Nick looked at the city for a bit.
Sure enough, things had changed.
The megastructure and the Outer City seemed to be almost the same as they had been a couple of decades ago, except that some buildings had been replaced.
The people in the Outer City also didn't seem to be any different from before.
They were not super happy, but they were also not in constant despair.
They were just living life.
'At least that means that things have not become as bad as before I became Liaison,' Nick thought.
'However,' Nick thought as he focused on the new buildings.
The old Crimson City was around five kilometers across.
Surprisingly, the old walls were still there, splitting the old Crimson City from the new Crimson City.
And that was also exactly where things started to change.
The newest ring around the city looked similar to the Dregs.
The only difference was that the people didn't seem to be as starved as the people of the old Dregs.
However, they still seemed stressed and miserable.
Nick had seen countless humans, and he had learned a lot about psychology when he had been a trainee of Aegis.
'Symptoms of chronic overworking,' Nick thought.
Based on their bodies, these new people were not malnourished or anemic. Surprisingly, their bodies were quite resilient and fit.
Yet, their eyes were drooping, they were constantly nervous, and their bodies either rested or moved in a jittery way.
Nick could also see that nearly every person living in the outskirts was working currently.
A good chunk of them was working on some new fields north of the city.
These fields stretched from Crimson City to about one kilometer from the coast.
The fields were gigantic!
They were basically ten kilometers long and wide!
The food that was being grown there seemed quite interesting.
The fields were filled with adult trees,which had a ton of big fruits hanging from the top of their trunk.
Nick had seen these fruits before.
'What were they called? Papayas?' Nick thought.
Nick saw hundreds of people traveling from the outer ring to the papayas with water and fertilizer.
It only rained once every week or so, and that wasn't enough to raise plants like these.
The sheer amount of papayas being produced here was crazy.
That was more than the city could consume.
However, that obviously wasn't the point of the trees.
'They are meant to be a local specialty for caravans.'
Nick noticed that a lot of the workers were randomly grabbing papayas while working and eating them without trying to hide their act.
'Probably a perk of their job,' Nick thought. 'Allowing them to eat papayas during work gives the employers the opportunity to pay them lower wages while also getting a customer for the overproduction.'
'No surprise that they are not malnourished. The constant carrying and walking around also keeps them relatively fit.'
'And yet, they look more like slaves than normal people.'
Nick watched for a while.
He saw some workers whose shifts were ending, and he watched them walk home.
On their way home, they carried a bunch of papayas with them and exchanged them with other people for some different food and water.
Then, they walked home, greeted their families, and…
Went to sleep.
Almost all of these workers fell asleep almost immediately when they hit the bed.
'Their bodies and minds are exhausted,' Nick thought. 'There are people who can fall asleep within seconds, but the chances that all of these workers just so happened to have this attribute are low.'
'That means that the body needs to gain this attribute to survive.'
Nick looked at the number of employees working and cross-referenced it with how many people were leaving and coming every hour for about three hours.
The results were crazy.
'They are working for 16 hours a day,not including the path to and from their work.'
'Since they also need to buy things and eat, they barely have seven hours of sleep per day, and only if they have zero private life.'
'By the looks of their bodies, there are also no rest days.'
'These people are literally working 112 hours every single week.'
'That is crazy!'
'Why are they working that much? It should be obvious that working that much would kill you pretty quickly.'
'No one would do that for their entire life without being forced to.'
'Food doesn't seem to be the issue. In fact, everyone gets home with far more food than they actually need.'
'Water also isn't an issue.'
'The credits they receive are also pretty good.'
'I also don't see guards forcing them out of bed or beating them to work faster. It's like they are all doing it voluntarily.'
It took Nick a couple of minutes to find the reason.
'There are no homeless people.'
'Not even a single one.'
'Every single person has a home, without exception.'
'Even the elderly and the sick have homes.'
Nick's brows furrowed.
'However, there are very few elderly and sick people.'
Nick slowly approached one of the houses while staying hidden.
That's when he felt something very interesting.
'There's a sophisticated Barrier around this house.'
'Specters wouldn't be able to see the Barrier, but they can feel the danger.'
'Approaching this house feels dangerous.'
The next moment, Nick's Barrier activated, and he used its analyzing capabilities to inspect this mysterious Barrier.
When his Barrier gave him the results, he grew annoyed.
'It's an empty threat!' Nick thought. 'This entire machine is useless against Specters! It just gives off waves that Specters perceive as dangerous!'
Nick hadn't made the connection before, but after realizing what was going on, he noticed that the feeling of danger was similar to another feeling he had once felt.
'The space above the green machine,' Nick thought.'The dangerous and threatening feeling of this house is very similar to the space above the green machine!'
'But it doesn't actually have the same power!'
'The mysterious force on top of the green machine had the same effect as drowning had on a normal human, while this one just reminds me how drowning feels like.'
Nick quickly found the generator inside the house, transformed into mist, and inspected it.
He inspected the machine and quickly found out how this feeling was generated.
'Vibrations,' Nick thought as he looked at extremely subtle vibrations going through the walls.
Nick put some of his mist around a crucial part of the machine and stopped it from moving.
The house stopped vibrating, and the dangerous feeling Nick had been feeling all this time vanished.
A moment later, he let go, and the house resumed vibrating.
A normal human wouldn't notice the vibrations since they were exceedingly subtle.
After analyzing the machine for a while longer, Nick also finally found out why everybody seemed to work that much.
'This thing consumes two grams of Zephyx per month!' Nick realized.
Then, he looked at the houses.
Every single one of them had such a generator.
The next moment, he looked at the gigantic wall separating the outer ring from the Outer City.
Naturally, the people behind the walls didn't need these machines.
'That's why there are no homeless people.'
'Anyone that doesn't have a house is free food for any Specter, and since there are no walls, almost any Specter can come here.'
As soon as Nick realized what was going on, he grew angry.
'Building a new wall is costly, but the construction will break even within just barely 16 months!'
'It's an obvious fix to a horrendous amount of suffering.'
'Any half-decent Governor would come up with that fix. It's also not difficult to implement it.'
Nick looked at the city with furrowed brows.
'Aria is probably no longer Crimson City's Governor.She would've never let anything like this happen.'
'Yet, even an idiot wouldn't be stupid enough to not come up with building a wall.'
'That can only mean that the Governor is corrupt and purposefully not solving the issue.'
'And the incentive for that couldn't be clearer.'
Crimson City had around 2,000 new people, who all lived in the new outer ring.
With around four people on average per house, there were 500 houses, and each needed at least two grams of Zephyx per month to operate.
That was over a kilo of Zephyx every month.
However, the important part wasn't that but the insane production of Crimson City.
The amount of goods produced by Crimson City was crazy, and Crimson City probably made an insane amount of credits by selling to the caravans.
'The earnings from this machine are actually not the most important part. The important part is the high production of goods due to the abundance of man hours put into work.'
'The fact that even the poorest household has over 2,500 credits available every month is crazy. In other cities, having 500 credits makes your life stable, and having 1,000 allows you to live quite luxuriously for normal people's standards.'
'Yet, 2,500 credits seem to be the low end here, and many even have over 3,500 credits available per month.'
'One thing is clear. The economy is really good in Crimson City.'
'Crimson City is producing far above its size.'
'And, as always, it's probably the elite who don't want to take a step back and allow the people to live a normal life.'
'Every damn time!'
Nick took a deep breath.
'Sadly, I'm not here to fix Crimson City.'
'It's no longer my job.'
'The only thing I can do is to report it to the Technician later.'
'I want to help, but I have to keep my identity secret for now, and I can't get involved.'
'I hate this.'