proverbial gun to its head, there was no reason to go against them.
And the identity of that gun couldn't be more obvious.
It wasn't hard to guess that it was the Champion of Light.
His sudden rise to power.
His alliance with the Sun.
His lack of a background.
He was an Early Shield that came out of nowhere, and as soon as he appeared, he was already the most powerful human.
There was no possible way that humanity could create somebody like that.
He had to have had the help of someone much more powerful than humanity.
And that someone also couldn't be more obvious.
After all, the Champion of Light had their ability.
The Sun.
The Sun was humanity's enemy.
Based on Nick's theory, the Sun was the creator and controller of all Specters.
'The Sun doesn't want to destroy humanity,' Nick thought. 'It has the power to destroy every single human in the world. The piles of ash and dust in the ruins showed as much.'
'Yet, it does not do so.'
'The Sun wants humanity to survive, but it also doesn't want humanity to go out of control.'
'It wants us to keep fighting for our survival.'
'It wants us to fight the Specters.'
'If Ghosty's theory is true, the Sun should grow more powerful by causing suffering, and all the other Specters are its minions.'
'The stronger humanity becomes, the more the suffering produced is worth.'
'That explanation gets rid of the biggest weakness in Ghosty's theory, the existence of Prephyx and our ability to absorb it.'
'We absorb Prephyx to create human Zephyx. Then, by causing suffering to humans with a great amount of human Zephyx, more Specter Zephyx gets produced. Most likely, the Sun is getting a big cut of that produced Zephyx.'
'The Sun's power is growing. So much is evident based on the density of Prephyx.'
'Specters keep dying, and their Zephyx gets turned back into Prephyx, creating more Specters.'
'And then, these Specters become more powerful again.'
'The amount of Prephyx stored as Specter Zephyx grows over time without reducing the amount of pure Prephyx.'
'This means the amount of Prephyx in all different forms increases.'
'That means the world is not a closed ecosystem.'
'Somehow, the Sun is converting something from outside into Prephyx, which it then adds into the atmosphere of Earth, and it does so via the machines.'
'Based on what I have seen, the bright white light that gets added into the machine is the source of the Prephyx, but I don't know how the Sun is creating that bright light.'
'I don't think you can make less energy into more energy. If energy gets added to the system, it has to be taken away from somewhere else.'
'One possibility would be that the Sun is using the generated Zephyx to acquire materials from outside of this world to add to the Prephyx.'
'It is essentially converting something worthless into something valuable, which it then uses to buy more worthless things to convert into valuable things.'
'The Sun is essentially buying iron ore and making steel out of it, which it then uses to acquire more iron ore.'
Nick narrowed his eyes.
'And every couple thousand years, when the density of Zephyx reaches a sufficient level, it harvests all the strong humans.'
'The speed at which the density of Prephyx is increasing is way too fast.'
'It's impossible that the Specters kept growing more and more powerful over tens of thousands of years. Otherwise, they would be so powerful that we wouldn't even be able to resist them anymore.'
'Most likely, a big part of the Specters also gets harvested.'
'Then, it leaves the most useful Specters alive that produce the most Zephyx.'
Nick had investigated the world for decades, and now, all the individual clues started to fit together.
At that moment, Nick remembered something.
'The Zephyx beneath the Nightmare,' Nick thought.
'There was an endless expanse of Zephyx below the Nightmare.'
'Naturally, since the Nightmare seems to be neither alive nor sentient, it doesn't use the Zephyx. Yet, it keeps producing it.'
'Most likely, the Nightmare is some kind of machine or something similar that uses a bit of Zephyx to cause suffering to create even more Zephyx.'
'Then, all the Zephyx gathers around it, like a storage.'
'Every couple thousand years, this Zephyx gets harvested.'
'Additionally, if we believe that the Nightmare has been placed by the Sun, its power also makes more sense.'
'By making the dark dangerous, the Sun can guarantee that everyone stays in its light.'
'Like this, nothing can go out of control.'
That was when Nick thought a bit about the different eras.
'The Sun is supremely powerful, but it still wants to use the Nightmare to assure that everyone stays in its light?'
'Staying in its light should not cause any suffering. The only thing I could think of is that it wants to keep watch over all the humans.'
'And that would only become relevant if humans become dangerous.'
'So, does that mean that something has happened in the past?'
If Nick just imagined Earth as a big bottle with a chemical reaction going on inside of it, he could imagine a way something could go wrong.
There were three forces in the bottle, which all reacted with each other.
Prephyx, human Zephyx, and Specter Zephyx.
If something went wrong and only Prephyx remained, the reaction would end.
If something went wrong and only Specter Zephyx remained, the reaction would also end.
But if something went wrong and only human Zephyx remained, the bottle would explode.
The human Zephyx was the only force that would actively destroy its container.
At that moment, Nick remembered the image he had seen in the ruins of the Ancient Ones.
A ball surrounded by a circle.
'The ball is Earth!'
'And the circle surrounding Earth is the bottle!'
'It is the thing containing everything!'
Then, Nick thought about the fact that the Sun was also always above everyone's head.
Naturally, the Sun couldn't possibly be at multiple locations at the same time.
'But what if I treat it like my mirror image?'
'If humans were to look at a mirror when looking up, it would always look like their mirror image is directly above them.'
The circle surrounding the Earth.
The fact that the Sun was always above someone.
The bottle.
An experiment.
The fact that humans were killed if they reached a height of 30 kilometers.
'The Sun is not some kind of shining ball of fire above our heads!'
'The Sun is some kind of shield or forcefield surrounding Earth!'