The stone crunched between Maeve's teeth as she chewed it like a biscuit.
It made Vanessa curious enough to pick up a small fragment herself and put it in her mouth, only to spit it out with a grimace a moment later.
"Well? You can eat it, right?"
"Yes! And it's delicious... far tastier than Dream Creature meat... heavens, this is the best thing in the world!"
Maeve gnawed frantically at the stone as though possessed.
"Heavens, how did you ever think of eating this stone?!"
Maeve soon finished the stone, then eagerly picked up another rock from the Wood and took a tentative bite before spitting it out repeatedly.
"Only this kind of stone tastes good... did it come from the other side of the passage?"
"Yes."
Elliot had sent this stone here specifically to have Maeve try eating it.
As for why the idea had occurred to him...
It was because the Difference Engine had labeled the stone [Flesh Chunk].
"A stone dug out of the bottom of the Sea of the Moon turned out to be a [Flesh Chunk]."
Elliot narrowed his eyes.
This gave him a few ideas.
"Could Dream Creatures slowly turn into stone after death? Is the bottom of the Sea of the Moon not stone at all, but an accumulation of Dream Creature corpses?"
After giving it some thought, Elliot rejected the idea himself.
Quite a few Dream Creature corpses were stored at the Dock, and none showed any sign of turning into stone after death. There were also quite a few already stockpiled in the Dream.
Some sort of white light spots did drift out of them, however, slowly sinking into the Abyssal Sea.
But that was strange, too. Vanessa had specifically activated [Spirit Vision] to look when she went to the