Gray Chronicle

Chapter 10 Departure

Before setting off, Old Tok checked everyone's equipment.

He didn't inspect it with his mouth. He opened Lynn's bag and took things out one by one. The Holy Iron Sword—he pulled it out to check the blade, then put it back in to test the tightness of the scabbard. The Tempered Dagger—he scraped the etched lines on the blade with his thumb to make sure the lines weren't broken. The Rune Hammer—he felt the rune stone at the end of the handle. The Etched Mask—he held it up to the firelight to check the filter for cracks.

Then he picked up Lynn's leather boots. The sole of the left boot had worn a hole, and the edges were hardened by the corrosion of dust.

"Take it off."

Lynn took off his boots. The dwarf pulled a piece of old leather from under his anvil, cut it into the shape of a shoe sole with scissors, and sewed it on. The stitches were rough but neat, with each stitch spaced the same. After sewing the sole, he sewed the upper—the right boot was also taken apart and re-sewn.

"The underground river is full of water. The soles of my shoes will get so soft that I can't walk."

He tossed the sewn boots to Lynn, then turned to Ellie.

Ellie didn't have leather boots. She wore a pair of leggings made of rags and fish skin, her toes sticking out. Old Tok looked at her for two seconds, then pulled a thin piece of sheet metal, a little larger than his palm, from the junkyard. He cut it into two sole shapes and rounded the edges. He then took a piece of unburnt rabbit skin from the hearth and cut it into two straps with iron shears.

"Place it under your feet. The pebbles at the bottom of the underground river are sharper than the shards of glass in the alley."

He didn't look at her face when he spoke. He only looked at her leggings.

Ellie took the tin insoles and rabbit skin straps. She didn't say thank you—thank yous weren't common in the Lower Town—but she tied the shoes more slowly than usual while squatting by the fire.

Kirk leaned against the doorway. Old Tok tossed him an iron rod—not a weapon, but a piece of discarded iron pipe, about forearm length, sharpened at one end.

"You don't know how to use a knife. You don't need to learn—just stab."

Kirk caught the iron rod, twirled it between his thick knuckles, and then tucked it into his belt.

Finally, the dwarf took a small cloth bag from under the anvil, untied it, and poured out a few grayish-green, coarse salt-sized crystalline particles. He divided the particles into three portions, wrapped them in scraps of cloth, and gave them to the three men.

"Ash-corrosion crystallized salt. Not for eating—keep it in your inner pocket. In some places in the underground river, the concentration of ash corrosion can corrode ordinary iron into holes, but if you have a higher concentration of crystallization on you, the lower concentration of ash particles will go around you. This is a folk method used by ore hunters, and it's not written in any book."

Lynn put the cloth into the pocket inside his chest. The grains pressed against his ribs through the fabric, creating an irregular, hard sensation.

"Five days." Old Tok sat back down by the fire. "The underground river tributary has no day or night—you have to calculate the time yourself. You can walk for a maximum of twelve hours a day. If you exceed twelve hours, your perception will be wrong, and you'll take the wrong turn. Most people who take the wrong turn in the underground river never come out again."

His voice was flat.

"You need to pick the coldest ore samples from the bottom of the river. The ore at the bottom of underground rivers is kept at low temperatures all year round, and the lower the temperature, the higher the iron content. Put your hand in the water and feel it—if it's so cold that your fingertips go numb, that's what you want."

"Don't draw the survey too detailed. The guild doesn't need an accurate map, but rather the river's course and branch markings. However, you must indicate the changes in ash concentration—take a sample from the rock face every 300 steps along the river, put it in a cloth bag, and mark the location. When you get back, use the guild's test strips to check the concentration. The concentration distribution map is more valuable than the map itself, so don't miss anything."

Then he closed his eyes.

"Come back alive. Five days later, the finger wearing the graduation ring will still be there. Everything else can be thrown away."

Lynn pulled up the iron gate of the waterway.

Just turned around—

"stop."

Old Tok's voice rang out behind him. It wasn't the declarative tone he used when giving instructions earlier—it was the clanging of iron ingots as he shouted "Stop!" while forging iron.

You owe me an answer.

Lynn turned around. The dwarf stood by the fire pit, holding the holy iron sword in his hand—not drawn from Lynn's waist, Lynn hadn't noticed when it had been taken. His thick fingers slid along the gray etched lines of the blade to the tip.

"You still call me by my name—and you still haven't told me why. That day by the fire in the canal, you asked me if I knew how to forge iron, and I knew something was off—you weren't asking about the technique, the iron, or the quenching temperature. You were asking 'Do you want to?' Most people don't ask that. Most people come here for weapons, armor, and escape routes. You want more than that."

Old Tok stared at him, his hand holding the knife as if it were something heavy.

"What exactly do you want?"

Lynn didn't answer immediately. He looked at the holy iron sword in the dwarf's hand, then at the dwarf's face.

"I want rules."

"What rules?"

"The real reason why this world doesn't award stones to people in the lower city. Why skills can solidify. What exactly is Ash Erosion Crystal? All the questions that the temple forbade to ask, written in the 'Oracle'—I want to know their answers. Not answers told to me by others—answers I'll find with my own hands."

