The employee entrance opened, and a tall woman with white hair entered.
She looked at the mass of tentacles in the corner carefully.
She wasn't afraid since she knew what was about to happen, but she was also careful.
Specters could become unpredictable, and being weak in the presence of a Specter was not a smart idea.
If the Left Arm hadn't repeatedly assured her that the Specter wouldn't attack her during her moment of weakness, she wouldn't have agreed to it.
The door behind the Protector closed, and she sat down in the opposite corner of Nick.
For a while, she just looked at the motionless tentacles growing out of the big mass in the corner.
This Specter looked a bit like a plant.
Most likely, it didn't have any intelligence.
'But seriously, why do they need to make the ratio so atrocious?' the Protector thought. 'I get that we are testing a new Containment Unit, but do we really need to go to such extremes?'
The Left Arm told the Protector that they were testing a Containment Unit where they could even intercept the Zephyx that the Extractor would produce.
Conventional Containment Units didn't restrict the Zephyx the Extractor earned. After all, if they did, the Extractor wouldn't grow more powerful.
Additionally, it wasn't easy to intercept the Zephyx flowing between Specter and Extractor.
In fact, it seemed almost impossible.
There was essentially no space to interfere since there was a direct connection between Specter and Extractor.
Of course, the truth was that Aegis didn't have the capability to do that.
This was just an excuse for the low production of Zephyx that the Protector would feel.
One had to remember that Nick was only a Late Demon, while this was an Early Protector.
Sending her to work with a Late Demon would be very suspicious since there wasn't any explanation as to how that could be useful. The closest rationalization for something like that would be to punish the Extractor.
That was also the reason the Left Arm gave for the invention of this Containment Unit.
Guard duty was a nice punishment, but they only needed so many guards.
In the future, corrupt Heroes would be sent into these kinds of Containment Units to work for Aegis without any pay.
It was a pretty good idea, and this Protector hated traitors more than anything.
After about a minute, she started to breathe heavily.
She knew that this Specter absorbed the Prephyx in the air to suffocate its victims and to prolong their suffering, but this was still worse than she had expected. ȓ₳ŊỔＢÊ𝐒
Just like Nick, she tried to rationalize the suffering through logic.
Sadly, or luckily, she wasn't a Specter.
Her emotions and body still followed her human instinct and instilled in her a deep sense of existential finality.
She would die.
She had to do something!
If she didn't do something, she would die here!
The Left Arm had lied to her!
They found out about that one time she didn't immediately report something to her supervisor!
They were killing her!
These were all the things that her subconscious mind screamed at her.
Of course, her logic fought back.
This couldn't possibly happen!
She didn't betray Aegis, and if they wanted to kill her, they wouldn't have warned her repeatedly!
They would just sentence her directly!
They didn't need to use such underhanded means!
Yet, her emotions constantly fought with her logic.
Despite all the logical reasons, she still believed that she would die here.
If it were possible to reason with emotions to such a degree, there would be almost no suffering in the world.
Emotions did what they wanted, and when they were intense enough, they ignored all logic.
Luckily,this was a Protector who was several centuries old.
Her discipline and self-control were extraordinary, and she forced her body to comply with her mind.
And then, her body reached the point where it couldn't even move anymore.
Now, even if she wanted to escape, she would barely be able to do anything.
She was so weak.
She wanted to sleep.
Yet, her body wouldn't let her sleep.
Powerful Extractors didn't need sleep, and someone as old as her had long forgotten how to sleep.
Plenty of normal people who slept almost every day had trouble falling asleep.
How could someone fall asleep when they hadn't slept for centuries?
Additionally, the Prephyx in the area was just dense enough to keep her body from shutting off her mind.
Lastly, while she wanted to sleep, her emotions certainly didn't want her to sleep.
Her emotions wanted her to jump up and fight for her life!
How could one fall asleep when they felt like they were drowning?
The only thing she could do was to wait and suffer.
Her emotions were screaming at her to do something, but her body was powerless to do anything.
She was in a horrible situation in which she had no control over her life anymore.
The existential dread was ever-present.
She was going to die!
She needed to do something!
But she couldn't move!
Panic, fear, terror.
Suffering.
While the Protector was suffering, Nick was still in a trance.
He only felt a great amount of Zephyx entering his body.
Although, it wasn't really Zephyx.
Zephyx required Prephyx to be produced, but there was no Prephyx to produce the Zephyx in here.
So, what was entering Nick's body?
It was the very thing that transformed Prephyx into Zephyx.
Humanity only knew that suffering produced Zephyx by reacting with Prephyx, but humanity couldn't bottle or even see the suffering.
They couldn't measure it.
Yet, it had to be there.
After all,one kind of energy didn't just randomly transform into another kind of energy without any outside influence.
The best way to describe it was that concentrated energy of suffering was entering Nick's body.
The cold inside a meat freezer had to come from somewhere.
If one wanted to cool something, one needed to heat something else.
It was energy transfer.
In a philosophical way, suffering felt like a cost.
People suffered in order to gain something.
Cost and benefit.
In this case, the Protector paid the cost while Nick reaped the benefits.
He was taking something from the Protector.
It wasn't clear what he was taking, but he had to be taking something since he was profiting.
The suffering was gathering inside Nick's body, and in the future, it would all react with the Prephyx in the air to produce Zephyx.
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