Kill the Sun

Nick just waited inside his dark cage.

After being put into it, nothing happened.

Most likely, the Knife had just put Nick into the Specter Cage before dropping him and quickly flying to one of the strongholds that needed help.

Specters could not be placed in Space Bags, even if they were contained in a Specter Cage.

There were Specter Cages that could compress and shrink to a small size, but they tended to have more instabilities and needed quite a bit of time to shrink.

The Knife wasn't a big fan of those and just used regular Specter Cages.

A couple of minutes passed.

The Fallen didn't move from its position since it knew that it couldn't escape.

Even if it got a couple of hours to run away, the Zephyx Suppressor wouldn't run out of energy during that time, and the Fallen would not have access to any of its abilities.

Although, there was a chance that it would be captured by them and put in a normal Containment Unit from which it could escape.

It assumed that its chances of being able to escape were about 20%.

But if these 20% didn't occur, it would be killed.

This wasn't even a possibility worth considering to the Fallen.

If it didn't move, it had a 99% chance of surviving.

Its growth might slow down considerably for a couple of centuries, but maybe this civilization would also fall from grace, and in a couple thousand years, the Containment Unit in which it lived would have deteriorated enough so that it could escape.

Getting captured by humans was just a temporary setback as long as it wasn't killed.

About 30 minutes after leaving, the Knife returned.

Despite accomplishing the historic feat of killing the first Corruptor, she didn't seem to be in a good mood.

She extended her hand, and the Fallen was pulled to her.

The Fallen didn't touch her body anywhere but kept hovering in front of her.

Levitation and basic telekinesis were not very hard for Shields to learn, but it was hard to make them powerful enough to make them useful in a fight.

After grabbing the two Specters, she threw a glance at the green wall.

Her eyes narrowed.

Then, she took a deep breath and released it before leaving the area.

It took the Knife less than a minute to travel back to Aegis' headquarters.

People of her power level could move at speeds of over 200 kilometers per second.

As soon as the Knife appeared on top of Aegis' headquarters, she vanished again.

The only thing she did was to throw the two Specters on the roof of Aegis' headquarters.

The fewer times the Knife showed her face in public, the safer humanity was.

The guards on top of Aegis' headquarters quickly called their superior and made sure that the Specters wouldn't escape.

Sometime later, someone came out of the main entrance on top of Aegis' headquarters.

"Greetings, Technician!" the two guards spoke with utmost respect.

"Yeah, yeah," the Technician said dismissively as he waved them off.

Then, the Technician approached the Fallen and looked at it with interest.

The Fallen didn't move.

"Aren't you a strong one?" the Technician commented with an interested smile.

The Fallen didn't answer.

"Mid Fallen, yes?" the Technician asked.

The amalgamation of arms nodded.

"You'll feel right at home here!" the Technician said before looking at the Specter Cage.

He approached the Specter Cage and pressed a couple of buttons on its display.

The display showed a couple of things, and the Technician nodded.

The Technician lifted the Specter Cube with telekinesis and waved for the handsy Specter to follow him.

The two of them entered the headquarters, and the Technician brought the Specter to its new Containment Unit.

He released its Zephyx Suppressor and told it that somebody would be with it shortly to discuss their future working relationship.

Then, the Technician brought the Specter Cage down to the research and development area.

Inside his office, the Technician opened the Specter Cage.

The cloud of mist came out of the Specter Cage and looked around.

The Technician waited for Nick to say something, but he didn't do that.

He blinked a couple of times in confusion before his eyes widened, and he realized something.

"Oh yeah! Wait a sec!"

Then, the Technician summoned his Barrier, which then turned a solid white.

For a moment, it was impossible to look through the Barrier in any way.

A second later, the Barrier turned transparent again.

Shing!

Nick turned into his human form again.

Since the Technician knew about Nick's ability, he decided to take advantage of it.

Nick's unique sense of perceiving his surroundings made parts of his senses superior to even the Technician's senses.

Not even the Technician would know if Death or the Champion of Light were looking at him.

Yet, Nick could feel that.

After all, he had also felt his ability deactivate when the Champion of Light had risen to power.

Therefore, Nick was the best tool to finding out whether or not the Champion of Light or another Shield was secretly watching them.

The Technician modified his Barrier to isolate his senses for a short moment.

Anyone who watched would think that the Technician was doing something strange again, but that wouldn't be suspicious since researchers tended to do very confusing and weird experiments from time to time.

And if someone was actually watching and the cloud didn't react, the Technician would just go, "Whoops, that wasn't the recording button."

"So, I assume things went well," the Technician said with a smile.

Nick nodded. "I did not expect the Left Arm to send the Knife."

The Technician shrugged. "I guess she trusts you. Well, as far as someone like her can trust people."

"How much did we lose?" Nick asked.

The Technician wasn't supposed to share these kinds of details, but he and Nick were close enough.

"We lost the western stronghold of the Grand Continent," the Technician said.

"And?" Nick asked.

"And that's it," the Technician said with a smirk.

Nick's brows furrowed in surprise.

"That's… bearable."

"I would call that more than bearable," the Technician said with a chuckle. "It's a miracle."

Nick could just nod.

Pride's death must have provoked a gigantic counterattack from the Specters.

Most likely, this had been the biggest attack from Death's forces within the last thousand years.

The fact that they only lost a single stronghold was crazy.

With Pride dead, almost all organized Specter forces within the Great Triangle would fall into chaos.

Demons and Fanatics that used to serve Pride would regain their freedom again, which meant that almost all of them would be working alone from now on.

Some of them would become far more aggressive, but they would equally lose the blurring veil of belonging to an organization.

Others would become far less aggressive and only attack individuals that were safe to consume.

Trying to infiltrate any city was extremely risky, and most Specters were not the biggest fans of risks.

Humanity had taken a huge step forward today.

There were only four things War could do now with the Great Triangle.

Send a less capable general than Pride since it didn't have access to a stronger one.

Leave the Great Triangle alone for now and focus on Wrath.

Leave the Great Triangle to Envy, essentially lowering its own power but increasing the power of their collective alliance.

Or manage the Great Triangle itself.

None of these things were great.

Managing the Great Triangle itself would give Aegis more opportunities to track its whereabouts.

One of the biggest reasons why the Trio of Destruction used the Corruptors as generals was so that the Corruptors would get found out instead of them.

When one of the Trio of Destruction communicated with one of the Corruptors, there was almost no way to track the communication since both sides were communicating on a very high level and from isolated places.

However, the Corruptors needed to communicate with tens and hundreds of Specters across the world.

The chances of a signal being intercepted and traced were much, much higher.

There was also the unfortunate coincidence of Aegis' headquarters being on that continent, making communication even riskier.

The obscuring haze hiding War had lessened with Pride's demise.

Over the next few minutes, Nick reported all the damage he had caused to Pride's forces, and the Technician took note.

The majority of Pride's forces would turn into metaphorical local warlords chasing their own goals.

It was still important to stop Pride's former servants despite her death.

The Technician had to laugh a couple of times when Nick explained how he had killed a Specter with the dumbest reasoning possible and still got away with it.

"You were chased by a Peak Demon?" the Technician asked with surprise. "And you're still alive?"

Nick nodded.

"I found something," Nick said.

The Technician looked at Nick with interest.

"Yes?"