He looked at Dust. Dust whined.

He didn't place a pearl. He didn't step inside. Instead, he took out a single, pristine Netherite Ingot and tossed it into the launcher's core.

He placed a single, ordinary Cobblestone into the hopper on the control panel. The machine hummed. Then, he threw a lever.

Kael was thrown back by a shockwave that didn't move air, but space . He watched, jaw agape, as the Netherite Ingot didn't fly upward. It unfolded . It reversed its own trajectory through time. For a single, terrifying second, he saw the ghostly images of every furnace that had ever smelted it, every arm that had ever mined it, all the way back to the primordial chunk of Ancient Debris floating in the Nether's magma sea.

Then, the Tuff Launcher fired.