Krafft's Anomaly Notes

To this day, Kraft has not actually experienced a real battlefield.

It was undeniable that sometimes he felt that he had experienced it many times. After experiencing the touch of humans and inhumans while wearing a sword, no matter how conservative a person is, it is easy for him to have the idea of ​​"just like this".

That is a misunderstanding, an illusion caused by defeating loose enemies one by one and using traps to create an advantage.

The real battlefield should be closer to the current situation. The individual characteristics are obliterated and the masses become one, forming some kind of huge whole without weaknesses, dominated by chaotic and slow consciousness.

This whole body does not express any will. There are only the sounds of marching shields, the scraping and knocking of iron spikes, and the murmuring of what seems to be human voices.

Green began to feel grateful for his encounter in the sewer on a rainy night. If he hadn't prepared the situation beforehand, perhaps someone would have made some kind of collapse when he saw that form.

Of course, it's not much better now. All the most disciplined teams can do is maintain their sanity and act in unison in the channel.

Before escaping, Yvonne picked up a short spear on the ground and threw it. The afterimage of the weapon was almost indistinguishable before it plunged into the darkness, causing the impact mechanism to buzz like a bell.

This failed to curb the speed of advancement, and with a heart-wrenching sound of metal expansion, the dents caused by the blows were reset.

The force that is fatal to the individual is not enough to cause damage to the integrated body. It seems to be some kind of malicious joke on the "collective power", literally twisting different bodies together and breaking down the barriers.

Perhaps this is the perfect posture of the ideal military formation.

Kraft grabbed Yvonne, pulled her into the center of the team, and evacuated away from the dark wave.

The sound of its approach was played back through the folds of the complex corridors, and was everywhere, coming from every doorway of every stone chamber, following closely at the heels of the team.

The bricks and stones trembled with an increasingly intense frequency, delivering a slight numbing sensation like an electric shock. The chaotic procession seems to have been summoned from a long sleep, slowly awakening, and stretching itself in a way that is not limited by space.

It was unknown where it came from. This metal-coated biomass seemed to be released from some gate, quickly flooding the surroundings and even appearing in the direction of the team, torturing every eardrum with those sharp scraping sounds.

They were forced to give up their plan to turn back and move deeper into the three-dimensional maze in order to gain distance.

This process was not smooth. It was necessary to identify the embossed pattern on the door edge to find the correct route. The tight time intensified the rush. Even though everyone tried their best not to show the panic that was about to boil, they almost made several low-level mistakes in misreading the pattern. It also made them realize that something was wrong.

Now it seems that this way of marking the route is not only not obvious, but also too easy to cause misunderstanding in emergency situations.

"Give me the direction, give me the direction!" Green shouted to everyone, "Go left!"

The sword-wielding guards guided them forward in twists and turns, spiraling up and down from time to time. It was hard to imagine how they could get around this maze if they didn't discover the rules.

"Straight ahead!"

"No, I saw it wrong."

Two voices sounded at the same time, confirming the relief in front of them again. The latter was horrified to find that he had hardly thought before reporting the direction, and almost led the team to the wrong direction.

It was clearly a figure with a sword facing upwards. In a state of high tension, it was subjectively distorted into an exiting form, "No, that's what I just saw."

"Don't explain, see clearly, and keep running!" The priest interrupted his explanation. This was the last thing he needed right now. The simple change in the reported direction effectively added a layer of insurance. After several correct turns, the team quickly found the right feeling, and the sound of the pursuit behind them became slightly distant.

It obviously does not use optical organs to find prey, but directly senses the position through some special method. It will inevitably be blocked for a while by various detours and long distances.

But the tide never needs to find a route, it just pours into all the places it can pour in until it engulfs the target.

"Turn right!" A monk announced the next direction, but then an unprepared despair grabbed his feet, preventing him from moving forward at all.

The surge of chaos and the sound of metal chiming appeared behind this doorway. Perhaps it was a coincidence caused by countless branches. A part of the dark surge passed through a circuitous road and blocked the only way forward at some point.

The validity of the definition of distance seems to it to be in a state of intermittentness, and it can appear unfettered in places that are impossible to reach at that speed.

"This is impossible..." The monk could not explain how this situation happened. The similar stone chamber environment caused a confusion in the sense of space, as if he was sent back to the thing after turning in a large circle.

Green reacted immediately, "Don't be stunned! Take other paths."

"Where to go?" If you deviate from the guidance, you will just linger, and you may run into a dead end at any time.

Perhaps even before that time comes, the loss of guidance has already pushed people's mental state to a dead end, and fear is uncontrollably expressed through wrinkled forehead lines and twinkling pupils.

Courage in the ordinary sense cannot support people to imagine the consequences of contact with that shield wall, let alone the way in which the owners of those grunting lines exist.

"Keep moving forward and turn left in the next room." An affirmative voice stabilized the situation, "This way can be bypassed."

It was an all too familiar voice, and Green found inexplicably that the professor still remained in his usual state of silence.

how do you know? He really wanted to ask this, but he knew better the consequences of asking. Unstable collective panic could break out at any time due to doubts.

The fatigue that had enveloped Kraft recently like a mist was temporarily lifted, replaced by a certain state of excitement, and the intuitive impression that had been felt in him became clear: the image of propriety is a solidified shell that contains secrets and other things. something.

And now "something else" becomes more apparent, injected into the shell. Appearing suddenly like an amorphous thing chasing them into a maze.

"Go forward, turn left in the next room." Kraft repeated, his eyes wandering, attached to countless visible and invisible focal points in the space.

Green was certain something had changed, and it was no illusion.

The team took action and was guided two steps in advance.

The surging chaos surrounding them appeared in all unexpected directions, but it was always one step away from them, being avoided and thrown behind them predictably.

After an extremely complicated transfer, the embossed doorway with a sword representing the correct route reappeared in front of us, but this time there was nothing blocking the direction.

Kraft grabbed his throat, opening his gills like a fish thrown ashore, showing a strange false sense of suffocation, and said in a voice distorted by pain: "Keep on, don't stop, it's everywhere!"