Gray Chronicle

Chapter 6 Undercurrents

The inner walls of the tributary were narrower than he had imagined.

The brick arch narrows here into a narrow crevice barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways. The stone walls on either side have been eroded by the underground river for hundreds of years, making them as slippery as worn bone. His wound on his left arm throbbed with dull pain from the pressure, but he dared not stop.

Ellie led the way for him. Her figure moved through the narrow crevice like water seeping into a crack in the stone, but she deliberately slowed down—not because she couldn't get through, but because Lynn couldn't.

"Lower your left shoulder a little more, yes, right there—avoid that protruding brick on the right."

They walked for about twenty minutes. The fissure suddenly widened at one point, becoming an underground cavity about three meters in diameter. Water from an underground river flowed through the bottom, so clear that the pebbles on the riverbed could be seen. The pebbles had peculiar shapes—not round, but multifaceted, as if deliberately cut by someone, or as if naturally formed by thousands of years of water erosion.

Lynn leaned against the stone wall, panting. The wound on his left arm hadn't reopened, but the dull pain from the pressure made cold sweat bead on his forehead. He looked at the crystal slice. Complex terrain traversal jumped to 1.1%. Escape jumped to 0.7%.

Ellie sat down beside him. Sweat beaded on the mixed-race girl's face, but she wasn't panting—half-human blood was definitely an advantage in these kinds of environments. She looked at Lynn, hesitated for a moment, and then pulled half a piece of dark bread from her pocket.

"The bakery owner gave it to me. She said thank you and asked for my money back, so I broke off half of it."

Lynn took the bread. He took a bite. The sour taste of the cheap, dark bread mixed with the rough texture of the bran, but it was his first bite of the day.

The two shared half a loaf of black bread amidst the sound of the underground river. Then they continued on their way.

They walked for about half an hour more. At one point, the crevice suddenly narrowed into a narrow opening, only wide enough for one to crawl through. Ellie crawled through first, followed closely by Lynn. When he emerged from the other end of the opening, he saw light—not the glow of the gray mist, but real firelight.

The basement of an abandoned mill. The stone walls are covered with etched gray crystals, but the space is high enough that the wooden beams overhead still retain the remains of the waterwheel's connecting structure. Scattered on the floor are fragments of the millstone, discarded iron parts, and several old wooden crates.

In the corner, a fire was burning. A person sat beside the fire.

Not Old Tok.

It was a halfling wearing a faded guild robe—the clerk who had sat at the dispatch window last night. His dark eyes gleamed in the firelight, and he held a glass of ale in his hand.

"Looks like old Tok has taken on a new apprentice." The clerk took a sip of ale. "The last time he had someone take the hammer away was twenty years ago in the Hephaestus Federation."

Lynn's hand rested on the blunt-bladed knife.

How did you know this location?

"There are three entrances to this abandoned mill. One is in the old canal, one is in the back alley of the Adventurers' Guild, and one is right under my feet—I've been sorting through commission files here for over a decade, and I know the distribution of the underground river's tributaries better than the Waterworks Bureau." The clerk put down his wine glass. "And the code that old Tok just tapped can be heard throughout the entire underground network of the lower city. He tapped 'The kid's learning to forge blacksmiths, please be lenient.'"

Quiet.

Ellie glanced at Lynn, then at the clerk.

"Are you here to help him?"

"I'm here to tell him two things," the clerk said. "First, Rice recruited a retired adventurer, a bronze-rank warrior named Wright Steelwrist, in the central district. As payment for helping to kill Lynn, Rice agreed to collect protection money for him in the underground tunnels."

The clerk bent his second finger.

"Secondly—the twelve-year-old youngest son of the Winster family, who awakened his dragon bloodline, was taken away by the Temple of Nox three days later. The temple's explanation was 'to provide career guidance.' But the Baron of the Winster family went to the guild and said that his son's eyes had changed from the moment he entered the temple—no longer the vertical pupils of a dragon bloodline, but the round pupils of an ordinary person. He was very scared, but dared not openly question the temple."

Are these two things related?

"Wright Steelwrist, a Bronze-rank warrior. His Judgment class name is 'Shadow Warrior'—the kind of warrior trained by the armed guild under the Temple of Nox. He wasn't recruited by Rice. He was sent to the Lower City by the Temple." The clerk paused. "Recently, several households in the Lower City received 'Free Judgment Trial Vouchers' from the Temple. You kids probably don't know, but the Judgment fee in the Middle and Upper City starts at five silver coins, with deeper readings costing extra. Free Judgment—it's not charity."

Lynn tightened his grip on the blunt-bladed knife.

He didn't know Wright Steelwrist. What did the Winster family's dragonborn have to do with him? But it wasn't a coincidence that Ellie had bruises on her wrists from the rope when she said she owed the bakery four copper coins, and that the debt collectors in Midtown had changed leaders and were no longer playing by the rules. The temple was infiltrating Downtown.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

The clerk pushed the empty wine glass aside. The weariness he had felt at the window that morning was gone from those distinctively half-human black eyes; instead, something heavier remained.

"I've sat at this window for eleven years. Watching waves of kids from the lower city come asking how to become a professional. Three years ago, a half-elf boy stood at this window asking me what the requirements were for the trial. I told him Strength and Constitution at least 6, Dexterity and Intelligence at least 7. He trained for two years—and achieved it. He stood on the judgment stone and was judged a 'Wanderer.' He wasn't satisfied and wanted to do a deeper reading, but he didn't have enough money." The clerk paused for a moment. "A month later, people from the Temple of Nox came to him. They said they could provide 'professional orientation training,' free of charge. He went with them. He returned three months later—his eyes had no pupils."

Quiet.

Ellie's voice was very soft: "What's wrong with him?"

"Still alive. He sharpens knives at the other end of the lower city. He's very skilled, but he doesn't remember ever being a half-elf." The clerk stood up. "The temple doesn't just monopolize the Judgment Stone. They're collecting certain professions—not ordinary professions, but those that expand their authority. That dragonborn from the Winster family, the half-elf boy—they have something the temple wants. They take the thing, and the person is returned to society."

He walked toward another exit of the mill. Halfway there, he turned back.

"Old Tork is letting you use his hammer—he only has one apprentice left. His apprentice, who died in the Federation twenty years ago, was named Lorian—Old Tork forbade anyone to tell him where he went, and his body wasn't found until three months later at the docks of Graymist City. Now that you're holding his hammer, don't waste his craftsmanship—in this lower city, craftsmanship is the only thing the temple can't take away."

The footsteps of the halfling clerk gradually faded away on the stone steps.

Lynn gripped the hammer handle tightly. The runestone was quietly embedded in the end. Eighty years of silence.

He looked at the crystal slice.

The grayed-out unlockable entries were still there, but one line flickered. It wasn't activation, it wasn't a hint—it was just that the entry's name briefly lit up, as if something from the distant future had shone upon it.

[Rune Awakening]

The flickering stopped. The entry returned to gray.

Lynn tucked the hammer back into his waistband.

"We'll go back and return the hammer to him tomorrow," he said to Ellie, and to himself, as if confirming with something that they would see the dwarf again.

It was already midnight outside the window. The gray fog was slowly dissipating, revealing the lights of the central district that had been invisible during the first half of the night, like someone finally surfacing from a deep well to take a breath.

But what was on his mind wasn't the light. It was the clerk's words—"Come back three months later, and there will be no pupils in his eyes."

Where did those things taken by the temple go?

Outside the window, the midnight bells of the Temple of Nox tolled faintly, like the shadow itself.