Twenty thousand years ago.
A Cataclysm Civilization known as the Creators, forged from high-end precision machinery, dominated Night's Veil Land.
Until one day.
From deep within the continent, another Cataclysm Civilization known as the Metal Raiders accidentally discovered this peninsula civilization, which occupied vast, rich, fertile lands. Wary of this powerful civilization, the Metal Raiders Civilization instinctively chose to strike first. Before their enemy could discover them hiding within the Death Storm, they destroyed it preemptively, snuffing out the threat before it could grow.
Then.
They launched a capsule filled with nanobots into the Creators' Eye of the Storm.
The capsule was tiny, no bigger than a grain of millet.
Yet once it hatched within the Eye of the Storm, it took only a few short years for the countless nanobots to devour every metal vein and precision instrument in this once-prosperous peninsula civilization.
These nanobots reproduced by consuming metal.
With a sufficient supply of metal, they could replicate once every three minutes.
At that terrifying rate, every precision instrument belonging to the Creators Civilization became their food. In an incredibly short time, they reduced a highly intelligent, orderly fourth-order civilization to primitives who could rely only on wooden wheels and glass containers!
But this was only the first stage of the Metal Raiders' Cataclysm weapon.
Once the nanobots had devoured every last piece of metal in the Eye of the Storm, they would slowly decay and die over the following months without sustenance. But they would not die inertly. The moment they died, they would become dust as dense as air and dissolve into it.
This metallic dust was undoubtedly lethal.
Worse still, as it continued to oxidize, it would gradually turn dark red, forming what the people of Night's Veil Land called the Scarlet Mist.
This was the