Silence. A piece of firewood in the hearth has split open.

Old Tork remained silent for longer than usual. Then he sheathed the Holy Iron Sword back into the leather scabbard at Lynn's waist. The movement was slow; he pressed his palm against the end of the hilt after inserting it fully.

"I know a man. He said something similar forty years ago. Then he died. Not murdered—he was standing by the furnace, forging iron, when he suddenly fell silent, looked down at his hands, as if he could see something no one else could. Then he put the hammer on the anvil, walked into the deepest part of the underground river, and never came out again."

"who is he?"

"My master," old Tok sat back down by the fire, "the highest-ranking rune master in the Hephaestus Federation—he only ever took three disciples in his entire life. One died, one was banished, and one dared not forge iron again."

He did not explain whether the one who "died" was the one who went into the dark river or Bahrain, who was "expelled," or who "dared not forge iron anymore."

Lynn waited a while. The dwarf showed no sign of speaking again.

He turned and pulled up the iron gate of the waterway. Ellie and Kirk were already waiting at the entrance of the tributary.

Kirk went in first. The iron rod, tucked behind his waist, got stuck when he went in.

Then Ellie vanished into the rift in a flash.

Lynn glanced back before crawling inside. The dwarf sat by the fire pit, back straight, without turning around.

The narrow section of the underground passage was even darker than a few days ago. Ash crystals seeped from the cracks in the brickwork; in some places, they were no longer powdery but had formed clusters the size of rice grains. Lynn slipped past sideways, his right hand remaining firmly on the hilt of the Holy Iron Sword. The warmth emanating from the blade never ceased.

As we emerged from the crevice, the sound of the underground river rushed towards us.

The dome of the underground river was higher than the old canal. At least three stories high. Stalactites hung upside down from the top, jaggedly intersecting with the stalagmites rising from the bottom. On the rock walls of the underground river, eroded crystals grew in the kind of "orderly pattern" he had seen on scrap iron—emerging from the cracks in the rock, branching, converging, and branching again.

It's not chaotic. It follows some unseen pattern.

He thought of old Tok's master. Standing by the furnace, he looked down at his hands, then put down the hammer and walked into the deepest part. What did he see?

Now is not the time to think about this.

Lynn raised the torch. The main current of the underground river was flowing more slowly than he had expected—the surface of the water even appeared still.

Ellie squatted by the river, dipping her fingers into the water.

"Cold. Colder than the water I used for quenching last night."

The water temperature of the underground river is lower than that of ordinary groundwater. Old Tok said that the colder the place, the higher the iron content—there should be mineral veins buried under this river.

"Start with the main current." Lynn spread the parchment on his lap. "Mark the main current first, then the tributaries—Ellie, you're twenty paces ahead. Kirk, you're ten paces behind. Anything wrong—stop before you speak."

Ellie nodded. Her figure had already disappeared into the shadows ahead.

Kirk gripped the iron bar and stepped back ten paces. In the dim firelight, only his muscular silhouette was visible.

Lynn stuck the torch into a crack in the rock wall, took out a charcoal stick, and marked the first dot on the parchment—

First survey point of the main underground river: western rock wall, ash erosion concentration—visually estimated to be medium to high. Crystal morphology: thin plate-like crystal clusters, orderly distributed.

Kirk's voice came from behind me.

"Lynn".

Two words, but the tone is wrong.

Lynn turned around. Kirk stood ten paces away behind a stalagmite, his iron rod already drawn from his waist and held in his hand.

"Your knife is glowing."

Lynn lowered his head. The Holy Iron Sword was tucked into its leather sheath at his waist, with a small section of the hilt protruding—the gray-etched edge was gleaming. The brightness was not high, but it was steady and consistent.

He drew his knife.

The entire knife was glowing. The gray etched patterns on the spine of the blade shone a dark green in the dark river environment, as if a low-temperature fire was burning inside the blade.

"Concentration change." Lynn held the knife up to his eyes. "The ash concentration—in this underground river—is higher than in the old canal."

He crouched down and dipped the tip of the Holy Iron Sword into the river. The moment the tip touched the water's surface, the brightness of the gray-etched patterns doubled. Then, a large patch of faint fluorescence appeared beneath the surface of the dark river—not the light reflected from the Holy Iron Sword, but the glow of the stones at the riverbed themselves.

Ash crystallization. There is a large amount of ash crystallization on the riverbed.

"This is the ore the guild wants." Lynn stood up. "It's not iron ore—it's ash-corroded crystal ore."

Ellie, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped. She raised her hand—stop, don't move.

The three people stood still in the darkness.

Then Lynn heard it.

Upstream from the underground river, beneath the sound of the water, there is an extremely regular tapping sound. It's not water hitting rocks—the rhythm is too even. Every three beats, there's a pause, then three more beats.

It sounds like someone is knocking on stones. But there shouldn't be anyone in the underground river.

The knocking stopped.

Instead, a different sound emerged—lighter, thinner, and closer.

It looks like countless tiny feet walking down the rock face.