Metal Jungle

The wind wailed across the gray-white wasteland.

This abandoned plane, stitched together from fragments, was essentially the remains of dozens of worlds whose resources had been completely drained. Aside from endless gray-white dust and the occasional exposed rock, there was nothing.

Yet now, somewhere upon this monotonous wasteland—monotonous enough to drive one mad—an utterly jarring sight had appeared.

Black.

It was a "jungle" formed of countless sharp black metal clusters, growing wildly across the gray-white earth.

Each metal cluster stood over ten meters tall, pitch-black from tip to base. Their surfaces were covered in fine spiral patterns and sharp barbs, reflecting an ominous dim gleam beneath the murky sky.

They were packed densely together, interwoven with one another, forming a terrifying black forest more than ten kilometers in diameter.

This was clearly not a natural creation.

Any experienced wizard could tell at a glance that this was the lingering effect of some large-scale sorcery.

It was most likely the product of a spell such as "Metal Proliferation" or "Matter Transmutation," capable of forcibly converting the soil and stone within its range into metal structures of a specific form—and sustaining them for quite some time.

At the center of the jungle, atop the thickest metal cluster, a Chaos Cult wizard was busily at work.

He wore a dark crimson robe that seemed woven from coagulated blood, his face crisscrossed with stitches.

The loose ends of those threads still wriggled faintly, like living creatures.

At that moment, he hummed a tuneless little song in a hoarse voice as he fiddled with the corpse of a Noren Workshop wizard.

The corpse was in a dreadful state.

Its limbs had been twisted into unnatural angles, its chest cavity split open, its internal organs exposed but not fully removed.

Fine cuts covered its skin, every