Krafft's Anomaly Notes

Chapter 340 Undercurrent
"Mr. Kraft, do you have a minute?"

The cool light in the church was unconsciously dyed orange and red, and dinner time was approaching.

Brother Raymond, who had long been visually fatigued, left with a small stack of book lists, and Yvonne was also attracted by the aroma coming from the open-air campfire in the courtyard.

Kupp struggled to the end and called out to the professor who was still immersed in his books.

"Anytime."

It was a natural answer. In fact, as long as he was not disturbed during the rescue process, a similar answer would be obtained.

Kraft's schedule is like an ideal church. Although it seems busy with people coming and going, you can always find an empty seat to sit down and get some attention if you need it.

But he doesn't really have a thousand pairs of ears and a thousand mouths, and he doesn't know and see everything like an angel. As his influence and titles increase, the time that can be allocated to a specific person is still visibly diluted, and only his attitude remains consistent.

Regardless of their identity, they will receive the same patience.

Perhaps this is why the professor actually gets along well with the grassroots monks. Kup once heard someone in the team talking about related topics, claiming that they saw some kind of "holy quality" in it, that is, justice and fraternity without distinction of high or low, which eliminated the particularity of secular identity relationships and even went beyond common sense of human nature.

As the one who is closest to the person involved, Kupp found the source of his feeling that something was wrong - a sense of alienation.

It's not like he hasn't seen those strange and bizarre things before, and he was certainly aware that Kraft had mastered some of the techniques from them. Even Yvonne was using powers of questionable origin, and might even express them unintentionally in her life.

But the former gave him a much stronger sense of strangeness than the latter, as if a tall and huge statue was looking down at the world, with a perspective that was detached from the crowd and beyond ordinary values, and was not limited by status.

"Have you been feeling, I mean, a little off lately?

Kraft looked at him in surprise, as if he was a little surprised, but not too surprised. He almost realized that the student had solved a difficult problem that was slightly beyond the syllabus.

The facial expressions full of subtle and natural changes bring the image back to normal, making people feel that everything is normal and that all the previous things were just illusions caused by oversensitivity.

"Oh, how did you know? I thought there was nothing special about his performance." Kraft generously admitted the problem.

Apart from a fleeting moment of fatigue, he looked as energetic as usual. "Yes, the sequelae of the Dunling sewer are like having more frequent migraines. It's not a big deal after you get used to it."

"It can even be said that it is lighter than expected. As long as you don't pay special attention to it, it hardly interferes with your daily activities. Don't worry too much."

"That's great." Kupp relaxed his breath-holding subconsciously and coughed repeatedly because of the dust everywhere.

"By the way, besides feeling unwell, do you feel anything else is wrong?"

The assistant and attendant took the water bag and took a few gulps to suppress the discomfort in his throat. "For example, do something you were not good at doing before."

"Uh, no?"

After sincerely reviewing his deeds over the past six months, Kraft found nothing unusual. He was just doing some practical medical research within his ability and cleaning up some things that shouldn't be causing trouble in the world. His work content remained consistent.

“Well, a little bit actually. I did use those ‘tricks’ more recently, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

"You know, intracranial hemorrhage must be explored for volume and range, artificial pneumothorax must be evaluated for pleural adhesions before surgery, complex fractures cannot be accurately located based on experience, manual reduction of cervical dislocation is very dangerous, and blindly expanding the incision during surgery will increase the probability of infection...

"It's worth it. A single deep breath can bring about a huge improvement in prognosis. The cost is less than one-tenth of the 'spell', and it can be completed on several patients at the same time."

"It's not always a coincidence. You can only use it alone when encountering an emergency, and you seem to maintain a special state during the operation sometimes." No one is more familiar than the assistant with certain operations that make the old surgeons in the medical school who are watching sweat. Behind them are things that cannot be explained by experience and skills.

"What should I do then?" Can I just watch someone die?

Kraft's subtext could not be refuted, especially since the first beneficiary had no position to persuade people to reduce the frequency of use. If clinical use had to be saved, the cost of rescuing people from the deep creatures would be unacceptable. Coop was speechless for a moment because of this question, but he discovered something that perhaps only he realized.

Since his acquaintance, no deep and fundamental changes in Kraft's personality tendencies seem to have been observed, only that the original traits have become more prominent.

This is extremely counterintuitive. Logically speaking, as the one who has gone the furthest, his thinking should have undergone a transformation like a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon, so profound that his behavior patterns were completely transformed and he became unrecognizable.

unless……

"Mr. Kraft, when did you first start pursuing a career in medicine?"

……

……

"About a year or so ago. I was pretty naive back then."

Field pulled the mule bridle and tried to avoid the big mud pit on the road at the foot of the mountain. The carriage behind him was loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables, shelled wheat, daily necessities, and Dominic who was keeping accounts.

"I always thought that I had a bright future and that it was only a matter of time before I became a priest after graduation. Later, I realized that I had to serve as an attendant for one or two years, a lector for three years, and an altar server for many years."

"When there is a vacancy, compete for the position of deacon. Those who do a good job and are appreciated by others will be promoted to associate priests, priests, and then priests."

The car jolted up and down violently, and the person sitting in the back seat hurriedly grabbed paper and pen, held on to fixed objects, and at the same time raised his foot to support a rolling old pumpkin.

"Be steady. It's easy to flip over if you go too fast." Dominic was annoyed to find that the booklet and the clothes on his chest were stained black, and half a page of words was missing.

"Let me think about what is written here."

Lord Priyer did not organize a market, so they spent the whole day visiting more than a dozen farmers and the only craftsmen here, and bought half of the items by scraping together some, and then returned in the last light of the evening.

The night was chasing behind us, driving the carriage into the shadow of the mountain, and the livestock let out instinctive and anxious cries.

Dominic had to put his nose to the paper to barely see what he had written down.

The notebook he carried with him was usually used to complete his copying homework, and occasionally as a memo. It was originally made of cheap fiber pressed straw paper, and he had to use a thin board as a pad when writing. When it was stained with ink, it soaked through several pages at once.

Complaining about his companion's poor driving skills, the monk hurriedly tried to restore the damaged content while his memory was still fresh.

The accounts for that day were fine; I could get a rough idea by looking at the first and last numbers, but it was difficult to find the things before that. Various casual notes were intertwined, and there were also some revisions, so I could only scribbled a few strokes based on my intuition and jot them down in a clean place at the back.

The light was dim, the handwriting was sloppy, my mind and hands were a mess, and sometimes I had no idea what I saw or wrote.

When he was about to jump to the next page, his finger suddenly paused and turned back to the original position. He seemed to have seen something that caught his subconscious attention.

It's like soaking in your own bathtub and feeling something cool and smooth sliding across your skin. It's like cold water secretly poured into your bathtub by a mischievous friend, or it's like some creature covered in slippery slime.

The frightened hand stayed there for a long time, waiting stiffly for that feeling to come again.

But there was nothing else there, only ink darker than the night, soaked with a few descriptive short poems that he had copied down by hand because of their beautiful words.

It’s not there anymore.

(End of this chapter)