Nick led his four employees toward the north.
They decided to veer off towards the west for a bit.
The reason for that was the big area to the northeast.
A couple of kilometers northeast of the Swallowing Swamp was the Desert.
The Desert was a Specter that was called the Desert as well as an actual desert.
However, compared to the usual deserts, this one was far smaller, only being about five kilometers wide.
The Desert was an even plane of sand.
There were no hills, dunes, holes, or whatever.
It was perfectly even.
There were also no stones, animal bones, corpses, plants, or whatever.
Every point of the Desert was identical to every other point.
There were two reasons why Nick wanted to avoid appearing near the Desert.
First of all, the Desert was at least an Elder.
Anyone who walked into the Desert would become extremely thirsty within a matter of seconds, and if they were normal people, they would just straight up turn into mummies before transforming into sand that combined with the sand on the ground.
Even worse, that draining effect also worked on water that wasn't connected to any living being.
This meant that water bottles, rain clouds, and even the air would have all of their water sucked out.
Since the effect also worked on inorganic things, the Manufacturers concluded that the Desert grew more powerful by absorbing moisture, not by the consequence of absorbing all moisture.
This meant that the Desert most likely grew more powerful just by having water splashed over it.
While the Desert was not very dangerous due to it not being able to move, its potential was immense.
When Crimson City had connected to the outside world again after two years, they found out that the Desert had grown by about 100 meters.
If this thing continued being here, it might grow even bigger and more dangerous.
Some people had even thought about what would happen if this thing became an Eternal.
Wouldn't the water in the entire world vanish?
The city actually wanted to deal with the Desert, but it wasn't that easy.
The second reason why Nick didn't want to approach the Desert was that there was a high likelihood of a strong Extractor being there.
While the Swallowing Swamp and the Desert appeared very similar on the outside, the worth in the Manufacturers' eyes couldn't be different.
The Swallowing Swamp was just some worthless and annoying Force Specter that produced no Zephyx.
Meanwhile, the Desert was powerful and produced a whole lot of Zephyx.
How could one capture, transport, and suppress a desert?
One would need to build a Containment Unit as big as Crimson City, and if the city had access to something like that, they would've used it on the Crimson Sea.
Nevertheless, the Manufacturers constantly looked for ways to contain the Desert.
If someone managed to find some kind of core or something similar, they could potentially capture and use an Elder Force Specter.
Force Specters were already very valuable due to the costs of capturing them, and an Elder one would be even better.
The only two Manufacturers not interested in the Desert right now were Dark Dream and Gemini.
Dark Dream wasn't interested since they had nobody powerful enough to suppress and work with the Specter, excluding Julian, and Gemini wasn't interested since they still had to consolidate after capturing the Distortion. One Elder Force Specter was a lot of drain already for them.
However, all the other Manufacturers were quite interested, and there were almost always some powerful Extractors near the Desert, running experiments on it.
That was why Nick wanted to avoid that place.
Sure, many guards knew that Nick and his people were somewhere outside the city, but the fewer people knew of their specific whereabouts, the better.
After traveling north for about five kilometers, the five found themselves at the foot of a mountain.
Or, more like, a very big rock or cliff.
It wasn't a mountain in the classical sense since it wasn't nearly tall enough.
300 meters was a bit small for a mountain.
However, it could also not really be called a hill since it was quite steep and jagged.
Also, it was made of rocks.
So, the city just decided to call it the local mountain.
The entire mountain was probably around a kilometer wide.
Back when the red mist hadn't been in Crimson City, people could see the mountain as long as they looked toward it from an elevated position.
After all, back then, there had still been massive walls around the city, blocking the view.
Nick looked up at the mountain.
This was the first mountain he had ever seen up close.
Yet, it wasn't impressive in any way.
The megastructure of Crimson City dwarfed it.
When Nick looked towards the right, he saw that part of the mountain's foot had turned yellow and brittle.
The mountain was directly adjacent to the Desert, and the eastern part of its foot was already inside the Desert's domain.
Based on the difference between the normal mountain and that part, there was apparently still some moisture to be gained from a stone.
The five of them would need to be extremely careful not to accidentally enter the Desert's domain.
The next moment, Nick led his people to the western side of the mountain.
He wanted to climb the mountain from the west since that meant turning their backs on Crimson City and the Crimson Sea.
As long as they didn't turn around, they wouldn't die.
It was like Roaching.
Nick stepped behind everyone while Jason, Petra, and Clayton went to the front.
Jenny was in the middle.
The three people at the front became quite nervous, but they knew that they had signed up for this.
They were now supposed to do what they were here for.
Naturally, Nick and Jenny were behind the three of them since it would be problematic to save them in case of an ambush if that meant turning around.
Because of that, the strongest in the group had to stay at the back.