Nick held the side of his head as he was assaulted by emotions.
He felt warmth, but he also felt deep terror.
He remembered two people.
A man and a woman.
They felt… nice and warm.
He remembered a drawing.
'No!' Nick shouted in his mind, steering his thoughts away from the topic with unending discipline.
Aria looked at Nick, noticing that something was amiss with him.
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
Nick closed his eyes.
'Why now?' he thought.
Naturally, Nick knew what had just happened.
His brain was trying to remember his life before he was ten.
But that was dangerous.
'I can't think about my previous life. If I remember the Null, I will die. I don't know if the Null also targets Specters, but I don't want to take the risk.'
Nick focused on his life after the event.
He had woken up disoriented, with dried blood on his head.
The Parasite had immediately tried to convince him that life was not worth living.
However, Nick had just been a child back then, and he feared death more than whatever the Parasite told him.
Then, the Parasite tried to kill Nick by attacking him with its rats, but Nick just ran out of the alley.
When the Parasite saw all the people on the streets, it didn't pursue Nick anymore.
After that, Nick just aimlessly walked around in confusion.
He knew a couple of things about the city, but he didn't know anything specific.
When he got thirsty, he drank from the rain barrels.
When he got hungry, he stole from merchants.
Eventually, the people of the Outer City got sick of him, and the guards threw him into the Dregs.
Just like any other person living in the Dregs, Nick had been going through hell.
Luckily, he had one advantage.
He was pretty strong.
As a ten-year-old child, he was almost as strong as a proper teenager, and when he became a teenager, he was as strong as an adult man.
Naturally, that was because Nick had already become an Initial Newbie at that point.
He joined one of the gangs pretty early, but some things happened, and he was essentially thrown out again.
So, he became some sort of contractor who would do anything for money.
He lived rather well for someone living in the Dregs, and he started to train.
Eventually, he became old and strong enough to apply to become an Extractor for Ghosty's Lab.
The exam was tough and terrifying, but Nick got through it.
But then, when he was supposed to get his first ability, the examiners realized that Nick already had an ability.
Since everyone needed to have a specific ability in Ghosty's Lab, they denied him.
Accepting unknown people with unknown abilities was too risky.
However, despite throwing him out, they were still interested in his ability.
They knew he had one, but they didn't know what it was.
On some tests, he performed exceptionally well, while on others, he performed averagely.
As Ghosty looked through the applicants and the ones who had been denied, he saw Nick's file.
He grew interested in the ability but didn't have the time to go search for Nick.
During a conversation with one of his friends, Albert, Ghosty talked about the ability, and Albert became interested.
Albert searched for Nick and eventually found him.
For the first time in his life, Nick had proper guidance.
And two years later, he came into contact with Wyntor.
That was when his career began.
Nick took a deep breath.
By focusing on his true life, he could dissociate from the memories that wanted to invade his mind.
'This is not me,' Nick thought. 'The child that existed before the fire is not me.'
'It is the life of a stranger.'
With discipline, Nick dissociated from the invading memories.
They became irrelevant and unimportant.
They were no longer interesting.
This was the safest way to stop his mind from going on tangents.
"Sorry, I had to deal with something," Nick said, opening his eyes again.
Aria nodded and looked back at the floor.
The incident with the screaming researchers still terrified her.
For many years, she had thought that all of them would die any moment now.
She had seen the true face of the enemy, and one of their Eternals had essentially invaded the secret base.
The true enemy could send their servants any moment now.
But it never happened.
Every day felt like it could be the last, but there always came a tomorrow.
"We were lucky," Nick said. "I can't speak of the details, but I'm pretty sure that nothing will happen to the research base because of this incident."
Aria just sighed again.
'The Null is most likely like the Sun,' Nick thought. 'Or, maybe not completely like it.'
'The purpose of the Null is to stop certain information from spreading. Most likely, if anyone speaks of the true nature of the Sun or the aliens, it will be the Null that kills them.'
'Even in complete darkness, away from all sunlight, the Null could feel the information of it being spread.'
'It could be that the Null is an autonomous system, but it could also be that it is a Specter.'
'Due to its instinctual actions, it doesn't seem to have an intelligent mind. Most likely, it is a Force Specter.'
'Luckily, the Null doesn't seem to be an information gatherer. It's just an information cleaner.'
'If the Null gathered information and delivered it to the Sun, this research base would already be destroyed.'
'But since the base is still here, it means that the Null doesn't deliver any information.'
'It's like an antibody. The only thing it does is to seek out viruses and destroy them. The antibody does not tell the brain what virus it caught. It just consumes them.'
The next moment, Nick looked at the beams coming out of his body.
'I partially know about you.'
'You probably have millions of beams, and I am one of them.'
'My beam should be darker than 99% of the other beams, but it is not dark enough to trigger you.'
'However, you must know I exist.'
'And since you know that I exist…'
Nick narrowed his eyes as he looked at the very lightly colored beams.
'You are one of the beams.'
'One of these beams belongs to the Null.'
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