Naturally, Giovanni accepted the position.
Nick had spoken just the right words to convince him, but that was to be expected.
Nick could read Giovanni's mind, after all, and he knew exactly what he thought.
For the next five years, Giovanni was Samar's aide and simply enforced her commands.
Of course, Samar also explained what she was doing and why she was doing it, and Giovanni learned a lot.
When the five years were up, a major policy change happened in the city.
Zephyx production had to be ramped up significantly to keep up with the future rise of the Nightmen.
Because of that, all the Protectors had to work with the most powerful Specter in the city.
Some of the Protectors had seen this Specter before.
The city rarely worked with this Specter, but when it was necessary, they did just that.
Over a thousand Protectors entered the gigantic Containment Unit.
In the middle of the Containment Unit was the Specter.
An unmoving piece of flesh.
It radiated incredible power.
The Protectors knew that if the Specter decided to attack them, all of them would be helpless in front of it.
That was why the city rarely worked with it.
While the Specter couldn't escape its Containment Unit, anyone inside the Containment Unit was helpless.
However, if they strengthened it too much, it might gain the power to break out of the Containment Unit.
It was dangerous to work with this Specter for exactly this reason.
But the city needed Zephyx.
Naturally, this Specter was Nick.
A couple of weeks ago, he had told Samar basically everything about himself since she had still been under the impression that he was human.
Unveiling his true identity was no longer an issue since Samar would die in about 15 years anyway.
The relationship between Nick and Samar had not changed in any way despite the revelation.
The only thing it did was to calm Samar's worries about the unknown Specter.
Nick could already kill everyone, and he has had that power for centuries.
If he wanted them dead, they would already all be dead.
And yet, the people lived in relative happiness.
Samar still remembered her distant past of living in Crimson City.
Compared to Crimson City, living here was much better for the people.
Over a thousand Protectors gathered in the Containment Unit.
The door closed, and the Prephyx was pulled out.
The Protectors collapsed and lay weakly on the ground in agony.
10% of the gathered Zephyx would be harvested by the Containment Unit, and the remainder would go directly to Nick.
For a week, the Protectors just laid weakly on the ground.
Then, the doors opened, and they were allowed to leave.
The reactions were mixed.
Some of the Extractors felt terrible and hated working with this Specter.
But other Extractors were excited because they could finally grow more powerful!
There were so few Fallen in the city that advancing became almost impossible!
By working with this Specter, they could finally become stronger!
When the thousand Protectors left the Containment Unit, they walked past another thousand Protectors.
49% of the Protectors would work for one week.
Then, another 49% of the Protectors worked for the next week.
The remaining 2% were left in the city to keep it running.
One week of work, one week of relative free time.
This would be the cycle for the next years.
As soon as the doors opened, the tremendous suffering Nick had accumulated turned into Zephyx.
'This is even faster than working with the two Shields,' Nick thought. 'If I only used this, I would advance a level within just a couple of decades.'
'Sadly, I can't just advance without causing suffering in the real world. That would be too suspicious.'
'It's expected that Specters have some secret sources of suffering, but these secret sources can't be too good.'
While Nick was harvesting the suffering from thousands of Protectors,he was also focusing on creating some new abilities.
These abilities would be useful in the future.
One wave of Protectors after the other entered and left the Containment Units while Nick was creating new abilities.
After around 15 years, Samar died.
Now, there were fewer than 20 people left who had seen the outside world before, and all of them were aging Protectors.
Within the next 50 years, nobody would be left who had ever seen the outside world.
As the new Chancelor, Giovanni gave the order to stop working with the Specter.
The Zephyx they had harvested was more than enough, and he hadn't been the biggest fan of Samar's decision to work with the Specter.
Naturally, Nick didn't mind.
He had already expected something like that to happen.
He needed to cause some chaos anyway.
'I'm about 60% of my way to becoming a Late Adversary,' Nick thought. 'As long as I harvest the remaining 40% in a noticeable manner, there shouldn't be an issue.'
Nick left the city and looked at his beams.
There were hundreds of thousands of light-red beams pointing at him.
These beams represented the people who knew about the Trickster.
By now, the world's population had increased drastically.
There were probably over 50 million people alive right now, but the only ones who knew about the Trickster were Extractors.
There was only a single one, and that one came from Giovanni.
With Samar's death, there was nobody left who knew of Nick Dusk.
The name of Nick Dusk had essentially vanished.
Its only existence was in the form of an old database entry of a failed program regarding a new position.
Not even the Pure One remembered Nick's true name and his past since they had agreed to delete a big portion of the Pure One's memories for Nick's primary ability.
Nick Dusk no longer existed.
'My true identity has been expunged from the world.'
'In the future,the Trickster will also vanish.'
'But, for now, I still need this identity.'
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The author's . If he gets more than 1000€ per month, he will increase the number of words in the chapter.