Chapter 118

It is well known that underground caves do not spontaneously produce glass. Deep-dwelling creatures are unlikely to be able to fire ceramics, so these items must have come from humans—and very likely not from local villagers.

Kraft discarded the small shards of glass, put on gloves, and cleared away the mixture of dust and broken stones on the ground, retrieving larger surviving fragments.

They appeared to be the thick, rounded bases of cups or bottles, with clear signs of artificial firing; the craftsmanship was inferior to Vechum's, but after wiping off the grime, their relatively good transparency became visible—light easily passed through the thick, more than a finger's width, casting irregular patches caused by uneven melting.

He unslung his scabbard and used its tip to pry apart the shards of the large ceramic vessel, revealing a residue clinging to the inner walls, ranging between yellow-brown and reddish-brown.

He pinched a pinch of it and detected the scent of old metal that had lost its oil film—poorly handled, left damp too long until ruined.

The residue cracked and flaked off like slightly damp flour under light pressure, dispersing into a dusty substance; some inevitably entered his nasal passages, carrying a faint sour note within the metallic, rust-like stench.

The uneven granular particles looked like common rock—such slag deposits are typical after impure minerals are calcined.

"Rust powder?" Under Kraft's threatening gaze, William stopped tasting it, but that didn't stop him from recognizing what it was—he often rubbed it off old iron parts in the cabin.

As for why anyone would grind iron rust into powder, the captain had no idea, but the rust powder reminded him where he'd seen these green minerals before: "I remember—I've seen these green things before, but not like this. They were ground into powder and mixed into ink, given to me for drawing parchment sea charts."

"You actually recognize it?"

"It tastes peculiar—somewhat like iron rust and red iron ore." William licked his lips, savoring it. Perhaps due to an instinctive wariness of injury, this peculiar taste, close to biting one's lip and drawing blood, was easily memorable. "Any ideas?"

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Kraft was using his meager chemical knowledge to analyze the pile of debris. Unfortunately, due to changes in the exam format back then, this otherworldly soul had never deeply studied chemistry; even medical chemistry was barely touched, his level roughly equivalent to middle school.

Still, it wasn't entirely useless—he could roughly guess it was some kind of iron salt, likely turning into rust when calcined—no, he meant iron oxide.

"I have two pieces of news."

"Another good and bad one?" William showed remarkable acceptance—or rather, compared to what he'd endured before, this was nothing. "I don't want to choose. Just give me one."

"We're inside the alchemist's mine." Kraft picked up a green crystal fragment broken off from a raw stone, crudely snapped at its base and piled beside the apparatus for easy access. "We've figured out our target isn't some unique rare mineral—it was already used in ink."

The green crystal's appearance suggests ferrous ions; given the product was sulfuric acid, it likely contained sulfur anions, possibly with added water to form crystals.

Solved—it appears to be primitive dry distillation, collecting heated products to obtain sulfuric acid.

Congratulations to this talented amateur chemist: journeyed to remote, desolate lands, discovered a beautiful mineral long already known, and under the guiding principle of "extracting the essence of ore," accidentally stumbled upon dry distillation, ultimately producing sulfuric acid—and killing himself.

Out of secrecy, or perhaps genuine ignorance that such substances existed elsewhere—used only minimally and supplied as powder—he insisted on mining in a geographically and culturally isolated environment.

This made information leakage extremely difficult; under strict control of key personnel, reverse tracing from outside inward became impossible, directly causing the technology—and the people—to vanish together.

This prematurely aborted invention would have been buried forever with its inventor and the terrifying cause of his death—until one day someone, bored, tossed some ink ingredient into a distillation flask to play.

Then a clever bastard dug up clues from a stroke victim, traveled thousands of miles to arrive here, and caught the final wave of misfortune years after the accident.

It felt like finding a treasure map after immense hardship, only to discover it pointed to a crooked tree at the entrance of your own village.

"We don't need to risk developing this mine—just go back and ask where this stuff is produced. It's absurdly simple."

William froze for a moment; the green glow that had seemed worthless just minutes ago now seemed to shimmer, edged in bright gold. "You said you had two pieces of news. What's the bad one?"

"The one I just told you was the bad one."

"Huh?"

"We're inside the alchemist's mine for extracting raw materials." Kraft repeated the fact, slipped the crystal into his pocket, and lit another torch as he walked forward. "I hope you still remember what happened in this mine—or would calling it the 'Old Mine' better trigger your memory?"

They stepped over ceramic shards and glass fragments, crossed the broken-handled pickaxe, and saw chisel marks on the cave walls—William quickly realized what their greatest problem was.

"Collapse…"

In the area with the densest mining traces, an entire section had collapsed, blocking the passage with rocks. The arrival of the excavators wasn't the direct cause of the miners' deaths, but it delivered the fatal blow to the already weakened structure.

On the massive boulder blocking their path, chisel marks converged into several small pits; a rusted iron pickaxe, its head broken off, lay discarded nearby.

"Can we try going back and finding another route?"

Kraft slowly shook his head, lighting another torch—he'd brought plenty, but they couldn't last forever. "We probably don't have time to find a second path."

"So close… just a little, just a little more?" William shoved the rock with all his strength, recoiling several steps from the counterforce—the stone didn't budge. After traveling so far, escaping from that monstrous entity, standing inside the treasure they sought—only to be blocked at the final step?

They were likely no more than a few dozen steps from the outside world, but the collapsed rocks had turned this stretch into an impassable chasm—impossible to dig through by human strength alone.

"Will those things add two more faces now?" Repeated cycles of hope and despair battered the captain. They were truly at their wit's end—Kraft's "magic" could only move them across layers, not conjure a path out of nowhere.

Kraft remained silent. If anyone felt regret, it was him—more than William. Compared to the desire to return and tell stories, he had at least half a person's height of writing unfinished; he didn't want to spend his final days deep underground with arthropods and shelled worms.

But this wasn't a problem he could solve. Unless he could summon a tunnel boring machine, how could he possibly dig through over ten meters of rock?

"We haven't even seen a single bone—probably all dragged away by those things…" William picked up a heavy piece of longstone and tried swinging it. He seemed determined to make one final, dignified stand.

That made sense. Along the way, they'd only seen alchemical apparatuses and pickaxes; combined with the local faces that had surfaced in their minds, it wasn't hard to guess what had happened to the victims.

【Tunnel boring machine?】

Kraft rubbed his chin, his mind suddenly sparked with a dangerous idea—he realized this might not be pure fantasy after all.