Kaito walked deeper into the dead heart of the Blightscar. The black glassy ground gave way to something worse—a thick, spongy substance that pulsed faintly under his feet, like rotten flesh. The air grew thicker, humming with a sound that was less a noise and more a vibration in his bones.
The feeling of being watched was a physical pressure now. The point of cold awareness in the center was pulling him in, a magnet to his strange metal.
He crested a low, slick rise and stopped.
The landscape changed.
The endless, flat blackness was broken. Ahead, the ground had been cleared into a rough, circular platform. And on that platform were things that did not belong.
Machines.
They were not made of wood or iron. They were made of a smooth, grey material that looked like polished stone but gleamed under the sickly light. They had no seams, no bolts. They were sleek, silent, and utterly alien in this place of primordial sickness.
One machine was a tall pillar with a glowing blue ring at its top, spinning slowly. It hummed with a clean, sharp energy that fought against the foul air. Another was a low, flat platform. On it, boxes made of the same grey material were stacked in neat rows.
And between the machines, things moved.
They were not monsters. Not like the rock-scaled fish or the corrupted guardians. They were humanoid, but made of the same grey material as the machines. They had no faces, only smooth ovals for heads. They moved with a stiff, precise efficiency, picking up boxes from the platform and carrying them in a straight line towards the center of the cleared circle.
There, hanging in the air, was a Door.
It was not a wooden door. It was a tear in reality itself, a vertical slit of shimmering, liquid silver. It was about ten feet tall and five feet wide. The edges crackled with blue-white energy that smelled of ozone. It was a teleportation gate.
The faceless grey workers walked right into the silver slit. They vanished without a sound. A moment later, they would step back out of the slit from the other side, empty-handed, and return to the platform for another box.
It was a delivery system. A highly advanced, technological operation running in the middle of the world's oldest magical wound.
Kaito watched from the ridge, hidden by the weird, shifting haze. His mind tried to make sense of it. This was not the work of a Half-Divine with a secret ability. This was not magic as this world knew it. This was something else. Something from outside. The boxes, the machines, the worker-constructs—they were all tools. Someone was using this dead, forgotten place as a storage yard. A secret base.
But for what?
One of the faceless workers turned its smooth head. It did not have eyes, but Kaito felt a scan pass over him, a wave of cool, mechanical awareness. The worker paused for a single second, then turned back to its task, uninterested. He was not a threat to the operation. He was part of the landscape.
That was the most terrifying part. This advanced, alien operation saw the immense, corrupting power of the Blightscar as nothing more than background noise. A useful cloak. And it saw him, Kaito, the unkillable slime, as just another piece of that noise.
The cold, focused awareness he felt was not coming from the machines. It was coming from beyond the silver door. The operator. The one receiving the deliveries.
The forger was not here. The forge was somewhere else. This was just the loading dock.
Kaito's mission had just changed again. He was not here to destroy a source of corruption. He was here to find a door. And he needed to see where it led.
He stood up and walked down the slope towards the clearing. The faceless workers did not stop. They moved around him, ignoring him completely, as if he were a rock in their path. He walked past the humming pillar, past the stacking platforms, straight towards the shimmering silver slit in the world.
The energy from the door made his skin prickle. It was a different kind of power. Ordered. Precise. Hungry in a clean, efficient way.
He looked back once at the dead expanse of the Blightscar. This place was not the source. It was a tool. A mask.
He stepped through the Door.
There was no sensation of movement. One moment he was in the cold, humming silence of the Blightscar. The next, he was… elsewhere.
The light was different. Softer. Artificial. The air was cool and tasted sterile, like a cave deep underground. He stood in a large, grey chamber. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of the same seamless material as the machines. More of the faceless workers moved here, taking the boxes from the Blightscar door and carrying them down a wide, well-lit corridor.
And at the far end of the chamber, standing before a large, glowing screen filled with strange symbols, was a man.
He was tall and thin, dressed in a form-fitting suit of dark grey material. His hair was silver, cut short and precise. His back was to Kaito. He was studying the screen, one hand tapping commands into a floating panel of light.
He was human. Or looked it. But he hummed with a quiet, contained power that felt neither magical nor divine. It was the power of knowledge. Of control.
This was the forger. The architect. The one who used the Blightscar's corruption as raw material and his advanced technology as a tool.
The man finished tapping and turned around.
He had sharp, intelligent features and eyes the color of polished steel. They showed no surprise at seeing Kaito. Only a mild, professional curiosity.
"Subject K-01," the man said, his voice calm and smooth. "The anomalous entity from the Frost Continent containment zone. You are early. The harvest from the Abyssal Heart site is not due for another seven hours."
He knew him. He had a name for him. A subject number.
Kaito held the Leviathan Staff tight. The grand war between Kingdom and Monster King, the schemes of Half-Divines, the trail of corruption—it was all a sideshow.
He had just found the real war. And he was standing in the enemy's laboratory.