Krafft's Anomaly Notes

Chapter 390 Scale Thoughts
Kup felt he must be crazy to do something like hiking at night.

On the mountain path, where even locals have a history of falling, you have to feel your way forward step by step by the light of a torch. No one can say for sure whether the shadow at the edge of the light is the next foothold or a cliff of no return.

But the priest was right; on such roads, there was absolutely no way to go up the mountain in the rain.

If he waits until the torrential rains begin and the mountain route becomes completely impassable, allowing an active source of anomalies to roam freely for days or even half a month, resulting in unpredictable changes, then he would truly be insane.

Although I don't know why the blacksmith insisted on bringing that thing up the mountain, we must find it now, or at least confirm that it is harmless for the time being.

If conditions permit, they might be able to take him back and persuade Craft to transfer him from his position as chief inpatient to a special agent post that involves business trips.

As for the risks involved, he certainly considered them.

I seem to be able to vaguely sense the presence of something abnormal, which gives me time to react if things go wrong; Benny is somewhat experienced and unlikely to make any mistakes; the priest is the only weak link, but anyone can quickly control him.

In the unlikely event that a real action is required, Yvonne will be there to cover for you, and dealing with minor troubles will be a piece of cake.

Besides, he had heard about Dominic and Field's experiences, which generally indicated that it was better to guard against internal threats than external ones, and that the most important thing to pay attention to was the mental state of the companions, rather than any strange creatures that might appear.

It can't be worse than Westminster, can it? With that thought, Cooper shuffled forward, clinging to the rock face.

The priest led the way at the front of the group, about two body lengths away, within easy reach. Benny was in the middle of the group, and Yvonne was at the back.

The daylight was swallowed up by the clouds and mountains. As we climbed higher, the rooftops of villages and the autumn wheat fields disappeared from view, the undulating treeline gradually blurred, and finally, the road we had come from was erased section by section by the approaching twilight.

The path, carpeted with fallen leaves, felt soft and unreal, like stepping on an untied ribbon, swaying left and right in the mountain breeze.

It's hard to tell whether they're climbing upwards or have already lost contact with the ground, simply floating slowly in a void, carried by darkness.

The visual sensation of floating interfered with his judgment. Kup stopped, slightly out of breath, trying to convince himself not to be deceived by his eyes. The village was sleeping peacefully beneath his feet, the earth was stable and unharmed, and its existence would not change because of his perception.

The effect was limited, but he did gain some sense of security and regained his balance.

We walked along winding, narrow paths, climbed steep slopes strewn with rocks, and made our way through tangled thorns and wild vines.

The air whistled through the gap between the two mountains, tugging at our limbs and clothes, with the cliffs and deep ravines always nearby. Occasionally, a loose rock would tumble down, and only after walking a few steps would we hear a faint echo.

If at the beginning everyone had other things to consider, after halfway through, all that was left for everyone to think about was how to take the first step.

Even the priest, who knew the route well, walked with trepidation, his heavy breathing clearly audible.

Beyond a stretch of bare rock, the vague outlines suddenly disappeared from view.

"Here we are?"

Someone asked hesitantly, and received an affirmative answer from the priest.

Cooper straightened his back, which had been bent over the whole way, his spine cracking. Looking up, all he could see was pure, bottomless darkness, with nothing but the faint sound of birds flapping their wings.

Following my instincts, I walked upwards, and the closer I got, the stronger the sense of presence became. It was as if an invisible flame was burning fiercely, and I could feel the heat emanating from it even from a dozen steps away.

He found it on a flat-topped rock.

The white, coin-sized flakes had a semi-transparent, mineral-like texture and were covered with scorch marks, consistent with what one would expect from being removed from a high-temperature environment.

The shape has been artificially modified, and the whole thing is leaf-shaped. The sides are polished and sharpened, with small serrations caused by repeated use. The back is made into a stem shape for easy insertion and fixation.

It was far from the pagan object image I had imagined; it looked like an arrow made of mineralized bone.

It was impossible to handle it directly, so Cooper took out the sampling kit he brought from the monastery and used hemostats to pick up the thing. It was much lighter than he had imagined; it might float if dropped into water.

One side is carved with quite exquisite patterns, like totems or heraldry, which are no longer very clear after being repeatedly burned and damaged. It can be barely identified that a weapon is piercing through a creature that resembles a snake or a dragon.

Its body is supple and slender, with wings, and its limbs are flexible. It is sculpted like a dying human, twisted in pain, reaching for the blade that pierces through it.

