As usual, the team skilfully skirted the edge of the hall, a path they had traversed so many times that they could remember which doorway was too thick with moss and which had a large ditch next to it.

They reached the mouth of the tunnel, which was indistinguishable, and Green shook the small iron kettle to make sure the rustle was as usual.

After only a few minutes of travel, Green stopped in front of an alcove to remove the newly deposited silt and show Kraft the surface of the stone bricks.

It was a narrow mark, roughly similar to the cross-section of the rusted iron, slightly above the plane, showing a reddish-brown color that fits it perfectly, like the strange texture of the rust block mixed with the rock.

They are blended and nested within each other like oil paints, and it is easy to associate them with those who have seen similar things.

This is where the blade was first found. There are more traces of fine crumbs around, as if melted grease is tumbling in a soup pot, but there are no waves on the surface.

It's hard to describe the feeling, like something has fallen into a hard liquid, swallowed and dissolved, only to reach out in despair with a blade of the sword.

"Is there a pickaxe?"

"Is the armor-piercing hammer okay?" A weapon flanked by a hammerhead and a pointed beak was handed over.

Kraft took it, gestured with the tip to the stone face, and raised it high and smashed it down.

Instead of popping open immediately, the spout is embedded deep inside, chiseling through the uneven brittle rock, exposing a sponge sieve-like cavity that contains an unrecognizable mixture of semi-fluids and particles that disperse with the water in a layer of foul color.

It was much more than the blade of the sword, the masonry was partially replaced, and the sight of an abscess-like burst on an inorganic object was particularly grotesque.

The things were quickly washed away, and the water filled the tiny holes, and the bubbles chipped out of the humus deeper and spread out in wisps, like the webbed whiskers of some marine caveman.

"Keep going." Kraft washed the residue from the hammer in the water, baked it with a torch, and returned it.

The vignette is quickly left behind, and the strange feeling of that moment remains deeply.

Unable to know if it was a psychological effect, the monks began to feel that the tunnels were not so clean, and every slightly different stain and crack was subjectively magnified, making it impossible to guess their meaning.

As if in response to this suspicion, the passage began to reveal something more in small pieces.

At first, it was a small and superficial damage, but only on closer inspection can be seen that it is man-made, carved with a sharp object that is not suitable for piercing.

The lines interlaced in paradoxical regularity, trying to combine them into some kind of meaningful pattern, but without exception, failed. No matter where you start your pen, it will fall apart after a few turns, and you will be at a loss.

Like a painter who wakes up in the middle of the night, trying to hold on to the things that swim through his dreams, the speed of painting is never able to catch up with the leftovers.

But that thing was so deep that it occupied all their minds and could not be dispelled or abandoned.

That's right, it's "them". More than one type of notch can be seen, and the intensity of the technique is difficult to count, and as the road stretches upward, it becomes more and more frequent and dense until it begins to take shape.

In a corner near the ground, the first fully closed shape appeared.

It was a crooked geometric figure with six straight edges, and the lines tended to expand around, but they eventually stopped there, and there were several patches of sifted-like loose stone that had been impregnated with different colors.

It seems that something is mixed with masonry, and the weak parts of it decay and drain away, and the structure that remains is similar to the structure seen when the masonry was smashed before.

As Green approached with the lantern, the darkness in the tiny holes—or something—flinched hallucinatingly, retreating deeper, leaving an empty pleated, damp inner surface.

The priest turned to look at the others and asked with his eyes if they had seen what had just happened, but it was so fast that the monks farther away did not grasp the meaning at all. Even he couldn't be sure if it was because he saw a familiar symbol, because he was nervous and had a trompe l'oeil.

The professor seemed to be touched to block the approaching student, but it was the geometry that caught his attention.

The rough hexagons are surrounded by polygonal lines, and the infinitely expanding parts are not drawn, which is a corner of the whole picture.

At first he thought it was simply some kind of symbolic symbol, but it seems that there is something else to it, and it comes from something that is itself extremely impressive.

"What the hell are these?" Looking at the eroded part of the stone brick, Green felt that it was not completely irregular, and that he could faintly discern some kind of outline from it, and only needed to change the perspective slightly.

Some of the sections, which are mainly concentrated on the outer rim, clearly contain a fairly high metal content, exceeding that of any known iron ore.

No one could explain why, it just made the team more vigilant.

The frenzied geometric lines continued to grow until they covered the walls and feet, overlapping and interlacing.

Hexagons of various sizes begin to appear in patches, often surrounded by suspicious loose porous areas, and the sensation becomes clearer as more cases are seen.

They were far beyond the distance they had ever explored, and the passage was still extended. The notches and loose structures that can cause a phobia of density have now begun to diminish in favor of long, familiar elongated marks that smoothly cut through the masonry and deep into it, with an immaculate cross-section.

Passing by an alcove, a monk exclaimed, drawing his weapon and pointing at the piled up objects.

Judging by its bloated silhouette, it was a pair of armor, which happened to be stuck here because of its location.

The helmet and lower body were missing, the disconnected armour was scattered, and the apparently damaged breastplate, despite the severe rust, remained in place.

Kraft, who was the quickest to react, had already lifted the grease canister with one hand, but nothing had changed from the exclamation to the team's alertness.

Inside the illuminated armor was a clamshell-like calcareous glossy surface that had been modified by something, but now nowhere to be found, the fracture was still fresh compared to the whole.

It is a recent anthropogenic trace.

The priest tried to provoke it with his sword. The failure of this move led him to notice that the lower part of the armor was firmly glued to the ground, and the stone and rust iron fused with each other, and the joint surface was densely covered with a loose structure of sieve holes.

The strange and painful conjecture finally took shape—it was like some inexplicable dislocation, overlapping the brick walls, leaving the hard armor that had no protection, and the fragile contents quickly decayed or became the material for the construction of some other soft creature, leaving sieve holes.

The light and heat of the torch caused a reaction, and he noticed the movement of a small, shell-covered creature-like thing, trying to escape near the breach and hide in the shadows of the armor.

"Professor Kraft?"

Needless to say, a long pair of tweezers appeared in Kraft's hand, clamping the thing firmly, and using a little force to separate it from the calcified surface, emitting a clear sound of air pressure change like a small suction cup peeling.

It is no larger than the knuckles of an adult's thumb, and its structure resembles that of a snail from a distance, but no snail's shell is so pale and has soft tissue that reversely wraps around half of its hard body.

Those soft things are not confined to fixed forms, and slowly stretch and fabricate filament-like tentacles, searching for a point of focus in the air. And what looks like a shell is actually a dull white stone,

As one of the monks approached to observe, the tentacles jerked and lengthened, stabbing at his eyeballs, attempting to burrow into them. But the professor responded faster, distanced himself in time, and didn't let it succeed.

The softness regained its sluggish camouflage as if nothing had happened, and was put into a thick, round glass bottle by Kraft.

"What the hell?"

"I don't know, first of all, exclude the special local breed of snails in Dunling."