Shadow Novelist
Volume 23: The Game Changes
← Previous chapter: 717 Establishing Contact
The vibrations on the wall stopped, and Nick focused on something else.
Naturally, learning from this Specter would take literal years due to the slow speed of the communication, and Nick couldn't just do that without giving his superiors a heads-up.
He also had other things to do.
Of course, Nick would continue learning from the Specter, but he would only do that when he didn't have anything else to do.
Nick had only listened to the Specter for about half a day, which was just enough to have an overview of some things.
He had essentially only received an introduction to potential ways Zephyx could be used.
But for now, Nick would need to deal with other things.
Obviously, Nick didn't exactly "tell" that to the Specter but just gave a couple of yesses to some yes and no questions.
The Specter didn't know how long it had been inside the Containment Unit.
Nick had had a brief stint in a Containment Unit himself as a Specter, and telling the passage of time was very difficult in there.
While one could take a guess as to which day one was on within the first seven days, things became very wishy-washy later.
After a month, one would already start doubting whether they had been here for a week or for half a year.
This Specter most likely had been here for over ten thousand years, but it could have also been over a hundred thousand years.
The durations of the different eras were difficult to discern.
Aegis knew about a method the Ancient Ones used, which was called carbon dating, but that method didn't produce accurate results anymore since Prephyx had a subtle influence on atoms.
While that subtle influence wasn't important almost all the time, this subtle influence completely messed with the readings when they had to be very accurate.
After a bit, Nick looked up at the tear in the ceiling.
Originally,Nick wanted to transform into mist and fly out, but he was stopped when he saw the sword.
With the new knowledge he had just received, he had come up with a thought.
'The Enlightened Ones had access to more energies, right? They could also use Star Energy and Pure Energy.'
'If the biological machine works with Star Energy, Star Energy should be a natural and very effective weapon against Specters.'
'Wouldn't it make sense to create weapons out of Star Energy then?'
Nick looked at the blade of the sword.
'Whenever I look at the blade, I feel nervous. It's like something inside of me is telling me that touching this thing is a very bad idea.'
'Yet, if it is just a blade, why should I be afraid? I'm essentially a Force Specter. The worst it can do is cut me.'
'And yet…'
Nick's left arm transformed into mist and extended to the blade.
No part of Nick's body had touched the blade before.
He had always only interacted with the handle, and his subconscious trepidation had stopped him from touching the blade when he had come down to the locker room. ṟ
Shortly before Nick's misty hand touched the blade, he cut his connection to it.
Of course, his hand would quickly turn into black dust and vanish, but for just a bit, it would continue to exist.
As soon as Nick's misty hand touched the blade…
SSSHHH!
It turned into white dust before dissipating.
'Sure enough, it's made of Star Energy,' Nick thought.
At that point, Nick realized how insane the power difference was between today's era and the era of the Enlightened Ones.
With such weapons, the Enlightened Ones didn't even need to fear Force Specters.
A single cut with this sword would be devastating to every Specter.
Usually, Specters always had the advantage in terms of defense.
They recovered relatively quickly, and one could only truly kill or stop them when one found the Specter Core.
Many Specters were willing to sacrifice a part of their body to kill their opponent in a troublesome situation.
But with these weapons, the entire dynamic switched.
The Specters had to make absolutely certain that the weapon would not touch them.
They would need to transform Zephyx into matter to block the attack.
Metallic shields, fire blasts, winds, ghosts, whatever.
Anything that wasn't directly made of Zephyx would act as a buffer between the opponent's weapon and their body.
In short, they needed weapons of their own.
In a way, the bodies of Specters were even more susceptible to injury than human bodies if struck by such a weapon.
'But it can't possibly be cheap to create such a weapon,' Nick thought. 'Star Energy already seems relatively unstable, and the entire world is doused in Prephyx, which probably constantly eats at the Star Energy.'
'A weapon like this is for the peak of humanity. There may be weaker versions of this, but those versions most likely don't have infinite energy. Their Star Energy might need to be refilled somehow.'
'Although, it's also possible that they use something like Pure Energy as a film around the weapon, which then gets pushed aside when coming into contact with Zephyx, releasing the Star Energy, which then destroys the Zephyx. In a way, it would only use its battery when turned on.'
'Difficult to say. I might know a lot about Zephology, but this is beyond my current skill level.'
'I can't do anything with the sword yet.'
Nick turned into mist and carefully floated through the tear in the ceiling.
Then, he left the small room, went back to the main hallway, and continued down.
Obviously, Nick had already found an invaluable treasure in the form of the mysterious Specter.
This Specter might have been the most valuable find of the entire era.
It could potentially unlock the powers needed to fight the Specters as a whole.
Yet, Nick still had a job to do,and he wanted to look at the surroundings.
He found a couple of isolated laboratories.
After inspecting them for a while, Nick concluded that human experiments took place here.
However, he knew by now that the experiments were only carried out to pull attention away from the true secret, the Peak Shields trying to become a level nine Extractor.
Nick also finally found out how the buildings in the pillar were connected to the secret laboratory to the north.
There was a door that led to an elevator.
The elevator led down and went quite a bit underground.
At the bottom of the elevator was a long hallway that led north.
The hallway was below the lowest layer of the ruin.
Eventually, Nick reached a huge gate at the end of the hallway, and he finally realized why no one from Crimson City had found this place.
'This gate is made of rank seven materials. Only Shields can break it,' Nick thought. 'It's not that nobody knows that there is more to be found. It's just that nobody is powerful enough to get past this gate. I don't think a Shield would be willing to expose themselves just to destroy a door.'
With that mystery solved, Nick went back again, past the Peak Shield's office, and went down the other hallway.
This one should lead to the second building connected to the secret laboratory.
Just as expected, Nick reached another gate made of rank six materials, identical to the one he had destroyed earlier.
'I don't need to hold myself back any longer. The Specter knows that I'm here anyway, and we're not in an antagonistic relationship.'
Nick created a spear and made two maws again.
The entire spiel repeated, and Nick launched another brutal spear at the gate.
BOOOOOOM!
Just like before, the gate broke, and Nick's spear turned into dust.
After dealing with the fallout of the attack, Nick continued and looked through the next building.
As soon as he entered the building, one of his eyebrows rose.
The more he looked through the building, the more skeptical he felt.
'Was I actually wrong?' Nick thought.
Eventually, he looked through the entire building.
'It's just a big warehouse,' Nick thought. 'Did Markus actually look through this place?'
Compared to the hospital, Nick saw also very faint traces of distant human activity.
'Huh, I was actually wrong,' he thought as he looked at one of the doors.
One of the doors was actually bent open.
It was like something long and round had forced its way through the slit and forced it open.
While there was still molten metal covering the opening, the shape of the molten metal was not congruent with the other molten metal.
It was like it had been remelted.
'Guess Markus was actually in here and looked around, but he only looked at one of the buildings.'
'He most likely found the powerful gate but wasn't strong enough to break it. Also, he probably didn't want anyone to destabilize the pillar for his new and fancy megastructure.'
'So, he just said that he found a warehouse, closed everything down again, and fucked off.'