Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

The boat came to shore amidst a shivering vibration.

The lake water was constantly rising and falling, and they stepped into it, fixed the boat in a safe position with ropes and spikes to ensure that it would not be carried away by an unexpected wave, and then carefully stepped onto the "island".

Under the huge pillars with a clear sense of pressure, it felt like the dirt gathered around aquatic tall plants, floating, unstable, and could be washed away and collapsed at any time.

Several incomplete stone ridges extending into the water showed that this might have been a small dock, but it was hard to imagine what it was originally for mooring based on the depth that even a flat-bottomed boat would have to stumble to enter.

Those buildings of unknown style were attached to the stone foundation in a barnacle-like form, and were half-collapsed.

They did not belong to any known style, or they could be called the "Dunling Ruins Style", which was characterized by the lack of characteristic and unique details, but with extraordinary craftsmanship, which preserved them even under extremely harsh conditions.

The polished stones collected locally are tightly spliced ​​together to form walls and vaults that are not tall but strong enough, which is exactly the same as the construction method of the sewer, showing the builder's superb spatial geometry level.

It is the kind of thing that appears in some monotonous and repetitive strange dreams. When it is regularized to a certain extent, it brings discomfort.

There is no expression of life or art, not even a little cultural atmosphere, and nothing that can be called "human taste". These things are just simple buildings, with no other meanings except function.

If the regional community is personified, then the building is its face and the source of the first impression.

When visitors try to look at the ancestors through the ruins, they only see a blank face without facial features. The traces of people have been wiped out from it, leaving only something extremely pure, which becomes its only remaining background.

These buildings are more likely to awaken fear than the creatures hiding underwater, suggesting that the people who once lived here were some kind of alien group transformed from their own kind but could no longer understand each other.

But they can't stop. The reason for putting on such a big show is not to come here to visit the periphery of the ancient monument.

Green originally wanted to leave someone to guard the boat, but considering that the firelight is more likely to attract creatures wandering on the shore, and if an accident really happens, two people can't do anything, so he finally gave up the useless move.

With unspeakable feelings, the team began to move towards the inner circle, looking for possible information.

The traces observed show that the changes in this place are quite complicated.

There are a lot of sediments filled in the gaps and corners, most of which have solidified into half mud and half stone, smoothing some of the outlines, and the colors are layered and mixed, mottled and uneven, formed by different components at different times.

On the surface of the stone, there are some gray and white round or irregular small protrusions, which may come from shellfish such as barnacles and oysters that can attach to hard surfaces; and the membrane and flocculent coverings are frequent visitors on reefs in shallow waters, mostly related to algae and water plants.

All signs indicate that this place has experienced sinking underwater more than once.

Moreover, there was no lack of organisms in the lake at that time, and it was even rich, at least not as barren as filtered lime water.

They put torches into several relatively intact buildings. The original things inside could no longer be seen. They collapsed under the erosion of weathering and flowing water. Only the parts wrapped in sediments still had a rough outline, and no human remains were seen.

It is difficult to say whether the residents left on their own initiative or were destroyed by some disaster. How they survive here is also a problem. Maybe when the lake water was not so clean, they could meet their needs by fishing and collecting edible aquatic plants.

But even if we don’t mention the technical feasibility of doing so, the biological resources in the freshwater area should be difficult to meet the food supply of town-level settlements.

The buildings without characteristics are repeatedly piled up. They seem to be messy but have a certain order at the same time, which makes the team often have the illusion of "have you been here before" during the tortuous progress.

When the depth reaches a certain level, something that is difficult to judge the purpose begins to appear. Those are stone pillars that rise from the ground. The special topography here greatly facilitates the production. You only need to pick one at random and modify it slightly to carve it into a standard hexagonal shape and add various patterns on it.

They are firmly fixed in the large foundation, or simply carved out of the whole rock and integrated with the ground. Most of them stand up to this day.

The decorative patterns are in two completely different styles, one is the flowing, serpentine intertwined curves, and the other is the straight lines that fall vertically from the six sides.

Because of the excellent geometric level, they are well depicted, extremely symmetrical and uniform, with an irresistible strange and coordinated beauty. They are so eye-catching among the monotonous buildings, like a mirage of a temple appearing on the horizon of the spiritual wasteland.

The designer has a special obsession with height. Regardless of the thickness of the stone pillars, they are far higher than the head, close to one and a half times the height of most doorways. It seems that it is the most intuitive expression of "height" out of a similar psychology to the high spire design of the church.

This also means that you need to step on the surrounding ruins to see the top of the stone pillar. As expected, they found bisected rings, broken circles, and twisted lines that were hard to tell the beginning from the end.

The further inward they went, the denser and larger the pillars became, some even as thick as a person's arms, forming a dazzling forest of pillars.

Some of them were made of materials that were frightening, with a very familiar pale color or an extremely deep light-absorbing black color, which made people who had seen similar things jump in their hearts.

But after careful observation and touch, Kraft found that they were not the two materials he thought.

Although they look basically the same, they lack some intuitive things and become ordinary substances that look special. They have a mixed feel between chitinous shells, limestone, and bones, and a bit of rough granularity.

[They are dead]

This intuition is very strange, but it can be compared to the new storage in the morgue and the sleeping people. In fact, they are basically the same in composition, but they are completely different in nature.

He felt a little regretful, like seeing a patient who died on the eve of the birth of a new treatment. This has never happened before. It seems that a part of him regards these things as living things, or even the same kind, forming a kind of sympathy for the same kind.

Shaking off the inexplicable emotions, as the team passed through the pillar forest, an open space appeared in front of them.

In the center of the open space are several hexagonal pits the size of a wellhead, which are almost filled with mud, sand and gravel. According to what they have seen along the way, it should be the base of several particularly huge prisms.

The religious totem that once stood here is nowhere to be found, pulled up by the incredible force of thousands of people.

The pillars were pushed down like straw, clearing a wide passage and extending to the periphery. Buildings were crushed along the way, and the road surface was plowed and rolled up, pointing directly to the shore and sinking into the clear water.

"That makes sense"

This is the kind of existence they encountered in the royal mausoleum, or the chaotic army is an imitation of this behavior.

[Gathering, Proliferation]

If one army is still not enough, what about an entire tribe? An entire tribe that once lived on various islands in this underground lake, a Babel tower built by bodies and souls, has it undergone a qualitative change and is closer to the highest place on the other side?

Or is this road to heaven that truly brings them together, the living temple, still one step away, patrolling in the lake waiting for the last few bricks and stones.