Kill the Sun

When Nick saw the amount of Zephyx that had been created, he sighed.

'It's as expected. The more suffering someone goes through, the more Zephyx gets produced.'

Nick had produced around 15 grams of Zephyx, which was quite a bit more than previously.

Since Nick got to keep 20% of that, it meant that he had essentially earned 6,000 credits from just this.

Usually, Nick would feel quite overwhelmed, but the feeling of surprise and joy was extremely subdued at best.

It just didn't feel like anything special right now.

After looking at the Zephyx for a little bit, Nick grabbed the Zephyx containers and brought them over to Wyntor's office.

"Thanks," Wyntor said as he grabbed the container.

A moment later, Wyntor calculated the worth of the Zephyx and gave Nick the money he had earned the last couple of days.

After all, even though Nick hadn't been working, the other Extractors had been working, and Nick still earned money from that.

"Thanks," Nick also said as he pocketed the money.

"By the way, your first teacher is ready to start today since she doesn't have a lot to do," Wyntor said. "You're fine with starting today, right?"

'She?' Nick thought.

Nick had chosen fist weapons and throwing spears, and both things didn't seem like weapons that women would choose.

"Which instructor is it?" Nick asked.

"The spear one," Wyntor said with a chuckle. "She will be in the warehouse in a bit less than an hour."

Nick nodded with a bit of anticipation, which could almost be called excitement.

"I will be there," Nick said as he stood up.

"Nick, I need to talk to you about a couple of things," Wyntor said.

"I know," Nick answered. "I'm just getting something to eat. A consistent diet is part of training, and I need to eat something before I start training with my instructor. We can talk about everything after I got my food."

"If it's okay with you, I can get the food and eat it in here. That should save us some time," Nick explained.

Wyntor furrowed his brows.

He wasn't the biggest fan of someone eating food inside of his office.

"Let's talk about these things in your room then," Wyntor said.

"Fine with me," Nick said before leaving the office.

Nick grabbed a cooked chicken and walked to his room.

Naturally, Wyntor was already waiting there, and the two of them entered.

While Nick was tearing the chicken apart, Wyntor was telling Nick about what had changed in the last couple of days.

Nick simply listened, and when Wyntor was done with telling Nick about everything, Nick gave his input.

"I'm fine with the corpse acquisition," Nick said.

In the last couple of days, Wyntor had finally managed to finalize a deal between him and Crimson Fungus City.

Corpses were seen as the property of Crimson Fungus City.

Any corpse that appeared in the Outer City and the Dregs was the property of the city.

Naturally, it was like that since corpses could be sold for quite a lot of money to the Zephyx Manufacturers.

The baseline price of the corpses was set by Anatomy, the second-biggest Manufacturer in the city.

Anatomy's strongest Specter was the Pit of Corpses, and it was a very strong level five Specter, a Fanatic.

The Pit of Corpses essentially had no limit to the number of corpses it could turn into Zephyx.

However, the more corpses it got, the less efficient it was in producing Zephyx.

After a lot of time, Anatomy found a sweet spot.

If they purchased all the corpses at 10,000 credits per corpse, they would still remain very profitable, and the other Manufacturers would need to pay more to get corpses.

Naturally, the other Manufacturers could only buy a couple of corpses for such a high price, which meant that Anatomy would still receive the vast majority of corpses.

If one directly bought corpses from the guards without any kind of deal, they would need to pay 15,000 credits since the city also wanted to earn quite a bit.

Luckily, Wyntor had gotten a favorable deal with the city.

Every two days, they would receive the corpse of one adult male for 11,000 credits.

That made things way easier.

First of all, the corpse was cheaper.

Second, it was always a very valuable corpse since it was from an adult male. These corpses tended to have more mass than the corpses of females and children.

Third, Nick wouldn't need to find targets anymore, which was good for his mental state.

They wouldn't even need to leave since the city guards would deliver the corpse right to the warehouse.

After talking about the corpses, the two of them talked about their future plans.

For now, everyone would focus on training and getting ready for battle, and in about three months or so, when everyone reached the Peak of the first level, they would start to become a bit more aggressive towards Ardum's company.

The search for a third Specter was put on ice for now since they wanted to consolidate for a while.

The more Specters they had, the more people they needed to employ, which would make for a bigger target.

They could still expand when Ardum was dealt with.

Wyntor also told Nick about Ardum's company.

It was called Cycle, and it had a circular arrow as a symbol.

Cycle was named as such due to their strongest Specter, the Dung Heap.

The Dung Heap was an Adolescent Specter, making it stronger than all the Specters Dark Dream owned.

Ardum had purchased the Dung Heap for only 500,000 credits, which was insanely low for an Adolescent Specter.

Even Hatchlings went for at least a million credits each.

Well, the reason why the Dung Heap was so cheap was that it barely produced any Zephyx.

The Dung Heap produced Zephyx by destroying food.

And, well, food was pretty expensive in Crimson Fungus City.

Even more, the "bargain bin method" couldn't be employed since the Specter was a Possession Specter.

So, Ardum was stuck buying very expensive food to pile onto the Dung Heap to barely produce a bit of Zephyx.

Even though the Dung Heap was an Adolescent, it was probably only a quarter or half as profitable as the Screaming Coffin.