Kill the Sun

Two days later, Nick returned to the Specter, and this time, it didn't immediately annoy him with constant scratching.

It seemed like it was finally cooperative.

For the next hour, Nick asked the Specter several questions, and it answered by scratching the floor.

Left scratch for a positive answer.

Right scratch for a negative answer.

Left and right scratch for neutrality.

No scratch for uncertainty.

It turned out that the Specter did not know what Extractors were.

It had been in the outside world all its life, and it had grown stronger by slowly capturing stronger and stronger humans, which surprised Nick since there were probably not very many Newbies running around outside.

After Nick explained the concept of Manufacturers and Extractors to the Specter, it actually became even more cooperative.

In the outside world, it barely received any food.

It had taken decades for the Specter to become this strong.

But now, it was going to receive regular food, and it wouldn't even be in danger?

If it had known that this was the fate that would befall it if it were found by a human, it would have voluntarily given itself up.

Of course, if it could actually enter one of the cities, it would rather stay free.

But how was it supposed to do that?

It was quite noticeable, and it couldn't disguise itself.

After talking some more with the Specter, Nick finally found out how it grew more powerful.

It abducted people, and it grew more powerful based on how many people it kept as prisoners and how strong they were.

There had been many cocoons attached to the walls of the cave where Nick had suppressed the Specter.

These cocoons had once been filled with humans.

The Specter had simply caught humans, surrounded them in the silk, hung them up on the wall, and never touched the cocoon again.

Naturally, all the humans in the cocoons had died so long ago that only dust remained in them.

After talking some more, Nick made a plan on how to improve the Specter's powers.

Annoyingly, when Nick had said that the Specter couldn't kill the people who were sent to it, it seemed to become confused, angry, and annoyed.

It took Nick almost half an hour to explain how letting its food escape would allow it to get more food in the future.

Since it wasn't secret anymore, why would anyone want to get captured by it if it just killed them?

Eventually, the Specter finally understood what Nick wanted, and it agreed.

While it was intelligent enough to have a conversation with, Nick could see that it wasn't the most intelligent Specter.

Yet, the ability to communicate already made it the third most intelligent Specter in Dark Dream.

The only two who were more intelligent were the Money Sink and the Dreamer.

The Bleeding Lady was also intelligent, but she was crazy in the head.

Although, the Lover might also be smart since it fed on human mentality.

Sadly, it was quite difficult to judge its intelligence since it got quite handsy very quickly.

After finishing his talk with the Specter, Nick gathered a couple of Dark Dream's Newbies.

Dark Dream had quite a lot of Newbies compared to the number of Hatchlings, which gave the Newbies a lot of downtime.

Luckily, their newest Specter could work with potentially endless people simultaneously.

From now on, the new Specter would capture and contain two-thirds of the Newbies assigned to it.

The last third would remain in the Containment Unit but free.

The reason for that was because, due to the Zephyx-absorbing properties of the silk, they couldn't gather any Zephyx for themselves while surrounded by the silk.

So, two of them would be sent to produce the Zephyx, and the last one would absorb the Zephyx.

Naturally, the positions switched regularly to keep things fair.

Near the beginning, Nick kept watch over the proceedings, but eventually, Nick would only check on them every couple of hours to make sure that nothing bad was going on.

Luckily, the Specter was quite cooperative.

Surprisingly, the Specter had turned out to be far more useful than they had expected since it could train many weaker Extractors simultaneously.

Over the coming days, Nick also hired a couple of new people to check what kind of ability the newest Specter offered.

It was silk.

Any Extractor that received its ability could release long and thick strands of black silk.

Sadly, the silk couldn't absorb Zephyx.

Another disappointment was the fact that the Specter's silk could only retain its physical form if the Specter was close to it.

If the silk left the Specter's side, it turned into Prephyx a couple of hours later.

That sadly made it worthless as a material.

Nick had hoped that they could compete with the Fear Queen's Ghost Wires, but sadly, they could not.

Eventually, Nick also came up with a fitting name for the Specter.

The Abductor.

As for its Stage, it was a Late Adolescent, making it one of the stronger Specters belonging to Dark Dream.

By now, Nick's days had become quite busy.

He had to deliver the trash to the Dung Heap.

He had to regularly check up on the Abductor.

He sometimes had to force one of the newer people to stop working with the Puppy.

He had to give the Money Sink money.

He had to give the Screaming Coffin its corpses.

He had to free the people working with the Fog.

He had to gather all the Zephyx containers.

And on top of all that, he had to deal with most of the executive stuff, like planning the future, dealing with personnel issues, working with the Investigation department, writing guides for the Specters, reviewing profiles, making budget reports, keeping the books, meeting with other companies, and a couple more things.

He was glad that he had Taren and Jenny dealing with the management of the employees.

Luckily, since Nick had so much experience already and since he was working 24 hours per day, he could deal with all of this without any issues.

Finally, two weeks after his conversation with the governor, Nick finally heard back from the city regarding the Spilling Bottle and their reward.