Nick landed in the middle of the cave, inside the darkness.
The Nightmare had already become active again.
However, the Nightmare's influence vanished very quickly as the governor landed beside Nick.
Markus was giving off a bit of light, and he looked at Nick expectantly.
Nick was a bit surprised that the governor could create light without any noticeable device.
'Does he create the light just by manipulating Zephyx?' Nick thought.
'Actually, isn't that how Zephyx Synchronizers work?'
'Zephyx Synchronizers just synchronize with a Specter's powers, which basically means just copying the way they use their Zephyx.'
'So, if someone knows exactly how an ability works, and if someone has the skill to manipulate their Zephyx this finely, wouldn't that allow them to use that ability without a fitting Zephyx Synchronizer?'
'However, I can't even imagine how difficult that would be to achieve. That's like trying to run while manually giving commands to every single strand of muscle I have in my body.'
"I'm using Zephyx Manipulation," the governor said after noticing that Nick was just looking at him. "Please hurry up. It's quite costly to keep producing the light."
"Oh, right, sorry," Nick said.
Nick quickly ran down the cave, and the governor followed him.
A couple of seconds later, the two of them arrived at the door that Nick had destroyed.
The alarm was still loudly making itself known, and the light was still pulsing.
When the governor saw that, his eyes narrowed.
"Lead me around," he ordered.
"Of course," Nick said.
The two of them entered, and Nick showed the governor the steel suits in the lockers.
The governor went forward and looked closely at them.
"Why are the suits so weak and the weapons so strong?" Nick asked over the loud alarm.
The governor furrowed his brows without looking away from the suit.
It seemed like he was thinking about something.
Then, without saying a word, the governor put the suit down and went to the other room.
Nick watched as the governor took hold of one of these insanely powerful rifles.
Without saying anything, the governor pointed the rifle at one of the suits and pulled the trigger.
SSSS!
Surprisingly, several places on the walls were starting to sizzle while the suit didn't show any signs of damage!
When Nick saw that, his eyes widened.
How was this possible?!
Nick could tear these suits apart easily, but the guns were an actual threat to him.
And yet, the suits could resist that threat without any issues!
"Do you know how the people in the Outer City cook?" the governor asked.
Nick was taken aback by the seemingly unrelated question.
"Yes, they focus the light-"
That was when Nick realized what was going on.
"Wait, this is light?!" Nick asked.
The governor nodded. "Correct," he said. "And the shell of this suit is made of something that disperses the light. The only way to get through one of these suits is with physical force, and without Extractors, the only way would be high-caliber rifles."
"We believe that the light rifles were used to break through barricades and to kill humans who were not wearing these suits."
"We can see what these weapons can accomplish, and we can also somewhat understand how these suits defend from them, but we have no idea how these weapons manage to condense this much light to such a degree while using this little energy. We also don't know how to produce the material that defends against the light."
"We know it's possible, but that's the extent of what we know," the governor said.
Nick nodded as he looked at the suit with newfound respect.
'I didn't expect him to answer, and I certainly didn't expect him to tell me this much,' Nick thought with surprise.
After that, the governor asked Nick to show him more of the ruin.
"Remains of a deceased Old One," the governor said as soon as he saw one of the piles of dust. "Have you noticed something about them?"
Nick was a bit surprised that the governor asked him such a question.
Nick was only supposed to show the governor around, right?
But now, the governor was showing him things, and he was even asking him things that the governor most likely already knew.
"I noticed that their placement seems very organized," Nick said. "Most of them are in places where you would find humans. Above beds, guarding doors, in front of monitors, and so on. Only very few of them were in random places."
"I suspect that they were killed in an instant and that they weren't prepared for their deaths," Nick said.
"That's correct," the governor said as he took hold of one of the small squares lying in one of the piles. "It's like this in every single ruin of the Old Ones. At least, according to my knowledge."
The governor tapped on both sides of the square and shook the dust off it.
"We think that the Old Ones all died simultaneously without any prior warning."
The governor searched through the pile until he found a long cord.
"Every Old One in the entire world died at the same time. We do not know who or what did it."
The governor put the cord into the square and then walked over to a wall, searching for something.
"Our most likely suspect is the Sun."
Nick's eyes widened when he heard that.
Wait, the Sun?!
He knew that the Sun was incredibly powerful, but he hadn't expected that it could kill every single human in the world simultaneously without any of them being able to react!
Can Nurse Alice do this as well?
Can the Nightmare do this?
It didn't seem likely.
Nurse Alice always showed up personally.
By now, Nick knew quite a bit about Specters and Extractors, and he could also tell how Nurse Alice managed to show up this quickly whenever anyone said the Sentence.
It was actually very simple.
It was not some kind of illusion, teleportation, or domain.
No, Nurse Alice was just very fast.
Very, very, very fast.
