Nick walked down to the research and development department of Aegis and entered the Technician's office.
The Technician was smiling brightly as he sent one report after another.
He was currently writing down all of his accumulated knowledge and made it available to basically anyone in the world.
Many people would want to keep their knowledge secret. After all, they worked hard for it. They spent years upon years accumulating said knowledge. Sharing it would be akin to doing the work and letting others benefit from it.
But the Technician was like the Left Arm.
He was someone whose sole desire was to help humanity.
He was happy that he could share centuries of accumulated knowledge with everyone on Earth.
"Good job out there!" the Technician said with a smile.
Nick nodded. "Humanity broke one of its biggest shackles today."
Naturally, the Champion had handed the glasses back in the 30 minutes after the Envious Researcher died.
"Want to see what the Envious Researcher looked like? I can show you with these," Nick said.
The Technician became interested. "I would love to!"
Nick handed the glasses to the Technician, who put them on.
The Technician saw the image of a floating brain with a nervous system.
After a bit, the brain vanished into smoke, and the glasses deactivated.
The Technician took off his glasses and handed them back. "Really interesting. So, what are you going to do now?" he asked.
Naturally, the Technician wanted to confirm his suspicion.
He was there while Nick developed the glasses, and he knew that the image didn't disperse when they were deactivated.
The image would just become fainter.
The Technician knew that he was the only other person who knew about that.
The Champion didn't know about that.
"I am going to focus on technology for a bit. Compared to humans,Specters don't have such an inherent affinity with technology," Nick said.
The Technician's suspicions were confirmed.
The fact that the image of the Envious Researcher turned to smoke was already enough.
Or, more precisely, the Envious Researcher didn't turn into smoke but into mist.
And the Technician knew of only one being who could turn into mist on command.
This message told him that Nick now had the job of the Envious Researcher, and the fact that Nick confirmed that he was interested in technology confirmed it. į¹šĘšØšĪļ¼³
Sadly, while the Technician was extremely intelligent, he was not nearly as good at secret communication as the Left Arm.
Because of that, he didn't realize the second hidden message.
Nick commented on humanity's inherent affinity with technology with the context of being the new Envious Researcher while also juxtaposing that affinity with Specters.
This was supposed to mean that humanity should advance slowly.
Nick could tell that the Technician didn't get the second part of the message, but that was to be expected.
The quieter the message, the easier it was to miss it.
"Mind if I read?" Nick asked, pointing at the reports the Technician was reading.
"Oh, go ahead! If you manage to finish all of this, we can work together. There are several experiments that would benefit from having a Specter volunteer!" he said with a smile.
Then, the Technician transmitted all of his notes and accumulated knowledge into Nick's Barrier, which almost ran out of space.
It was a lot.
A LOT!
Nick nodded. "It will probably take me a couple of years to read through all of this. I hope that isn't an issue."
"It's fine! Go ahead!" the Technician said, waving Nick off. "I've got plenty to do anyway!"
It was more than clear that the Technician was in a good mood.
Nick said his goodbyes and left.
Then, he left Aegis' headquarters.
After his ability reactivated, Nick changed his appearance and traveled to the secret research base.
He hadn't talked to Ghosty in years.
When he arrived, he saw that everyone was busy compressing the Star Energy Generator.
Right now, they were building a prototype that was barely a meter across.
If they managed to succeed, they would have achieved a milestone.
"I'm back," Nick transmitted to Ghosty.
Ghosty's eyes widened, and he seemed to visibly relax.
"It's been a while," Ghosty answered with his unique voice transmission.
"Many things have happened," Nick said. "I'm going to transmit something to your Barrier."
"Sure thing," Ghosty answered.
Some seconds passed.
"There is not enough space on your Barrier's storage," Nick transmitted. "I need you to clean about half of what you have. This is a big file."
Ghosty blinked a couple of times in surprise, and the other researchers noticed.
"Not sure if I can clear that much," Ghosty answered. "Is it really that important?"
"Ask someone if they have enough free space," Nick said.
Ghosty raised a brow in skepticism and contacted the others.
"Michael has enough space," Ghosty transmitted.
"I'm going to send a file to him," Nick answered.
Some seconds later, Michael's Barrier activated, and he looked with surprise at his storage.
It was almost full!
"He may look at it," Nick said.
"You can look at it," Ghosty said to Michael.
By now, the others knew that Ghosty was talking with somebody.
There was no more reason to keep Nick's presence a secret.
They knew about the mysterious helper anyway.
Michael looked through the files for over a minute just to see what they contained.
Yet, the more he looked, the wider his eyes grew.
"What is it?" Ghosty asked, voicing the question everyone had.
"It'sā¦ a lot," Michael said. "Based on the name of the primary folder, this should be the Technician's research notes."
"The Technician's research notes?!" Ferdinand asked in shock.
That would explain why the file was so big!
"Is it safe to look at this?" Michael asked with worry.
Ghosty was just as worried.
This was a bomb.
"You may share everything. The entire world has access to that now," Nick transmitted.
"The Envious Researcher died about an hour ago."
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