Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

"Mr. Kraft?" The boss retracted his hand and fled from the cold touch. The hand reminded him of a drowned person fished out of the sea. The skin was white and wrinkled with blisters, and salt particles as fine as sandpaper remained. The friction provided between the folds seemed to be designed to grab and drag down another victim.

Lucius and Liston heard the words and looked at Kraft's face. Under the blond hair, the eyes opened quietly. The hand with soaked hair blocked the outstretched fingers, but they did not raise any questions about everything around them. It was as if I was in a state of confusion that I just woke up from.

But the look in his eyes didn't seem to be chaotic. Instead, he was staring at an elusive focus in the void, behind everyone and farther away than the roof.

Kraft's lips quivered and his raised hand opened. Lucius thought he was trying to use his strength to get up, so he held his hand, but Kraft was not held back.

His cold and stiff fingers were tracing a certain regular trajectory, but due to limitations of physiological functions, this action failed after several attempts. Lucius could not identify what he wanted to draw, and let go in confusion.

The pale, stiff body gave up trying to leave a trace in the air, and instead supported the ground, lifting its upper body from the cold stone floor.

The mechanical, non-biological feeling of gear-like rotation makes people who meet every day seem strange. A puzzling consciousness is controlling this body, forcibly driving the uncooperative joints to flex and stretch, as if after a long time, with the help of broken bones, Continued muscle memory recreates past movement patterns.

It took him a few seconds to turn over, face the ground with an awkward center of gravity, and move his hands and feet to a half-kneeling position, which made the movement smoother.

When the three of them were surprised by the strange behavior, he pulled his gaze back from infinity, his eyes moved around with his neck, and finally stopped on the stove.

The wet hand grasped an unburned firewood and pulled it out from the fire with a string of sparks. The burning flames on the blackened front section distorted the surrounding air, and gray embers fell.

"Put that down, Kraft!" Liston wanted to stop the newly awakened man from continuing his dangerous actions, but was unable to do so due to the burning charcoal fire.

Kraft stood up with the wooden stick in his hand and raised it up to his eyebrows. The firelight reflected in his pupils, reflecting the flickering red and yellow light and shadow. The gradually smooth movements showed that he adapted quickly, but Liston could not Know if this is a good thing.

Failure to respond to questions may be a sign of mental illness, especially when the person has a hot object in his hand. Lack of awareness can cause great harm to the safety of himself and bystanders.

Liston held down Lucius who wanted to come forward to communicate, blocked him behind him, and led him back a certain distance without leaving a trace, hiding behind the long table.

The boss, who sensed something was wrong, had already retreated behind the counter, holding in his hand a silver-white double-winged ring amulet that symbolized the gods of the church.

Facts have proved that Liston's decision was very correct.

As soon as he regained his ability to move, Kraft swung the wooden stick and smashed it against the wall like a hammer. The hot firelight drew a dazzling arc of light on his retina, and then hit the stone wall.

The fragile carbonized part shattered and burst, and the high-temperature fragments inside burned again when they came into contact with the air, and countless flames rushed out.

Craft watched these high-temperature little things without fear as they passed by his ears and the ends of his hair. He walked to the table holding the last carbonized piece of wood, and wrote on the table using a writing pad. Black scratches.

That kind of drawing movement is natural and smooth, no different from using lime blocks to draw the anatomical diagrams that have been observed repeatedly in the course. It seems that the lines have already been marked on the plane with transparent ink that ordinary people cannot see, and the painter just follows the existing graphics. Copy.

He drew the first stroke, which was a long arc that connected end to end, occupying most of the table. The simple charcoal brush drove the entire body to move, and drew the outline of a perfect circle with as perfectly symmetrical strokes as possible.

The edges and corners of the stump of the carbon block were shattered during the painting, and small sparks and flames flickered, as if using flames to paint a luminous object. Just a circular outline, the gesture requires no explanation and makes people involuntarily believe that it is something huge and suspended.

Then, the painter drew a black straight line on the circle with sharp and fast brushstrokes like beating and cutting. It seemed like he was swiping with a sword or other sharp object.

What we want to draw is just such a crack, abrupt and profound, which destroys the integrity of the whole. But if it is such a huge existence, what could leave such a mark on its surface?

This is not the end. More crack-like straight lines were added, none of which crossed the boundary of the circle, proving that what Craft painted was indeed a perfect circular entity that was destroyed and broken.

The two people behind the long table were attracted by the paintings that looked like knives and axes. The simple lines seemed to have some inexplicable magic. It was not a technique that any painter they knew could use, and it conveyed something that other paintings could not. attainable information.

After a while of actions that I didn’t know whether to evaluate as slashing or creating, a perfect circle filled with criss-crossing cracks appeared on the table.

