Kill the Sun

"There are no holes," Pride transmitted to the Fallen.

"The holes only appear when I touch the wall," the Fallen answered.

"Can you fit inside?" she asked.

"I can reach about five meters inside, but that\'s my limit," the Fallen answered.

"Is there anything different at that depth?" Pride asked.

"The atmosphere grows thinner, and gravity seems to lower."

"Gravity is lowering?" Pride asked.

"I believe so," the Fallen answered.

Pride looked at the wall with furrowed brows.

Naturally, Nick didn\'t hear any of their conversation.

"How hard is it?" Pride asked.

"I can\'t damage it," the Fallen answered.

Pride\'s eyes narrowed.

Not even one of her most powerful servants could damage this wall?

This meant that this wall was about as hard as Aegis\' headquarters, which was insane.

This wall had to be made of material that could only be damaged by Shields or Adversaries.

"Is it alive?" Pride asked.

"No, there\'s no sign of life," the Fallen answered.

"Then, it has to be made by the humans," Pride answered. "Humans are the only beings that build such big things that are this resilient."

The Fallen didn\'t answer.

It was just a servant, and it would only talk when its master ordered it to.

It had learned over the centuries that it was best to only talk to Pride when she wanted to hear something.

Talking to her unprompted was often taken as trying to climb up to her level.

This could very quickly lead to getting more dangerous jobs.

Pride wanted constant displays of respect.

"I want you to search for an actual entrance," Pride said. "If you find one, call me again."

"Yes," the Fallen said.

Then, the connection was cut.

A moment later, the Fallen glanced at Nick.

Pride hadn\'t said what it should do with Nick.

"Wait here," the Fallen commanded.

Since Nick couldn\'t be sure about what they said, he didn\'t know what the Fallen was about to do.

"Ok," Nick answered.

Waiting seemed to be the best option for now.

The Fallen almost immediately buried into the ground.

And then, Nick waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, after over ten minutes, the Fallen reappeared in front of Nick.

"What\'s in the hole?" it asked.

Nick just told it the same thing he told Pride earlier.

While Nick told the Fallen what he saw inside the hole, the Fallen moved some of its tiny arms into the holes.

Sadly, he couldn\'t reach very far.

However, the things that Nick said seemed to make sense.

The Fallen didn\'t have any eyes, but it could sense its surroundings via an extremely sensitive sense of touch.

When the Fallen stretched part of its body into the hole, it could sense the end of the hole just a couple of meters away.

Usually, it wouldn\'t think that to be strange and wouldn\'t think about double checking whether or not there was actually a wall, but with Nick\'s input, it could sense that the placement of the wall actually didn\'t make any spatial sense. ᚱâℕǒÈṢ

It was like the end of the hole was slightly moving backward as the arm reached deeper.

Together with the weird illusion on the outside of the wall that hid all the holes, the Fallen could tell that something strange was going on in there.

"Go into the hole," the Fallen ordered.

"Hole dangerous," Nick answered.

The Fallen increased its pressure on Nick.

BANG!

One of the Fallen\'s claws swiped through Nick\'s misty body, scattering it across the cave.

"Go into the hole, or I will kill you," the Fallen transmitted.

The mist gathered again.

"Ok," Nick answered as he slowly moved into one of the holes.

\'So, it doesn\'t have an ability that suppresses Force Specters,\' Nick thought as he moved into the hole.

This realization calmed Nick down quite a bit.

Naturally,being in the presence of a Fallen was an immense danger to Nick, but he had bet on the fact that finding out any information about this hole was just way too difficult.

When Nick had inspected the hall with the machine, he had not seen any kind of entrance.

Not even the top seemed to make sense since there still had to be hundreds of meters of rock and dirt above it.

This meant that this place most likely didn\'t have a traditional entrance.

If the builders of this thing wanted to look at the machine, they would probably enter the same way as the sunlight entered.

It was probably a portal or something like that.

Additionally, the destructive force of the weird energy near the top of the machine would have already leaked into the surroundings if it weren\'t isolated, and somebody would have noticed that.

The fact that the Fallen had returned to interrogate Nick meant that it hadn\'t gained any meaningful information.

This meant that Nick was the only one who could gain information from that hole.

Well, maybe he wasn\'t the only one, but he was the closest one.

There might be a couple of very small Physical Specters, but they needed to get to this place first.

So, Nick was their best option to investigate this hole.

This was why Nick hadn\'t immediately fled after the Fallen went to search for an entrance.

The fact that the Fallen didn\'t have an attack that could properly target a Force Specter made it even less dangerous for Nick.

This Fallen couldn\'t compare to the Robe in terms of danger.

The only thing this Fallen could do was to disperse Nick\'s body.

Sure, having his body dispersed cost Zephyx, and if the Fallen stopped Nick from gathering by constantly attacking every bit of mist, it could genuinely kill him.

However, that would take a while, and it would only work if Nick tried to gather into a cloud like a typical Force Specter.

Of course, he wouldn\'t do that.

He would just disperse into different directions,forcing the Fallen to choose, and compared to the Robe, the Fallen couldn\'t destroy Nick\'s will on his different clouds.

That meant it wouldn\'t know which one the real one was until the real one was kilometers away and had time to vanish or recover Zephyx.

Nick was relatively safe.

About five meters into the hole, Nick looked back at the Fallen, who was blocking the entrance.

"Am inside," Nick transmitted.

"Go further and report what you see," the Fallen commanded.

Nick did just that, and the Fallen saw Nick going past the "end of the hole".

Some seconds later, Nick came back.

"Wall everywhere," Nick reported.

The Fallen interrogated Nick further, and Nick just kept telling him that the hole was confusing.

Nick was sent into the hole again and again.

After almost 30 minutes, he came out again.

The hole was just as confusing as before.

This time, the Fallen contacted Pride and told her about its findings.

"This sounds like an old trap for Force Specters," Pride said. "It was most likely constructed by one of the destroyed civilizations."

Pride looked at Nick. "The only reason why it didn\'t work on the cloud is because it is stupid but not as stupid as a normal Force Specter."

"Is there no way for you to find out more about this green building?" Pride asked.

"I have tried everything in my power," the Fallen answered.

Pride sneered in disgust.

Useless!

Then, Pride glanced at the cloud.

"Kill it," she transmitted.

"I\'m sorry, but I don\'t think I can," the Fallen answered. "It knows that it is safe from me by entering the hole, and I can\'t kill it fast enough. It also seems to be more careful around me. I don\'t think it will expose its Core."

Pride looked with disgust at the Fallen.

"You are telling me that you can\'t kill a Specter two levels weaker than you?" she asked.

"Yes," the Fallen answered.

Pride remained silent for a while as she looked at the cloud.

She didn\'t have a servant powerful enough to kill the cloud of mist.

As she looked at the cloud, she weighed her options.

So what if she couldn\'t kill that cloud?

What damage would that cause her?

She had already registered the cloud as one of her servants, which meant that no Corruptor would accept it.

The cloud also couldn\'t communicate with humans, and even if it could, it barely knew anything about Pride.

Just letting it go wouldn\'t cause any real harm.

This thing would just continue flying around, killing people.

Yet, Pride was not happy with that idea at all.

This idiotic and weak cloud had caused her more damage than any other servant ever had.

It was not even a Demon!

And now, she was powerless to put it in its place?!

The disrespect of this thing!

She refused to acknowledge that this thing could make her, one of the Seven Corruptors, powerless!

"I\'ll deal with the cloud myself," Pride transmitted to the Fallen before cutting the connection.