The news that Anatomy had captured a powerful Demon traveled throughout the city within the next couple of days.
Naturally, Kugelblitz congratulated them publicly, and everyone saw this as a good event.
After all, with a second Demon contained, there was one less Demon walking around the world.
But beneath the surface, things became troublesome.
Anatomy had become a genuine threat to Kugelblitz.
Kugelblitz felt threatened.
Obviously, they didn't want to lose their position as Crimson City's strongest Manufacturer.
This meant that they had to do something against Anatomy.
Of course, they had tried to get rid of Anatomy for decades now, but that hadn't worked until now.
The soft approaches just didn't work.
This meant that only the hard approach was left.
They had to kill at least one of Anatomy's Heroes or their Demon.
However, killing their Demon was basically impossible since no one would be able to enter without getting noticed.
This meant that they could only kill their Heroes.
But that was easier said than done.
They couldn't attack any of their Heroes inside the city since everyone would immediately notice what was going on.
At that point, all pretenses would be lost, and open warfare would commence.
This meant that the governor needed to choose a side, and whoever he chose would most likely survive.
And chances were that the governor would choose the opposing side of whoever decided to escalate this conflict.
If Kugelblitz decided to stage an assassination, the governor would most likely choose Anatomy's side and vice versa.
The main reason was that the governor didn't want this situation to occur.
Therefore, as a counterincentive, he made it clear that he would choose the other side.
If one side believed that they would need to fight the other Manufacturer and the governor, they wouldn't easily stage an attack, which would keep the city peaceful.
So, without one side being stronger by quite a bit, no side would escalate the conflict.
Yet, while all of these covert mind games and tactics were going on beneath the surface, none of the normal Extractors noticed anything.
To them, things seemed just as always.
One day later, Liera Jenkins appeared in the city and took the Specters that she had been promised with her.
Anatomy and Liera kept the number and power of Specters a secret, but everyone could see that Liera had left with three Specter Cages.
And then, it was time for Dark Dream to receive their Specters.
The citizens noticed that another big set of Specters was being moved from one place to another, and they watched in shock as Extractors from Anatomy delivered one Specter Cage after the other to Dark Dream.
Dark Dream's employees watched in just as much shock.
They almost couldn't believe that they were getting that many Specters!
After over an hour, the people from Anatomy finally left, and Nick could start his work.
Luckily, Anatomy had already given Nick all of the documentation regarding the Specters within the last couple of days, which meant that Nick already knew what to expect from them.
So, Nick immediately went to work.
The first Specter he visited was on the seventh floor, the floor for Specters with mind powers.
Without hesitation, Nick walked into the Containment Unit.
In the middle of the Containment Unit was a relatively weighty fellow with a nervous expression on his face.
He was quite dirty, and he looked like he was afraid that somebody was watching him.
Nick just looked at the guy as he slowly approached Nick.
"Are you one of them?" the weighty fellow asked carefully.
"One of whom?" Nick asked back.
"You know what I'm talking about," the fellow said carefully.
"I really don't," Nick said.
"One of the rat people," the guy said in a whisper.
"Rat people?" Nick asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes, the rat people," the man repeated as if Nick was supposed to know what he was talking about. "They're the ones that secretly run the city."
"Could you elaborate?" Nick asked.
"Did you never notice how hairy the governor's arms and legs are? That's his rat coat coming through his flimsy disguise! The rat people control this city! They want to turn all of us into willing servants to build their rat empire!"
"Didn't you see that the governor and the really strong Extractors can look at the Crimson Sea without issue? That's because the Crimson Sea is the rat king living below the city in reality!"
Nick listened to the guy talking about rat people for about an hour before he just turned around to leave the Containment Unit.
Surprisingly, the weighty fellow didn't stop Nick from leaving.
After he left the Containment Unit, Nick just took a deep breath and sighed.
'Fucking rat people,' Nick repeated in his mind. 'What nonsense.'
The weighty fellow was a Specter, and he was called the Conspirator.
The Conspirator came up with conspiracy theories all the time and tried his best to convince the people.
Now, every knowledgeable Extractor would have noticed one specific thing.
Wasn't that just like the False News, the Fanatic that was roaming the city?
And yes, it was very similar.
The Conspirator and the False News basically did the same thing but on different scales.
The False News was way more troublesome since it reached way more people, while the Conspirator's reach wasn't as big.
Yet, there was one subtle difference.
Their ways of growing more powerful were slightly different.
The False News seemed to grow more powerful based on how many people it convinced of its conspiracies, while the Conspirator grew more powerful just by sharing his conspiracies.
However, just like the False News, the Conspirator was very convincing, and every normal person who listened to him believed him.
Luckily, working with him was pretty easy.
Dark Dream just needed to send a strong Extractor to talk with him. As long as the Extractor was powerful enough, the Conspirator's effect would be trivialized.
They just had to be careful that their Extractor didn't suddenly start believing crazy shit.
The ability an Extractor could gain by working with the Conspirator was the power to become much more convincing.
By using the ability, the likelihood of the other side believing the Extractor's words was far higher.
Of course, the effectiveness of the ability lessened with the power of the opponent.
After Nick was done working with the Conspirator, he looked at how much Zephyx the Conspirator produced.
'If I send someone to work with the Conspirator every hour of the day, that would be about 95 grams of Zephyx. Not a whole lot, but it's also only a Mid Adolescent.'
'I would say it's a bit below average.'
Nick closed the door again and went to the next Specter.
