Kill the Sun

Nick went to the third floor.

This was where all three of the new Adults resided.

Nick decided to change the third floor to a floor solely for Adults.

He felt quite nice when he saw that half of the Containment Units on this floor were filled.

Together with the Blaze on the fourth floor, Dark Dream now had five Adults.

'And only two Veterans,' Nick thought with furrowed brows. 'We are allowed to keep the Specters thanks to Julian's power, but we really need more Veterans. Taren and Jenny should really hurry up.'

'Although, even with the two of them, we would still not be even close to working the Adults to peak efficiency.'

'Sadly, getting Veterans from outside is basically impossible. We're not Kugelblitz, after all.'

Nick stopped thinking about Dark Dream's lack of Veterans and looked towards the northeastern Containment Unit.

'According to the documentation, working with this one should be about as exhausting as working with the Talker,' Nick thought.

Nick approached the Containment Unit, took a deep breath, and entered.

As soon as he entered, his gaze focused on the Specter in the middle of the room.

It had a humanoid shape, but that was the only thing that made it appear human.

Its entire body was covered in human eyes with red irises, and all of them frantically looked around the room.

It didn't matter where one looked.

Absolutely every inch of the Specter's body was covered in these rapidly moving eyes.

The way the eyes moved seemed desperate and panicked.

It was almost like they were scanning for a threat.

As Nick looked at the Specter, he noticed that it was impossible not to make eye contact with it.

Whenever Nick looked at the Specter, the eyes he focused on turned completely still and looked back into his eyes.

Yet, he could still see the other eyes frantically moving around in his peripheral vision.

But when his focus went to the moving eyes, they turned still and looked back.

It was quite disorienting for Nick to see constant movement in his peripheral vision, which always vanished whenever he tried to look at it.

Nick wasn't sure which way the Specter was facing since its front and back looked completely identical.

It didn't even have any joints, essentially turning it into a 2D painting of a human, except that the human was filled with eyes.

'This is definitely one of the creepier ones we have,' Nick thought calmly.

Nick was a bit creeped out, but he wasn't really scared.

He knew what this thing could do, and even if it attacked, Nick was quite confident that he could fight it.

This was the Early Adult that they had received, and Nick knew that he could suppress it if necessary.

Several seconds passed in which he only looked at the eyes.

Then, minutes passed.

Nothing changed.

Nick just kept looking at the eyes.

That was how one worked with this Specter.

This Specter was called the Attention Seeker, and just as the name implied, it wanted attention.

Blinking was fine.

Looking away for a brief moment was also okay, but that moment should not be longer than a second.

Naturally, working with the Attention Seeker was very similar to working with the Talker. In both cases, one needed to pay constant attention to one task that couldn't be interrupted.

In the case of the Talker, one only needed to become active every couple of seconds since the Talker also needed to talk, but during those times, one had to actually put effort into what they were saying.

In comparison, the Attention Seeker demanded constant attention, but the attention it wanted didn't need a lot of mental power to be delivered.

It was just looking.

In fact, it was even fine to defocus one's eyes and to stare off into space.

As long as the pupils of one's eyes pointed towards the Specter, it was fine.

For minutes on end, Nick just kept looking from one eye to another.

Since there were many eyes to look at, it wasn't completely boring to look at the Specter.

Minutes passed.

Nick spaced out.

After around half an hour, Nick started to plan things in his mind again.

Suddenly, something in his peripheral vision moved, and Nick focused his eyes again.

Nick's eyes opened widely when he noticed that the Specter had come quite a bit closer.

'Guess I looked away for too long,' Nick thought as he looked at the Specter that was now only two meters away from him.

'I should be more careful.'

Sadly, the Attention Seeker did not have any intelligence.

It worked completely on instinct.

If there was nothing living nearby, it just stood there.

If there was something living nearby, it immediately tried to get its attention.

Naturally, it did that by attacking the living being.

As soon as the living being looked at the Specter, it would stop moving and just bask in the attention.

Funnily enough, since it didn't move when anyone paid attention to it, nobody knew how it actually attacked.

After all, nobody had ever seen it attack.

Of course, that was a bit creepy, but that actually didn't matter.

Its behavior was very good for Manufacturers.

Since it didn't attack when anyone looked at it, suppressing it was extremely easy.

Even a John could do it.

They just needed to walk up to the Specter, lift it, move it away, keep looking at it while doing so, and place it back in a Containment Unit.

The thing didn't attack anyone who looked at it.

Extractors were even allowed to poke its eyes.

Although no one had ever attempted to do that.

This meant that this thing was easy to get back in the Containment Unit if it broke out, and it probably wouldn't even kill a single person during a containment breach.

It was one of the safest Specters to have in one's facility.

The only bad thing was that working with it could be dangerous for weaker employees.

If a Veteran spaced out, their Barrier would be strong enough to withstand the Specter's attacks for long enough that they could look at it, after which the attacks would stop.

But if a John spaced out, things would not be so easy.

Nevertheless, that just meant that only Veterans could work with it. As long as a Veteran was working with it, there were no issues.