As usual, the team skillfully skirted the edge of the hall. They had walked this road so many times that they could remember which doorway had too thick moss and which had a large ditch.
They arrived at the same tunnel entrance. Green shook the small iron bottle gently to confirm that the rustling sound was correct before entering.
After only a few minutes of marching, Green stopped in front of an alcove, pushed aside the newly deposited mud, and showed Craft the surface of the stone bricks.
It was a short and narrow trace, roughly similar to the cross-section of the rusty iron, slightly higher than the plane, and showing a reddish-brown color that fit perfectly with it, like the weird texture of rust and rock mixed together.
They are blended and nested like oil paints, making it easy for people who have seen similar things to associate them with each other.
This is where the blade was first found. There are more fine traces around it, as if melted fat is rolling in a soup pot, but there is no ripple on the surface.
It's hard to describe the feeling, it's like something fell into a hard liquid, was swallowed up and dissolved, and only a blade stretched out desperately.
"Do you have a pickaxe?"
"Can I have an armor-breaking hammer?" A weapon with a hammer head and a sharp beak on both sides was handed over.
Kraft took it, made a gesture with the tip against the stone surface, raised it high and smashed it down.
The sharp mouth did not pop open immediately. Instead, it was embedded deep inside, cutting through the uneven brittle rock, exposing a sponge-like sieve-like cavity. The interior contained some unidentifiable semi-liquid and granular mixture, which was scattered into a layer with the water. dirty colors.
More than just the sword blade was inserted, the masonry was partially replaced, and the sight of festering abscesses was particularly grotesque when it appeared on an inorganic body.
Those things were quickly washed away, and the water filled the fine holes. The bubbles turned up the humus deeper and spread out in threads, like the webbed beards of some marine burrowing creatures.
"Keep going." Kraft washed away the residue on the hammer head in the water, toasted it with a torch and returned it.
The episode was soon left behind, but the strange feeling of that moment remained deeply.
I don't know if it was a psychological effect, but the monks began to feel that the tunnel was not so clean. Every slightly different stain and crack was magnified subjectively, making people involuntarily guess their meaning.
As if in response to this suspicion, the channel began to reveal more things in detail.
At first, there were some insignificant superficial damages, but upon closer inspection, it can be seen that they were man-made, carved with a sharp instrument that was not suitable for drilling.
The lines intersect in a paradoxical pattern, trying to form some meaningful pattern, but fail without exception. No matter where I start from, it falls apart after several twists and turns, leaving me hesitant and at a loss as to what to do.
Like a painter who wakes up late at night, trying to retain the things that wandered through his dream, but the painting speed can never catch up with the things left behind.
But that thing was so profound and huge that it occupied all their thoughts and could not be dispelled or given up.
Yes, it's "them". More than one kind of carvings can be seen, with different techniques and intensities, which are difficult to count. As the road extends upward, they become more frequent and dense, until they begin to take shape.
In some corner near the ground the first closed complete shape appeared.
It was a crooked geometric figure with six straight sides. The lines tended to expand to the surroundings, but in the end they stopped there. There were several pieces of sieve-like loose stone dyed with different colors scattered next to it.
It seems that something is mixed with the masonry, and the weak parts of it decay and drain away. The remaining structure is similar to the structure seen before when the masonry was broken open.
When Green held the lantern and looked closer, the darkness in the fine holes - or something else - shrank like an illusion and retreated deeper, leaving behind an empty, moist inner surface like a fold.
The priest turned to look at the others, asking them with his eyes whether they had seen the scene just now, but it was too fast, and the monks further away did not understand the meaning at all. Even he himself was not sure whether it was because he saw familiar symbols and was suffering from nervousness. The professor seemed to be touched and blocked the students who were approaching, but what caught his attention was the geometric figure.
Each of the rough hexagons has folded lines extending around it, and the infinite expansion part is not shown, which is just a corner of the whole picture.
Previously, he thought it was simply some kind of symbolic symbol, but it seemed to have other meanings, coming from something that would leave a very deep impression on people.
"What are these?" Looking at the eroded parts of the stone bricks, Green felt that they were not completely irregular. He could vaguely see some kind of outline from them, and he only needed to change his perspective slightly.
Some parts, concentrated mainly on the outer edges, apparently contain a very high metallic content, exceeding that of any known iron ore.
No one could explain the cause, which only made the team more vigilant.
The wildly arranged geometric lines continue to grow until they cover the walls and feet, overlapping and interlacing with each other.
Hexagons of different sizes began to appear in patches, often surrounded by suspicious loose hole-like areas. This feeling became clearer as more cases were seen.
Their position has far exceeded the previous exploration distance, and the passage is still extending. The scratches and loose structures that can cause trypophobia have begun to decrease, and are replaced by some familiar slender marks, which smoothly cut through the masonry and penetrate deeply into it, with a smooth cross-section.
When passing by an alcove, a monk exclaimed, drew his weapon and pointed at the objects piled inside.
Judging from the bloated outline, it was a pair of armor, which was stuck right here due to its location.
The helmet and lower body were missing, the arm armor that had lost its connection was washed away, and the obviously damaged breastplate, although severely rusted, still stood in place, unmoving.
Kraft, who reacted the fastest, had already opened the seal of the grease can with one hand, but there was no change in the thing from the exclamation to the whole team being on alert.
The illuminated armor has a layer of calcium shell-like surface adhered to the inside. Something has modified it, and it is now missing. The fractures at the damaged areas look relatively fresh compared to the whole.
It is a recent human trace.
The priest tried to provoke it with his sword. The failure of this move made him notice that the lower half of the armor was firmly stuck to the ground. Stone and rusty iron merged with each other, and the joint surface was densely covered with a mesh-like loose structure.
The weird and painful conjecture finally took shape - it seemed that some kind of unexplainable dislocation had occurred, overlapping with the brick wall, and the hard armor that did not play any protective role remained, while the fragile contents quickly decayed and passed away, or became Instead of materials for constructing other soft-bodied organisms, leaving behind sieve-like holes.
The light and heat of the torch caused some kind of reaction, and he noticed that there were small things like shelled creatures moving around, trying to escape from the vicinity of the fracture and hide in the shadows inside the armor.
"Professor Kraft?"
Without him having to say anything, a pair of long tweezers appeared in Kraft's hand, clamped the thing firmly, and used a little force to separate it from the calcified inner surface, making a clear sound like a small suction cup peeling off as the air pressure changed.
It was only about the size of an adult's thumb knuckle, and its structure resembled that of a snail from a distance. However, no snail's shell would have such a pale white color, and it also had soft tissue that wrapped around half of its hard body.
Those soft things do not stick to a fixed shape, and slowly expand and contract to create filament-like tentacles, searching for the point of force in the air. What looks like a shell is actually a dull white stone,
When a monk came closer to observe, the tentacles suddenly accelerated and extended, stabbing towards his eyeball, trying to get into it. But the professor responded faster and distanced himself in time before he could succeed.
The software calmly resumed its slow disguise and was put into a thick round glass bottle by Craft.
"What the hell?"
"Not sure, first rule out the special local species of snails in Dunling."