Zee dropped to his knees on the jagged asteroid surface, his breathing ragged.
The blood-red notification burned in his vision, but he forced himself to look away from the prompt and down at the blue vein of ore glittering at his boots.
He had taken a life for this.
He wasn’t going to leave it behind.
Zee reached out, plunging his bare hands into the glowing rock.
[ EXTRACTING: LOW GRADE GRAVITY ORE ] [ MATERIAL QUANTITY: 50 UNITS ] [ ASSIGNING TO WORLD CORE ] The dark, damp sludge inside his sphere didn’t just absorb the ore, it attacked it.
Thick black tendrils erupted from the core, coiling tightly around the glowing blue minerals and pulling them beneath the murky surface.
A dense, hummed vibration echoed through the asteroid, rattling Zee’s teeth.
Inside the core, the gravity ore was crushed, dissolved, and fused into the organic sludge.
The murky crimson light inside the sphere suddenly turned a deep, abyssal black.
The dark mud began to compress.
The wet slime hardened, forming a heavy, dense mantle around a tiny pulsing center.
A faint gravitational pull pulled small dust particles toward the sphere, creating a miniature orbital field.
The core was no longer just a mass of floating waste.
It was solidifying.
[ ANOMALOUS CORE SOLIDIFICATION COMPLETE ] [ GRAVITY VECTOR MATRIX INTEGRATED ] [ WORLD CORE EVOLUTION: GRADE F 1 ] Zee felt a sudden, powerful surge of energy flow back into his body through his bond with the core.
His exhausted muscles burned away, replaced by a strange, hyper dense vitality.
The dark mud had taken the heavy density of the gravity ore and repurposed it into a living structural skeleton.
Zee stood up, raising his hand toward the floating dark sphere.
The low grade gravity around him shifted.
Loose rocks floated off the ground, drawn toward his hands before settling back into the dust.
He finally had a foundation.
Then, a massive wave of golden light shot out from his core, shattering the dark environment with a blinding glare.
The standard green interface of the System cracked open, overridden by a unique, blood crimson window.
[ SYSTEM CRITICAL ALERT ] [ ANOMALOUS CORE HAS REACHED MINIMUM DENSITY THRESHOLD ] [ INITIATING PRIMARY ARCHITECTURE PROTOCOL ] [ PLANET CREATION FUNCTION UNLOCKED ]