The Technician was sure that there was much more to Star Energy, but he also knew that Nick was essentially the leader of humanity's true resistance.
He was the one who controlled the secret research camp, and he was also directly working with the Sun.
The Technician knew that Nick knew more about the true state of the world than anyone else.
Sure, the old Champion of Light once used his ability to create an isolated space in which he could tell them everything he knew, but that had been a one-time thing, and it had angered the true enemy tremendously.
They didn't know what he had told the Shields, but they knew that he had gone behind their backs.
Because of that, they had weakened him tremendously until it was time to create a new Champion.
Naturally, the aliens had also considered killing all the Shields, but that would be wasting a gigantic chunk of time and progress.
The aliens were running a business, and they needed to produce Zephyx.
With time, the Shields would die either way and as long as the Champion didn't personally isolate them from the Sun again, the new Shields wouldn't be able to learn of whatever it was the old Champion told them.
With the addition of the Sun's new image as humanity's protector, things would also change for the better with time.
The aliens had been more honest with the old Champion.
They had told him that he was supposed to supervise humanity.
But with the new Champion, they went a different route.
They claimed that they were protecting Earth, and the Champion believed it.
Yet, neither the old Champion nor the new one could hold a candle to what Nick knew about the true state of the world.
Nick had been inside a machine that produces Prephyx.
He had seen an alien in person.
He had access to the suppressed Adversary.
He was working for the Sun.
The Technician and the Left Arm knew that Nick held the most knowledge about the world out of all of them.
Because of that, they did whatever he suggested.
Nick was the leader of humanity's resistance, and when he said that humanity should focus on transforming Star Energy into physical weapons, the Technician would do just that. ŔΑ₦𝔬𝖇ƐṢ
"I'll join you in the research," Nick said. "Maybe I can contribute a little."
"Sure thing," the Technician said with a smile.
For the last four years of Nick's break, he focused on researching with the Technician.
He subtly directed the flow of research in a direction that diverted from the secret research base's research.
The true way to progress was to push Star Energy's production to the limit before turning it into Pure Energy.
Pure Energy would have the biggest impact on technology, and Nick had to keep humanity from going in that direction for as long as possible.
The aliens wanted humans to focus on biology and battle-strength. They didn't want humans to create more gigantic weapons that could destroy entire planets.
As soon as humanity gained the technological power to destroy the Sun, it would become too dangerous to keep them around.
They would need to create another reset, which meant a long period of low revenue.
Naturally, the aliens had the power to create Specters that would stop humanity's technological development in its tracks.
However, that was also bad for their revenue.
If humanity didn't make progress, humanity would stop fighting.
Without the illusion of hope, almost nobody would continue fighting.
It was important to drip-feed humanity progress. Humanity had to believe that they were slowly walking forward.
So, they let humanity progress on the path of technological progress, but they also wanted to gain as much time as possible.
At some point, humanity would create weapons that allowed them to suppress Adversaries, which meant that the Shields would finally be working with Specters again.
A Shield working with an Adversary would create a flood of Zephyx that the aliens could harvest.
The most profitable time was when humanity had a handful of level nine Extractors, who managed to capture between one and three Eternals.
Nurse Alice and the Maw were partially meant to be suppressed at some point.
The Null, the Nightmare, and the Sun would never be found or suppressed since they were integral in keeping the Zephyx generator running.
They would let humanity develop until there were two or three Late level nine Extractors.
At that point, they would start turning to the Sun.
And that was the time when the aliens would reset the era.
This era worked very well.
Humans were making progress without creating ridiculously powerful weapons that could damage the Sun, and it would hold a couple of times longer than the era of the Enlightened Ones.
This setting for Earth seemed to work just fine.
For the next era, they could make some light adjustments, but for most of it, the settings would remain the same.
The aliens had found a stable and predictable way to run the Zephyx generator.
In the tens of thousands of years of the future, the Zephyx generator would undergo periods of low generation and high generation, but it would be predictable.
That was how all of their stable Zephyx generators worked.
There was some instability near the beginning, but with time, all the generators would enter a unique rhythm and produce Zephyx in a predictable manner.
Naturally, Nick was working to prevent that from happening.
He wanted humanity to become free.
And the safest and best way was to gain access to the technology of the Enlightened Ones and make Pure Energy.
They would also need to make humanity immune to Star Energy's negative effects and make it usable as a biological source of power.
Finally, Nick would need to deal with the base on the moon, and humanity would launch a gigantic weapon that destroyed the Sun.
Then, it would be time to battle the hordes of aliens that would arrive.
This was the only way to escape.
Secretly advancing in technology was the only way to free humanity.
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