Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

The team withdrew from the ruins.

Before, I had thought that there might be a fierce battle, something that would tear apart my cognition, but there was nothing here, it was really just an empty shell.

The abandoned eggshell, the fallen thing was its embryo, soaked in the tribe that once lived here. In the end, the contents did aggregate and hatch that kind of thing, but no matter what the existence that broke out of the shell was, it had nothing to do with egg yolk and egg white.

Before leaving, Kraft knocked off a few samples from the stone pillars of special materials to keep. To be honest, he was very curious about how these "died".

They returned to the side of the ship unscathed, and the disappeared things turned into a substantial weight, pressing on fragile nerves.

The formation of the embryo requires nutritional support, but now it seems that formation is far from the end. It also needs to grow, and the tribe that is gradually shrinking underground obviously cannot meet the needs, and if there is anywhere to meet the needs.

Everyone thought of the same thing, just above, a whole city is trembling in the shock.

The ship left the shore, and the fuel consumption rate was more optimistic than expected. The exploration could go further, and the fuel consumption would exceed one-third of the total before returning.

The remaining two-thirds of the mile included detours, getting lost, and possible rescue situations such as on-site rescue.

After getting rid of the shoal and reefs, the torch went out, and the oil lamp flame became the only lighting again.

Adjust the course, and the goal is the foot of another larger and deeper giant pillar in the lake.

The light of the lighthouse basically disappeared behind him, shrinking into a faint needle tip, and it was difficult to pierce through the gray cloth-like thick fog, which was already the last of the strong bow. Fortunately, the giant pillar with visible outline became another kind of navigation mark here, which can be used as a reference for direction.

The water mist became thicker, and the fog that obscured the vision did not dissipate with time. Instead, the density gradually increased, turning into lead water that wrapped the senses, and the perception of the surroundings became more and more dull.

There was a slight delay in talking to each other, and it took a while to understand the meaning when watching the other party's lips open and close.

There was a coolness on the back of his hand, and Kraft wiped it, and the feeling turned into a small piece. Team members let out a series of small exclamations and put their unprotected skin close to the light to check.

Ordinary water droplets. The water vapor here is so thick that it condenses and falls from the dome, forming a strange phenomenon similar to rain.

For a while, they really felt that they were back on the surface, rafting on the Temu River or some other water area on a rainy day, and they could return to the shore by just turning the boat slightly.

But the fact is that the water area in the thick fog is endless, and the "rain" is getting heavier.

The cold water droplets penetrated the robe, passed through the chain mail, soaked the lining, and sucked the temperature out of the body.

They didn't take any rain protection measures, and no one thought that it would rain across the rock layer of dozens or hundreds of meters.

The Dunling people who have lived in a mild climate for a long time are still enduring, and the only northerners who know the troubles of freezing rain have begun to look for shelter.

Kraft took out the outer waterproof package of some spare items and spread it out for everyone to get close to avoid. The waxed cloth or cardboard is of decent quality. At least it can be used as a raincoat to block most of the raindrops and will not cause a group of hypothermia here in half an hour.

This situation is not sensational. For outdoor activities, rain may sometimes be more troublesome than snow.

"I don't quite understand how those people survived." The temperature in the lake is so low that it makes people shudder in the literal sense, and it is the most uncomfortable kind of damp cold. The hands pulling the raincoat feel that the bone marrow is cooling.

Kraft, who has a good tolerance to cold, is in good condition. Several monks who have never thought about keeping warm are already shivering with cold, humming and squeezing out suppressed breaths from their mouths and noses to prevent themselves from making noise.

The weak humming moves with the boat, and even forms a sense of rhythm after grasping the new breathing frequency.

The high and low, rhythmic humming interweaves, an ensemble of allergic rhinitis and artificial abortion sneezes.

I don't know who found his own melody in the extremely dull air. From the moment I didn't notice it, the sound really became musical, following a certain cycle of repetition, like humming a melody.

Sometimes I can hear a small and somewhat memorable tune from it, which overlaps with the mouth of a bar poet begging for coins, the dry lips of an old man in the countryside, or the performance of a church choir in the deep memory, and the next second it turns to a direction I haven't heard before.

The tune is a bit clumsy, but it can evoke resonance, like a widely circulated broken lullaby, with a familiarity that seems to come from the cradle, and there is an impulse to hum along with the familiar fragments.

However, when I try to find a specific tune without intuition, I can't really distinguish it from various sounds. It's just a simple ordinary hum, flowing out of the wet and cold nasal cavity of the mucous membrane, just a coincidence.

This feeling is quite uncomfortable, as if there is a flying insect around my ear, but I can only hear the buzzing sound when I am half asleep and half awake.

Finally, someone had enough. He found subtle impatience on his own and others' faces.

"Stop, stop humming." The monk's eyes lingered on every face for a moment, including the two rowers who looked over, but he couldn't find out who it was.

Everyone looked innocent and confused, shook their heads, and then continued to lower their heads and shrink back into their raincoats.

Only after a while, they realized that the humming tune did not listen to the persuasion, and it was still low and continuous.

Green frowned. He was already irritable in the wet and cold state, and this behavior made him even more annoying.

"Stop humming!"

He warned, making sure that everyone on the boat could hear it. Everyone held their breath temporarily, fearing that the sound they made would be misunderstood as the guy who had offended everyone.

Even the rowers stopped temporarily.

"." The rough tone crawled over the earlobes low and heavy. It hasn't stopped yet.

Perhaps it was a psychological effect, the air was colder, so cold that the warmth of the clothes on the body could not be felt. The mist wet the clothes unconsciously, and the cold droplets condensed on the surface of the skin and slid into the collar along the neck.

Kraft got out of the raincoat, pushed the rower who was still hesitating whether to continue rowing back into the boat, lowered his body and looked around the water.

At the same time, on the other side, the priest gestured to the monks, grabbed a waterproof package that had never been moved, took out the items inside, stepped on the pedal to pull the string made of linen and metal wire, put the arrow on the shoulder to complete the preparation, and waited for the signal.

The humming was almost drowned out by the hasty preparations in the belly of the boat, but the position was originally erratic.

Like aerogel dissolved in the mist, it can be in the ear or anywhere.

Where?

Kraft saw Green using exaggerated lip gestures, but his eyes could not catch anything outside the side of the ship.

The water in the air and the water under the ship merged into one, making it difficult to see anything. Only the faint light of unknown origin outlined the distant landscape, and the near scenery was completely indistinguishable.

Cold sweat flowed down from his forehead, crossed his eyelashes and drilled into his eye sockets, stinging his cornea. Something has been near them for a while.

[When? ]

Was it just after entering the freezing rain, or after they huddled under the raincoat?

The mist was wriggling like a living thing, slowly and silently, weaving into a layered curtain, disguising the ripples on the water surface, the ripples of raindrops, and the bubbles as suspicious, covering up the real changes.

He turned his back to the crowd and closed his eyes.