SSSSSS!

'Ah, fuck!' Nick thought as he looked at the ground.

Liquid metal was flowing in from the opening and passing by Nick's shield.

CRK! BANG!

At the same time, an extremely loud bang exploded from Nick's left, and all the light vanished.

Under the heat, Nick's spear couldn't keep its form anymore and had broken under the pressure of the doors.

It exploded, and the two doors slammed shut again.

At the same time, the metal surrounded Nick's shoes and tightly grabbed onto them.

Nick jumped forward, breaking his shoes in the process and landing outside the hole.

Inside the hole, the metal slowly started to solidify, but not before bending and slightly melting Nick's shield.

Nick just looked back at the hole.

'A fucking Specter. It's actually a fucking Specter,' he thought. 'And it has to be a Possession Specter.'

'A fucking Demon Possession Specter.'

Nick remembered Ghosty's hypothesis.

The amount of suffering an object caused would translate into power if it ever turned into a Possession Specter.

How much suffering had this Possession Specter caused?

Also, why was it in there?

'I wonder,' Nick thought. 'Was this thing surrounded by metal before or after it turned into a Specter?'

Nick looked up and remembered how deep down he actually was.

'Is the creation of the Specter related to this building getting buried this far into the ground?'

'Could be, but I can't be sure. I don't have enough information.'

Next, Nick tapped around on his Barrier for a bit, and a moment later, a picture appeared.

This Barrier also made a picture of the light while measuring it.

When Nick saw the picture, he furrowed his brows.

'About as expected,' he thought.

The source of the light was a very bright white ball.

However, Nick wasn't sure if this was just the great amount of light hiding the object or if it was an actual white ball.

'I also can't tell how far away it is. It could be ten meters away, but it could also be a kilometer away.'

'Based on the readings, if the object is just ten or a hundred meters away from the edge, it should be a Demon, but if it's further, it could even be a Fallen.'

'I should measure the building. If it's a Demon, Crimson City can contain it. If it's a Fallen, we need Aegis.'

Nick put the displays on his Barrier away and went back to the wall.

Next, he started to go along the walls and carefully dig through the stone walls of the cave.

After a bit of digging, Nick noticed something.

'The building is round. That makes things easier.'

Nick summoned his Barrier and told it to calculate the circumference of the wall by analyzing a small part of it.

After a bit of math, Nick got all the numbers of the building, assuming that it was a perfect sphere.

'Diameter of about 100 meters,' Nick thought.

'The walls are around 30 meters thick, which means the open space in the middle should have a diameter of 40 meters.'

'If the thing is in the middle of the building, it should be about 20 meters away from the wall. With that distance and the power of the radiation, I can calculate the approximate power of the Specter.'

Nick did a bit of math.

'Early or Mid Demon. More likely a Mid Demon.'

Nick furrowed his brows.

'Capturing the Big Brain Slug sure as hell was worth the risk,' Nick thought.

'Now, we just need to suppress and contain it.'

Nick thought about the size and danger of the Possession Specter.

'But that's easier said than done. The easiest way would be to carry and transport the entire building, but that thing has to weigh over a million tons.'

'We could shave off the outermost 20 meters, which should reduce its weight by over 90%, but that would still be tens of thousands of tons.'

'We would need Aria to carry it after shaving it.'

Nick narrowed his eyes.

'But that's impossible,' Nick thought as the image of the Plague Vulture shot through his mind.

'If Aria leaves Crimson City for more than a couple of seconds, the Plague Vulture might actually decide to attack the city.'

'That means I can only rely on my Specialists.'

While Nick kept planning the suppression of the Specter, he kept digging around a bit.

He wanted to make sure that the building was an actual sphere.

After about an hour, he got confirmation.

Yes, it was a sphere.

'This will take a long time,' Nick thought as he looked at the metallic walls.

Nick could tell that this was going to be a project spanning several years.

Just for starters, they had to dig a hole to this depth to unearth the building, which was already a lot of work.

'I should get back and tell Aria,' Nick thought.

Nick told his Barrier to create a map and to keep this place marked.

Then, he traveled through the caves until he reached the top.

This time, it barely took two minutes since Nick already knew the way.

On the surface, Nick looked at his Barrier and traveled to the part of the surface that was directly on top of the buried building.

Nick marked the place and left for Crimson City.

A while later, Nick arrived in Crimson City and directly went to the city's headquarters.

When Aria saw him, she sighed in relief.

"You were gone for quite a while," she commented.

"I got lost in the caves," Nick answered.

"Anyway, I got good and bad news. What do you want to hear first?" Nick asked.

"The bad news," Aria answered with a sigh.

"We have a huge project in front of us that will take years and a lot of powerful Extractors to complete," Nick said.

Aria looked with positive surprise at Nick. "That sounds more like good news. After all, why would you suggest investing that many resources into something if it isn't worth it?"

Nick scratched the side of his head. "I guess so."

"Anyway, the good news is that we got a non-sentient Mid Demon Possession Specter."

Silence.

Aria's eyes were opened widely, and she looked with shock at Nick.

A Mid Demon Possession Specter?

That was insane!

"Are you for real?" she asked.

Nick nodded and told her what he had found.

In the beginning, Aria seemed excited, but when Nick told her about the readings and the picture, her excitement turned to worry.

"You said there's molten metal, right?" she asked.

"Correct," Nick said. "It started to flow out as soon as the crack appeared."

"How high was the crack?" Aria asked.

"It started at a height of about one meter and stretched for another 80 centimeters upward," Nick explained.

Aria nodded as she furrowed her brows. "Show me the picture again."

Nick did just that, and Aria looked at it.

Then, she grimaced.

"There's no reflection," she said.

"Reflection?" Nick asked.

Aria nodded and pointed at the picture. "The molten metal reached your place, even though the crack starts at a height of ten meters. That means that the lake of molten metal has to be a meter deep, at least."

"However, if it only had that depth, we should be able to see a reflection of the light. The liquid metal should reflect the light like water reflects the Sun's light."

"But there's no reflection," Aria said.

At that moment, Nick started to combine the clues in his head.

The liquid metal had to be high enough to get through the crack, but there was no reflection.

This meant that the actual level of the liquid metal had to be higher than the height of the camera, which, at the time of the shot, was around 160 centimeters.

This meant that at least 80% of the crack's height had been blocked by liquid metal.

Most likely, all of it had been blocked.

The reason why the hole hadn't immediately been flooded was that the liquid metal was extremely viscous.

Nick looked at the picture again, and with the new context, this picture became far more intimidating.

Nick's calculations had all been correct.

Everything had fit perfectly

As long as there was air between him and the object.

However, that wasn't the case.

The object's light hadn't reached his camera through around 30 meters of air.

No, it had reached his camera through around ten meters of air and 20 meters of molten metal.

This thing was visible through 20 fucking meters of molten metal!

This thing could kill Nick in less than a second while shining through 20 meters of metal!

"Nick, that is not a Demon," Aria said.

Nick took a deep breath.

"I realize that now," Nick answered.

"That thing is a Fallen and not a weak one."

Nick did a couple of calculations.

"This has to be a Late Fallen."

"At least!"

Silence.

Several seconds of silence.

"I'm calling Aegis," Nick said.

Aria nodded. "You should."