The two Representatives kept confirming their beliefs.
Meanwhile, Nick slowly manipulated the energies in the air to use his abilities.
The Representatives were in the Eighth Realm, which put them beyond Nick's reach to manipulate.
He could manipulate Saviors, but he couldn't properly manipulate Pure Energy beings in the Eighth Realm.
The power difference was just too great.
However, there were ways around this.
Nick had more abilities to manipulate people than just his memory abilities.
One also shouldn't forget that Nick had spent thousands of years creating new abilities, and he was about to use one of his newer ones.
Emotional injection.
This ability used Nick's influence as a medium to induce certain emotions in a target.
Of course, the Representatives couldn't feel emotions, but emotions were not just hormones and feelings.
There was a misunderstanding about emotions and logic.
Many people believed that losing control over one's emotions also meant losing control over logic.
After all, a person who got so angry that they beat their partner over the head with a chair couldn't be logical, right?
They must have lost all reason.
But that wasn't entirely true.
When a person remembered a very emotional moment in which they had done something they later regret, very often, they don't believe that they lost control.
During this emotional moment, they made a logical judgment.
Their partner was crazy, and they were unhealthy for them. They needed a very quick way out, but what would the people say if they broke up? This would be humiliating!
But they needed a way out, desperately!
So, the best option was to beat their partner with a chair.
These thoughts had distorted values, but they were logical in nature.
During these moments, these thoughts made logical sense to the person.
During emotional moments, logic became distorted.
The importance of the negative actions of the angering person was amplified, while the positive actions were deemed of negligible importance.
Because of this selective logic, the angry person saw their actions as logical, while other people saw it as losing control.
This was what Nick made use of.
The Representatives couldn't feel emotions, but their logic could still be slightly distorted.
Nick used his Zephyx to influence one of the Representatives.
He had to be extremely careful while doing this since the Representatives were very sensitive to manipulation tactics.
Nick could tell that their minds were incredibly fortified.
Slowly, over several minutes, Nick infused the surroundings of one of the Representatives with fear and paranoia.
Yes, they had to get as much energy as possible from the humans, but what if the humans broke out?
Then, they wouldn't be able to deliver any energy at all.
Wouldn't it be better to spend 1% of the resources on security measures to make sure that the other 99% wouldn't vanish?
Especially now that the era of Earth had reached an advanced stage again.
They could afford to spend a bit on security.
Of course, Nick's manipulation was very slow.
It had to be as subtle as possible.
The way from "delivered resources have the highest priority" to "we need to make sure that nothing breaks" is long.
Delivered resources have the highest priority.
Delivered resources have priority.
Delivered resources are more important.
Delivered resources are important.
Delivered resources need to be secure due to their importance.
It was a slow and gradual process.
Hours passed.
The Representatives agreed on everything.
And then…
They disagreed for the first time.
As soon as this happened, the two of them flew out of their little house and made their way to a different one.
Nick recognized this house.
This one belonged to the Strategists.
The two Representatives entered and told the Strategists to give them access to the galaxy communicator.
The Strategists gave their okay, and the Representatives left again.
Nick followed the Representatives as they entered a huge room near the back of the fleshy cave.
Inside the room was a gigantic tendril with an eye, and it looked at them.
The two Representatives told the tendril to send a message to the Mother.
The message was rather long and very detailed.
The reason for that was that establishing communications over such a long distance was very energy-intensive.
The energy had to pass through a portal, and bending space in this way cost an absurd amount of Pure Energy.
Because of that, there would only be two messages.
One coming from the Representatives and one coming from the Mother.
After the Representatives sent their message, they waited for almost an entire hour.
Finally, the message returned, and the eye of the machine beamed the message into the air in front of them.
The answer was just as expected.
The Mother needed as many resources as possible. Risks had to be taken for more profits.
Safety was secondary.
The Representatives changed their cortexes to reflect this message and left the room.
After that, they returned to their little room and continued comparing beliefs.
Once again, they were in agreement with everything.
Nick left the room and the fleshy cave to return to his self-created biological machine.
He needed to refill his Zephyx.
Several hours later, Nick returned to the building of the Representatives and got to work again.
This time, he manipulated the other one, and he was doing it in the opposite way.
Safety was completely unnecessary.
Profit was everything.
The Mother's message said that risks had to be taken, and they would be taking risks.
Since Nick had to be so subtle with his approach, he needed almost three days to create another disagreement.
Once more, the Representatives went to the Strategists to ask for permission to use the communicator.
The Strategists became suspicious.
Something was going on.
However, there wasn't anything they could do.
The Representatives needed to be in agreement. Otherwise, the entire operation would come to a halt.
The Strategists were not allowed to give any orders without unanimous consent from the Representatives.
So, the Representatives went to the communicator again.
The communicator activated and sent the message.
However, something was different.
The message was sent, but it wasn't sent to the Mother.
Instead, it was sent to a random location somewhere in space.
While the Representatives couldn't be manipulated easily, the same thing wasn't true for the communicator.
The communicator wasn't very strong, and Nick could control it.
Two hours later, an answer arrived, but this answer didn't come from the Mother.
It came from Nick.
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