In the flickering firelight, the figure took on a strange, dynamic illusion; its body slowly twisted, and the finely carved scales rubbed together, creating an indescribably bizarre effect. Kup quickly averted his gaze, stuffed the item into the lead box, and fastened it with a leather strap.

"We'll leave right now."

The wind grew stronger, thick with moisture, and shouts were dissolved and diluted as soon as they left your mouth, making it difficult to hear the details.

Having achieved his goal, he couldn't stay any longer and repeated himself, raising his voice. The four huddled together, wrapped themselves tightly in their clothes, and prepared to leave this place as soon as possible.

Perhaps sensing the approaching downpour, the sound of birds flapping their wings overhead grew lower and lower, becoming exceptionally clear.

You could even hear the creature flapping its wings as it descended from the open heights, landing in the nearby thicket of thorns. Large swathes of thorny branches rustled apart and fell over, then fell silent, like a pebble swallowed by water without causing a ripple.

Are there any birds of prey or other wild animals nearby?

“Almost none,” the priest replied in a loud voice. “Snakes are only seen occasionally, and most of them are not poisonous.”

"That's good." Kup looked around, but unsurprisingly found nothing. The mountain wind blew, causing the ground-hugging vegetation to sway back and forth, producing a rhythmic rustling sound of branches and leaves.

Perhaps it was psychological, but he suddenly felt inexplicably as if something was moving along the ground.

Once the idea was conceived, the sound seemed to offer its own evidence, growing increasingly strange, shifting from light to rough, as if the wind was gradually strengthening, rubbing against fine sand and gravel.

When I listened again, the sound was no longer scattered everywhere, but hovered around, creating a sense of space.

"Did you hear anything?"

Already on edge, Cooper dared not gamble on whether he was just being paranoid or if there was something to it, so he stopped to examine the situation carefully.

The other three stopped in their tracks, puzzled, seemingly oblivious to the unusual atmosphere.

After listening for a while, Benny and Yvonne found nothing. The priest hesitated, also feeling that the wind was unusual, but still said with certainty, "There are no wild animals nearby. Perhaps it's just that the wind is strong at night. Let's hurry down the mountain."

Despite saying that, his quickened pace showed that he was somewhat frightened.

After walking a dozen steps, Benny suddenly spoke up from behind, "Does it seem a little like that?"

"What did you hear?" Kup asked in return.

"Unlike wild animals, did we see any birds when we came up?"

What kind of bird?

"It's hard to say. Maybe it's a bat or something. You can sometimes see those big bats in the mountains, but I've never heard of them attacking people or livestock."

Despite saying this, Benny clearly couldn't convince himself, his hand already unconsciously resting around the hilt of the sword. "Maybe it's a particularly large one." He emphasized the latter part of the sentence.

Just as Cooper was about to point out the difference in what the two heard, the flapping of wings sounded again in the wind, closer and stronger.

As Benny described it, it was like an incredibly large bat, spreading its black wings that blended into the night sky, swirling and tumbling among the cliffs, with a sudden gust of wind as it skimmed along the rock face.

The imagined things quickly become clear, and their form is enriched by sound and language.

When he realized his thoughts were running too fast, Koop found that his associations had already drawn the outline of wings.

A strange, inexplicable gust of air swept past them, raising a cloud of dust before settling into the treetops ahead.

No fallen leaves, no startled birds taking flight; instead, there was the sound of people moving about and scraping.

The pen tip glides across the paper, and snakes crawl on the sand, subtle yet leaving evidence of their existence.

The scraping sound slid down the tree trunk, rubbing against the rough stone surface. Imagination sculpted it into a long, flexible body, covered with fine scales.

The clearer it is, the heavier it becomes. From a certain moment on, it begins to have texture, its belly, which lies close to the ground, bending the brambles and pushing aside the tangled bushes.

"There's something there," Benny whispered, drawing his sword.

Kup felt he should see it; such a thing should appear intimidatingly in the distance.

But no, the sense of crisis failed to warn, and the eyes could not capture the complete image; only a narrow, intermittent "path" about one person's width extended out from the woods.

Indistinct and fragmented words kept flowing out, kneading together in my mind like clay, trying to piece together some vague, elongated thing, standing upright in my vision or imagination.

It has no clear boundaries, and is neither brighter nor darker than its surroundings.

But it was there, he knew.

It is indescribable how it knows; it is neither hearing nor sight, it lacks spatial awareness and directionality, and it lies somewhere between intuition and memory.

Even with my eyes closed, the feeling persisted. The thing didn't enter my field of vision, yet it perfectly filled the void in my perception.

