Shadow Novelist
Volume 23: The Game Changes
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The Nightmare was in the middle of this space.
At least, Nick assumed that it was the middle.
This space was rather sizable, and he had not been able to sense the end of it.
What he could see was a big area of pure Zephyx, and in the middle of that area was the Nightmare.
Nick's perception stretched towards the Nightmare and encompassed it.
The last time he had been here, he hadn't been able to sense a lot.
With his new perception, he could tell that a lot of Zephyx was moving through the air.
Nick wasn't just talking about the Zephyx the Nightmare produced but also about the Zephyx the Nightmare used.
In fact, the movement of the Zephyx was highly strange.
'It's the opposite of what I assumed,' Nick thought.
In Nick's perception, it looked like a huge stream of energy was coming out of the ground before entering the corpse.
Finally, an even bigger stream of energy was coming out of the corpse and dissipating throughout the area.
Nick approached the Nightmare and looked at it.
It hadn't changed a single bit.
It was alone in eternal darkness.
It had no perception.
It didn't seem to have any will.
It just existed.
In a way, it looked sad and tragic.
After a while, Nick looked at the space around the Nightmare.
'It's crazy, actually,' Nick thought before looking at the tons and tons of Zephyx beneath him.
'It actually didn't produce the Zephyx on the ground,' Nick thought.
'This is not its product but its fuel.'
'The Zephyx beneath the Nightmare is being absorbed by it.'
'The Zephyx is being burned as fuel for its ability.'
'You can't just use an ability without spending anything. Even my primary ability is not an exception. I am just recovering far more Zephyx than I am using with my ability.' ʀ
'Usually, the Eternals would just use their abilities by using their personal storage of Zephyx inside their Specter Core.'
'But that is not the case here.'
'The Nightmare is actually using the Zephyx below it as fuel.'
'It uses the Zephyx as fuel to cause suffering all across the world, which produces a multitude of the Zephyx it burns for its ability.'
'Then, the Zephyx gets dumped into the atmosphere around it.'
'Yet, the Zephyx is actually nowhere to be seen.'
'It just gets dumped into the atmosphere and vanishes.'
'This is not the first time I have seen something like this.'
Nick remembered the Force Specter trap inside the outer wall of the biological machine.
Back then, the Zephyx he had used had also been absorbed by the surroundings.
'Is the same thing happening here?' Nick thought as he looked up again.
'Very possible. I should take a look later.'
Then, Nick looked at the Nightmare again.
'I might have been correct in my assumption back then.'
'I believed that the Nightmare didn't seem alive or conscious, and that actually seems to be the case.'
'It could just use its own Zephyx to use its ability, but it is not doing that.'
'The only reason I can think of is that it simply has no passive Zephyx generation.'
'Which means it is dead.'
Nick kneeled down beside the corpse and looked into its empty eye sockets.
There was nothing there.
It was like the Nightmare was a random piece of stone.
No intelligence.
No life.
Nick's left hand extended…
And he put it on the Nightmare's forehead.
His ability didn't deactivate.
Nick's hand felt cold when it touched the Nightmare.
It felt like touching a corpse.
'Except that this corpse is rather sturdy,' Nick thought.
The Nightmare looked fragile.
It looked like a strong gust of wind could collapse its crumbly bones.
Yet, when Nick touched it, he felt like he was touching an impossibly dense and heavy piece of iron.
It felt about as hard as rank seven material, which was crazy.A Shield would need to unleash their most powerful attack just to create a tiny scratch or little dent into such material.
After looking at all the clues he had gathered so far, Nick came to a conclusion.
'This is most likely not a Specter,' Nick thought.
Nick's eyes narrowed.
He remembered his conversation with the old Champion of Light.
When Nick had told the Champion about the Nightmare, the Champion had seemed like he had realized something.
He had also said that it made sense.
Nick had also mentioned that the old Champion of Light seemed similar to the Nightmare.
Back then, Nick hadn't been sure why, but now, he knew.
'It's because they are similar.'
Nick looked at the Nightmare, and he carefully moved its rotting hair back.
