Chapter 443: The Dark Room

Nick took a deep breath and entered the Containment Unit.

He really didn't look forward to this.

As soon as he entered, he saw a big black cuboid in the middle of the room.

The cuboid was about 2.5 meters high, five meters long, and three meters wide.

This was the Specter, and it was a big one.

The people from Anatomy who had delivered the Specters had even needed to remove parts of the floor to get this huge Specter onto the fourth floor.

Luckily, the entrances to Containment Units were generally huge, almost always covering an entire wall.

When Nick saw the Specter, he grew nervous.

This Specter was on the verge of unworkable.

Nick slowly walked around the cuboid until he arrived at its backside.

There, he saw a door.

Nick put his hand on the handle and turned it.

The door creaked open, and Nick looked inside.

Black.

Everything was black.

The name of the Specter was the Dark Room, and just as its name implied, it was a perfectly dark room.

By now, it was obvious how to work with the Specter.

The Dark Room was just like the Fiend of Darkness.

The Fiend of Darkness was a Fanatic that belonged to Kugelblitz, and Kugelblitz used the Fiend of Darkness' shroud to create the Shadow Shrouds.

Nick had worn one of these.

The Fiend of Darkness encompassed people, putting them in a place without any light.

Then, it would keep them inside that lightless space until the Nightmare killed them.

The Dark Room worked the same way.

Just like the Fiend of Darkness, the Dark Room produced Zephyx based on how powerful the person inside it was and how long they were in there.

Working with the Dark Room meant suffering under the Nightmare's influence, and nobody was willing to do that.

The Nightmare's influence was worse than working with the Blaze, and Taren was the only person other than Nick who was willing to work with that.

Nick was certain that Taren wouldn't want to work with the Dark Room.

This left only Nick.

Sadly, there was no real reason for Nick to work with it either.

Sure, the Dark Room produced quite a bit of Zephyx, but Nick's quota of Zephyx his body could absorb was already filled by the Adults.

This meant, just like the Agonizing Wait, nobody would be working with the Dark Room.

However, just for the sake of completionism, Nick decided to work with the Dark Room for one round.

Nick steeled his mind and stepped into the room.

BANG!

The door behind Nick slammed shut and vanished, leaving Nick in absolute blackness.

The Dark Room's door wouldn't reappear until the person inside of it was killed.

As soon as the door closed, Nick found furious and laughing faces appearing around him.

The faces were all shouting and laughing at him before they bit into his body.

Nick didn't move.

He had been under the Nightmare's influence more than once in his life, and he had somewhat grown used to it.

Nevertheless, Nick's entire body started to tense as unimaginable pain assaulted him.

The teeth of the faces started to burn and freeze.

Walls filled with grinding spikes closed in on him.

Burning needles poked into his eyes.

People killed by the Crimson Sea reappeared and tried to pull Nick down into the Crimson Sea with them.

The governor found out that Julian was a Specter and confronted Nick.

Envy arrived in Crimson City.

The worst things that Nick could imagine happened right in front of him.

He tried his best to resist.

However, resisting this indescribable torture consumed all of Nick's focus rather rapidly.

Whenever Nick had been under the Nightmare's influence in the past, he had either had a goal or had a method of escaping.

Right now, he didn't have either.

So, just 15 seconds after he entered...

"AAAHHH!" Nick began to scream as he tried to hold his shoulders.

However, in his illusion, he felt like his arms were bound by searing chains.

Molten metal was being poured into his screaming mouth.

'I can't!'

In his illusion, Nick felt like he couldn't move, but he knew very well that it was different in reality.

Nick turned around and kicked.

BOOOOOM!

The illusions vanished as a gigantic hole appeared in one of the Dark Room's walls.

Nick breathed rapidly and jumped out of the Dark Room.

For a while, he just looked at the Dark Room with fear.

While Nick was looking at it, all the rubble strewn around the Containment Unit started to turn into black smoke, which quickly vanished.

A moment later, the wall of the room very slowly started to regenerate.

It would probably take a couple of hours for the wall to fully regenerate.

This was the only way to get out of the Dark Room.

One had to break a wall.

Luckily, Specters were hard to kill, and as long as someone didn't attack more than one wall, the Dark Room would survive.

After some seconds, Nick finally calmed down.

'How long was I in there? 20 seconds? 30? I don't know,' Nick thought.

'Anyway, I'm glad this is over.'

Then, Nick walked out of the Containment Unit.

He checked the Zephyx container and was a bit surprised.

'Half a gram for about half a minute of work? That's a lot!' Nick thought.

'I wonder, did Anatomy put problematic Extractors in there and left them until they died? That should be a lot of money.'

Nick took a deep breath and sighed.

'It doesn't matter. I'm not doing that.'

Nick looked back at the Containment Unit and fell into thought.

'I guess this will also just be another asset, like the Agonizing Wait.'

'Yet, compared to the Agonizing Wait, this one doesn't even grant an ability.'

'Anatomy tried many times to see if it is possible to get the Nightmare's ability via the Dark Room as a proxy, but, of course, it didn't work.'

'If it were that easy to get an ability from an Eternal, more people would have one.'