Kill the Sun

'I'm not sure how effective it is going to be when I'm only working with it for 50 hours,' Nick thought as he looked around the grey nothingness.

The Grey Room was one of the Specters that produced far more Zephyx when fitting people worked with it.

Specters like the Money Sink, the Gambler, or the Abductor basically always produced the same amount of Zephyx as long as the power of the person in front of them was consistent.

There were no individual differences based on personality or something like that.

However, there were also cases where the personality of the Extractor was important for Zephyx production.

For example, the Bleeding Lady might decide on cutting some more if she really enjoyed herself, and the Dreamer produced more Zephyx based on how much suffering it could inflict on its victims in the dreams.

The Grey Room was one of these kinds of Specter.

The Grey Room became more powerful by inflicting boredom.

That meant that the Extractor had to be bored.

If someone managed to just keep thinking about things in here without getting bored, not a lot of Zephyx would be produced.

Of course, one could only entertain oneself in the nothingness for a limited time, and the more time passed, the more bored and desperate one would become for stimuli, which meant more Zephyx.

However, too much boredom could cause trauma, and it was important to keep that to a minimum.

Even if Nick were to completely ignore the moral aspect, giving his employees trauma by making them work too much with the Grey Room would prove horrible for profit.

Employees were employees, not slaves.

If someone had such a bad experience that they completely refused to work with the Grey Room, Nick couldn't force them to do so unless he wanted to risk leaking valuable intel.

The Grey Room was one of the few Specters for which no unified procedure could be created.

Every Extractor would need their own procedure.

'And things would probably become different once again when the Grey Room becomes an Adult,' Nick thought.

The Grey Room was already a Peak Adolescent, and it had been a Peak Adolescent for years.

Not every Specter could become an Adult, but the Grey Room had a good chance of becoming one.

The Grey Room could become an Adult tomorrow or in a couple of years.

It was basically impossible to predict.

'Most likely, the time dilation gets even stronger if it advances.'

'It won't be easy to incite the Extractors to work with it.'

'Well, at least its ability has amazing potential.'

The Grey Room's ability was the main ability that the Spartans had relied on back then.

Sadly, the Spartans had never had the opportunity to actually use this ability on Nick.

The Grey Room gave an Extractor the ability to stretch and constrict space.

It could reduce the distance between a target and the user or expand it.

Of course, a Newbie couldn't do a lot with that since the degree of space bending was very low, but everyone could see how crazy this ability could get with enough power.

Just its versatility was amazing.

It could be used for Bruisers to force a slippery target close to their range.

A Sniper could use it to lessen the distance when they were about to fire, making the shot much more accurate and more difficult to avoid.

A Manipulator could use it.

An Assassin could use it to get quickly to a target.

A Runner could use it.

It was crazy.

The ability could be developed in any of these ways.

Since Nick didn't have much to do here, he just thought about how to deal with all the Specters and how to distribute the Extractors.

'It's actually not so bad in here,' Nick thought. 'I now have all the time in the world to properly plan all these things.'

By now, Nick's job as CZE had become brutal.

This was no longer like back when Dark Dream only had the Dreamer and the Screaming Coffin.

Back then, Nick had only needed to sleep for eight hours a day and deal with the Zephyx.

Now, Nick was managing a business with over a hundred employees almost on his own.

Julian was busy with meeting people from outside the company, not giving him a lot of time to manage Dark Dream.

Although, it was important to note that Nick was essentially doing two jobs at once.

He was the CZE, for one, but he was also almost the entire HR department.

Julian focused on the financial aspects, but naturally, Nick also had to deal with finances since he was the CZE.

While there were plenty of people that envied Nick due to his position, they didn't envy him due to his workload.

Ding!

Suddenly, the greyness around Nick vanished, and he found himself in the Containment Unit again.

The Grey Room had moved back to one of the walls.

Nick wasn't really surprised that it was already over.

It felt just about as long as he had expected.

"We'll need to send a couple of employees in here and see where we stand with things," Nick said as he stood up. "The next couple of days will be filled with tests, but we should be able to optimize the Zephyx production within the week. Just be patient."

Scratch, scratch.

Nick nodded and left the Containment Unit.

After leaving, he checked the Zephyx container, and he found just about as much Zephyx in there as he had expected.

'Two grams,' Nick thought.

Naturally, Nick only worked with it for one hour, which meant that not a lot of Zephyx could have been produced either way, but the severe lack of boredom was naturally also a factor.

Nick had barely been bored in there.

Even though Nick had effectively spent 50 hours in there, he only felt like he had actually spent one or two.

'But I've made a lot of progress on the plans,' Nick thought. 'Maybe I'll work with it just to get more time in the day to organize things.'

'Since I'm no longer limited by the number of hours in the day, maybe I can take on a couple more duties.'

Eventually, Nick left the floor and went to the next Specter.