The sky was still grey when the team stirred.
A cold wind swept down from the peaks, sharp enough to cut through the layers of clothing they wore. Dew clung to their cloaks as they slowly woke up.
Victor was already on his feet, checking gear in practised silence. Sam rubbed at the sleep in his eyes, his breath misting as he rolled up the map.
"Everyone ready?" he asked, as he checked their supplies.
Ethan gave a small grunt as he attached his axe to his waist. "Let's get moving before we freeze."
They broke camp quickly, making their way down a narrow ridge that twisted towards the dig site. The terrain dipped, then rose again, forming a natural overlook above the Obsidian Sect's camp.
Even from a distance, it was clear they weren't fully awake yet.
Only a few fires burned. Most of the tents remained sealed. A handful of figures moved along the edge of the excavation pit—sluggish and unfocused, likely finishing the night shift.
The guards stationed near the ore processing area stood still and stiff, either barely awake or nearing exhaustion.
Sam lowered himself against the rocks, signalling the others to halt. AJ slid forward, staying flat against the ground.
"You're up," Sam whispered.
AJ pulsed once in acknowledgement, then flowed down the ridge.
---
The approach was relatively easy.
AJ moved slowly, flat, quiet, nearly invisible in the low light. He kept to the stone shadows, tracing the edge of the pit until he found a stack of crates near a forge station. The smell of burnt metal and cold ash filled the air.
A partially processed ingot rested on an anvil, still faintly steaming. Next to it, a basket of broken shards—raw chunks of ore, jagged and uneven.
There you are.
He extended a tendril towards the shard, wrapping it carefully, then drawing it into his body.
The effect was immediate.
His body shrank.
Mana inside him recoiled, contracting like a muscle hit with a freezing pulse. The ore wasn't inert—it was actively rejecting him.
Energy bled from his system faster than he could adjust, pulled away into dead weight. He quickly released the shard as he moved away. What the hell was that?
AJ felt wary but also curious. He couldn't quite understand what he had just felt—his whole body had rejected the ore as much as it had rejected him.
But it wasn't just rejection. He had lost control of a portion of his mana and even the part of his body that came in contact with the ore.
He gave up on trying to absorb the ore, making his way over to the area where the ingots were stored.
It was a risk—but this wasn't raw ore. This was the refined version, likely mixed with trace materials, compressed with impurities, maybe even stabilised through heat and pressure.
If the raw mineral actively rejected its surroundings, the ingot might be less volatile.
The Obsidian Sect wouldn't be forging weapons from something that destroyed everything it came into contact with... right?
If they could use it—surely he could too.
He reached for the ingot. It might give him insight into how the Obsidian Sect was weaponising the material.
He enveloped the surface—and convulsed.
The mana within him spasmed, pushed out of alignment. Mana that represented his internal structure flickered erratically.
He felt... dull. Disconnected. As if the world had suddenly become harder to sense.
It's anti-mana properties were amplified? No—It attacked structure itself. It doesn't just reject mana and structure. It scrambles everything.
AJ recoiled, severing the part of his body that was in contact with it and retreating several metres before he stabilised himself. His core pulsed erratically.
Whatever this material was it was extremely dangerous. Especially towards AJ, it was basically his bane.
AJ hid behind a crate, the distortion still lingered in his core, like echoes ringing in a shattered chamber. His form wavered at the edges, it was still unstable.
The ingot's energy hadn't just shaken him, it had penetrated deep inside him, disrupting the internal cohesion he relied on to move, think, and exist.
He focused inward, working to re-establish order within his core. Mana threads aligned. His body flattened slightly, thinning into a low, semi-transparent film.
No more tests, he thought. That went way worse than I thought it possibly could.
He slowly began sliding towards the slope where he'd entered.
Then he heard it.
Footsteps. Voices.
The clatter of metal tools being lifted from racks. A barked command. Two workers—dressed in dark, trimmed leathers—moved towards the forge with practised familiarity. One stoked the coals. Another reached for the very crate AJ was hiding behind.
He froze.
More figures emerged from the central tents, yawning and stretching, pulling on gear and tying back their hair. The day crew had begun to stir, rolling into the site like an incoming tide.
Things just got more complicated.
AJ slithered beneath the crate, hiding in the thin space between its base and the uneven stone floor.
From his position, he watched.
The workers weren't soldiers. They moved with the disinterest of routine—checking ingots, weighing shards, logging output into wooden tablets.
A tall woman in a cloak stalked between stations, occasionally pointing at mistakes and coldly giving out corrections.
The lack of due care given to this material confirmed one thing: even the Sect didn't fully understand what they had gotten their hands on.
AJ considered sending some kind of signal back to the others—but the risk was too high. Any surge of mana might be noticed, especially if the material scrambled residual traces.
