Shadow Novelist
Volume 23: The Game Changes
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Nick looked at the machine inside the corpse for a while.
It was a fusion of three different things.
First, the natural Zephyx Synchronizer.
Second, the manmade addition to improve the Zephyx Synchronizer.
Third, the abnormal architecture of something alien, forcing the Zephyx Synchronizer to activate.
In a way, this could also represent the corpse's past, present, and future.
Becoming an extremely powerful human.
Turning into a soulless machine.
After looking at the machine for a while, Nick carefully moved forward and touched the membrane.
As long as he didn't interfere with its function in any way, nothing should happen.
When Nick touched the membrane, he felt quite some resistance, but it wasn't nearly as strong as he had anticipated.
'The membrane is not nearly as hard as the corpse,' Nick thought as he pulled his mist tentacles back.
'If I wanted to, I could destroy the membrane and essentially kill the Nightmare.'
This was a bit to digest for Nick.
He could technically destroy one of the Eternals.
Even more, besides the Sun, the Nightmare had probably caused the most suffering.
Just the fact that no human was allowed to enter the dark already caused immense suffering.
Additionally, almost every human had accidentally wandered into the dark at least once in their life.
Usually, when one entered the dark for the first few times, it wasn't that bad.
Most times, they were only a bit in the dark.
In that case, the Nightmare only whispered into their mind and tried to play a couple of tricks.
But if one kept accidentally walking into the darkness, the immense torture would start.
It was so bad that over 50% of all humans were scared of even looking at a dark place.
And with a single strike, Nick could end all of this.
The machine would be destroyed.
The Zephyx Synchronizer would stop spinning, and within seconds, it would turn into pure Zephyx, which would scatter.
Sure, the Sun's technological prowess was beyond impressive, but without a proper base material like this Zephyx Synchronizer, it couldn't easily build a replacement that accomplished the same thing.
There might be many cheaper ways to achieve similar results, but they wouldn't give the exact same one.
'If I destroy the Nightmare right here, I will have redeemed myself several times over. Millions upon millions of humans will have their lives improved tremendously.'
Nick wanted to take a deep breath.
'But it's not that simple.'
'Honestly, back when I joined Aegis for the first time, things seemed much simpler.'
'Just become strong enough to deal with the Eternals.'
'Just kill one Eternal after the other, and the issue is solved.'
'If only…'
'Instead, if I kill the Nightmare right now, the Sun will realize that humanity has become powerful enough to kill an Eternal, and it will immediately increase the suppression factor while probably killing almost all of the Shields.'
'Then, it will just make a different machine to do something similar to the Nightmare. It might even be worse than the Nightmare.'
'Maybe it will create something that forces humans to stay in literal sunlight, not even giving Specter light any chance to fight against it.'
'It might even dim its own light to make it harder to refract the light into distant caves without losing too much of it.'
Nick looked at the Nightmare.
'Killing it represents an escalation of the conflict. Humanity is not ready to fight the Sun.'
Nick materialized beside the Nightmare and looked at it for a bit more.
'I have to be careful what I am going to tell the Technician. Some of these things are definitely subject to the Sun's surveillance of information.'
'If we are ever ready to fight the Sun, I can kill the Nightmare with no issues.'
'Until then, we can make use of the Nightmare.'
'As long as I am here to help the Extractors, I can lead them to the safe area around the Nightmare. At that point, they can become attuned to it.'
'However, I am not sure how safe that is. There are bound to be some Specters that know the truth about the Sun. Some of them might even be working directly under the Sun.'
'If there are any, Death will definitely be one of them. If Death realizes that we can attune an Extractor to the Nightmare, it might tell the Sun, which will represent the death of humanity's chance at freedom.'
'If there are only one or two very powerful Extractors who managed to attune to the Nightmare, Death might not even notice since they only received a mutation to their already existing ability, but if there are many weaker Extractors that show clear signs of the Nightmare's ability, things will become troublesome.'
