Shadow Novelist
Volume 23: The Game Changes
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Nick's mind was going wild.
A Containment Unit.
One that should contain a Peak Adversary.
A suppressed Peak Adversary.
This single Specter could kill all of humanity if it broke out.
If it joined Death, humanity wouldn't be able to survive.
The Sun wouldn't want all of humanity to die.
Without humans, it couldn't become more powerful.
At most, another era would appear in which humanity had to rise from the bottom again.
After thinking a bit more about this find, Nick realized that this actually changed nothing.
How would the Shields even suppress such a Specter?
Sure, if every Shield gathered and united, they might be able to suppress and capture this Specter, but that would never happen due to Death and the Trio of Destruction.
They would lay waste to all of Aegis' strongholds and even its headquarters before destroying the majority of Protectors.
Even if Aegis were willing to sacrifice all of that just to contain this Specter, they most likely wouldn't be able to work with it.
It was a Peak Adversary, and the Shields wouldn't be able to threaten it to force it to work without gathering all their power again and risk another attack.
'This Specter is unusable right now,' Nick thought. 'Just as the note suggested, this is the key to becoming a level nine Extractor, but we don't even have a key for our Shields to advance properly.'
'Working with the False Prophet is insanely difficult.'
'Aegis needs an Early or Mid Adversary first before we can even consider using this Specter.'
'Even more, the Specter isn't accessible to us.'
'None of us are powerful enough to break rank eight materials, and we can't interact with the Enlightened Ones' technology to open the Containment Unit.'
'Nevertheless, I should take a closer look.'
Nick went to the side of the sword and kicked its hilt.
The hilt moved further away as it continued cutting the floor, leaving a crevice.
Luckily, the floor was hard enough that it could easily support the insane weight of the sword.
Then, Nick turned into mist and traveled through the crevice.
The locker room Nick found himself in did not have any entrance.
Either the entrance was so insanely well hidden that not even Nick could find it, or there simply was no entrance.
'In that case, the Peak Shield living above this room must have had an ability that allowed him to enter this room.'
Nick looked around the locker room.
It was basically empty.
The only thing left was a couple of lockers made of powerful material.
Of course, Nick also saw a lot of dust in here, which meant that there used to be organic matter in here that decomposed.
There was also a big bucket that was filled with dust.
However, Nick could also see that the walls near the bottom of the bucket were discolored.
Nick's right arm turned into mist, and the mist touched the discoloration.
'Dried blood,' Nick thought. 'Most likely, body parts were in the bucket. This Specter probably becomes more powerful by consuming something biological.'
'A Peak Adversary that consumed corpses would be the jackpot. It would be insanely easy to work with.'
'This Specter must have been raised artificially,' Nick thought. 'Most likely, the Enlightened Ones captured this Specter when it was weaker and just kept training it until it reached its current level.'
'Although, I might just as well be wrong.'
Nick looked at the entrance of the Containment Unit.
The Enlightened Ones didn't differentiate between employee entrances and Specter entrances.
Their technology was sufficiently advanced that they could use the same entrance for both.
'If this thing could break out, it would have already done so.'
Nick approached the gate and put his hand on it.
He tried to look through the Containment Unit.
However, the material was very peculiar.
It was like it absorbed everything.
It absorbed all light,giving it the blackest black of colors.
Sound also seemed to be absorbed by it, and it didn't have a smell.
Nick could only tell that it was there since he knew that something should be there but wasn't.
It was a bit similar to the mysterious wall of the biological machine.
'The Enlightened Ones even managed to adapt parts of the mysterious machine.'
Aegis didn't even dare to experiment with the green wall.
Most likely, Aegis didn't even know what was behind the green wall.
After all, how would they know? They couldn't turn into mist, and the tiny holes had distorting effects on perception. Even if they managed to send some kind of probe in there, they would lose contact with it almost immediately, and the probe would forever get stuck in the Force Specter trap.
As an intelligent Force Specter, Nick was the only being in this world that could get past the green wall.
'I wonder if the Enlightened Ones managed to look at the biological machine,' Nick thought.
Nick's eyes narrowed as he looked at the gate.
'However, despite the insane technological level of the Enlightened Ones, I don't think they can compare to the builder of the biological machine.'
'Inside the holes, gravity was also gone.'
'Distorting perceptions seems way more feasible than eradicating gravity.'
'Eradicating gravity equals messing with the very basics of spacetime.'
'I have not seen signs of the Enlightened Ones being able to pull off something like that.'
'If anyone managed to pull that off, it must have been the Ancient Ones.'
'The Ancient Ones had weapons that could move at lightspeed and were powerful enough to wipe an Eternal from the world in an instant.'
'This Containment Unit is advanced, but there are even more advanced things out there.'
'The fact that the Specter in there sensed me when I broke the door down also means that the material doesn't perfectly isolate vibrations. Maybe if it still had power, it could do that.'
'But as it stands right now, it can't.'
'Well, since the Specter can't break out anyway, I should check if it is intelligent or not.'
Nick made a fist and punched the door.
His ability didn't deactivate.
Nick took a step back and kicked the door with his full power.
The gate didn't vibrate in the slightest.
Yet, Nick's ability deactivated.
'Terrifying perception abilities,' Nick thought. 'I wouldn't even notice the vibration from this side, but the Specter can actually feel it from the other side.'
Ding.
The wall vibrated a tiny bit.
Nick had to wait until his ability activated again before he could kick the gate again.
Dinginginging!
As soon as Nick's kick finished, countless individual vibrations came through the wall.
Even after several seconds, they didn't stop coming.
Nick just listened to the strikes, and he quickly realized what was going on.
'It is establishing a language,' Nick thought as he listened to the rhythm of the punches.
A normal human would just hear a single note due to the high frequency of the attacks, but Nick could hear the definite breaks between the attacks.
There were also different kinds of vibrations.
There were quick ones coming from the top.
There were louder ones coming from the bottom.
There were long comes coming from the middle.
As Nick listened to the vibrations, it was almost like a picture appeared in front of him.
It was like sound was transforming into sight.
Nick had to use his full power to make the gate shake just the absolute tiniest bit, while the Specter on the other side could make very audible knocks at insane speeds.
By now, it had also become extremely clear that the Specter was very intelligent.
It had very quickly realized what was going on.
It also realized that Nick wasn't very powerful, which was why it immediately took the initiative to write down a way to communicate.
Nick's mind was very fast, and within one hour,he had essentially become fluent in the language the Specter had just come up with.
As the gate kept vibrating, Nick took out one of his spears, pulled back, and performed a full-throw with it.
Just when a pause in the vibrations appeared, Nick's spear hit the gate with full force, bending like a spring.
The Specter had been repeating the same pattern again and again, and it always left a pause in the end.
Essentially, it said that Nick was supposed to strike the gate with his strongest attack during the pause.
Nick did just that, but his attack still wasn't strong enough to produce a vibration audible to his ears.
Yet, as always, the Specter on the other side noticed it.
After Nick's attack, the pattern of the vibrations changed.
The Specter told him that it realized that he wasn't very strong and that Nick's power wasn't enough to communicate different intentions based on the intensity of his produced vibrations due to his weakness.
So, he could communicate his intentions based on the position he struck.
BANG!
Nick kicked a low part of the gate, indicating a yes to the question the Specter had just asked.
With that, proper communication was established, and the Specter began to ask questions.
Its first one was already a surprising one.
"You hungry?"