'The first requirement has been fulfilled,' Nick thought. 'The Amorphous Race wants at least 5,000 years with Heroes present. It took only 1,000 years to make it happen.'
'The progress should be much faster than in the past. That's because humanity has received an easier start in this era.'
'But now, it is time to push back.'
'The rapid progress needs to stop now.'
Nick looked at the Adversary and the Fallen that had been allowed to survive the end of the last era.
He gave them the order to become active.
They had waited for a thousand years in silence, and now, they would ravage the world.
Naturally, as soon as they became active, Earth experienced a calamity.
Only the weakest of them had become active, but that Specter was already far more than they could handle.
Many cities were destroyed, and many more fell under its control.
Once more, humanity had to hide from a Specter that was far more powerful than them.
The global suffering increased Zephyx production severalfold.
Meanwhile, Starbreaker Base started the next step of the grand plan.
A baby with ashen skin was born.
The first Nightman of this era.
The weaker Extractors found the existence of the Nightmen to be a horrible mistake.
Why were they creating these psychopathic people on purpose?!
There was nothing positive to be gained by actively making them!
Yet, the Protectors and Shields all held firm.
They knew what they had to do.
They needed the Nightmen if they wanted to fight the true enemy.
Over the past 1,000 years, Nick had refined the Nightmen's path forward.
There were millions of Techniques in the Archive, and Nick was adding more and more.
While the first Nightmen were growing, Nick looked at the Duskbringer.
For the past thousand years, Nick had fed it Pure Energy.
The fact that it didn't have an active Soul also allowed Nick to essentially use it.
Since Nick's upgraded ability from the Blinding Light gave him control over all forms of energy, he could actively manipulate the energies inside the Duskbringer.
He could create energy manipulation pathways for Techniques, fill its Energy Bones with the best Internal Techniques, and could make it advance.
Thanks to Nick's ability to create and manipulate biological life, he could also change the Duskbringer's body as much as he wanted.
At this moment, the Duskbringer was already in the Late Eighth Realm, and it knew all of the Techniques that were available.
Nick had also filled the Duskbringer's brain with all the memories he had accumulated.
The Duskbringer knew everything Nick knew.
Lastly, since Nick didn't need to use the Nightmen's DNA for the Duskbringer since it didn't need to resist the Nightmare's influence, he could also grant it a purer path forward.
He micromanaged all the biological processes and took his time to strengthen every possible part of its body and mind.
Nick had already noticed a certain similarity.
'I am doing what the Mother of the Amorphous Race is doing,' Nick thought.
'The Mother is creating purpose-built individuals for her race.'
'If she needs a weak engineer, she creates a weak engineer.'
'If she needs a powerful warrior, she creates a powerful warrior.'
'The difference is that she is doing all of this biologically and automatically, while I am doing it mechanically and manually.'
'However, there is still one distinct difference.'
'Her creations do not have Souls.'
'Meanwhile, the Duskbringer has a Soul. It is just not active yet.'
The Duskbringer was Nick's ace in the hole.
Nick had essentially already reached the end of his path to power.
He was a Specter, and there was a limit to how powerful Specters could become.
As a being of Pure Zephyx, Nick was inherently disadvantaged when compared to beings of Pure Energy.
He couldn't hope to become powerful enough to stop the warriors.
Sure, Nick could create his own biological body that worked with Pure Energy, but that would make his Specter abilities unavailable to him.
These Specter abilities were essential to him.
Yes, Pure Energy could do much more than Zephyx and was much more flexible.
Yet, there were a couple of things Zephyx could do that Pure Energy couldn't.
Pure Energy worked by improving the baseline of a material or a biological lifeform.
So, how could such a lifeform turn into mist or nothingness?
It couldn't.
There were Techniques that made the user invisible or imperceivable, but it didn't make them intangible.
A lifeform working with Pure Energy couldn't pass through extremely powerful walls without destroying them.
They could shrink, grow, and change their shape, but they couldn't fundamentally alter their existence.
As a Specter, Nick could do that.
He was Zephyx.
He was just a kind of energy.
Without his Specter abilities, how could Nick pass through the walls leading to the aliens' extraction point?
Nick needed his Specter abilities.
For this mission, Nick needed to be as imperceptible as imaginable, and in this case, Zephyx was better suited for the job than Pure Energy.
Over the next centuries, Nick watched the Nightmen grow.
Since all the Techniques had already been created, the Nightmen advanced very quickly.
They didn't need to fight Specters or search for energy sources.
All the Pure Energy they ever needed was provided to them.
The one hundred Shields produced a shocking amount of Zephyx by working with all of the artificial Specters Nick had created.
There was more than enough Zephyx for the Pure Energy the Nightmen needed.
300 years later, the first Nightman reached the Seventh Realm.
And as expected, things were starting to become troublesome.
The Nightmen were becoming greedier, and they wanted more representation in the government.
The normal people were against this, but Kiran granted them their wish.
He had seen the records of how the Nightmen had developed in the past era, and he knew what he had to do.
Additionally, he also knew that the Nightmen would soon become the dominant race in Starbreaker Base.
That one Nightman who had reached the Seventh Realm could already win against Mid Protectors.
Even more, that difference in power wouldn't shrink with time.
It would only widen.
The Nightmen were truly powerful.
Just on a baseline, they were superior to Zephyx Extractors in almost every way.
And that was how it was supposed to be.
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