"I have exhausted almost every scrap of material I brought with me," William muttered, wiping a layer of grime from his face.
He patted the dozens of high-grade storage rings hanging from his belt, each one packed to the brim with his specialised gears. He felt a rare moment of satisfaction; he had enough to begin the takeover of the world's core. "Now... It's time to see what that cloud actually is."
During his week of forging, the blue cloud had continued its slow, agonising crawl across the horizon. Its behaviour had shifted. For the first few days, it had covered miles in a matter of hours.
But for the last three days, its advance had slowed to a snail's pace, as if it were wading through a sea of thick molasses. It took nearly twenty-four hours to cover the same distance it once had in four.
