Kill the Sun

For example, Nick noticed that moving was very different from normal.

While Nick was many times slower in his fog-state, there were a couple of interesting things.

For example, he could cling to any surface and move along it quietly.

Nick could quietly slither up a huge building like a spider without any issues.

Then, he could simply materialize on top of it with all of his equipment.

Sadly, Nick couldn't just fly.

His fog needed to be attached to something, and it couldn't move too fast, or Nick would lose a lot of Zephyx.

Nick had tried to throw a spear and attach himself to his own spear while it was flying, but he immediately stopped when he felt his Zephyx vanish at insane speeds.

The reason was the strong wind, mostly.

After that, Nick took a while to come to terms with the fact that a strong gust of wind could kill him if he wasn't careful.

But there was one other thing that was quite interesting.

Nick could fit through tiny openings as long as he moved through them very slowly.

As long as Nick moved slowly through a small hole, he didn't need to use as much Zephyx to recover his shape.

For example, Nick had moved through one of the grates on the ground and entered the sewers.

However, that move had cost him 20% of his Zephyx and took almost half a minute.

But that was still impressive!

After all, Nick could now easily enter the sewers, and even more, he could travel through it by clinging to the ceiling.

This meant that the sewers had essentially transformed into pathways Nick could use.

Well, as long as there was light.

Traveling through the darkness was still dangerous.

Nick had a lot more experience with the Nightmare, but traveling through its world was still extremely dangerous.

If Nick accidentally commanded his body to move away from the ceiling, he would drop down into the sewers.

It was possible that Nick would simply land above the liquid since he wasn't very dense, but it was also possible that he would fall into it, and his body would disperse.

Nick didn't want to find out.

But, of course, this wasn't the only use of this ability.

For once, the Nightmare's existence actually helped Nick.

After all, nearly every single building in Crimson Fungus City had holes in its walls and ceiling so that the sunlight could enter.

And Nick could fit through these holes.

Sure, it would cost some Zephyx and would take a while, but it was possible.

In summary, the ability was extraordinarily useful in non-combat scenarios but almost useless during combat.

Unless his opponent was blind and deaf.

'I would say it's pretty useful,' Nick thought. 'My battle style is already mostly reliant on finding ways to escape my opponent's perception and attacking from that position.'

'And as far as I see it, this ability achieves just that.'

'But now, I wonder what kind of ability the normal one from the Fog is.'

One had to remember that this was a mutation of Nick's ability that had been granted by the Null.

This was not the ability the Fog would give someone without an ability.

One could see quite clearly that the ability that Nick had received worked to make it harder for people to perceive him, which was exactly what his main ability was all about.

Almost all abilities Nick would receive from any Specter would somehow or some way try to reduce the ways Nick could be perceived.

Some of them were simply more fitting than others.

For example, the Fog's ability was obviously very fitting to Nick's main ability, which was to be expected.

A less fitting one would have been the Lover, for example.

Maybe the Lover would have made Nick invisible to people who wanted to have sex with him?

Not very useful.

After all, someone would actually need to see him in order to even think about having sex with him.

Maybe the Dreamer would have made him very quiet for sleeping people?

Also not very useful.

Eventually, Nick finished all of his research and trained a bit more.

Even though he had a free day, Nick still hated doing nothing.

Over a year had passed since the incident, but Nick was still a bit scared of quiet and isolated moments.

Whenever he was alone with nothing to do, he felt nervous.

This made sleeping difficult, but Nick managed to circumvent that problem by training so much that he was always completely exhausted before going to sleep.

Maybe once he managed to achieve his goal, these problems would vanish.

Nick could only hope.

So, after a lot of training and planning, Nick went to sleep.

The next day, Nick entered Dark Dream again and did his daily duties.

Get the Zephyx canisters.

Measure the Zephyx.

Put the canisters and the measurements into Wyntor's office.

Check if the Screaming Coffin needed a new corpse and potentially give it a new one.

Get the pile of fresh garbage from the delivery man and dump it onto the Dung Heap.

Work with the Bleeding Lady.

Ask Jenny if anything of note happened.

Those were the regular duties that Nick did every morning.

When those were done, Nick either planned something for the Extractors, talked with Wyntor, searched for Specters, or coordinated with the Investigator Department of Dark Dream.

But today, Nick would do something different.

Someone had to find out the best way to work with the Fog, and that was Nick's job.

How long could someone survive in the Fog?

Was it possible to sleep in it?

Could more than one person enter?

Would that produce more or less Zephyx?

What was the easiest way to break out?

How much Zephyx did it produce?

There were many things Nick had to check.

Any inaccuracies on his part, and Dark Dream might lose tens of thousands of credits in potential profits per day.

When Nick was finally done with his daily duties, he told Jenny and Wyntor that he would be experimenting with the Fog.

And then he went to the sixth floor.