His best option was to wait it out, observe, and find another exit.
The forge hummed now, warm and rhythmic, like a breathing beast. That same ingot he'd touched before was lifted and carried to the refining table.
AJ stayed hidden. Trapped, not by walls or weapons—but by proximity, and the cost of being caught.
---
The ridge above the dig site caught the first clear rays of morning light, revealing the subtle shift in activity below.
Sam narrowed his eyes, muttering under his breath as he observed. "They're already moving."
From their vantage point, they could see the Obsidian Sect's day crew filtering out of tents and gathering near the forge stations.
Dozens of figures took their positions with well-practised precision. Crates were moved. Fires relit. Guard rotations swapped out with curt nods.
Ethan muttered, "He should've been out by now."
"No alarm," Lily said, scanning the site. "They didn't see him."
"Doesn't mean nothing went wrong," Victor added flatly.
Sam watched a group of Sect workers gather around the processing station. His grip on the edge of the ridge tightened.
"If he's still down there, he can't move until there's an opening."
"Give him time," Walter said quietly. "Rushing in helps no one."
Even as he said it, his gaze lingered on the way the Sect guards seemed more... alert. Not frantic. Not on high alert. But the site had stirred slightly, the way a body shifts in its sleep before waking.
---
AJ remained completely still beneath the crate, his form barely stable. Minutes passed. Then more. The workers came and went, occasionally speaking in low tones. A few laughed—one cursed when a shard cut their palm.
It took nearly half an hour before the workers began moving away from his corner, rotating to other stations or following a tall man in a green-trimmed robe towards the deeper sections of the dig site.
Finally—an opening.
AJ slid out slowly, pulling his form tight and narrow as he slipped between the crates, then past a low shelf, and finally into the shallow trench leading out of the processing zone.
No one saw him. The soft hum of work continued behind him as the wind whistled through the stones ahead.
He climbed the slope, avoiding loose gravel, cresting the edge a moment later.
Sam exhaled in visible relief.
"Report?"
AJ pulsed once in affirmation, but didn't speak immediately. He was still reassembling his thoughts.
The others didn't rush him.
---
As they retreated from the ridge, putting distance between themselves and the Sect, AJ remained quiet. He clung to Lily's shoulder now, fully stable again, but deep in thought.
Things have been getting weirder.
It started with the dream. That broken stellar forge. The scattered orbs. It had felt like he had uncovered something he wasn't supposed to.
And now this ore... this anti-mana metal.
He'd touched all sorts of things since becoming a slime—living, dead, magical, mundane—but never something that had rejected him so completely.
Not just his mana but also his body, his structure. Like the material wanted to undo the very concept of him.
What kind of force does that?
It wasn't just defensive. It was hostile. Almost like it was designed to erase certain types of existence.
AJ pulsed slightly, out of habit.
It seemed as though this world was exposed to something it was never meant to see or be a part of.
That thought lingered, quiet and heavy, as they made their way deeper into the hills—in the general direction of the safe zone.
Lily felt the shift in AJ's weight on her shoulder. A ripple—subtle, but different.
He pulsed again, this time with intention.
"The ore was bad." His voice was flat, but layered with undertones they were learning to read—strain, uncertainty, discomfort.
Sam glanced over. "Define 'bad.'"
"It rejected mana. It disrupted the flow, stripped it from my structure, then tried to unravel it." A brief pause. "I've never felt anything like it. It didn't just push back. It outright rejected me."
Ethan straightened slightly. "Reject you how?"
"The part of me that touched it... came apart." Another pause. "And that was just the raw shard."
"You touched the ingot too?" Victor asked.
AJ hesitated. "I thought the refining process might stabilise it, weaken the effects. That's what I hoped for anyway."
Lily frowned. "But it wasn't."
"No. It was worse." The feelings he shared were fuzzy—a sensation of collapsing, distortion, a sudden disconnection from everything.
"It scrambled everything. I couldn't think properly whilst I was touching it, couldn't feel mana or myself. My core was destabilised. Took everything I had to regain control."
Walter tapped his cane gently against the ground in thought. "And yet the Sect's working with it. So far at least it seems to not have caused any issues for them."
"They're using it..." Sam said slowly, muttering as he pieced together the implications. "Probably without knowing what it's really doing."
"From what I could gather they think it's a just an extra sturdy metal," AJ said. "They don't know just how dangerous it is."
He didn't mention his deeper thoughts—not yet. The dream. Those orbs. The ingots. The feeling that none of this was natural and yet wasn't a mistake.
Not until he was sure.
They continued in silence, boots crunching against the rising gravel trail. The wind carried the hum of the Spires behind them, distant now, but never gone.