Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

As we all know, glass cannot be brushed out by itself in underground caves. Deep creatures may not be able to make pottery, so these things can only come from humans, and they are unlikely to be the original inhabitants of the village.

Kraft threw away the small shards of glass, put on gloves and cleaned the ground mixed with dust and gravel, and found larger surviving fragments.

It is roughly the round bottom of a thick cup and bottle, with obvious traces of manual firing. The craftsmanship is not as good as that of Witcham, but after wiping off the dust, you can see that it has relatively good transparency. Light can easily pass through a distance of more than one finger thick and project. Irregular spots caused by uneven melting.

After taking off the scabbard and using the tip of the sword to open up the fragments of the large pottery bottle, you can see the residue between yellowish brown and reddish brown attached to the inner wall.

Twisting a handful, he found in it the smell of old metal products that had lost their maintenance oil film. They were left wet for too long due to improper handling, and even scrapped.

The attachments, like slightly moist flour, cracked and fell off under gentle pressure, dispersing into dust-like substances. Some of them were inevitably inhaled into the nasal cavity, and the smell of blood and rust still contained a slightly sour smell.

The uneven particles appear to be common rocks, and there are such slag deposits after the calcination of unclean minerals.

"Rust powder?" Forced by Kraft's threatening gaze, William did not take another bite, but this did not prevent him from figuring out what it was. It was often rubbed against old iron parts in the cabin.

The captain had no idea why the rust was ground into powder, but the rust powder reminded him where he had seen these green minerals before. "I remembered, I have seen these green things before, but they don't look like this." , ground into powder and added to ink, someone gave it to me for drawing parchment charts."

"You actually recognize it?"

"It tastes quite special, a bit like rust and red iron ore." William smacked his lips in recollection. Perhaps because of the instinct to be wary of injury, this peculiar taste of blood, which is close to biting his lip, is easy to remember. "Do you have any idea?"

Kraft is using his meager knowledge of chemistry to analyze the debris in front of him. Unfortunately, due to the changes in the examination pattern that year, this alien soul did not have any further study in this field. Medical chemistry was also passed at a low altitude, and the level was about the same as in middle school.

Fortunately, it is not too barren. I can roughly guess that it is some kind of iron salt. It is suspected that it will turn into rust after being calcined. Oh no, he means iron oxide.

"I have two pieces of news."

"One good and one bad again?" William showed quite good acceptance ability, or compared to what he had experienced before, this was nothing. "I don't want to choose, just pick one."

"We are in the alchemist's mine." Kraft picked up a green crystal block separated from the original stone. It was roughly broken from the root and stacked next to the device for access. "We figured it out. The target is not a unique and rare mine, it has even been used in ink for a long time."

The appearance of green crystals is 80% ferrous ions. Considering that the product is sulfuric acid, which contains sulfur anions, a few water may be added to create the crystals.

The case was solved, it seems to be the original carbonization method, collecting the heating product to obtain sulfuric acid.

Congratulations to this talented amateur chemist who went to remote mountains and remote areas and discovered a beautiful mineral that had been discovered before. Under the guidance of "refining the essence of the ore", he accidentally discovered the retorting method and finally developed sulfuric acid, Kill yourself.

Out of confidentiality, or indeed not knowing that this kind of thing is available in other places, but only used in very small amounts and supplied as powder, he insists on mining in a human and geographical environment that is almost completely isolated from the outside world.

This makes it extremely difficult for news to spread out. Under the circumstances of strict control of key personnel, it is not easy to trace the source from the outside inward, which directly leads to the demise of technology and people.

Originally, this long-dead invention would have been buried underground forever along with its inventor and the terrible reason for its disappearance, until one day someone got bored and threw some kind of ink raw material into a retort bottle to play with.

As a result, a smart guy dug out clues from a cerebral infarction patient and brought people all the way here, and got together with the last wave of bad luck in this accident after several years.

It feels like the treasure map I found after all the hard work points to the crooked neck tree at the entrance of my village.

"We don't need to take risks to develop this mine. We just need to go back and ask where this kind of thing is produced. It's incredibly simple."

William was stunned for a moment, and the green light that was worthless a few minutes ago seemed to be changing color, plated with a bright golden edge, "You just said there are two pieces of news, what about the bad news?"

"That was bad news just now."

"Um?"

"We are in the mine where alchemists excavate raw materials." Kraft reiterated this fact, stuffed the crystal into his pocket, and walked forward with a torch. "I hope you still remember what happened in this mine, or Would you say calling it 'Old Mine' would be more suitable to evoke memories?"

They crossed over pottery shards and glass shards, and stepped over broken-handled mining picks. Chisel marks appeared on the cave walls. William quickly realized what their biggest trouble was now.

"Collapse..."

In the area with the highest concentration of mining traces, the entire area collapsed and was choked with rocks. The arrival of the cave builders was not the direct cause of killing the miners, but it dealt a fatal blow to the weak structure.

On the huge rock blocking the way, the gouge marks gathered into several small pits, and a rusty iron pickaxe with its head broken off was discarded next to it.

"Can you go back and try another way?"

Kraft shook his head slowly and lit the remaining torches. He had prepared a lot when he came, but he couldn't bear the consumption. "I'm afraid there is no time to find a second way."

"Just a little bit, just a little bit worse?" William pushed the rock hard, and was shaken back several steps by the reaction force, but the rock didn't move at all. After walking such a long way, escaping from the mouth of such an evil creature, and being in the treasure hunt, only to be blocked at the exit at the last step?

Now the distance from the outside world is probably only a few dozen steps. The collapsed rocks have turned this section of the road into a chasm. This is a distance that is absolutely impossible to dig through manually.

"Are those things going to have two more faces?" Repeated hopes and despair hit the captain alternately. Now they are probably at the end of their rope. No matter how brilliant Kraft's "magic" is, it can only take them through different levels. There is no way Create a way out of thin air.

Kraft was silent. To say that he is not willing to give in, he is much more unwilling than William. Compared with his desire to go out and tell stories, he still has half a man's height left to write, and he doesn't want to be in the company of arthropods and shelled insects in the depths.

But this is really not a problem he can solve. Unless he can create a shield machine, how can he dig through a rock formation that is at least ten meters thick?

"There isn't even a single bone here. They were probably all dragged away by those things..." William picked out a long stone with some weight and tried to wave it. It seemed that he was planning to make a last ditch effort and die with dignity.

It makes sense. I only saw alchemy equipment and mining picks along the way. Combined with the distinctive faces of the locals that emerged, it is not difficult to guess the whereabouts of the victims.

[Shield boring machine? 】

Kraft touched his chin, active thinking and found a somewhat dangerous inspiration, and realized that this matter was not entirely a daydream.