As usual, the team skillfully skirted around the edge of the hall. They had walked this road so many times that they could remember which doorways had too thick moss and which ones had a large ditch next to them.
They arrived at the same tunnel entrance. Green shook the small iron bottle gently to confirm that the rustling sound was normal 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 narrow trace, roughly similar to the cross-section of the piece of rusty iron, slightly higher than the plane, and showing a reddish-brown color that fit perfectly with it, like the weird texture of mixing rust and rock.
They are blended like oil paints and nested into each other, making it easy for people who have seen similar things to associate them.
This is the place where the blade was first discovered. 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 sword blade stretched out in despair.
"Do you have a pickaxe?"
"Can I have an armor-piercing hammer?" A weapon with a hammer head and a pointed 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 sieve-like cavity. The interior contained some unidentifiable semi-liquid and granular mixtures, which were scattered into a layer with the water.
dirty colors.
Much more than the sword blade was inserted, the masonry was partially replaced, and the sight of festering abscesses was particularly bizarre when it appeared on an inorganic body.
Those things were quickly washed away, and the water filled the fine holes. The bubbles turned out the humus deeper and spread out in threads, like the webbed whiskers of some marine burrowing creatures.
"Let's move on." Kraft washed away the residue on the hammer head in the water, toasted it with a torch and returned it.
The little episode was quickly left behind, but the strange feeling at 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. Only upon closer inspection, it can be seen that they were man-made and carved with a sharp instrument that was not suitable for drilling.
The lines intersect with each other in a paradoxical pattern, trying to combine into some kind of pattern with specific meaning, but they fail without exception. No matter where you start from, they all fall apart after several turns, leaving you hesitant and at a loss as to what to do.
Like a painter who woke up late at night, trying to retain the things that passed by in his dream, but the painting speed could 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". There are more than one kind of carvings that can be seen, with different techniques and intensities, which are hard to count. As the road extends upward, they become more and more frequent and dense, until they begin to take shape.
In a corner near the ground, the first complete closed shape appeared.
It was a crooked geometric figure with six straight sides, and the lines tended to expand to the surroundings, but ultimately stopped there. There were several pieces of sieve-like loose stone dyed with different colors scattered next to it.
It seems that something was mixed with the masonry, and the weak parts of it decayed and drained 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 of seeing the scene.
When I saw familiar symbols, I had a false vision because of my 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 polygonal lines extending around it, and the infinitely expanding 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, mainly concentrated on the outer edges, apparently contain a very high metal 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 examples were seen.
Their position has far exceeded the previous exploration distance, and the passage is still extending. The carvings and loose structures that can cause trypophobia have begun to decrease, replaced by some familiar slender marks, which smoothly cut through the masonry and penetrate deeply.
Among them, the cross section is smooth and flawless.
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 scream to the whole team being on alert.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! The illuminated armor has a layer of calcium shell-like surface adhered to the inside. Something has modified it, and now it has disappeared.
The fracture at the damaged area looks quite fresh compared to the overall one.
They are recent human traces.
The priest tried to pick it up with his sword. The failure of this move made him notice that the lower half of the armor was firmly stuck to the ground. The stone and rusty iron were fused 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. He noticed that there were small things like shelled creatures moving around, trying to escape from the vicinity of the fracture and hiding 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 due to changes in air pressure.
It is only about the size of an adult's thumb knuckle, and its structure resembles that of a snail from a distance. However, no snail's shell would be such a pale white color, and it also has soft tissue that wraps around half of its hard body.
Those soft things do not stick to a fixed shape, slowly contracting to create filament-like tentacles, searching for the point of force in the air. And 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 opened the distance in time to prevent it from succeeding.
The software calmly resumed its slow disguise and was put into a thick round glass bottle by Craft.
"What the hell?"
"Not sure, let's first rule out Dunling's local special species of snails."
