Everything was prepared.
Now, Nick had to wait for the end of the era.
He returned to all the Shields he had captured and looked at them.
They all greeted him reverently, but Nick didn't feel anything.
'I am not supposed to advance anymore,' he thought.
Nick took a deep breath.
BANG!
He turned into the Null and enlarged his body.
In an instant, his blades appeared beside everybody at once, penetrating their brains.
All the Shields collapsed at the same time.
'I have to act like a Specter,' Nick thought.
One last burst of suffering entered Nick as all of them died.
And then, it was over.
The Shields were dead.
Nick's perception stretched across the world, and he just looked at it for a bit.
'Everyone thinks that humanity is recovering.'
'They believe that the hard times are finally behind them.'
'For a couple of generations, that will be the case.'
'But not forever.'
Nick looked at the underground city.
'The Nightmen are advancing quite well.'
'I should focus on the underground city for the foreseeable future.'
Then, the long wait began.
Nick sent a message to the Champion that he was ready and that the era should proceed as the aliens wanted.
The Champion knew what he meant.
Soon, Aegis would make a mad dash for power.
They would sacrifice more and more people for the Champion and the other Saviors.
Nurse Alice grew stronger.
After only two centuries of this, Nurse Alice became an Early Eternal.
During this time, Nick watched the underground city and developed more methods to advance.
By now, the Nightmen had become quite aggressive.
There were just as many Seventh Realm Nightmen as there were Protectors, and the Nightmen were even a bit stronger than them.
Because of that, they wanted a Chancelor of their own.
They had the power, and they demanded a Chancelor.
They wanted to get out of this prison, and they were furious with the current Chancelor for trying to keep them suppressed.
In the end, the current Chancelor had to compromise.
As long as the Nightmen could fulfill a couple of requirements, they would get their Chancelor.
First, they needed to produce an individual in the Eighth Realm.
Second, they needed to create ten Internal Techniques that could be used from the Fourth Realm until the Eighth Realm.
Third, they needed to elect a leader of their own, and that leader had to be re-elected ten times in a row with one decade between every election.
If the Nightmen could fulfill these three requirements, they would receive leadership over the entire city.
Naturally, these requirements had come from Nick personally.
He wanted the Nightmen to advance as much as possible before the era ended.
When the Nightmen heard of these requirements, they grew furious.
They were already the strongest!
What stopped them from revolting and enslaving all the normal humans?
They could just turn the Extractors into lowly servants that produced their Zephyx!
More and more Nightmen joined the cause, and it looked like a civil war was about to happen.
But then, something happened.
All the Nightmen who had joined the cause fell into a realm of pain and darkness.
All of them held their heads as visions of immense torture and terror assaulted them.
Their worst nightmares were being made into reality.
The Nightmen collapsed in pain and terror as they screamed their lungs out.
And then…
They saw the silhouette of a person in their Nightmares.
The silhouette was black, but at the same time, white light was coming from the black silhouette.
"If you want leadership, fulfill the requirements."
"Try to revolt, and spend an eternity suffering."
That was when everything ended.
Naturally, the Nightmen immediately wanted to know what that was, and the Chancelor told them.
That was the true owner of the underground city.
The Guardian.
He was the one who decided who would become Chancelor, and his power was irresistible.
These requirements had come from the Guardian, and if they wanted leadership, they had to work together to fulfill the requirements.
In the end, the Nightmen were forced to abide by the rules.
They started by electing a leader, who was going to talk with the Chancelor to facilitate trade and cooperation with the normal humans.
The Nightmen needed more Zephyx.
Without Zephyx, they couldn't produce Pure Energy.
The Chancelor and the Nightmen's leader, the Nightwatcher, went into negotiations.
In the beginning, the Chancelor granted the Nightmen full access to 50 Protectors.
They could use them to produce Zephyx of their own.
Naturally, the Nightmen forced the Protectors to work with Specters without end.
Surprisingly, the Protectors were not worried.
Yes, it sucked to be them right now, but they had heard the predictions of what would happen from the Chancelor, and they believed the Chancelor.
They suffered for around ten years.
And then…
The Nightmen voluntarily gave control of them back to the normal humans.
The reason for that was simple.
The production of Zephyx from these Protectors had not lived up to expectations.
The Nightmen had believed that they would be able to produce more Zephyx if they made the Protectors work with more Specters.
But instead, production decreased.
The reason was that the Nightmen were the reason for the majority of the Protectors' suffering.
They were the ones who forced the Protectors to do things they didn't want.
Yet, the Nightmen were not Specters, and they couldn't produce Zephyx by inflicting suffering.
Usually, Extractors worked with Specters mostly voluntarily.
During their work, they suffered immensely, but all the suffering came from the Specter, which meant all the suffering would be transformed into Zephyx.
But when they were forced to work with Specters again and again, the cause of their suffering wasn't the Specters but the ones forcing them to work with the Specters.
Nick had known from the very beginning how this would end.
He had seen thousands of cities.
Yet, he had not seen even a single city where Manufacturers or the government forced their employees to work with a ton of Specters against their will.
It was just not effective or efficient.
If the Nightmen wanted Zephyx, they needed to let the Extractors produce them of their own volition.
The Nightmen had the power, but all of their power wouldn't help them with this issue.
And that was a bitter pill to swallow for them.
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