'We definitely can't allow new Extractors to attune to the Nightmare, and even if we wanted to, I doubt that I can protect normal people from the Nightmare's influence in this place. The Nightmare's influence is unreasonably dense and powerful around this place.'
'In fact, I don't even know how I managed to get here back then.'
Nick looked away from the Nightmare and turned in a random direction.
'I should find out where I actually am.'
A moment later, he turned into mist and flew forward.
As Nick moved away from the Nightmare, he felt the density of Prephyx in the surroundings drop.
At the same time, he could also tell what was happening to the Prephyx.
'It's all being pulled to the Nightmare.'
'Just like everything else, the Nightmare isn't exempt from needing something to produce something. Without Prephyx, it can't produce Zephyx.'
'All the Prephyx in the atmosphere is being pulled towards the Nightmare, creating a dense cloud of Prephyx around it.'
'Yet, the density of Prephyx in the outer area of the Nightmare's domain is surprisingly low. It's even several times lower than outside.'
'That means that only a limited amount of Prephyx is being released into this place.'
'If this place were connected to the outside world, the density of Prephyx in the area should at least be comparable to normal Prephyx density.'
'This means that we are in an isolated space that only gets access to so much Prephyx.'
'Which, in turn, means that there is something that dictates the amount of Prephyx we receive here.'
Nick already had an idea of what that could be.
After a bit more flying, Nick found a huge wall with countless tiny holes in it.
Nick closed his eyes and focused on the atmosphere.
'Some of the holes deliver Zephyx, while others deliver Prephyx.'
When Nick had been in the small holes of the green wall, he hadn't been able to tell where the Zephyx was going due to the distortion of his perception.
But in this place, there was no distorting effect on Nick's perception.
After all, there was no reason to.
This was probably the core of one of the most secure and fortified places in the world.
There was no point in deploying defenses to this place.
That would be like having a thick bone shell inside of one's heart.
'If I follow one of the holes delivering the Zephyx, I will most definitely end up in some kind of gigantic storage of Zephyx. That's probably kilometers upon kilometers of Zephyx.'
'And if I am right, I will probably find another Prephyx generator if I follow one of the other holes.'
'As expected, this is probably a closed shell system.'
'None of its components are in any way interacting with the outside world, except for the Star Energy being transported to the biological machine.'
'That means I probably also wouldn't be able to get out safely without the Fiend of Darkness.'
'Seems like I was a bit reckless.'
'Luckily, it worked out.'
'I should be more careful in the future, but mistakes happen. I'm also just human.'
Nick wasn't sure if he meant that as a joke or not.
'Maybe I shouldn't be so flat all the time.'
Nick shook his head. 'Tangent,' he commented in his mind. 'I should focus on investigating more.'
Nick shrunk and squeezed into one of the holes delivering Prephyx.
As he flew through the hole, he realized that his perception was almost completely unaffected.
Sure enough, there were no defensive measures in these holes except for their hardness.
Nick rapidly flew through the hole and exited on the other side.
'As expected,' Nick thought as he looked at the gigantic biological machine.
This one looked very similar to the other biological machine.
There was a chitin-like substance everywhere, which was being pushed around by transparent membranes and muscles.
The density of Prephyx was also higher than normal.
'While I'm already here, I should take a look at the actual sun again. Maybe, with more context, I will learn something new.'
Nick flew through the biological machine towards the top.
Yet, after just a couple of seconds, he stopped.
While the machine was extremely loud and chaotic, to Nick, it sounded like many individual and logical vibrations.
In a way, there was a pattern to them, and they made sense.
However, just now, Nick had heard something that didn't fit the pattern.
It was like someone dropped a plate while one was listening to music.
It was a very different sound.
Nick changed directions and moved towards the sound.
After just a tiny bit, Nick saw the origin, and when he did, his eyes opened wide in shock.
'What is that?!'
'Is that a Specter?!'