Krafft's Anomaly Notes

Chapter 313 "Siren"

The team withdrew from the ruins.

I had thought before that I might encounter a fierce battle, something that would tear apart my cognition, but there is nothing here, it's really just an empty shell.

The abandoned eggshell, the fallen thing is its embryo, immersed in the tribe that once lived here. Eventually the contents did come together and hatch that thing, but no matter what the existence that broke out of the shell was, it had nothing to do with the 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 things "died".

They returned to the boat unharmed, and the disappeared objects became a substantial weight, oppressing their fragile nerves.

The embryo needs nutritional support to form, but it seems that forming is far from the end. It still needs to grow, and the population gradually shrinking underground obviously cannot meet the demand. If there is anywhere to meet the demand.
Everyone thought of the same thing at the same time: right above, an entire city was trembling in the earthquake.

The ship left the shore and the fuel consumption rate was more optimistic than expected. The exploration could go further inland and the fuel could be consumed until more than one-third of the total amount was consumed before returning.

The remaining two-thirds of the miles include detours, getting lost, and possible rescue situations such as needing to stay on the spot.

After getting rid of the shallows and reefs, the torches went out and the flames of oil lamps once again became the only source of illumination.

Adjusting the course, the goal was to reach the foot of another larger and deeper pillar in the lake.

The light of the lighthouse basically disappeared behind me, shrinking to a faint needle tip, struggling to pierce through the thick fog that looked like gray cloth. Fortunately, the huge pillar with visible outline became another kind of navigation mark here, which could be used as a reference for direction.

The mist became thicker, and the fog that obscured the vision did not dissipate over time. Instead, its density gradually increased, turning into lead water that enveloped the senses, making the perception of the surroundings increasingly dull.

There was a slight delay when talking to each other, and it took a while to understand the meaning when seeing the other person's lips opening and closing.

A cool feeling fell on the back of his hand. Kraft wiped it and the feeling turned into a small piece. Team members made a series of small sounds 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 on the dome, forming a strange phenomenon similar to rain.

For a moment they actually felt that they were back on the surface, boating on the Teme or some other body of water on a rainy day, and that they could return to shore with just a slight turn of the boat.

But the fact is that the waters in the fog are never ending and the “rain” is getting heavier.

Icy water droplets seeped through the tunic, passed through the mail, soaked the lining, and sucked the warmth from the body.

They didn't take any rain protection measures, and no one had expected that it would rain across the rock layers that were dozens or hundreds of meters thick.

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

Kraft unpacked the outer waterproof packaging of some spare items and spread them out for everyone to take shelter. The waxed cloth or cardboard was of decent quality, at least it could serve as a raincoat to block most of the raindrops and would not cause a new batch of hypothermia cases in half an hour.

This is not an exaggeration; sometimes rain can be more troublesome for outdoor activities than simple snow.

"I don't quite understand how those people survived." The temperature in the lake was so low that it was literally creepy, and it was the most uncomfortable kind of damp and cold. The hands that were pulling on the raincoat felt like they were cooling down to the bone.

Kraft, who had a good tolerance to cold, was in good condition. However, several monks who had never thought about protecting themselves from the cold were shivering from the cold. They groaned and squeezed out suppressed breaths from their mouths and noses to prevent themselves from making any noise.

The weak humming sound moved along with the boat, and even formed a sense of rhythm after grasping the new breathing frequency.

A rhythmic mix of high and low hums, an ensemble of allergic rhinitis and aborted sneezes.

I don't know who found their own melody in the extremely dull air. From an unnoticed moment, the sound became really musical, following a certain cycle of repetition, as if humming a melody. Sometimes I can hear a small and somewhat memorable tune from it, which overlaps with the voice 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 in a direction I have never heard before.

The tune was a little crude, but it was able to evoke resonance, like a broken lullaby that was widely circulated, with a familiarity that seemed to come from the cradle, and there was an urge to hum along with familiar fragments from it.

However, when I tried to find the specific tune without intuition, I couldn't quite distinguish it from the various sounds. It was just a simple hum, flowing out of the wet and cold nasal cavity, just a coincidence.

It feels quite uncomfortable, like there is a flying insect buzzing around your ear, but you can only hear the buzzing sound when you are half asleep and half awake.

Finally someone had enough, and he noticed the subtle impatience on his own face and the faces of others.

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

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

After a while, they realized that the humming tune did not listen to their advice and continued to play softly.

Green frowned. He was already irritable due to the cold and damp discomfort, and this behavior made him even more annoying.

"Stop humming!"

He warned, making sure everyone on the ship could hear him. Everyone held their breath for a moment, fearing that their voices would be misunderstood as the guy who had offended everyone.

Even the rowers paused temporarily.

"." A rough tone, low and heavy, crawled over the ear. It didn't stop yet.

Maybe it was a psychological effect. The air became even colder, so cold that I couldn't feel the warmth of my clothes. The mist wet my clothes unknowingly, and the cold droplets condensed on the surface of my skin and slid down my neck into my collar.

Kraft took off his 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 signaled to the monks, grabbed a waterproof package that had never been touched, took out the items inside, stepped on the pedal to pull the string made of linen and metal wire, put the arrow on his shoulder and prepared to wait for the signal.

The humming was almost drowned out by the sounds of hasty preparations in the belly of the ship, but the location was already erratic.

Like aerogel dissolved in mist, it can be next to your ear or anywhere else.

where?

Kraft saw Green lip-syncing his words, but his eyes could not catch anything over the side of the boat.

The water in the air and the water under the boat merged into one, making it difficult to see anything. Only the faint light from an unknown source outlined the distant scenery, while the nearby scenery was completely indistinguishable.

Cold sweat flowed down from his forehead, past his eyelashes and into his eye sockets, stinging his cornea. There was something near them, and it had been there for a while.

【when? 】

Was it just as they entered the freezing rain, or after they huddled under their rain ponchos?

The mist squirmed like a living thing, slowly and silently, weaving into layered curtains, disguising the ripples on the water, the ripples on the raindrops, and the bubbles into suspicious appearances, concealing the real changes.

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