Kill the Sun

Every Manufacturer lusted for a way to give Extractors the abilities of Eternals.

After all, the Eternals were the most powerful Specters, and a powerful Specter had to have a powerful ability.

Sadly, the Eternals were so powerful that one would only gain one of their abilities if they were willing to grant them.

In order for a human to get an ability or achieve an ability advancement, two prerequisites had to be met.

First, the Specter's body had to be in close proximity.

Second, the Specter needed to produce Zephyx.

As long as someone was in a situation where both of these prerequisites were met for long enough, one would get an ability if they didn't already have one.

So, with these prerequisites in mind, how could someone attain the ability of an Eternal?

The Sun?

The Sun was high up in the sky, and it killed every single human that ascended higher than a couple of kilometers.

Getting close to it was impossible.

Of course, there was a precedence case with the Champion of Light, but Nick didn't know how the Champion of Light managed to achieve that.

The only way Nick could think of was that the Sun had chosen him.

The Null?

Being close to the Null meant perceiving it, and perceiving it meant dying.

Therefore, getting its ability was also basically impossible.

Sure, Nick managed to get it, but he only managed to get it by getting amnesia at just the right time.

Also, there was a high likelihood that the Null consciously decided not to kill Nick.

The Nightmare?

While the Nightmare's influence stretched to every dark place in the world, its actual body was not present.

Nobody knew where the Nightmare's body was.

Humanity only knew that the Nightmare's body had to be somewhere in the world.

However, since its body wasn't anywhere near any human, gaining its ability was also impossible.

Nurse Alice?

Well, technically, it was possible to get Nurse Alice's ability.

But would Nurse Alice hand over her ability?

There had been cases in which Nurse Alice looked at a random bystander and killed them.

It was important to note that these bystanders did not ask for death.

One had to remember that while Nurse Alice primarily killed the people who asked for death, she was still an extremely powerful Specter and also an intelligent and autonomous being.

The only thing stopping her from killing people was whether or not she wanted to.

There was no rule stating that she wasn't allowed to kill random humans.

Most likely, the humans she killed randomly had received an ability from her, and she didn't want her ability to be granted to any human.

Finally, what about the Maw?

Funnily enough, the Maw was the only Eternal that gave out its ability regularly.

Whenever it abducted Extractors for its grand battle royale, it awarded the winner its ability.

The reason for why it did that was unknown.

However, since the Maw only abducted Extractors, no one had actually ever received the Maw's pure ability.

In order to be abducted, one had to be an Extractor, and to be an Extractor, one had to already have an ability.

So, the only thing that the Maw actually gave out were ability advancements.

And that was it.

There were no more Eternals.

Getting an ability from an Eternal was almost impossible.

But that was exactly why everyone wanted to find a way to reliably obtain one.

Anatomy had experimented with the Dark Room many times.

The amount of Zephyx the Dark Room produced was unreasonably high for an Early Adolescent, which made them believe that some of the Zephyx had to come from somewhere else.

Naturally, the most obvious guess would be the Nightmare.

However, after years of trying and after countless experiments, they had concluded that there was no way to get it.

In the beginning, the Dark Room had seemed like a potential goldmine, but in the end, it was just an asset.

Nick looked at the Containment Unit for a while longer before sighing.

Anyone looking at the Dark Room would have that exciting thought.

What if?

What if they were the one?

What if they managed to do it?

But in the end, one had to be realistic.

Anatomy had probably invested hundreds of millions of credits into experimenting on the Dark Room.

If not even they could do it, how could Nick?

Naysayers might disagree and highlight the time when Nick had found the Spilling Bottle. After all, the Manufacturers had also searched for that, but only Nick had found them.

However, people who said that either lived in a fantasy world, were helpless optimists or lacked the critical thinking skills to reliably evaluate reality.

Everyone knew that the Swallowing Swamp had been a Hatchling, and there was basically no incentive to investigate it.

Wow, great, a Hatchling that was hundreds of meters big.

Containing that thing would take more money than it would produce in its lifetime.

Because of that, nobody had really invested considerable resources into the Spilling Bottle.

That was the only reason why Nick managed to get it.

If Anatomy or Kugelblitz had just sent 20 Veterans or so to dig through the Swallowing Swamp, they would have found the Spilling Bottle.

But when it came to the Dark Room, Anatomy had invested a huge amount of resources.

In fact, they had invested so much that they even felt comfortable with giving it to Dark Dream as part of their deal.

'I won't be able to get the Nightmare's ability with the Dark Room,' Nick thought. 'Honestly, I shouldn't even think about it.'

'I'll just treat it like the Agonizing Wait.'

A moment later, Nick looked away from the Containment Unit containing the Dark Room and focused on the neighboring one.

'One more Possession Specter to go,' Nick thought.

Nick pushed the Dark Room out of his mind and walked over to the other Containment Unit.

Then, he took a deep breath and opened the door.