As usual, the party skillfully skirted the edge of the Great Hall. They had traveled this route so many times that they could remember which doorway had too much moss beside it and where the deep ditch lay.
They reached the identical-looking tunnel entrance. Green gave the small iron bottle a gentle shake, confirmed that it rattled as usual, and went inside.
After only a few minutes, Green stopped in front of a niche, brushed away the newly settled silt, and showed Kraft the surface of the stone bricks.
It was a short, narrow mark, roughly the same cross-section as the rusted iron fragment. It rose slightly above the surface and was a reddish brown that matched it closely, with the strange texture of rust mixed into rock.
The two seemed blended like oil paints, interlocking with each other. Anyone who had seen similar things would easily make the connection.
This was where that piece of sword blade had first been discovered. More tiny marks surrounded it, like melted grease churning in a soup pot, though the surface remained perfectly still.
It was hard to describe the feeling. It was as if something had fallen into a solid liquid, been swallowed up and dissolved, and only a piece of sword blade had desperately stuck out.
"Do we have a pickaxe?"
"Would an Armor-Piercing Hammer do?" Someone handed him a weapon with a hammerhead at one end and a pointed beak at the other.
Kraft took it, tested the point against the stone, then raised it high and brought it down.
The point did not bounce back at once. Instead, it sank deep into the stone, chipping away at the uneven, brittle rock and exposing a spongy cavity riddled with sieve-like holes. Inside was an unidentifiable semiliquid, a mixture of particles