Everything made sense now.
The Nightmare had only appeared after the era of the Enlightened Ones.
The Nightmare was dead.
It did not use its own Zephyx.
It felt like a human.
'That's because it is human.'
'Or, at least, it used to be.'
Nick imagined a scene in which several level nine Extractors shot out of the ground simultaneously.
They all launched their strongest attack at the same point in the sky.
A crack appeared in the sky, but it was mended immediately after.
The Sun brightened, and all the powerful Extractors turned into dust…
Except for their leader, the most powerful human in the world.
Instead of turning into dust, the leader was surrounded by darkness.
Powers infiltrated him and changed him.
His mind and soul were deleted.
His Zephyx Synchronizer was forcefully changed.
His being had been hollowed out.
The Sun had turned him into a biological machine, and its only purpose was to cause as much suffering as possible to humanity.
The most powerful human, the Champion of an entire era, had been turned into a machine that caused infinite pain to the very thing it used to protect.
The Nightmare wasn't humanity's enemy.It was a corpse that had been transformed into an instrument of torture.
'He must have come incredibly close to succeeding,' Nick thought as he looked at the corpse.
'Transforming a corpse into such a machine is definitely not the most efficient method.'
'The only explanation I can think of is rage and fear.'
'Most likely, the Sun had a near-death experience, and when it realized that it survived, it grew enraged and did this.'
'Specters usually don't have emotions, but the Sun might be different.'
'It's obvious that the Sun is different than every other Specter.'
'It's very possible that it has emotions.'
'It's also possible that it's not even a Specter to begin with.'
Nick wanted to sigh.
'I don't know enough about the Sun yet.'
'I can tell that the Sun is intelligent. After all, creating all of these biological machines requires unrivaled intellect and education. No mindless object can create something this complicated.'
'I can practically feel the hatred and anger that went into this bastardization of someone's ideals.'
Nick slowly stood up.
'I hope there is no afterlife.'
'I hope you didn't need to see yourself like this.'
Nick had become a bit emotional in the last couple of minutes, and he was doing his best to calm down and return to his investigation.
A moment later, he turned into mist and entered the Nightmare's body.
Usually, Nick couldn't just enter someone's body.
Every living being had a force of life in them.
A soul, a mind, a will, whatever.
Entering someone's body meant losing control over one's Zephyx unless someone did it forcefully, like the Sea King.
But since the Nightmare was dead, it didn't have such a will, which meant that Nick could enter its body.
The actual corpse was just that, a corpse.
The machine was just its Zephyx Synchronizer.
Over the many years, the corpse had accumulated countless tiny holes through which Nick could navigate.Nick just followed the flow of Zephyx and found his goal quickly.
In front of Nick was a spinning sphere.
Although it wasn't truly a sphere.
It wasn't easy to discern due to the speed of its spin, but Nick believed that it was a dodecahedron.
Even more, one of the sides of the dodecahedron was hollowed out, creating a hole through which Nick could look at its center.
Nick could see the shape of a Zephyx Synchronizer through the hole in the dodecahedron.
But that wasn't everything.
Around the dodecahedron were infinitely precise and clear membranes.
As soon as Nick saw them, he was reminded of the clear membranes that made the biological machine move.
'There's a crazy amount of Zephyx moving through these membranes,' Nick thought.
'The Zephyx is leaving the membranes before entering the dodecahedron.'
'The dodecahedron is shaping the Zephyx through Zephyx Manipulation, creating the Nightmare's ability.'
Nick didn't know a lot about the Enlightened Ones, but he knew a lot about Zephyx Manipulation, Specter Cores, and Zephyx Synchronizers.
'The Zephyx Synchronizer at its core confirms that the corpse used to be human.'
'The clear membranes are the machine added by the Sun.'
'And I believe the dodecahedron is something that the Enlightened Ones used to become stronger.'
'We use Shells and other things, while the Enlightened Ones used these things.'
'This is the true essence of the Nightmare.'
'It is a biological machine forcefully activating the ability of possibly the most powerful human who has ever lived.'
'To torture and harvest humanity.'