Nick woke up and looked at the clock.
'5:35,' Nick thought. 'The alarm rings in ten minutes anyway.'
Nick left his bed, walked over to the clock on the wall, and clicked a button at the side.
He had learned just yesterday that the clocks in the hotel had an alarm function from one of the clerks.
This made things much easier for Nick.
After deactivating the alarm, Nick grabbed his cuffs.
But before he put them on, he looked at his wrists.
Nick saw some faded cuts on them, and he furrowed his brows.
A memory from two days ago shot through Nick's mind.
After running around with the cuffs, Nick had come home, and when he had taken the cuffs off, he had seen that they had cut into his skin.
While the four cuffs were quite expensive weapons, they were not designed to be worn for hours of running around.
Naturally, Nick's bleeding wrists hurt quite a bit, but he didn't view the pain as bad.
In a way, this pain was a reaffirmation of his own conviction.
Seeing how much he had pushed himself somewhat calmed Nick's guilt.
He was putting in so much effort that he was even bleeding.
Even if Horua could see him, he wouldn't say that Nick wasn't trying his best.
The day after that, the cuts on Nick's arms had somewhat healed, but there were still some scabs left.
Nevertheless, Nick put on the cuffs again and trained for the entire day.
In the end, he bled again, but it wasn't as bad as the first day.
And this morning, the cuts were nearly completely gone.
One would only notice them if one knew that they were supposed to be there.
Eventually, Nick put the cuffs on and left for work.
He hadn't officially been to work for three days, but unofficially, Nick hadn't worked for about five days.
So much had happened in the last five days.
Nick killed Pator.
Horua died.
Nick started to feel horrible.
Nick found a new goal.
Nick trained.
To Nick, it felt like he hadn't been at work for a month or so.
Nick walked out of the hotel and went into a nearby shop that sold food.
In the last couple of days, Nick had found something else that tasted amazing.
Apparently, these things called chickens also laid eggs, and these eggs were a great source for many different things a human needed.
But the eggs were expensive. One egg wasn't very big, but it cost almost ten credits!
Nevertheless, Nick saw spending money like this as an investment.
If eating the eggs were just a hobby or for leisure, Nick would feel like he threw his money out of the window.
But this was for his future and his power.
Nick needed to invest money into his power!
Because of that, he wasn't very bothered by the high price.
Also, the price of the food wasn't actually that high, considering what Nick made in a day.
As the Chief Zephyx Extractor, Nick made 10% of what Trevor, Jenny, and the Screaming Coffin produced.
So, even if Nick didn't work himself, he would make at least 2,000 credits a day.
200 to 300 credits for food was barely ten percent of what Nick earned that day.
After shoving five eggs down, Nick went to Dark Dream.
As Nick entered, he slightly furrowed his brows.
His ability had deactivated, but he couldn't see anyone.
'The spy is back,' Nick thought.
'Sadly, it's not the time yet to confront Ardum.'
Nick walked forward and entered the Screaming Coffin's Containment Unit.
Surprisingly, the Screaming Coffin was peacefully lying in the middle of the room.
'I guess Wyntor found a way to get a corpse,' Nick thought.
Seeing that he wasn't needed here, Nick left the Containment Unit and stopped in front of Wyntor's office.
A couple minutes later, Wyntor entered the warehouse.
When Wyntor saw Nick, he was a bit surprised.
Nick felt quite different from before.
Three days ago, Nick seemed so fragile and vulnerable, and two days before that, Nick had seemed like he was about to say the Sentence.
But now, Nick seemed quite… sturdy and serious.
He had always seemed like a nice and light-hearted guy, but now, he seemed like someone who wasn't interested in hearing jokes.
It was quite a strong transformation.
Nevertheless, Wyntor had learned how to interact with all kinds of people, and he had also learned to discern emotions from just the slightest signs.
And he could tell that Nick was concerned right now.
"You noticed our new colleagues, I presume?" Wyntor asked with a smirk.
Nick furrowed his brows. "New colleagues?" he repeated.
Wyntor nodded and pointed at a railing at the side of the warehouse.
Naturally, almost all warehouses in the Outer City were equipped with some kind of metallic scaffolding with cheap metallic stairs that led to a higher layer at the edge of the warehouse.
The higher layer consisted of a corridor made of metallic grates, barely two meters wide, which led around the sides of the warehouse.
Nick looked at the spot Wyntor was pointing to and saw a guy lifting his right hand in greeting.
The guy was wearing a grey uniform, which almost perfectly blended into the grey of the walls.
The guy was also carrying a couple of guns with him.
All in all, the guy gave off a similar vibe to the city guards but a bit more subdued.
"This is one of the members of the guard team that I hired," Wyntor said.
Then, he pointed at another spot. "Another one should be there."
Nick furrowed his brows and looked over.
It took a couple of seconds, but eventually, Nick managed to discern the silhouette of another man.
"And the last one is there," Wyntor said, pointing at yet another spot.
Sure enough, Nick saw a third person.
"There are always three guards here," Wyntor said. "We want to make sure that nobody tries to take them out one by one, which is why they all have each other in their vision and are on opposite sides of the warehouse."
"They're professionals, and they can even fight an average level one Extractor with their weapons and their tactics."
"And the best thing: this entire team barely costs 1,500 credits per day."
