This is the bonus chapter for reaching 2100 Powerstones.
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"Look all you want. It's not like you're going to figure anything out anyway."
Zeke calmly placed the Crafting Table horizontally right in front of Vashtorr.
Staring at this object that he had spent quite a bit of effort to finally obtain, Vashtorr engaged his entire logical processing capacity, attempting to analyze this thing before him that completely violated the physical laws of the universe.
Material: Wood.
And then... and then there was no "and then." He couldn't analyze absolutely anything else.
Vashtorr was forced to admit that there was actually something in this universe that He, the Lord of the Soul Forges, was incapable of understanding.
Despite His unwillingness, Vashtorr still extremely reluctantly opened His clawed palm, fulfilling His promise.
A sphere radiating a nauseating aura levitated above it: the rotting Plagueheart.
This was a blasphemous relic that Vashtorr had forcefully seized from a dying world on the edge of the Eye of Terror, and it was the final fragment.
It writhed, every inch of its rotting epidermis spewing the curses of the Warp outward.
Zeke glanced at the JEI interface in his field of vision, confirming that Vashtorr hadn't brought a fake to pass off as the real thing.
"Stop." A hand covered in ceramite armor clamped down on Zeke's wrist.
The Lion stared intently at the Plagueheart. His acute senses could smell the rancid stench of decay contained within it.
The Lion absolutely did not dare to imagine what kind of hellish nightmare Caliban would turn into if this thing were fused with it.
"You intend to implant this... filth into my homeworld?" Although the Lion directed this at Vashtorr, deep down, Zeke felt the Lion was also directing the implication at him.
The Lion knew that if even a Warp demigod coveted this Old Ones' vault, the things hidden inside must be incredibly precious.
But if the price of obtaining this vault was sacrificing his homeworld of Caliban, the Lion would never agree.
Vashtorr let out a cold, hard sneer.
"Wyrmwood being able to reassemble from fragments relied entirely upon my dark intellect and the mighty power of the Warp in the first place. Every inch of its soil is carved with my mark. Your so-called homeland died long ago. What remains is nothing but a hollow shell stuffed full of curses."
The Lion's eyes turned piercingly cold. Due to his fury, his face—stern as a marble sculpture—appeared even more imposing.
He felt a profound sense of powerlessness, a powerlessness born from helplessly watching his home be reduced to the plaything of a Chaos God.
"Lion, look me in the eye." Zeke shook off the armored grip. "Why are you so certain that your Caliban will develop in a bad direction? Just think about what Wyrmwood looks like right now."
The Lion fell into his memories, recalling the sights he had seen upon first setting foot on the reassembled Wyrmwood.
The forests were nothing but pitch-black, dead wood entirely devoid of life. Industrial hellscapes built of brass and steel, and fortresses stuffed with pollutants could be seen everywhere.
What flowed in the rivers was either sparkling molten metal or bubbling slime that looked like tar.
The current Wyrmwood was nothing more than another planet resurrected on Caliban's corpse, possessing the form but lacking the soul.
Zeke looked at his Blueprints. With the newly unlocked WorldEdit mod, he felt that changing a planet's ecosystem wouldn't be a difficult task for him.
"Lion, after I craft the Key, I will return a Wyrmwood to you with green hills and clear waters."
"Do I even have a choice anymore?" The Lion sighed deeply.
He looked at Zeke, those golden eyes revealing a desperate, all-or-nothing resolve.
"I have no other path left to walk," the Lion mocked himself. "Rather than letting it be reduced to a furnace in the hands of a daemon, I would rather entrust it to a man capable of creating miracles. Do it, Zeke."
Zeke turned around and placed the Plagueheart and the Tuchulcha Engine into the 3x3 grid of the Crafting Table.
"I'd like to see how you, a mere human, intend to forge the fragments together without my help." Under Vashtorr's almost solidified stare,
There were no tedious, convoluted rituals. Those inherently incompatible relics were forcibly reconstructed upon the Crafting Table.
A pitch-black, metallic heart appeared in Zeke's hand. The Key was half-complete.
"Impossible..." Vashtorr took a step back.
Even if the Old Ones themselves returned, fusing these fragments would require a tremendously long time. Yet in the hands of this human, it was as simple as snapping together building blocks.
An unprecedented mix of curiosity and fear intertwined in the daemon's heart. He subconsciously pulled out two pieces of scrap metal and mimicked Zeke's actions on the Crafting Table.
But apart from the dull clanking of metal striking wood, He achieved absolutely nothing.
He desperately wanted to know how this Crafting Table worked. Vashtorr scratched His head and ears like an anxious monkey.
He suddenly felt that cooperating with this human might not be such a bad choice after all. This human seemed far more interesting than He had initially imagined.
Holding the mechanical heart, Zeke browsed through JEI. The next step was very simple.
It just involved directly using local stones on Wyrmwood to build an altar, and then placing the mechanical heart upon it. That way, the Key would be complete.
"Lion, can you withdraw all the Dark Angels still stationed on Wyrmwood? The commotion from crafting the Key probably won't be small."
Receiving Zeke's prompt, the Lion withdrew the remaining Dark Angels from Wyrmwood.
As the final batch of Dark Angels' Thunderhawk gunships evacuated the surface, Zeke stood alone on a desolate, corrupted plateau, beginning to execute the final step.
The Nether Portal was already established behind him; if anything went wrong later, he could immediately run away.
Zeke built the stone altar according to the template in his mind.
Once the altar was complete, Zeke pulled out the mechanical heart. A powerful attractive force emanated from the altar.
The mechanical heart flew from Zeke's hand and landed perfectly in the center of the altar.
Metallic threads spewed outward from the heart, connecting to every stone of the altar like pulsing arteries. The entire altar mutated into a mighty construct known as the "Dissonance Engine."
Thump. Thump.
First, it was the beating of the heart, and then the surrounding environment began to beat along with it. The entire planet came alive.
A heaven-and-earth-shattering upheaval occurred from the inside out.
Metallic gears erupted from the ground. They interlocked and rotated against each other, the friction between their teeth sparking blinding showers of sparks several kilometers long.
The supernatural landmass of this planet underwent an extreme, violent reconstruction, transforming into what Vashtorr called the Key.
"This won't do. The Lion is still waiting to move back home." As Zeke spoke, he pulled out his Blueprint. A new option had appeared on it: WorldEdit.
"The creator of this Key clearly had terrible aesthetic taste. I'm going to give it a new skin." Zeke tapped into the WorldEdit interface.
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If we somehow reach TOP 3 before the reset I will upload 3 more bonus chapters excluding the normal bonus chapter.