It's like a perfectly apt word; you know where it should be used and what it describes, but it hasn't been created yet, or it's been lost to an untraceable history.

It's here.

Kup held the hammer horizontally in front of him and suddenly turned to the side just before making contact.

A series of hard, sheet-like objects grazed the metal handle, and his body went airborne, losing all sense of weight. Even though he had bent his elbows to cushion the impact, the violent tremors made him feel a brief loss of sensation in his arms.

He landed in the bushes, rolling to dissipate his weight, and looked to his companions for help. However, Benny was also crouching to avoid what seemed to be an attack from the air, and Yvonne, holding a hammer, looked around blankly. Seeing him fall, she quickly moved closer to him.

The priest clutched the holy emblem and prayed aloud, his eyes trembling as he closed them, having surrendered everything to the Lord.

"where?"

“In…” Cooper tried to point to the location he intuitively sensed, but his hand made a half-circle in the air. He found that he could not describe the location precisely, nor could he match it with his vision.

Before I could think further, the rustling sound of scales drew closer.

It passed by the oblivious Yvonne, but the wind it created didn't even stir her clothes. The latter looked at Kup with an even more bewildered expression as he struggled to roll to the side, trying to swing the forging hammer he had brought from the blacksmith's shop, and passed through the attacker's path without hindrance.

They seemed to be separated on a cognitive level, existing in the same space, yet attacked from different angles by the same being. They could communicate with each other, but no form of expression, including language, could make others understand the situation they faced.

The thing became clearer in my consciousness, slowly unfolding its headless body, its scales rising one after another like rock layers cracking under pressure, layer upon layer without end.

The smooth, mirror-like scales reflected everything around them: flames, trees, and human figures, each scale unique to the next.

He initially thought it was just a simple reflection, until he saw himself in one of the scales, from an impossible angle behind him; in the next scale, it shifted to a downward view, as if he were being peered down from the treetops.

The sense of disconnect is intensifying; the clearer it becomes in our perception, the harder it is to describe. With each passing second, a new batch of descriptions of it emerges in our minds, language striving to refine the outline, yet moving further and further away from reality.

It is not illusory, but rather too direct to be expressed indirectly.

A cry for help filled with extreme terror and pain came, and the priest floated up into the air, twisted in an extremely uncomfortable position, as if his bones were about to break, as if he were being entangled by a rope that was gradually tightening. Fine, sharp lines tore through his clothes, leaving spiral-like bloodstains on his skin.

Benny dodged the attack rather awkwardly, swinging his sword in an attempt to help, but there was no resistance in front of the blade; the thing that was about to kill the priest did not exist for him.

He forcefully deflected his slashing trajectory to the side, grazing the priest's pained face before slamming into the rock wall. The recoil force pried open his tightly clenched fingers, nearly causing him to drop his weapon.

Before he could regain his composure, he suddenly bent down to dodge, and a strand of his hair was taken away.

The attackers of the column are here and there; they soar in the air and roam on the ground; they have wings and scales, and their beginnings and ends are nowhere to be seen.

The knight suddenly understood something and let out a roar that was hard to tell whether it was excitement or despair.

"dragon!"

"what?"

Kup didn't understand how he made that connection, but Benny had neither the time nor the inclination to explain. Contrary to his usual behavior, he abandoned his passive defensive stance and raised the tip of his sword, seemingly ready to fight the thing to the death.

Perhaps he mistook the obviously unusual creature for a legendary beast or the culprit of the torrential rain, hoping to exchange his life for the peace of his family's territory.

However, Cooper didn't think so. What had driven them to the brink was indeed terrible, but it was far less formidable than the most troublesome enemy he had ever encountered. It was more like a harbinger, a byproduct of the disaster, rather than the real one.

"Don't..." The sweeping wind pressure blocked the words of advice that could not be spoken. The body reflexively lowered its shoulders and leaned to the side to avoid being directly in front. A large area of ​​sharp pain burst open where it was affected, accompanied by warm liquid flowing out.

He staggered a few steps, struggling to regain his balance, and realized that he had greatly underestimated the danger.

Those things that defy common sense are not beasts that can be defeated by brute force, but abnormal forms that subvert the rules. Exploring new rules comes at a price.

Now he may become the price to pay.

But Kraft never taught anyone to sit and wait to die. On the brink of life and death, thoughts numbed by the battle began to function sluggishly, reflecting on what room there was left to struggle.

I bumped my lower back on a hard object; it was a lead box from the package, containing valuable samples.

A somewhat trivial question suddenly popped up:

Why is it shaped like an arrow?

Two in one (joyful)...