While Dark Dream was busy growing, the Extractors in the city became more and more nervous.

Things have changed since Anatomy captured that Late Demon two years ago.

Coral people started to appear in the city.

In the beginning, the coral people were rather rare, but after two years, they appeared almost daily.

Even more, all of these coral people were Extractors.

So, where did they come from?

Naturally, everyone knew that the coral people worked for Anatomy, but not everyone knew who these coral people had been before they had been infected by the corals.

Well, two years ago, after Anatomy had captured the Sea King, the coral Specter, they had become far more active when it came to encroaching on the territory of other cities.

Capturing Extractors belonging to Crimson City was obviously a no-go, which was why Anatomy started to focus on the cities to the west and to the south, but mainly the one to the west.

Due to the vast domain of the Corrosive Dust, going to Darksky City in the south was very difficult.

Additionally, Anatomy seemed to have a deal with Metal Works City to the east, and they also never really went there.

Because of that, the city about 150 kilometers to the west, Stone Crystal City, was the one that had the most conflicts with Anatomy.

The conflicts had gotten worse and worse over the years, and by now, even Kugelblitz avoided sending people toward the West.

After all, Stone Crystal City knew what was going on, and the Manufacturers there obviously wouldn't just keel over and die.

No, they would fight back and take revenge.

Since Anatomy kept attacking them, they would fight back against Crimson City.

Several Manufacturers had already complained to the governor since they were suffering as well, but the governor only told Anatomy to calm down a bit.

Of course, that only made Anatomy act more covertly but with just as much intensity.

Naturally, Anatomy took the most damage out of all the Manufacturers, and they had lost several Experts and even two Specialists.

However, they had also gained a Specialist and a couple of Experts in the form of coral people.

With the addition of the three Specialists they had gained when they had captured the Sea King, they now had four Specialists, seven Experts, and around 20 Veterans as coral people.

On paper, Anatomy was losing employees due to the constant conflicts, but when one included the coral people, Anatomy was actually gaining employees.

The only downside was that the coral people couldn't work with Specters and, therefore, couldn't produce any Zephyx of their own.

However, every coral person increased the amount of Zephyx the Sea King produced passively.

Of course, Kugelblitz saw what was going on, but they didn't seem to do anything, which confused everyone.

If Anatomy kept expanding like this, they would sooner or later overtake Kugelblitz.

So, why wasn't Kugelblitz doing anything?!

Nobody knew.

As more years passed, things only got worse.

Three years later, Anatomy had transformed almost 50% of its employees into coral people.

Of course, they didn't actually transform them. They just exchanged their employees' lives for prisoners who were turned into coral people.

However, in total, Anatomy seemed to lose more employees than they were gaining.

That was different from how it had been three years ago.

But that wasn't due to Stone Crystal City.

It was Kugelblitz.

It seemed like Kugelblitz was finally waging a secret war against Anatomy.

While none of the battles had been noticed by anyone outside the two Manufacturers, the results spoke for themselves.

Kugelblitz had lost quite a few employees during "excursions".

Kugelblitz seemed to focus on the living employees instead of the coral people, and the reason was quite obvious.

They wanted to put even more pressure on Anatomy's living employees.

They wanted to make Anatomy's employees leave Anatomy.

Sadly, that was easier said than done.

Contracts made by Kugelblitz and Anatomy were extremely overbearing, and quitting any of them would put the person in prison for over ten years.

Of course, that was absolutely insane!

Ten years of prison for just quitting?!

However, Anatomy and Kugelblitz had worked together several decades ago when they had come up with these contracts.

Together, they had influenced the city's government to make these contracts legal.

Sadly, the true destiny of someone who quit Anatomy wasn't really prison.

Sure, they would be sent to prison, but almost all of them "mysteriously vanished".

The most popular theory was that they were secretly turned into coral people, but that couldn't be confirmed since none of them showed up in the city again.

If Anatomy turned them into coral people, they would be hiding somewhere inside Anatomy.

And the governor no longer inspected Anatomy.

With Anatomy becoming more and more powerful, the governor was also in more and more danger.

Luckily for the smaller Manufacturers, this huge conflict left Kugelblitz and Anatomy busy with other things, which meant that they could find Specters more easily.

However, all of them suspected that this might only be a temporary respite before disaster.

The Manufacturers suspected that Anatomy wanted to replace all of their employees with coral people, creating a perfectly uniform and loyal work force.

Even more, all the coral people were connected to each other via the Sea King.

Every coral person could see what every other coral person could.

Assassinating a single coral person was almost impossible since every other coral person would immediately know when one of them was in a conflict.

Of course, Anatomy's employees could also tell what was going on.

But what were they supposed to do?!

They couldn't quit, or they would die!

If they stayed, they would also die!

If they ran towards the west or south, they would be killed by Stone Crystal City and Darksky City.

If they ran towards the east, they were delivered back to Anatomy by Metal Works City.

Towards the north was the gigantic sea, and nobody knew if they could survive there.

So, the only way to flee was to somehow get past one of the cities in secret.

But that was extremely risky.

Things became worse and worse.

Yet, the governor wasn't doing anything, and Kugelblitz seemed to only engage Anatomy a little bit.

The future looked dark.