Kill the Sun

Nick left the room with all of the monitors and made his way back to the cave.

About 45 minutes had passed since he had gone back into the mountain, and he had found many interesting things.

Sadly, many things didn't seem to make much sense.

Why were this building and these suits made of steel while the weapons could destroy steel so easily?

How did all of these people die?

What did all these things on the monitors mean?

How could that big machine produce Zephyx?

Sadly, Nick didn't have the means to uncover all these mysteries.

He had no idea how to speak the ancient language or how to operate these machines.

'These things are beyond my paygrade,' Nick thought as he walked out of the big building.

'Maybe these things will make sense at some point, but right now, I have no idea what any of this means.'

Nick looked into the darkness of the cave.

'And it's also not important. Knowing more about these things won't help me in improving the lives of the weaker people.'

'What's important is that we can use this to earn a lot of money, which will help the weaker people in the long run.'

Nick started to shine in a weak light.

By now, his Zephyx had already fully recovered, and it would be enough to get back to the entrance without having to go through another torture session with the Nightmare.

Nick ran through the cave and jumped up into the hole again.

Shortly before he reached the exit, he stopped.

"Everyone still here?" Nick shouted.

Nick heard some shuffling and saw Jason peeking over the edge of the hole.

"Welcome back, Boss! We were worried about you," he said.

"Everything alright?" Nick asked as he slowly approached the exit with closed eyes.

"No issues," Jason said as he moved to the side. "Petra woke up."

"Good to hear," Nick said as he grabbed the wall of the mountain again. "Sound off."

"I'm here, Boss," Nick heard Jenny from his left.

"Here," Clayton said from below Nick.

"I'm here," Petra said, also from below Nick.

"Eh, here," Jason said from beside Nick.

Naturally, Nick didn't dare to look around right now, which was why he asked them to sound off.

"Is the Specter here?" Nick asked.

"Right here, Boss," Jenny said.

Nick moved to his left and extended his hand.

He felt the cold and rugged hairs of the Specter's spidery limbs.

Nick pulled the Specter over to himself and put it under his left arm.

"Let's go," he said before he started to descend.

Then, the group started to descend the mountain.

Descending the mountain was still quite scary since none of them had seen the foot of the mountain in a long while.

What if someone was there?

Eventually, everyone reached the bottom, and Nick was the first to look around.

After not being allowed to look in one direction for so long, everyone was nervous about turning around.

What if they could still see the Crimson Sea?

Nick was the only one who was calm since his ability had already reactivated.

Of course, he had to throw the Specter to the side first to test whether or not the Crimson Sea could see him.

For the first time in a long while, Nick looked around his surroundings.

Nothing special.

It looked just like before.

"It's fine. You can look around," Nick said.

Everyone else slowly looked around, and their anxiety vanished when they couldn't see the Crimson Sea.

Then, everyone looked at the Specter.

Only Jenny and Nick had seen the Specter properly.

When Petra, Clayton, and Jason saw the Specter, they were quite surprised.

They weren't surprised by the Specter's appearance but by the fact that it was obviously missing several limbs.

It seemed like Boss had done quite a number on it.

Right now, the Specter was still recovering, and only the lower part of its jaw had recovered.

In probably half a day, it would have recovered its head, after which it would focus on its limbs.

All in all, it would probably need around two days to recover fully.

"Boss," Petra said after a sigh.

"We can talk later," Nick said as he grabbed the Specter. "We need to get back to the city first."

"Sure," Petra said with uncertainty.

Nick looked around the group. "Everyone ready?"

He saw a couple of nods.

Nick nodded back and ran towards the south while his team followed him.

Right now, Nick was especially careful.

After all, they were carrying quite a conspicuous Specter.

A minute later, they reached the Swallowing Swamp.

It wasn't very noticeable, but the Swallowing Swamp had lost about two centimeters of depth.

The most dangerous part of the journey was over.

After all, the most powerful Extractors were near the Desert, which had been just beside the mountain.

Luckily, the people there didn't like looking towards the city for obvious reasons.

The group continued traveling towards the west.

Suddenly, Nick's eyes were drawn to the south.

There, he met eyes with another person.

The person was a man with dark hair who was looking at Nick with furrowed brows from a distance of about 300 meters.

He wore the uniform of a Veteran belonging to Anatomy.

It was quite obvious that the Veteran had just been near Anatomy's Infester and was just going elsewhere.

'Just my luck,' Nick thought.

"Change trajectory," Nick ordered his team.

The next moment, they started to run towards the northwest instead of the west.

Instead of running towards the valley, they were now running past the northern wall of the valley, directly towards the city's entrance.

The reason why they had traveled through the valley was that it was difficult to see them from a distance unless someone else was looking directly into the valley from one of the edges.

But since they had been spotted, they no longer needed to stay hidden.

In fact, it was now better to travel as openly as possible.

After all, killing was still very illegal, and Kugelblitz would love seeing someone from Anatomy trying to kill someone else.

When the man from Anatomy saw Nick change trajectory, he turned around and ran towards the south, towards Anatomy's Infester.