There is still a certain flaw in this pattern, the lack of a dominant stroke to fully express the object. Anyone who looks at it carefully can clearly realize this, even if they have never seen the real thing with their own eyes. The charm can be indirectly experienced in Kraft's painstaking paintings.

It was a very impactful experience, as if walking out of a small space and facing the full moon hanging high in the night sky. The ruthless celestial body has existed forever and has not been disturbed by thousands of years of human changes, but it can have magnificent power left on its surface. A rift big enough to swallow up a city.

To think about it, to be awestruck, to be filled with a deep instinctive awe of giantness and power.

The silver double-winged ring amulet held tightly in his hand fell unconsciously, bounced off the edge of the counter, rolled into the cracks of the floor, and disappeared without a trace in the dark gaps.

But its owner seemed unaware of this, and stared blankly at the figure outlined in black strokes with the others, waiting for the moment of completion.

After a long pause, the painter's hand came down again, starting from the far left end, and drew horizontally on the edge of the circle.

This brush stroke is bold and delicate, and the great wrist force is guided by strong control. It cuts through the smooth patina formed by years of use on the surface of the wooden board. It is also like scratching the surface of the object in the painting to show that the underneath is to be exposed.

The strokes of the brush gradually deepen and reach the limit when they pass through the center of the circle. Tiny popping sounds are heard endlessly, and the wide scratches are dark in color. After passing through the center, they lighten up and end at the boundary on the other side.

An elongated spindle pattern appears across the painting, dividing the whole into upper and lower parts. It is full of gratuitous dynamics and gives it a chaotic character between inorganic celestial bodies and life. In some strange illusion, it will open along the horizontal crack in the middle, revealing an undepicted side behind the deep darkness.

After finishing the finishing touch, Kraft seemed to have had all his strength drained away. The will that had previously supported the cold body to get up was exhausted. He fell backwards according to gravity, with half of his body hanging on the chair next to him, his chest Heaving and panting violently.

The human side returned to him, and his weak movements showed the correct state of an unlucky man who had been in the water for an unknown period of time.

"I understand... vomit!" With vague words, the surging liquid flowed out of his throat, and Kraft spat out a large amount of water, looking like a drowning man.

Despite nausea and exhaustion, the first time he woke up, he used the closest materials at hand to write down what he remembered. He couldn't tell whether it was his own will or the drive of others.

Like most dreams, the memories in the dream are fading away quickly, but this time, the consciousness insists on grabbing a handful when waking up, retaining the parts that it thinks are important.

[Celestial body, falling in reverse direction]

Very good, he drew the last thing he saw, and his intuition told him that it was related to leaving the dream.

The consciousness continues to sort out the earlier parts. Those chaotic and flowing memories are like quicksand from another world, flowing out of control between the fingers. Discontinuous images flash past quickly like a revolving lantern. It takes a lot of effort to catch a few key words.

[Falling, white light, creeping singing]

besides……

[Spirit, senses]

Kraft stored the words in confusion, along with the incomplete picture that he had not yet had time to distinguish one by one.

At this time, a hand was placed on his shoulder.

"You really scared me to death just now. Are you okay, Kraft?" A deliberately slow voice sounded from beside you, and the owner of the hand leaned forward and approached.

"I'm fine." Kraft regretted it after he said it. He found that he "saw" that person without turning around, a "transparent person."

A humanoid creature built from a hollow support structure, connected by stretchable flexible tissues, and covered with a layer of locally grown slender hairy skin, placed its complex-structured forelimbs on his shoulders, making him tremble in fright.

If he hadn't been so exhausted, Kraft would have jumped out of his chair. Being familiar with the structure of the human body, he quickly recognized that it was a transparent, very standard human form, and small stones could be seen in the gallbladder.

[Spirit, senses]

That kind of thing reappeared in his consciousness, and he soon discovered that not only people, but everything was presented in his mind from a transparent perspective, and nothing could be hidden from his spiritual senses.

Yes, this is my sense, related to this dream. His intuition helped him confirm this, so naturally he was not surprised at all. Perhaps he had been surprised in his dream.

【Turn it off】

The remnants of the dream continued to prompt.

Kraft instinctively intended to do so, but a final glimpse in his mental senses caught his attention.

Just on the stairs from the front hall to the second floor, there is a very vague object in the feedback of the mental senses. It is different from other objects and people. It is not blurry because of the distance, but it seems unreal within the range of perception.

To use an inappropriate metaphor, it is stuck between "there" and "nothing", like the boundary of the auditory field and the blind spot of the retina. It cannot be confirmed in the spiritual senses, but only its existence can be recognized. .

Visually, there is no one on the stairs and there is no debris.

It seemed to be moving at a slow speed, it was not small in size, and its texture was surprisingly sticky. Rather, it was... squirming?

Kraft rubbed his eyes and looked towards the stairs with wide eyes. There was indeed nothing there.

"This may sound a bit strange, could you help me take a look at what's on the stairs?"